Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Greenwald is awesome - the Woodward and Bernstein of our times.

I also note the "social policy blowback". He's prevented from living in the US because the government won't recognise his same-sex marriage.

Though he is probably glad he's not in the US at the moment.

Uh...the point of the video was that the term "Blow-Back" and what it stands for was NOT made up by Ron Paul. That it is a real thing and that RP was using the term to correctly explain his point of view. The fact that most people watching the debates including the people participating have no idea what blow-back is doesn't do a lot to support your claim that ""Blowback" is a widely known term"...perhaps in certain circles this is true...but not for most people.>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Welcome to foreign policy 101.
"Blowback" is a widely known term and concept that goes back decades. Chomsky has written extensively about it since the 70s. Ron Paul did not invent or popularize this term. In fact, Ron Paul is 30 years late to the party, which I guess is pretty good for Ron, considering he is still stuck in the 1800s with regards to economics.

Welcome to foreign policy 101.

"Blowback" is a widely known term and concept that goes back decades. Chomsky has written extensively about it since the 70s. Ron Paul did not invent or popularize this term. In fact, Ron Paul is 30 years late to the party, which I guess is pretty good for Ron, considering he is still stuck in the 1800s with regards to economics.

George Zimmerman is on trial currently for 2nd degree murder. Sure, the Sanford cops were slow on the investigation, but there was sufficient blowback to cause the police chief to step down. We'll just see if the 'stand your ground' law is applicable in Zimmerman's defense. From the information in the video, there wasn't any provocation or attack mentioned to warrant any self-defense to bring 'stand your ground' into play. I think the guy in this video is just what he seems to be.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The problem with Ron Paul is that his economic policy contradicts his foreign policy. He wants to further deregulate and cut taxes for the corporations that took us to war in the first place. It's like trying to extinguish a fire with gasoline.


You see contradicts, I see consistency. A position against against war is a position against meddling, same to regulating businesses. And not all corporations profit from war, that is a bold hyperbole. Would an entire internet of do-gooders regulate food imports better than a government agency? Who knows, I for one, would like to see it tried. A failure will precipitate more participation in solution finding then the flawed FDA's and its inadequacies. The same advances that advance all our modern technology are ignored when mired in the miasma of politics. Important things that have no real answers should be left in our hands, 300 million hands make light work of problems, but only if that problem is left for them to solve. The illusion of law and safety is worse than no law at all. I consider myself a caring person, so I don't advocate liberty as an excuse to do harm, but do good in the way and on the things I want to do good on. Outsourcing caring, justice, goodness to other people; to government people I believe is the cause of much of our selfish american culture. And as such, I don't think upping the ante of other people caring for us is the answer. Freedom is harder, its evil more plain and boldfaced. But boldfaced enemies are easier foes than powerful men hiding behind good sounding legislation. Basically, I am against all forms of force, be it forces of good or evil. The only force I believe in is personal force of will, and my ability to convince you without force. It would be evil for me to demand you give your time, money, and energy to habitat for humanity...even though what they do is an arguable good thing. I don't see how the case for any of the other social legislation is any different.


Edit some autocorrect typos

I like both Chris and Sam, but after reading the passage I think Sam was irresponsible in his writing - though I see it as more glib than malicious. I'm happy to discuss it with anyone who disagrees, but the way I interpret the passage is...

"If Muslim Jihadists - who fear not death and want nothing more than to nuke us for religious reasons - ever came to power in a state that possessed nuclear weapons, our only option would be to nuke them first. It would be horrible, absurd, unthinkable and would result in millions of deaths and would likely lead to retaliation.... BUT IT WOULD BE THE FAULT OF RELIGION."

I think the problem is three-fold, a) that he mounts an argument that justifies preemptive global nuclear war, b) that, sadly, he paints our conflict as one of religion and not one of foreign policy and c) that he sees Muslims as crazy people who would sacrifice the lives of their children in exchange for dead Americans and heavenly virgins. This is indefensible.

Let me respectfully remind my good sift libs that Middle Eastern rage against the US has to do with foreign policy, not religion. It's blowback. It was Bush that said they hate us for our freedom, and Chomsky (on the left) and Ron Paul (on the right) that said they want us to stop bombing them, building bases in their countries and installing puppet dictators. Are we really going to side with the Bush doctrine instead of having to concede something to a person of faith?

