[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

I see you don't read the paper very often.. America is absolutely corrupt as can be, it is just less open.

America's corruption has more impact than other countries' but it's not the most corrupt.

Forbes 2010 list of the world's 10 most corrupt nations:

Haiti
Somalia
Afghanistan
Myanmar
Sudan
Iraq
Chad
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Iran

In a way, insisting that America is even on a par with these countries is as blindly US-centric as those people who chant "Yoo-Es-Ah" at sports events.

[knox]

FORBES list.
You said it.
What do you think they'd say?

They should have said top 10 most obviously corrupted nations.
They're not doing corruption right.

I mean, ok. Some of places are so fucked up calling them nations is kind of funny, as if they're in a position to actually be nations.

I guess I'm not making much sense today.

[demonrail666]

Well according to another set of criteria provided by the more liberal CBI, the top ten most corrupt countries are:

New Zealand
Denmark
Singapore
Sweden
Switzerland
finland
Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Iceland

The USA comes 19th, one place behind the UK.

Whichever way people wanna look at corruption, the US doesn't seem to rank particularly highly.

[knox]

New Zealand lol.

Finland? Canada? Iceland?

that can't be right.

Switzerland I'll take.

[demonrail666]

oops, sorry. I thought that was odd. They ranked it in terms of least corrupt.

The actual top ten is:

Somalia
Afghanistan
Burma
Sudan
Iraq
Chad
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Iran
Haiti

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...-international

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

oops, sorry. I thought that was odd. They ranked it in terms of least corrupt.

The actual top ten is:

Somalia
Afghanistan
Burma
Sudan
Iraq
Chad
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Iran
Haiti

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datab...-international

but how much of the corruption in Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Haiti are in relation to US businesses, military and foreign policies

I do believe that has been knox's point.

mine is simple, america is corrupt. just because it is not the most corrupt, does not some how vindicate its existing corruption. as an american, I am upset with this, and I do believe I have the option to want to get my own house in order, especially if it happens to fuck up my already dysfunctional neighbors around the world.

I don't honestly understand what all the backlash is about, corruption and violence and poverty is the same thing regardless of degrees..

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

mine is simple, america is corrupt. just because it is not the most corrupt, does not some how vindicate its existing corruption. as an american, I am upset with this, and I do believe I have the option to want to get my own house in order, especially if it happens to fuck up my already dysfunctional neighbors around the world.

I don't honestly understand what all the backlash is about, corruption and violence and poverty is the same thing regardless of degrees..

Nobody with any sense could ever argue that America isn't corrupt. Of course it is. Really corrupt, especially relative to a lot of other so-called First World countries. But while you may not have meant it to, your reply to !@#$%!'s point did seem to suggest that you considered the US to be atleast on a par with countries like Haiti. That was what I was questioning, not whether the US was corrupt or not. America is the most powerful country in the world right now, so it's inevitable that its corruption is gonna have a far greater global impact than the far more rampant corruption that exists in other parts of the world.

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

but how much of the corruption in Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran, Haiti are in relation to US businesses, military and foreign policies

That's a very good point and far harder to argue against. Although I personally think that while us foreign policy is a key factor, the political infrastructures in most of those countries were installed by European colonisers and were corrupt long before America got its hand in. Not to mention the unleashing of more indigenous problems that had effectively been supressed during their time as colonies.

[Count Mecha]

Without getting in the corruption debacle, great news as is. Can't wait till it's the full stroke though.

[knox]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

That's a very good point and far harder to argue against. Although I personally think that while us foreign policy is a key factor, the political infrastructures in most of those countries were installed by European colonisers and were corrupt long before America got its hand in. Not to mention the unleashing of more indigenous problems that had effectively been supressed during their time as colonies.

yeah, from mother to daughter, as a GIFT.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

I am still fucking excited about this news, thank God!
in regards to local corruption..

In Bell and Vernon alone, approximately $10million has been issued in exorbitant salaries, vacation packages, secret and illegal personal loans, nepotistic contracts etc etc..

meanwhile 150,000 state employees must continue on unpaid furlough days (as its been since Feb 2009) taking between a 15-30% pay cut while the prisons stay full and the corrupt government contracts and spending continues unabated. We local, community workers and employees just trying to pay our bills and take care of our neighborhood services have to suffer, while corruption runs rampant.

