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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGlenn Greenwald & the Nigerian Schoolgirls
Pretty entertaining writing from Wonkette about Greenwald's latest Tweet
Now. As our dear wonkers have pointed out, there are things to fear in a high-risk mission to get those girls. A high-risk mission could fail, Jimmy Carter-style! That would be bad! Some of our more cynical wonkers think that President Kenya Kincaid only cares about the girls because Nigeria = oil $$$. Those wonkers are incorrect. But only Glenn Greenwald is a massive enough dick to say we shouldn’t go at all, because we are BAD, BAD, VERY BAD. WORST PEOPLE, US. NO HUMANITARIANISM EVER, because BAD. Here, let’s let him tell it:
The ability to ignore virtually all history when advocating for the Next Western Intervention is as impressive as it is horrifying
Virtually all history! That is so much history! We would add in some times that the U.S. intervened in something because it was the morally right thing to do — like, we might say “when Bill Clinton sent in the Marines to install Jean-Bertrand Aristide as Haiti’s rightfully elected leader,” or, like, we don’t know, DACHAU — but we are obviously letting our sentimentality blind us to the geopolitical realpolitik that actually undergirded those crap neoliberal imperialist decisions. Would it be colonial or imperial of us to help find the Nigerian schoolgirls, Glenn Greenwald?
Read more at http://wonkette.com/548653/youll-never-believe-which-inhuman-monster-doesnt-care-to-find-nigerian-schoolgirls-its-glenn-greenwald#cLPrj69kA2UOBBS6.99
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Skraxx
(2,967 posts)
FSogol
(45,437 posts)Whisp
(24,096 posts)what a moran.
bravenak
(34,648 posts)It is not cute.
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)bravenak
(34,648 posts)I'm sure someone here will let us know how fabulous it is.
Meanwhile i'll just wait for a better work of fantasy fiction. The winds of winter.
Mr. lookit meee! Will not be getting my attention.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)The content of the discussion falls by the wayside.
Bryant
Supersedeas
(20,630 posts)
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)
Progressive dog
(6,898 posts)
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Last edited Thu May 8, 2014, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101692614I understand he has to keep up appearances and maintain his "anti-establishment" street cred, but his hatred of everything associated with Obama is starting to become pathological...It will be the downfall of his career if he's not careful...
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)JI7
(89,239 posts)NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)Sending law enforcement assistance to a country that has accepted such an offer of aid in finding hundreds of kidnapped children isn't a damned imperialist intervention.
Cha
(296,780 posts)
Autumn
(44,972 posts)( World President? What the fuck is that shit?) who doesn’t think World President Barack Obama should bonk Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan on the head, tie him up in his presidential palace, and send Seal Teams Six, Seven, Eight and Thirteen to go find the Nigerian schoolgirls?
Click on the the one human being on earth in red and it takes you to another disgusting paragraph:
Don’t Worry, Bamz And Seal Team Six Gonna Get Those Girls
"You may have heard, though not from us, that a bunch of Nigerian assholes are going around kidnapping all the girls. Almost a month after more than 300 girls were taken from their school (50 or so escaped), and days after eight more were kidnapped, and seeing what an Obamacare-website-style clusterfuck Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, has made out of “not searching” and “not rescuing” and “instead arresting some of the parents because apparently the Nigerian president is married to Winnie Mandela,” world president B. Barry Bamz is on the job! He is sending a team of whoever — Seal Team Six? JFK-styley “military advisors”? Amazon drones? We don’t care — to go get those girls.
Go Barry! Police the world!"
Read more at http://wonkette.com/548499/dont-worry-bamz-and-seal-team-six-gonna-get-those-girls#ZzJLyUu3H3bmLAAq.99
I don't think Obama should do that either.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)and everything it does.
Doesn't give a shit about actual human beings.
pnwmom
(108,955 posts)He only hates it when Dems are in office.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)to deport the 'illegals'
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Notes on Nationalism (by George Orwell)
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By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly -- and this is much more important -- I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseperable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
So long as it is applied merely to the more notorious and identifiable nationalist movements in Germany, Japan, and other countries, all this is obvious enough. Confronted with a phenomenon like Nazism, which we can observe from the outside, nearly all of us would say much the same things about it. But here I must repeat what I said above, that I am only using the word "nationalism" for lack of a better. Nationalism, in the extended sense in which I am using the word, includes such movments and tendencies as Communism, political Catholocism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism. It does not necessarily mean loyalty to a government or a country, still less to one's own country, and it is not even strictly necessary that the units in which it deals should actually exist. To name a few obvious examples, Jewry, Islam, Christendom, the Proletariat and the White Race are all of them objects of passionate nationalistic feeling: but their existence can be seriously questioned, and there is no definition of any one of them that would be universally accepted.
It is also worth emphasizing once again that nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the USSR without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit. When one grasps the implications of this, the nature of what I mean by nationalism becomes a good deal clearer. A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist -- that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating -- but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. He sees history, especially contemporary history, as the endless rise and decline of great power units, and every event that happens seems to him a demonstration that his own side is on the upgrade and some hated rival is on the downgrade. But finally, it is important not to confuse nationalism with mere worship of success. The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him. Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also -- since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself -- unshakeably certain of being in the right.
