As for the UK state itself, well I have to confess, I’m a wee bit of a Scottish seperatist. I would like the British establishment figment consigned to where it belongs, the dustbin of history.
I would like to see independent govts for Wales and England, and also Eire (just to be cheeky for a minute).

I don’t understand you reference to fighting ‘leftist brethern’. I can’t comment on it.

Talk soon Michael.

Here is me thinking I was being very democratically minded as well.
Talk soon Michael.

I never said any such thing, nor do I even remotely believe anything like that. I simply acknowledge we’re imperfect and mistakes have been made. I think the US & the UK have been two of the most powerful and effective forces for freedom and liberty and justice and human progress in the history of the world.

As a Brit, I think you should be bursting with pride at the stunning achievements of your society. The UK set the world on the path to liberty and exported the most durable and universally accepted institutions for law. They also stood and fought tooth and nail against tyranny when all their leftist European brethren had collapsed or appeased. You live in a great country with a spectacular history. Why do have such a hard time seeing that? Who has poisoned your mind?

The book I mentioned, by the way, is about the only decent study to date, along scientific lines, that proves the more exposure to the mass media the less you know about the world you live - Greg Philo and Glasgow University Mass Media Group 2004 Bad News fron Israel

The elected PM of Iran.
What, you mean the US doesn’t agree with democracy when its outcomes doesn’t suit its interests? So the US establishes and supports a cruel and bloodthirsty regime to prevent democracy breaking out amongst the Iranian public. Why are you so surprised when the US gets another regime it doesn’t like, but this time the Iranians despise the US for what it has done to them. The US destroys democracy in a country but doesn’t like the creature it is responsible for creating. Just as in Vietnam, when the US invaded and left the indigenous population no other option but to fight. Democracy was made impossible by US terror and genocide.

As for Communisn expanding here there and everywhere after WWII, this is another one of those convenient myths. Where the state subsidised Military-Intelligence (never the most dependable people as everyone now knows) referred to ‘communism’, this was in fact, independent nationalism. This type of mis-understanderstinding is in the now familiar old-new mould of ‘if your not for us your against us’ type propaganda. Those who didn’t want to work for a living (unlike the rest of us who have to) called independent nationalism ‘communism’. This was wherever the locals refused to hand over their resources for the benefit of US corporations. Independent nationalists ie the whole of the Third World, prefered to use their resources and wealth on themselves for such superfluous items as schools, hospitals, housing, water and sewerage systems.

Yes there was some nasty buisness going on in west asia, and as you keep admitting, the US was behind it all. Wether funding its sadistic dictatorships, or the locals who were reacting to these brutal regimes the US funded and supported to the hilt.
The fact that the US pidgeons came home to roost in spectacular fashion in 9/11 is all too embarrassing for the neo-nitwits who invaded Iraq, thus doing bin Laden the biggest of favours.

The regime of Iraq was still being supported after Halubja by the US and UK, and the French govts, and the Germans etc etc. A British journalist Farzouf Bazof, was hung by the Iraqi regime at the time and the British Secret(ive) Services spread smear stories to discredit the poor man and in order to support their pals, the WMD buying, Baathist Party of Iraq.
The reason for Gulf War I was because Saddam got a wee bit too big for his boots, when he invaded Kuwait. Despite the fact he had been given the green light by Washington. Funny how old friends fall out and history has to be re-written Orwellian fashion.

The US has no support in Iraq, apart from its washed up 3 percent. Any goodwill it had has long since vanished in the now familiar neo-incompetent fashion we have all come to know and laugh at. Unfortunately there are tens of thousands of victims strewn around various west asian countries due their war crimes.

The US does operate gulags. The people in them have been stripped of their human rights and been subjected to the most vile torture and sexual abuse. Its victims are often murdered. Quite appropriate that Abu Graibh is still standing, a monument to US morality in that region and its global crimes against humanity in general.

As your recipe states too few hands and suchlike, as the out of countrol US government shows, huge amounts of power in in too few hands this isn’t a good idea ( I will mention the fact the current US govt wasn’t even voted into office legally, that is by those US citizens who could be bothered to show up for the empty ritual of voting, a recent poll said 75 percent of Americans said it makes no difference to their lives who they vote for) . Who in west asia gets any input into the corrupt US policies. I only mention these folks because they are the Pentagon’s target population at the moment (apart from Haiti, Venezuala, Columbia).

