Ideal Social Engineering Settings

[Zeiter]

BTW, anyone who has read anything by Noam Chomsky would seriously question America's motives in the modern world. There's actually quite a bit of evidence that the U.S. has been the worst terrorist nation in the world since WWII. Almost every Latin American country has been brutalized at some point since WWII by the U.S. Hey, we even got some former Nazi SS officers to help out! And then outside of the Western Hemisphere, there are even more. The general rule of thumb is: if a country is doing what we want them to do, they are great. If they aren't, we must "correct them" through regime change or invasion. It has little or nothing to do with wanting to spread democracy. That's been our favorite excuse time and time again, but unfortunately it was manufactured only for public assumption. The real people making the decisions know better. They know that we do what we do so that the U.S. can maintain and grow in power and dominance in the world. At least, that's how I see it. Here's an interesting website with some eye-opening info:

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm

[binTravkin]

binTravkin, first off understand that I am basically on your side. America has become entirely too self-centered. I can only hope that a change in administration will nudge things in the other direction. But....your arguments to have gone the way of the zealot. While the US has its problems, to deny that they are the defining force of the 20th and 21st centuries would be ludicrous. Much like in sport, there will always be winners and losers. The best, and the rest. Most of the criticisms of the US outside of her borders boils down to one word....jealousy. Anyone with Americas power would end up in the same position (not saying it is right thing to do). Latvia is no more noble than the US. They would do everything in their power to keep themselves on top the same as the US does. What can the US criticize Latvia about if they have no means to affect the world at a large scale? It is easy to flaunt vows of poverty when you have nothing to begin with. The truly noble are those that give what they have, not just what they can spare. While American foreign policy has been atrocious in recent years, we are also a very easy and convenient target.

Think about SMAC for example. If you are 3rd in the power graph, you naturally ally with number 2 to take out number 1. Once you have defeated the number 1 guy, you rank 2nd and your ally is now in 1st. It is only natural that you will now compete to be 1st, and forsaken you former ally in the process. We always gun for the top dog, until we are number one. Once there, you have to fight to stay on top. Some reinvest in the domestic agenda, some go looking for a war to generate income. Hopefully, America will return to being a builder, and away from the momentum mind set.

Anyway my point is, good or bad, the US is the greatest nation since the British Empire. Like us or not, our accomplishments are reality. Do we have some things that we need to fix? Absolutely. Could we be a better nation? Absolutely. Any American that would say otherwise is truly the unpatriotic one, for they have no ambition for improvement.

My aim was not to offend you, nor to say that US isn't the most powerful country in the world, my aim was to pinpoint at some US' citizen's belief in US' propaganda, that they're doing everything better, has done everything better and will do everything better than all the other people - please read Commy's post and see how he pretends that even steel (!!!) has been invented by American scientists..

Maybe we start thinking that every good thing on earth has been made by americans...?

Well, I must say that at least one good thing on the earth (in pro-US viewpoint) has been made by Europe - it's US!!!

If there weren't some people who didn't want to sit at home and die from boredom back in 15th century, than we could never know US as it is now..
(a.k.a. C.Columbus and his ilk)

And by the way - looking at today's US policy in all the world I must say that it's very suspicious - it looks like this great nation is on it's decline as well as Europe is - they focus on quantity instead of quality, they try to claim new markets, new lands and that means that their own market doesn't give them what they need..
I dont think it's a sign of flowering, I tend to think it's a sign of "searching for the last rope out of abyss" or whatever it spells in English..

Between all this strife a new power emerges, slowly building up it's self-sufficient economy - China, India, Japan and all those small countries in Asia who make great profit out of US markets

Brink of a new era, huh?

US claimed the "vital" oil wells..
Well, maybe they'll be "vital" after some more years when they start to empty quickly, but by that time people will invent something new to counter it, in fact they've invented already, just need to make it more reliable, efficent - people always find a way out of hardness and those hardnesses make them think much more quickly..