Again, I like both these guys and would rather they didn't fight, but Hedges makes a fair point. We atheists aren't used to being criticized from the left and it puts us in a weird position. I don't think Sam is a hater, I think he just wrote an irresponsible couple of paragraphs in haste.

Anyway, the full passage is below. Judge for yourself. Tell me where I'm wrong.

SAM HARRIS: "It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side."

conflations.
deflections..
and false equivalencies are all the dissenting arguments i am seeing.
and this is not due to me being a "leftist' and therefore not owning the ability to critically digest historical information and come to a conclusion.

someone spent 20 minutes to refute some of the data in this video only to find out the numbers were accurate BUT they did not reveal the specifics and hence the argument was invalid.
kinda like: "the yellow honda ran over a man today crushing his skull"
"HA! the car was GREEN"
"so it was but how does that change the fact the car crushed a mans skull?"

some have suggested that american interventionism is sometimes messy but usually a necessity.so while it may be complicated,sometimes america has had to do what the rest of the world would not.
this (falsely) implies that their is a thread of moral good when america attempts to straighten out an ugly situation in a foreign country and that sometimes,sadly,this leads to unintended consequences that may lead to blowback.
this is pure propaganda and i say this not because i hate my country but because if it were a true statement then america would be where ALL human rights,oppression and suffering under the hands of despotic governments resided worldwide.

see:rwanda,east timor,bangledesh there is a massive amount of places where america had a strict non-interventionist attitude.
and the reason is simple.those countries had nothing to offer,but our government seems to REALLY like working with dictators.easier to deal with one person who is friendly to american interests than a whole population that might (gasp/horror) have the ability to vote your interests down.so not only does america not give two shits about a country with no resources to exploit,they prefer despotic dictators and have installed them when necessary in the name of american interests.

war is always for the same things:resources,land and labor.now for thousands of years it was religion that was the driving force to get the average person to go out and slaughter but for the past 100 years it has been nationalism.

one last thing to address those who have mentioned alqaeda and what they post.
firstly:this has nothing to do with this video and is a false equivalency.
secondly:look up where alqaeda was on the FBI's most wanted list in 1999.look at who trained alqaeda,even funded them.notice anything?

so we can say vietnam was complicated.
ok..i can agree with that but lets remember it would have never even been issue if not for our government creating a false situation in which to enter vietnam in the first place.see:gulf of tonkin.
and again,has nothing to do with the premise of this video.

we can say muslims dont hate our freedom but rather they perceive us as immoral and decadent.
i would agree with that also if we were in the 1950's and the conversation was sayyid qutb and the muslim brotherhood but we are talking alqaeda which is the creation of the american intelligence CIA.
so it is america which created the complications we are speaking of.so whatever propaganda alqaeda uses now to recruit besides just pointing to us bombing the shit out of them is still indirectly a result of american interventionism.

neo-conservative ideology has nothing to do with being conseravtive but everything to do with using the massive might of the military to secure american interests globally.
might makes right.

lets also remember traditionally republicanism tended to be isolationist and faaar less hawkish.so ron paul is just being a traditional republican.of course now we live in bizzarro universe where everything is opposite so we have self-proclaimed republicans admonishing ron paul for ..what exactly? being a republican?
thats just weird.

and please understand that my points are not just some rage against america.i am not,by my commentary,ignoring the vast amount of good and noble things my country has done over the past 100 years or so but i also will not shut my eyes to what my countries foreign policy has done to so many small countries who happen to coincidently all be populated by brown people.

might i suggest:
chalmers johnson "blowback"
bryzenski's "the grand chessboard"
or the stellar book by john perkins "economic hitman"

maybe you will understand ron pauls position on these things.
/rant off

iirc, that 'what a wonderful world' clip is from one of michael moore's films

there's some 'truth' in there, but also a lot of untruth...

for example, the mossadegh and shah segments, and the whole bin laden / cia angles

there IS blowback, and rp is correct in stating that obl referenced some previous us actions as the basis for aq's attacks

but as a whole--and in virtually everything--if you overstate your argument, well, you're already on your way to losing it

Because the international banking system is global, so too are the protests. The magnitude of the protests will have some relation to how screwed over the average citizen feels. For example there are lots of good reasons for people in the united states to be pissed off, but in the entire country of 300+Million, less than half the protesters were reported than the Spanish city of Madrid. Just one city in a country of only 46M.