Tthe computer and software, like much else in the hi-tech sector, was not developed in the free market, but in the publicly subsidised and protected US weapons research and development sector. You have to go to Japan to find hi-tech toys that are developed (almost) in the free-market. Such as the minituarised laser for use with CDs. The free-market as a concept is all very well and good but I don’t think it would be implemented again. Just look at any Victorian society before huge social movements demanded improvements to prevents kids being sent down the mines, prevent huge pollution etc etc The best example of the notion of the ‘free-market’ in action, is of course, the Third World. Who wants to give up their passport go and work and live there ? Not many. In any case the free-market is just another way of describing the welfare state for the rich.

Just one last thing. Madeleine Albright herself agreed with the statistics of half a million Iraqi kids dead due to UK-US sactions regime. She also stated on the US ‘ 60 Minutes’ programme that she thought it a price worth paying. Now this is an act of terrorism beyond bin Laden and his pipsqueak wannabees wildest dreams. The figure is a UN figure, just like the evidence that Iraq had no WMD or means to produce any, was a UN finding. It had nothing to do with interference from the Iraqi regime, which was actually held up as a model of food distribution. A lot of the deaths involved inadequate sewerage and water supply. Vital equipment was vindictively denied by the US-UK.

I enjoy the dedication in a Rambo film to the (CIA funded) mujihadeen, ‘freedom fighters’. These are the people that now bite the hand that fed them. So ironic, and the clearest example of Chlamers Johnston’s concept of ‘blowback’.

As you note, this is hardly anything new. The fact that the CIA was the govenment agency charged with supplying them and coordinating with them is hardly a secret. It was announced by the Carter Administration.

Let me tell you a little story. In 1985 I worked with two brothers who were Afghan refugees. Their father, who had been a general in the Afghan army defected to the US when the Sovs invaded to install a communist regime. There were six or seven brothers and three or four sisters. Big family. They were highly educated, very cultured, nice, giving people.

The father commuted back and forth to Afghanistan to help coordinate the war and would take two sons back with him each time to fight. The others worked to support the family.

I attended a fundraiser with them in a Senate office building that was attended by many members of the Mujahadeen leadership. At one point in the meeting, one of the brothers pulled me aside and pointed to a bearded and turbanned man. ‘See that man? He’s very dangerous. Think of Khomenhi. He’s like that. A religious fanatic. I tell you, when we finish fighting the Russians I predict we’ll be at war him and his faction.’ He was right. Does that mean we shouldn’t have supported and armed and trained the Muj? No, I don’t think so. I think our mistake was not staying involved and supporting the centrist, secular factions in their civil war against the fundamentalists. Instead, when the Russians left, we took the approach that it was up to the Afghans to sort themselves out. That proved to be a disasterous mistake. We’ve been forced to correct that, post 9/11. I also noticed the father of my friends is highly involved in the new government and I’ve seen his name in paper several times.

I have pictures of your pal Rummy, and others of the US govt, shining their backsides on Saddam’s seats.

Yes, that was some pretty nasty business, I agree. At the time, some very cynical political decisions were taken. If you’ll rememeber, the Iranian mullahs were destabilzing the entire ME with their support of fundamentalist islamists, instigating them to commit acts of terror. This was prior, btw, to his gassing the Kurds.

The debate went like this:
* The Iranians are very dangerous. Saddam has declared war on them. He is the enemy of our enemy, we should support him in his war, just as we supported Stalin (the monster) against the nazis.
* But he’s a dictator. A tyrant.
* So was Stalin. Look at it like this, two of the worst regimes in the ME are at war with each other. Of the two (so went the thinking at the time) the Iranians are more dangerous. We need to ensure they don’t win.

And so, Rummy was sent to Iraq to offer Saddam support in the war. Not pretty, I agree. Neither was supporting Stalin with arms and food during WWII. But it was done out of necessity to seeing the greater threat defeated. Now everyone likes to say, ‘See here! You supported him once.’ True. As we did Stalin. That’s reality. Life is not a fairy tale. Sometimes the choice is not between good and bad, it’s between bad and worse. And you need to choose.

