Here's a list of the military actions the US has been involved in since 1960.

I think he may have a point...

1959-60 -- The Caribbean.
1962 -- Thailand.
1962 -- Cuba.
1962-75 -- Laos.
1964 -- Congo (Zaire).
1959-75 -- Vietnam War.
1965 -- Invasion of Dominican Republic
1967 --Israel.
1967 -- Congo (Zaire).
1968 -- Laos & Cambodia.
1970 -- Cambodia Campaign.
1974 -- Evacuation from Cyprus.
1975 -- Evacuation from Vietnam.
1975 -- Evacuation from Cambodia.
1975 -- South Vietnam.
1975 -- Cambodia.
1976 -- Lebanon.
1976 -- Korea.
1978 -- Zaire (Congo).
1980 -- Iran.
1981 -- El Salvador.
1981 --Libya. in the Gulf of Sidra, claimed by Libya as territorial waters but considered international waters by the United States.[RL30172]
1982 -- Sinai.
1982 -- Lebanon.
1982-1983 -- Lebanon.
1983 -- Grenada.
1983-89 -- Honduras.
1983 -- Chad.
1984 -- Persian Gulf.
1986 -- Libya.
1986 -- Libya.
1986 -- Bolivia
1987-88 -- Persian Gulf.
1988 -- Honduras
1988 -- Panama.
1989 -- Libya.
1989 -- Panama.
1989 -- Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru.
1989 -- Philippines.
1989-90 -- Panama.
1990 -- Liberia.
1990 -- Saudi Arabia.
1991 -- Iraq.
1991 -- Zaire
1992 -- Sierra Leone.
1992 -- Kuwait.
1992-2003 -- Iraq. Iraqi No-Fly Zones
1993-Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1993 -- Macedonia.
1994-95 -- Haiti.
1994 -- Macedonia.
1995 -- Bosnia.
1996 -- Liberia.
1996 -- Central African Republic.
1997 -- Albania.
1997 -- Congo and Gabon.
1997 -- Sierra Leone.
1997 -- Cambodia.
1998 -- Iraq.
1998 -- Guinea-Bissau.
1998 - 1999 Kenya and Tanzania.
1998 -- Afghanistan and Sudan.
1998 -- Liberia.
1999 - 2001 East Timor.
1999 -- NATO's bombing of Serbia
2000 -- Sierra Leone.
2000 -- Yemen.
2000 -- East Timor.
2001 -- Afghanistan.
2002 -- Yemen.
2002 -- Philippines.
2002 -- Côte d'Ivoire.
2003 -- 2003 invasion of Iraq
2003 -- Liberia.
2003 -- Georgia and Djibouti
2004 -- Haïti
2004 -- Georgia, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Yemen, and Eritrea.[7]
2006 -- Pakistan.
2006 -- Lebanon.
2007 -- Somalia.

Make sure you vote for your own video!

Legacy100's raving immediately became irrelevant when an entire continent of 53 unique countries was compared to 3 cherry picked countries in Asia. Do I need to remind you that some of these gems of economic development also fall under the Asian designation . . . Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, East Timor, The Maldives, Nepal, Yemen, Bhutan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, etc.

There are deep and complex structural problems in Africa. Every country is unique but the exploitation of natural resources and labour is pretty universal.

Why not try reading "Bitter Chocolate" by Carol Off. It chronicles the exploitation of cocoa by large western corporations in the Ivory Coast, just 1 unique story in a bouquet of 53.

Westerners should stop pointing fingers at Africa while they stuff their mouths full of chocolate tempered on the back of bitter exploitative conditions on a continent they know NOTHING about.

>> ^Sniper007:
I'm not sure which figure is more bogus. The 80 cents or the $1,000.


Neither figure is significantly exaggerated.

"Perhaps 110 million mines lurk in 64 nations around the world, and each year they kill or maim about 30,000 people, usually civilians. The heaviest concentrations of mines are in poor countries like Cambodia, Somalia, Bosnia, Mozambique, Afghanistan and Angola that have survived years or even decades of civil war. Five million new mines are laid each year, and only 100,000 are cleared. A new mine costs $3; uprooting one costs between $200 and $1,000."