America after all is one of the most conservative countries in energy resource research, most of the Europe are already spending lots of money in alternative energy source research - see NewsScientist, but US even refuses to sign Kioto potocol

Why should they?

They can live well without it!

I'll say why they should - the countries which have done it have made themselves an artifical hardness - costly energy, therefore they are searching a way out of it and when they find it, it'll be a HUGE advantage!
They're just more flexible!

US is a modern day dinosaur - it lives too good to see the need for a change in future and now this change is coming for them both in economical and political way (terrorists)
Instead of changing themselves, adjusting to the new situation, to ever-changing world, US tries to change the world around..

Remember the Roman empire?
They tried it too...

That's their worst mistake and that's the reason why I think that the days of US as superpower are countdowning towards zero.

And to all who oppose me I can say:

1.Everyone has a right for opinion!

2.Expansion outwards is the best way how to avoid inner strife and need for inner changes and I didn't invent this statement in my historian armchair, every wise leader of the past knew it..

Sorry for terrible english!

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Well, I must say that at least one good thing on the earth (in pro-US viewpoint) has been made by Europe - it's US!!!

If there weren't some people who didn't want to sit at home and die from boredom back in 15th century, than we could never know US as it is now..
(a.k.a. C.Columbus and his ilk)

Actually, they didn't want to die of religious prosecution. Which is why they fled to the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands!!!
OK, and to the America's.

But I think most Europeans went over there in search of gold and, possibly a new start in life. Certainly not boredom.

[binTravkin]

But I think most Europeans went over there in search of gold and, possibly a new start in life. Certainly not boredom.

I said

If there weren't some people who didn't want to sit at home and die from boredom back in 15th century, than we could never know US as it is now..
(a.k.a. C.Columbus and his ilk)

and I thought:

If there weren't Columbus and all the other explorers who went West, we couldn't in any f^cking way now bash US, as there'd be no US or at least not such powerful as it is

BTW:
it was just an ironical remark not an information to comment, you'd better post your opinion about more serious statements of my post..

[binTravkin]

Here's an interesting website with some eye-opening info:

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm

It's just what I sought for - an american who reveals his government's dirty politics, not protects/tries to hide them above nice expressions!

[Natalinasmpf]

Hollywood films suck.

Bollywood films rule. Go Shahrukh Khan!

Largest economy, the US? Also national debt....Gives aid to other countries...but with an ulterior motive! Motives than aren't top virtues either....

What about, let me see....the time the CIA funded the sabotage of the Chilean economy because the conservatives over there couldn't bear to actually see a Marxist economy be successful? And not only that funding the violent coup d'etat in 1973 that would later cause thousands of deaths and grave crimes against humanity?

Nice "aid" eh...lets continue "aiding" our military friends in countries. Not the civilians! The civilians are evil marxists! Lets also, "aid" our freedom fighters, the Nicaraguan contra-terroris....erm, Northern Alliance.

Canada seems better than the US. Heck, Singapore seems better, even with their authoritarian elements. Better than plutocrats and corporations (ie. Philip Morris) dominating the US "elections" with their decadence. At least Singapore has 30 to 100% subsidies in healthcare , and better value of life...ie. comparison of cost of living to living standard, which in this case, low cost, relatively high standard.

The word showinism was actually been invented by British (IIRC) and if your brain is not too small, you can easily understand the meaning of the word.
By default it's "overextended patriotism" -

It reminds me of a joke.

An athlete was competing for an event. As he was going in to the stadium, a journalist stopped him. "Are you a pole vaulter?"

"No, I'm German. But how did you know my name was Walter?"

And how did BinTravkin's "W" become a V?

[binTravkin]

And how did BinTravkin's "W" become a V?

You know, Im not an indigenous English speaker,so there might be some mistakes in the text I type..