Support levels among Iraqis for the US interference in their affairs about 3%.

I don’t think that’s accurate. The Iraqis have been polled repeatedly and show reasonably good results. Now, if the poll question was phrased ‘Do you want the Americans interfering in the decisions of the elected government?’ I would expect the answer to be a resounding No. That’s seems like a normal answer. That doesn’t equate to their believing we should not overthrown the Saddam regime.

Who are the people in the US gulags?

There are no gulags. There is a POW prison in Cuba, if that’s what you mean. The people there are NOT there because they are Catholic, or made a joke about the political leadership, or read a banned book, as they would be in real, Soviet style gulag. They are POWs captured on the battlefield. They were determined to be leadership figures and so were detained. They are fed good food, allowed religious services, seen by doctors and dentists, etc. It’s propably more than they deserve but it’s the civilized thing to do, I guess.

Bremmer sacked all the Iraq army and all members of the Baathist party, action seen at the time and later as a complete disaster

On this, we can agree. That was a State Department recommendation, I think. Modelled on de-nazification in post-war Germany. I think lots of people think it was a mistake in retrospect.

The US-UK sanctions regime on Iraq was responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraq children over a 10 year period.

That’s another distortion. It wasn’t the sanctions, per se, it was how Saddam spent, or didn’t spend, the funds he had. He was given plenty of money for food and medical expenses. He used the money to build himself billions of dollars of palaces, pay off his supporters, etc. Many groups, such as the Kurds and Shia, he deliberately starved. He did that. No one else. And it was well known, well documented and well reported that it was happening. That’s one of the primary reasons the US/UK began to argue for regime change and abandoning the sanctions. It was not touching the regime but was hurting the population. I was always opposed to sanctions. I never thought they were going to work. I wrote repeatedly to my Senator and Congressman in opposition to sanctions and for regime change. The regime was the issue, not the Iraqis.

The Islamic Revolution was born of all the nasty things you describe, specifically funded by the US. If you remember the Shah of Iran

Yes, I do remember. He was installed by a CIA backed coup. The elected PM had been a communist, I believe. Bad decision by Eisenhower. Everyone agrees on that.

A little more history for you. This was ~12 years after the end WWII. There was lots of discussion, thinking, debate, etc about how to avoid big, catastrophic wars in the future. One line of thinking was that if Hitler had been assasinated or pushed out via a coup, WWII could have been avoided. It was a popular idea. This was also the height of the Cold War. We were opposing communist expansion everywhere. In 20-20 hindsight, it looks like a really bad idea. But their motivation was to try to avoid big, devastating wars by removing key figures. The Shah was seen as a pro-western, modernizing force. He was. He was also a tyrant in some ways. He tortured the islamist rebels he captured, I know that. But in truth, there was far more freedom and a far higher standard of living and education under the Shah than there is now. But we still probably shouldn’t have done it.

I quoted a recent book which is a scientific study of the mass media and effects. The more mass media one is exposed to the less one knows, but this is ignored.

The best bet, IMAO, is to read a lot. Look at as many information sources as possible. Read history and scholarly works on subjects. The newspapers are generally a poor source of comprehensive information. They tend to report on the sensational, not report in depth. TV is worse, with a few exceptions. Here in the States, C-SPAN, PBS’s ‘The News Hour’ and NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ are relatively good sources. They speak and debate in pages, not 10-second bites and tend to have a high caliber of guest. You hear lots of viewpoints which are given thorough hearing. C-SPAN, in particular, is exceptional. I’ve had several Brits comment to me that there’s nothing like it in the UK. They’re amazed at it’s non-partisan, comprehensive coverage of subjects and events. But reading high quality books is still your best bet.

I thought I was answering your question, the best way I can…

I read that paragraph several times and for the life of me can’t figure out if you believe in the free market or not.

Corporations, beleive me, are not your enemy. If there’s something you should fear, it’s too much power concentrated in the hands of too few people. That’s not only a recipe for tyranny, it practically gaurantees it.