Lets end corruption here, there and everywhere, one incident at a time.
Advocacy and awareness is the key to success..

also, lets push for more ground on this War issue, lets not get relaxed and over celebrate, there are still two active wars and dozens of secret operations going on across the world, in love we shall more than conquer them one duppy at a time

Jah! Rastafari! Give thanks for life, everytime!

[!@#$%!]

blagojevich is an innocent baby next to berlusconi

[Keeping It Simple]

Another "Vietnam" for the US draws to a close.

[ann ashtray]

It ain't no Vietnam...for damned sure. Especially from the soldier's perspective.

[Keeping It Simple]

Originally Posted by ann ashtray

It ain't no Vietnam...for damned sure. Especially from the soldier's perspective.

The U.S. may think they won the war by usurping Saddam Hussain from power, replacing him with a puppet government, but that was only the very start of it. The U.S. failed in their plan to turn Iraq into a democracy, and to eradicate the warring factions. They pulled out of an unwinnable situation. The same thing it's going to do in Afghanistan.

[ann ashtray]

Originally Posted by Keeping It Simple

The U.S. may think they won the war by usurping Saddam Hussain from power, replacing him with a puppet government, but that was only the very start of it. The U.S. failed in their plan to turn Iraq into a democracy, and to eradicate the warring factions. They pulled out of an unwinnable situation. The same thing it's going to do in Afghanistan.

What does this have to do with Vietnam?

[knox]

lol.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

blagojevich is an innocent baby next to berlusconi

Originally Posted by ann ashtray

It ain't no Vietnam...for damned sure. Especially from the soldier's perspective.

thats a selfish perspective. the worst part of Vietnam was not the draft, it was destroying a country. In Iraq, we destroyed a country. It wasn't necessarily a good country, but regardless we destroyed it. In its own way our soldiers now are in a weirder circumstance because they are literally mercenaries, career soldiers, some volunteer, some out of circumstance, some have been brainwashed and manipulated and out-right lied to by shady commission seeking recruiters who troll highschools and colleges..

but what's fucked up about Iraq is that we fucked up Iraq, and all our money and our society contributed to this, even if inadvertently, and that same flag we make our kids pledge allegiance to was plastered up at the point of the gun across that country.. much like in Vietnam, we created a whole second society in Iraq, Iraqis who have been affiliated with the US during the War who face many insecurities in the near future, so they will probably end up like the two million "South" Vietnamese government officials and soldiers who came to the US or at least left Vietnam fleeing the "communists" (for nothing by the way, my friends' families are all in Vietnam in Saigon since the 1950s and they tell me that in all honesty the 'communists' did not bring about any of the kinds of retaliation they feared at the time..)

There are coincidentally at least two million Iraqi refugees, but unlike the Vietnamese, most of these are not in the US, they are scattered across already exasperated Middle-Eastern countries...

Fuck the War. Fuck Everything About It. the sooner it ends, so sooner we can all breathe a bit easier for a brief moment and brace ourselves for the next one.

Thank God they left.. lets keep it up.

[jon boy]

so now what? the americans have gone. left the place in a right state, what happens now?

[Lamont Cranston]

the super sized military bases
the city-sized embassy
They have taken the traditional imperial method of control, they control the military through its logistics & training, and as well the government is their puppet (or "arab facade" as the British put it when they were doing this in the early 20th century), but should the local proxy forces prove insufficient or unable to control the population then there is a regionally located intervention force to step in.
Even during the height of the British Empire they never had more than 10,000 soldiers in India - they controlled the place via the locals. Romans used local auxiliaries rather than sending in the Legions. And so on all through history.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by jon boy

so now what? the americans have gone. left the place in a right state, what happens now?

its not that the americans have left anything in a right state its just that americans need to leave to cool things off.

there was a suicide bombing today, as there is often in Iraq. These bombings make the news but the news rarely elaborates the motives to them, but in reality, the vast majority of bombings and assassinations are against Iraqi police, military, government or businesses that are affiliated with the US government/military, just as was the case during the Vietnam war (which also had quite a few suicide bombings, the Arabs by no means invented that tactic).

The simply reality is that first step towards peace in Iraq and to curb the violence is for the US presence to draw down, and for US contracts to draw down, and US/Foreign involvement to draw down, as history has demonstrated that this largely solved a lot of problems for Vietnam.

The targets of violence and bombings in Iraq have largely been affiliated with the US, and to remove the US is to remove the bull's-eye..