Why? I don't know. Is it the poor media coverage? Do people not realize that they have a reason to be pissed off? Or that they really can change things if they get together? I will have to let our American friends offer better insight than I can.

The last time that the income gap was this extreme was immediately followed by the Great Depression, which was immediately followed by WWII. (Presently, I see a repeat of history from about 90 years ago in charts and other data.) The recent push to refresh in military technology, be it the F-35 White Elephant or the recent $35B Canadian navy contract, are not isolated only to NorthAm militaries. And I do believe that there is potential for some kind of blowback from NATO/US involvement in Libya/Iraq/Afghanistan etc. To what extent or force the blowback will or won't be remains to be seen. I hope the my spidey-senses and my surface reading of history are both very off on this point.

My prediction is that things will get worse before they get better. The recession in the U.S. is not a double dip, because it hasn't really gotten enough better to stop being a recession. Lots of soldiers are about to come home from Iraq, many will be discharged and not be able to find other non-military work. Greece will likely default or the process of preventing default will be so complicated that it will be seen as a lesser evil as opposed to a victory for the globalized financial casino markets, and some form of protest will continue or will be revived after a brief hiatus once a leak in the patchwork repair job springs true.

The real wildcard in Occupy Wall Street could be the reaction of those thousands of hard-working soldiers home from a long war to a country in protest. There are certainly a lot of factors to be considered. All I can say for certain is that something will come of Occupy.

@spoco2
iraq was going to happen.9/11 was just a convenient tool to get there.
see: http://www.takeoverworld.info/grandchessboard.html
or: http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/chalmers-johnsons-blowback-the-costs-and/

as for the political extortion coming from saudi arabia,and understand this is pure speculation.i would surmise it had something to do with very unsavory information that the body politic of washington would do much to keep under wraps.
when you consider the political landscape of the mid east it is an animal wholly and unequivocal in its absolute opposite of western politics,and that the US foreign policy over the past 50 years has been grossly under-reported and was rife with murder,assasinations,(economic as well as literal),coup de tats and the ruining of whole countries to rape and pillage their resources.
the open hand of the free market can never succeed without the closed fist of military might-arundhati roy
i have no doubt that certain american political factions got caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
just look at how the bush years handled the iraq war and how convinced they were things were going to go in certain direction.
it probably would have in a western country but the mid east is organic as much as it is chaotic.
western politics has always and i mean ALWAYS gotten the politics of the middle east wrong.

@blankfist

This is where government teaching morality tends to (subjective statement coming) blowback. It is a wonder allow this--either for good or ill--as a people. Laws to control "morality" are pretty black and white at least, this, this absinence bs is crazy.

So you'd rather him blow it on your belly than blow it on your back? >> ^bamdrew:

Start a death metal band with him. Get drunk and just fucking ROCK, you-know? Soon enough all would be forgive, due to the rocking.
wiaht whatre we talkin about? I think I just trolled blankfist. ... better just roll over and show my belly, metaphorically... avoid some blowback

Start a death metal band with him. Get drunk and just fucking ROCK, you-know? Soon enough all would be forgive, due to the rocking.

wiaht whatre we talkin about? I think I just trolled blankfist. ... better just roll over and show my belly, metaphorically... avoid some blowback

OTOH, I don't know how long the Christian gay-haters can keep bashing gays, and not expect a bit of blowback.

I feel a bit out of touch, since this is the first time I'd heard of this competition, but I found it hilarious. And one hell of a lot nicer than what's been coming out of the other side.

>> ^bcglorf:

I have troubles cheering a guy who declares the better solution was never go at all. Gadhafi would currently be finishing off the genocide he promised to commit against the opposition if that advice were taken. I have issues with anyone calling that 'better'. Doubly so when the reason it is better is because stopping that genocide created more anti-western Arab sentiments than allowing it would have.

The road to hell is oft paved with good intention.
-Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Marx

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

I think that the more important question here is why Libya? Why not Bahrain? Why not Yemen? Why not Syria? Why not any other number of countries where there is revolution?

The problem with becoming involved in Libya is that the risk of Blowback is much more dangerous than actually helping. Which is what the gentleman, former CIA analyst, is saying.

No, the better choice would be to stop all of the mass killings that are taking place everywhere, but that is unrealistic; meaning not the better choice. Indeed, the better choice is to leave well enough alone.