But the numbers might have changed since this 1996 Time Magazine article. I don't know if the "butterfly" landmines that this man talks about are newer or cheaper then the $3.00 price that the 1996 article cites.

^imstellar

Am not against gun control but to claim an armed populace is a deterrent against government oppression is a really ridiculous idea, even more so when you factored in the genocides of Armenia, Soviet Union, China, Guatemala and Cambodia.

Why not mention the reverse situation where there was high gun saturation then to show what happened when there was an armed populace? Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan and so on?

Such pro-gun arguments always seem to come from the US where this issue has been blown out of proportion because of the NRA and the Republican Party because it applies to a certain political demographic.

This doesn't address the high occurrence of gun related crime in the US in general when compared to states that have varying levels of gun control laws but don't have such high crime rates such as Canada, Japan, Finland, Switzerland and other EU states.

^unclejimbo,

directly comparing murder rates country-to-country is not a valid comparison because of a convolution of variables and you should know that. the figures i quoted were not simple murders, if one included those, the numbers would be even higher. genocide is only possible under a differential of force. that occurs when one group disarms another group. i think you should read up on gun myths further before you jump to the conclusions held by "popular knowledge". if this is a subject you are interested in, (at least interested enough to read about while you are at work) i can point you to a lot of enlightening information.

"In 1911, Turkey established gun control. Subsequently, from 1915 to 1917, 1.5-million
Armenians, deprived of the means to defend themselves, were rounded up and killed.
In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. Then, from 1929 to 1953, approximately 20-
millon dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1935, China established gun control. Subsequently, between 1948 and 1952, over 20-million
dissidents were rounded up and killed.
In 1956, Cambodia enshrined gun control. In just two years (1975-1977) over one million
"educated" people were rounded up and killed.
In 1964, Guatemala locked in gun control. From 1964 to 1981, over 100,000 Mayan Indians
were rounded up and killed as a result of their inability to defend themselves.
In 1970, Uganda got gun control. Over the next nine years over 300,000 Christians were rounded
up and killed."

It is not enough to say that gun control resulted in these deaths, this requires additional analysis which is found in that book. Gun confiscation rarely results in the direct, immediate death of its owner, rather it establishes a force differential which makes oppression, genocide, and murder possible.

You may not realize it, but one of the few things stopping someone from rounding you up and killing you is the fact that there are 150 million guns in this country. It does not mean that in the absence of guns genocide always occurs, but there has never been an instance of genocide where the victims had a means to defend themselves. If you take away the guns, and somewhere down the road something intense happens which causes a philosophical shift, you are ripe for genocide. Just look at WW2, the Japanese were rounded up into internment camps. How many Japanese lives do you think were spared because the US government did not have the physical power to kill them as a result of an armed populace? How about for arabs after 9-11?

It is extremely dangerous to trust your life with complete strangers, and that is what you do when give up your right to defend yourself.

"all guns will be confiscated and..."

its funny(?) until it comes true. list of countries/states that have confiscated firearms:

1938 Germany
1996 Australia
2001 Canada
1991 New York
1999 California
2005 Louisiana
1997 Great Britain
1935 China
1964 Guatemala
1956 Cambodia
1970 Uganda
1929 USSR
1911 Turkey
Bermuda
Cuba
Greece
Ireland
Jamaica
Soviet Georgia
Kenya
South Africa

>> ^quantumushroom:

Classic rewriting of history. No mention of the fact that the US did everything in it's power to win the war that was lost years ago. You know the endless bombing campaigns that wanted to simply bludegeon the populace into submission.

No mention of the fact that those bombings went into crossing borders into Cambodia and allowed the Khmer Rouge to come into power. Which is why Vietnam invaded.

No mention of the fact that Kissinger held back from bringing a peace to gain political power in his realpolitik doctrine.

No mention of the fact that General Westmoreland was allowed full control of the situation to 'win' Vietnam.

But that's okay, America had to be bomb Vietnam to free it.

Films I watched Wednesday:

• "Burning the Future: Coal in America"
• "One Bad Cat: The Reverend Albert Wagner Story"
• "Small Voices: The Stories of Cambodia's Children"
• "An Unlikely Weapon"

Can you make a list of Christian ideas that atheists claim as their own? I'm not at all curious about the pragmatic sides of theisms, but the theft of religious intellectual property is very interesting.