Corporations are voluntary assemblies of individuals who get together to provide a product or service in return for a profit. Those that provide the best product or service thrive, those that do not fail. They have no control over your life. You are not forced to purchase their products. The computer and software you use were made possible by corporations. So are the medicines. So are the vehicles. What’s not to like?

I have pictures of your pal Rummy, and others of the US govt, shining their backsides on Saddam’s seats. The only difference these days in Iraq, is the Pentagon has now decided to take control of matters directly. Support levels among Iraqis for the US interference in their affairs about 3%.

I also believe that getting rid of the biggest terrorist organisation in the region, ie the Pentagon, would help, of course it would.
By its own definitions the US is a rogue terrorist state. It funds and supports racist, repressive violent regimes, which you keep admitting to, but trying to get you to appreciate this is a thankless task.

What about Kuwait? As good an example of US policy in the region. Or the terror tactics and collective punishment regime of racist Israel. 130 UN resolution defied but no sign of a Pentagon invasion.

All intellegence has been discredited as fake, as everyone knew, and as the UN weapons inspectors related to an unlistening mass media. It is proven, at the time, and after. There was no WMD, which was the excuse fabricated at the time. Once that evoporated other lies needed to be concocted. If their are foreign terrorists, which I would assume there is, then where are they? I only as this as a matter of rigour. Who are the people in the US gulags?

Suicide bombers not Bremmer. Bremmer sacked all the Iraq army and all members of the Baathist party, action seen at the time and later as a complete disaster for any future planning of Iraq. The US admin had Iraq on a plate; a grateful public wanting to be rid of the evil US-UK sanctions regime, what more advantage did the clown need ?

Speaking of the sanction regimes and your flippant quip about busbombs and children. The US-UK sanctions regime on Iraq was responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraq children over a 10 year period. Madelein Albright on ‘ 60 Minutes’ said these costs, of the sactions agaianst Iraq, were worth it. Roughly 1000 children every week for 10 years. Again these are UN figures and not the former Baathist regime’s.

The reason for the reaction to the US govt by peoples of west asia is US support for corrupt and racist regimes in the region. Specifically, with its spiritual roots in southern Lebanon the Islamic Revolution, grew as a response to the IDF’s illegal invasion (unprovoked aggression, but like Hitler border incidents were fabricated to provide a cover). The Islamic Revolution was born of all the nasty things you describe, specifically funded by the US. If you remember the Shah of Iran, the Pentagon’s man through and through and bloodthirsty monster( incidently The Islamic Revolution was never predicted by the vastly over-inflated US intelligence community, to busy with paranood delusion about the pesky Russkies). If you are interested in finding a solution to terrorism then you must be interested in its roots and address those issues that breeds such violence.

Saddam was given the go-ahead to attack the revolution of Iran, to bleed it dry, if you cast your mind back. He attacked oil tackers nad the USS Stark and the Pentagon looked on this activity with magnanimity. Saddam was their man then but this is all history lost down the memory hole. Inconvenient to today’s orders.

I quoted a recent book which is a scientific study of the mass media and effects. The more mass media one is exposed to the less one knows, but this is ignored. I can’t do anymore than that

As I said the biggest recruitment campaign for resistence to US aggression and support for repressive regimes, is the behaviour towards these people.

I thought I was answering your question, the best way I can, trying to explain what I think the roots of the violence are. They belong in the neo-communist intervention in the economy on behalf on certain privileged sectors. Namely the military (and agri-buisness, but that doesn’t concern me). Underlying US policy remains stable and has done since WWII, only the excuses change. Once the excuse of protecting this sector from the influence of the free market was the ‘Cold War’, but once this excuse could no longer be peddled with a straight face (incidently, the US intelligence services failed to predict the fall of the Soviet system), new demons had to be found to scare the public into handing over their hard earned money to the corporations and the military.

What am I going to do about all this. Well, vote the right way, discuss things, get other peoples opinions and ideas. All the stuff that normally happens in a democracy. It’s hardle earth shattering news I hope Michael.

Thanks replying. At least you put an effort in which I appreciate.

Anyway Michael. I’ll talk to you soon.