Also I admitted "(IIRC)", which means I was not quite sure, but I'm sure I've read that word in the British history books more than everywhere else (uh, forgot USSR history! )

[binTravkin]

For all the pro-americans here, read this excerpt:

The Fate of an Honest Intellectual
Noam Chomsky
Excerpted from Understanding Power, New York, 2002, pp. 244-248
I'll tell you another, last case—and there are many others like this. Here's a story which is really tragic. How many of you know about Joan Peters, the book by Joan Peters? There was this best-seller a few years ago [in 1984], it went through about ten printings, by a woman named Joan Peters—or at least, signed by Joan Peters—called From Time Immemorial. It was a big scholarly-looking book with lots of footnotes, which purported to show that the Palestinians were all recent immigrants [i.e. to the Jewish-settled areas of the former Palestine, during the British mandate years of 1920 to 1948]. And it was very popular—it got literally hundreds of rave reviews, and no negative reviews: the Washington Post, the New York Times, everybody was just raving about it. Here was this book which proved that there were really no Palestinians! Of course, the implicit message was, if Israel kicks them all out there's no moral issue, because they're just recent immigrants who came in because the Jews had built up the country. And there was all kinds of demographic analysis in it, and a big professor of demography at the University of Chicago [Philip M. Hauser] authenticated it. That was the big intellectual hit for that year: Saul Bellow, Barbara Tuchman, everybody was talking about it as the greatest thing since chocolate cake.Well, one graduate student at Princeton, a guy named Norman Finkelstein, started reading through the book. He was interested in the history of Zionism, and as he read the book he was kind of surprised by some of the things it said. He's a very careful student, and he started checking the references—and it turned out that the whole thing was a hoax, it was completely faked: probably it had been put together by some intelligence agency or something like that. Well, Finkelstein wrote up a short paper of just preliminary findings, it was about twenty-five pages or so, and he sent it around to I think thirty people who were interested in the topic, scholars in the field and so on, saying: "Here's what I've found in this book, do you think it's worth pursuing?"

Well, he got back one answer, from me. I told him, yeah, I think it's an interesting topic, but I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you. So I said: if you want to do it, go ahead, but be aware of what you're getting into. It's an important issue, it makes a big difference whether you eliminate the moral basis for driving out a population—it's preparing the basis for some real horrors—so a lot of people's lives could be at stake. But your life is at stake too, I told him, because if you pursue this, your career is going to be ruined.

Well, he didn't believe me. We became very close friends after this, I didn't know him before. He went ahead and wrote up an article, and he started submitting it to journals. Nothing: they didn't even bother responding. I finally managed to place a piece of it in In These Times, a tiny left-wing journal published in Illinois, where some of you may have seen it. Otherwise nothing, no response. Meanwhile his professors—this is Princeton University, supposed to be a serious place—stopped talking to him: they wouldn't make appointments with him, they wouldn't read his papers, he basically had to quit the program.

By this time, he was getting kind of desperate, and he asked me what to do. I gave him what I thought was good advice, but what turned out to be bad advice: I suggested that he shift over to a different department, where I knew some people and figured he'd at least be treated decently. That turned out to be wrong. He switched over, and when he got to the point of writing his thesis he literally could not get the faculty to read it, he couldn't get them to come to his thesis defense. Finally, out of embarrassment, they granted him a Ph.D.—he's very smart, incidentally—but they will not even write a letter for him saying that he was a student at Princeton University. I mean, sometimes you have students for whom it's hard to write good letters of recommendation, because you really didn't think they were very good—but you can write something, there are ways of doing these things. This guy was good, but he literally cannot get a letter.

He's now living in a little apartment somewhere in New York City, and he's a part-time social worker working with teenage drop-outs. Very promising scholar—if he'd done what he was told, he would have gone on and right now he'd be a professor somewhere at some big university. Instead he's working part-time with disturbed teenaged kids for a couple thousand dollars a year. That's a lot better than a death squad, it's true—it's a whole lot better than a death squad. But those are the techniques of control that are around.

But let me just go on with the Joan Peters story. Finkelstein's very persistent: he took a summer off and sat in the New York Public Library, where he went through every single reference in the book—and he found a record of fraud that you cannot believe. Well, the New York intellectual community is a pretty small place, and pretty soon everybody knew about this, everybody knew the book was a fraud and it was going to be exposed sooner or later. The one journal that was smart enough to react intelligently was the New York Review of Books—they knew that the thing was a sham, but the editor didn't want to offend his friends, so he just didn't run a review at all. That was the one journal that didn't run a review.