In reply to this comment by ShakaUVM:
In reply to this comment by poolcleaner:
Where did you read that atheists claim these ideas as their own?

Like I said, I spend a lot of time on the IIDB boards, and it's a fairly common to see statements like "Religion shouldn't be used as a justification for war" being used as a club against theists.

I'm a theist, and I agree with that statement, and the concept was developed by theists during the Enlightenment, which is why seeing statements like that (or many of the statements made by Sam Harris) annoy me.

Personally, my philosophy is basically Pragmatic, so things like this actually matter quite a bit, as I tend to judge philosophies and religions by the results they produce. While atheism is a fairly reasonable position, when you look at guys like Sam Harris and Dawkins, who basically make their money by being fucktards towards Christians, that I get really annoyed with it. Dan Dennett is closer to the breed of atheist that I prefer.

At the same time, when I look at the immense amount of good being done around the world by Christians and the almost total lack of anything resembling, say, an atheist Red Cross, compounded by the direction that all the atheist nations have gone to to date (China, USSR, France, Cambodia), that I think a Pragmatic argument for Christianity becomes clear.

Don't think that my theism is just for Pragmatic reasons - I do think that Christianity is a defensible stance (and, in fact, a quite probable one, for various reasons) -- but Pragmatic arguments are a sort of common ground that both theists and atheists can participate in.

In reply to this comment by poolcleaner:
Where did you read that atheists claim these ideas as their own?

Like I said, I spend a lot of time on the IIDB boards, and it's a fairly common to see statements like "Religion shouldn't be used as a justification for war" being used as a club against theists.

I'm a theist, and I agree with that statement, and the concept was developed by theists during the Enlightenment, which is why seeing statements like that (or many of the statements made by Sam Harris) annoy me.

Personally, my philosophy is basically Pragmatic, so things like this actually matter quite a bit, as I tend to judge philosophies and religions by the results they produce. While atheism is a fairly reasonable position, when you look at guys like Sam Harris and Dawkins, who basically make their money by being fucktards towards Christians, that I get really annoyed with it. Dan Dennett is closer to the breed of atheist that I prefer.

At the same time, when I look at the immense amount of good being done around the world by Christians and the almost total lack of anything resembling, say, an atheist Red Cross, compounded by the direction that all the atheist nations have gone to to date (China, USSR, France, Cambodia), that I think a Pragmatic argument for Christianity becomes clear.

Don't think that my theism is just for Pragmatic reasons - I do think that Christianity is a defensible stance (and, in fact, a quite probable one, for various reasons) -- but Pragmatic arguments are a sort of common ground that both theists and atheists can participate in.

The lack of coverage by big media is, sadly, nothing new. It's great to see it condemned, though I think the daily show manages to do so more effectively, and it's a comedy program. I like the RealNews(all news actually) better when it's doing news rather than editorializing.

As for reading more into the lack of Iraq coverage as to any pro-war agenda, remember that the media's short attention span is equal opportunity with everything. The Iraq-Iran war, the gassing of the Kurds, Cambodia, Serbia, Rwanda and so on.

Chomsky is a total nutcase.

He famously said that Cambodia was better off under Pol Pot, among a lot of other amazingly deluded things.

^
The common conclusion is that the planet is warming. That's all anyone is saying with any certainty.

As to the cause, well, take your pick.

When we discovered that the amount of lead in the atmosphere was due solely to the lead being added to petroleum in cars, the entire motor industry changed overnight.

Global warming is different. It's political. The energy industry IS the government in America.

If you truly believe that global warming is man made, then get rid of your car, change your lifestyle, and be proud of yourself for doing something that actually will make a difference.

Energy efficient homes? Go out to Cambodia, or visit a village in Peru, or stay with a tribe in the Amazon. And it'd all be wiped out tomorrow with a big fucking McDonalds in the middle of it if corporate america could get away with it.

Operation Menu was the codename of a covert U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombing campaign conducted in eastern Cambodia from 18 March 1969 until 26 May 1970, during the Vietnam War.