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(Examples of) NEGATIVE NATIONALISM
1. ANGLOPHOBIA. Within the intelligentsia, a derisive and mildly hostile attitude towards Britain is more or less compulsory, but it is an unfaked emotion in many cases. During the war it was manifested in the defeatism of the intelligentsia, which persisted long after it had become clear that the Axis powers could not win. Many people were undisguisedly pleased when Singapore fell ore when the British were driven out of Greece, and there was a remarkable unwillingness to believe in good news, e.g. el Alamein, or the number of German planes shot down in the Battle of Britain. English left-wing intellectuals did not, of course, actually want the Germans or Japanese to win the war, but many of them could not help getting a certain kick out of seeing their own country humiliated, and wanted to feel that the final victory would be due to Russia, or perhaps America, and not to Britain. In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, "enlightened" opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.
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Greenwald clearly is US-Phobic as are many of his supporters
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)I've been puzzling over people who still think RT is a reliable source for any sort of info. This pretty much nails it.
KittyWampus
(55,894 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Adrahil
(13,340 posts)stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Chakab
(1,727 posts)have clued in when he claimed that the IRS scandal was legit on Bill Maher's show. He's really showing his ass now.
Jemon
(49 posts)?
msanthrope
(37,549 posts)posting habits!!!!
Have you been here before????
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)They seem to have a chip on their shoulders from a prior incarnation.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,264 posts)Chakab
(1,727 posts)
NuclearDem
(16,184 posts)
OilemFirchen
(7,143 posts)Video at link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/11/1208484/-Greenwald-also-echoes-GOP-talking-points-on-Benghazi
MineralMan
(146,253 posts)951-Riverside
(7,234 posts)The NSA programs these two traitors cry and moan about were set up to protect their commie Putin lovin' butts!
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)Long as you've started this kind of Orwellian "enemy" hate rhetoric -- so very courageous of you to direct it against individuals whom your government wants to designate as enemies -- it would be much more true to say that FOXNEWS commentators, such as yourself, see the Bill of Rights as the enemy.
Disgusting.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)So perhaps we should dispense with the off topic ad hominem nonsense?
The NSA is not the enemy of the American people. What they are doing may be a slight overreaction to the threat, but it is a real threat that exists whether you pretend otherwise or not.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)about how being on a billionaire's right-wing propaganda channel FOXNEWS is okay, but being on RT would support "Anschluss".
http://rt.com/shows/alyona-show/kucinich-leaders-limousine-liberals/
Kucinich isn't contributing to the latest imperialist propaganda for war and military spending.
http://rt.com/usa/kucinich-blames-us-ukrainian-crisis-986/
Kucinich doesn't designate the state's targets as "enemies" of the country, in odious McCarthyist fashion.
Secret policy by secret agencies by definition is enemy to the people's rule, known as democracy. The systematic violation of the Bill of Rights is enemy action. Whatever foreign "terrorist" threat exists, the NSA makes it worse and has nothing to do with "defending" against it.
Note who introduced "enemy" rhetoric to this. Too bad the shoe fits better for the spooks you prefer to defend.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)I know that each time someone brings up Fox News, they have lost the argument. You don't need to bring that up if you have something to talk about regarding the topic actually being discussed.
You lost.
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)the liberal imperialist faction...
which I'm figuring it probably is...
you should realize things have gotten so toxic with them it's no longer distinguishable as irony.
Look at all the frothing hatred here of the "enemy" of the country itself (i.e., anyone who's in the way of the Next War).
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,711 posts)And that's been my impression of him way before Snowden and the NSA.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)piece of shit.
not surprising.
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Unbelievable the insane projections foaming Greenwald haters will indulge. 
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)How many millions does the U.S. military machine have to kill before you all stop falling for the latest justification?
Afghanistan was also invaded to save the women, remember? The feminist cheerleader in that case was - oh look - the president's wife, Laura Bush.
Out of the world's bottomless store of atrocities, this government doesn't choose which one it's going to pretend is important on the basis of exceptional inhumanity. The government burns wedding parties by drone, and you think an intervention in Nigeria will be for humanitarian reasons?
All actions of the U.S. military and other agencies projecting force abroad are for reasons of empire.
The best case scenario if a Nigeria intervention happens is that this will be for the P.R., and not to get further hooks into Africa.
At least this has distracted the liberal imperialist faction -- not known for their attention span -- from last week's noble desire to start World War III in support of the Ukrainian coup regime.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)I understand what he means. Somalia started out as a humanitarian mission and ended with Blackhawk Down.
If we send in a special ops unit, they could wind up dead, the girls could wind up dead, and what would have been gained?
I'm not saying we should do nothing, but we really have to be careful how we use force when it's thousands of miles from home.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)It seems really obvious from the tweet. I am surprised that some people don't.
Edited cause I am in hospital and my post needed cleaning up.
Jeff In Milwaukee
(13,992 posts)Now that's dedication. Hope you're OK.
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)Bones in right and it is splinted. Takes me forever to type with left. Been here since Mon, hoping to go home sun. DU is a daily habit no matter what it seems! LOL
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Hope you are feeling better!
baldguy
(36,649 posts)
bigtree
(85,974 posts). . . in Nigeria to counter what they fear (or claim) is an emergence of a 'Muslim-based' movement of anti-government combatants. Sound familiar? In light of the lessons we've learned about the wisdom and efficacy of overt/covert U.S. military force across sovereign borders, we should welcome any call for restraint.
TheKentuckian
(25,018 posts)In fact, I've not seen or heard an argument about the content at all but rather spitting of "asshole" and lots of bitching about past statements but nothing about what supposedly triggered the latest round of "two minute hate".
After a lifetime of observing our jacked up and costly adventures, folks actually want to take some fierce exception to that sentence? Really?
Asshole or not, he is right as rain.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)That's gonna have me
all day long. Even got the LOLspeak in there.
Gotta go.