Meanwhile, Finkelstein was being called in by big professors in the field who were telling him, "Look, call off your crusade; you drop this and we'll take care of you, we'll make sure you get a job," all this kind of stuff. But he kept doing it—he kept on and on. Every time there was a favorable review, he'd write a letter to the editor which wouldn't get printed; he was doing whatever he could do. We approached the publishers and asked them if they were going to respond to any of this, and they said no—and they were right. Why should they respond? They had the whole system buttoned up, there was never going to be a critical word about this in the United States. But then they made a technical error: they allowed the book to appear in England, where you can't control the intellectual community quite as easily.

Well, as soon as I heard that the book was going to come out in England, I immediately sent copies of Finkelstein's work to a number of British scholars and journalists who are interested in the Middle East—and they were ready. As soon as the book appeared, it was just demolished, it was blown out of the water. Every major journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the London Review, the Observer, everybody had a review saying, this doesn't even reach the level of nonsense, of idiocy. A lot of the criticism used Finkelstein's work without any acknowledgment, I should say—but about the kindest word anybody said about the book was "ludicrous," or "preposterous."

Well, people here read British reviews—if you're in the American intellectual community, you read the Times Literary Supplement and the London Review, so it began to get a little embarrassing. You started getting back-tracking: people started saying, "Well, look, I didn't really say the book was good, I just said it's an interesting topic," things like that. At that point, the New York Review swung into action, and they did what they always do in these circumstances. See, there's like a routine that you go through—if a book gets blown out of the water in England in places people here will see, or if a book gets praised in England, you have to react. And if it's a book on Israel, there's a standard way of doing it: you get an Israeli scholar to review it. That's called covering your ass—because whatever an Israeli scholar says, you're pretty safe: no one can accuse the journal of anti-Semitism, none of the usual stuff works.

So after the Peters book got blown out of the water in England, the New York Review assigned it to a good person actually, in fact Israel's leading specialist on Palestinian nationalism [Yehoshua Porath], someone who knows a lot about the subject. And he wrote a review, which they then didn't publish—it went on for almost a year without the thing being published; nobody knows exactly what was going on, but you can guess that there must have been a lot of pressure not to publish it. Eventually it was even written up in the New York Times that this review wasn't getting published, so finally some version of it did appear. It was critical, it said the book is nonsense and so on, but it cut corners, the guy didn't say what he knew.

Actually, the Israeli reviews in general were extremely critical: the reaction of the Israeli press was that they hoped the book would not be widely read, because ultimately it would be harmful to the Jews—sooner or later it would get exposed, and then it would just look like a fraud and a hoax, and it would reflect badly on Israel. They underestimated the American intellectual community, I should say.

Anyhow, by that point the American intellectual community realized that the Peters book was an embarrassment, and it sort of disappeared—nobody talks about it anymore. I mean, you still find it at newsstands in the airport and so on, but the best and the brightest know that they are not supposed to talk about it anymore: because it was exposed and they were exposed.

Well, the point is, what happened to Finkelstein is the kind of thing that can happen when you're an honest critic—and we could go on and on with other cases like that. [Editors' Note: Finkelstein has since published several books with independent presses.]

Still, in the universities or in any other institution, you can often find some dissidents hanging around in the woodwork—and they can survive in one fashion or another, particularly if they get community support. But if they become too disruptive or too obstreperous—or you know, too effective—they're likely to be kicked out. The standard thing, though, is that they won't make it within the institutions in the first place, particularly if they were that way when they were young—they'll simply be weeded out somewhere along the line. So in most cases, the people who make it through the institutions and are able to remain in them have already internalized the right kinds of beliefs: it's not a problem for them to be obedient, they already are obedient, that's how they got there. And that's pretty much how the ideological control system perpetuates itself in the schools—that's the basic story of how it operates, I think.

From the link Zeiter gave us!
This exact exerpt is from http://www.chomsky.info/books/power01.htm

[Nabvrimn]

binTravkin, here's a hint. If you want respect the last thing you should be doing is quoting Chompsky.

[binTravkin]

binTravkin, here's a hint. If you want respect the last thing you should be doing is quoting Chompsky.

Following to what Chompsky described I believe you!
Thank God I'm not living in US!

That poor guy he describes didn't get the respect also and on the same reasons..

But can you give any objective reasons not to do so?
Can you explain why Chomsky is so unrespected?
Because he shows all the **** your politicians do?

Well, that's the reason I respect him!

[AnimateDream]

Democratic even though I'm tired of the rampant political ignorance here in the US.

Since machines came to be common place there is always enough food and yet there is always hunger. Automation replaces the need for manpower. That results in unemployment. The unemployed then can no longer buy into the goods. Thus there is even less demand. So more cuts are made in business. Unemployment becomes higher still. So on until economic collapse. Free market economies will have no place in a future where machines are continually taking the place of labor. Every society needs careful management. Socialism can ruin a good economy true, but I think it is inevitable. So I'll say planned. Whose to say planned and green are mutually exclusive anyways.

Knowledge. Its my own personal priority.

Eudamonic. No contest. Good is the latin prefix there.

[WotanAnubis]

Originally posted by AnimateDream
Democratic even though I'm tired of the rampant political ignorance here in the US.

Every society needs careful management. Socialism can ruin a good economy true, but I think it is inevitable. So I'll say planned. Whose to say planned and green are mutually exclusive anyways.

Knowledge. Its my own personal priority.

Eudamonic. No contest. Good is the latin prefix there.

Woo! An on-topic post! Thank you, thank you.

Anyway, yeah, good choices. I agree with all of them (well, obviously). Even though I don't think Free Market is *quite* as self-destructive as you described, but let's not go there again.

[AnimateDream]

Originally posted by binTravkin
My aim was not to offend you, nor to say that US isn't the most powerful country in the world, my aim was to pinpoint at some US' citizen's belief in US' propaganda, that they're doing everything better, has done everything better and will do everything better than all the other people - please read Commy's post and see how he pretends that even steel (!!!) has been invented by American scientists..

Not even the American propaganda is doing that. Bush plays off of events to create these stupid patriotism fads which an ignorant few have taken to the point of severe nationalism.

If there weren't some people who didn't want to sit at home and die from boredom back in 15th century, than we could never know US as it is now..
(a.k.a. C.Columbus and his ilk)

Damnit. You know we celebrate Columbus day here. He was an idiot. Everyone knew how big the world was, but columbus insisted upon using an ancient less accurate measure of Earth's circumference. In his attempt to find India he struck America and then to his dying day continued to believe it was india despite all of the evidence to the contrary. He was a madman or a fool at best.

And by the way - looking at today's US policy in all the world I must say that it's very suspicious - it looks like this great nation is on it's decline as well as Europe is - they focus on quantity instead of quality, they try to claim new markets, new lands and that means that their own market doesn't give them what they need..
I dont think it's a sign of flowering, I tend to think it's a sign of "searching for the last rope out of abyss" or whatever it spells in English..

Between all this strife a new power emerges, slowly building up it's self-sufficient economy - China, India, Japan and all those small countries in Asia who make great profit out of US markets

Japanese products have always threatened the US economy with superior goods. They totally shook up business in the US. People here were slow to catch on too. Eventually we did however learn from their approaches and recover. My father studies economics finance and business intensely. So he has books on the matter.

US claimed the "vital" oil wells..
Well, maybe they'll be "vital" after some more years when they start to empty quickly, but by that time people will invent something new to counter it, in fact they've invented already, just need to make it more reliable, efficent - people always find a way out of hardness and those hardnesses make them think much more quickly..


America after all is one of the most conservative countries in energy resource research, most of the Europe are already spending lots of money in alternative energy source research - see NewsScientist, but US even refuses to sign Kioto potocol

Why should they?

They can live well without it!

HEY! Firstly I would like to say Clinton was largely resposible for Kioto. Bush then backed out of it. He has the worst enviromental record of any US president ever though so it was to be expected.

I'll say why they should - the countries which have done it have made themselves an artifical hardness - costly energy, therefore they are searching a way out of it and when they find it, it'll be a HUGE advantage!
They're just more flexible!

US is a modern day dinosaur - it lives too good to see the need for a change in future and now this change is coming for them both in economical and political way (terrorists)
Instead of changing themselves, adjusting to the new situation, to ever-changing world, US tries to change the world around..

Remember the Roman empire?
They tried it too...

That's their worst mistake and that's the reason why I think that the days of US as superpower are countdowning towards zero.

Hmmm. Americans couldn't even switch over to metrics and are constantly avoiding foreign language. So yes we are reluctant to change, but you have to remember how isolated the US really is. Very few people here ever leave the country. There is no reason to here and possible destinations are generally less reachable.

American industry has a stake in this oil fall out. Make no mistake. However its looking for ways to minimize transitional costs. America generally pioneering the very close alternatives like ethanol and synthetic fossil fuels made from either natural gas or with new technology from almost anything organic. In Europe where fuel has always been pricier they've already made the jump to using electric vehicles. Once fuel costs escalate here the American industry will jump on the bandwagon but not until then.

edit: sorry for going offtopic too. As long as things are kept rational I suppose...

[binTravkin]

Hmmm. Americans couldn't even switch over to metrics and are constantly avoiding foreign language. So yes we are reluctant to change, but you have to remember how isolated the US really is. Very few people here ever leave the country. There is no reason to here and possible destinations are generally less reachable.

But their military and economics covers all the world..
It's just silly to think that methods that are good in US will be of any use outside of it - the world is pretty much different, we here don't live in such greenhouse where the government tries and can protect every single aspect of life from foreign influence, therefore we have to think more how will we live in future,but you have no worry about it as everything has been and is so well that many people of the world think that US is some kind of heaven!

American industry has a stake in this oil fall out. Make no mistake. However its looking for ways to minimize transitional costs. America generally pioneering the very close alternatives like ethanol and synthetic fossil fuels made from either natural gas or with new technology from almost anything organic. In Europe where fuel has always been pricier they've already made the jump to using electric vehicles. Once fuel costs escalate here the American industry will jump on the bandwagon but not until then.

..but not until then
There's a big possibility that this then will come so unexpected and with so little preparations that it'd be way too late to jump on the bandwagon..
There's no way an entire infrastucture of such a huge industry as that of US might jump into something in 1 day, even in 1year!
It'd cost you so much that the growth of industry will be stopped for some 5yrs just to regain the profits!

Damnit. You know we celebrate Columbus day here. He was an idiot. Everyone knew how big the world was, but columbus insisted upon using an ancient less accurate measure of Earth's circumference. In his attempt to find India he struck America and then to his dying day continued to believe it was india despite all of the evidence to the contrary. He was a madman or a fool at best.

Well, then we are to assume that US and all the other euro-american states were created by stupid people..

[smacksim]

Noam Chomsky is a dissident. He is dangerous to many political groups. He is respected by his enemies even more than his allies. This is because he is one of a handful of popular political theorists who have the good fortune to be also great writers. Thus, he is dangerous, and he is respected. Never believe anyone who tells you that 'If you start quoting this guy, you are going to lose respect'. That's a good sign that you should read more, IMHO. Sure, only the adventurous stick their necks out and live to find truth rather than conformity.......

Thought you'd like a few critiques of Chomsky:

Eight ways to Smear Noam Chomsky

and one I think is funny, for it uses all the typical half-arsed arguments and never really gets to discussing the meat of the sandwich. Ah Politics...

The Hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky

I don't yet have an opinion on Chomsky myself. I'd have to read more, which I plan on doing. He's been around a long time and is a favorite on college campuses, even making his way into the required reading lists for some schools.

-Smack