americandream wrote:In moving this thread along, I will use succinct historic analysis rather the spray gun approach of he said this, she said that. Few strange quirks in the ME swamp stand out for me and cause me to pause, speaking as they do of stranger happenings in the background. The hesitation Obama has taken as regards the Assad matter stands out, Iran is the other one (I could discuss Cuba but that adds nothing to this thread which is intended to try and understand this very strange relationship with the ME where for example, Iran with its very evident reformist tendencies is seen as a greater existential threat than Saudi Arabia with its clear and obvious links to anti-systemic tendencies. (I deliberately resist characterising the Saudis as anti-capitalist as I have no idea as to how resistant they are to adaptation when APPROPRIATE. The reins of global capitalism are compelling I would imagine, even to the apparently entrenched...only time will tell))
Thus, when I occasionally when I use news sources (this thread I reiterate, will revolve around historical analyses rather than he said, she said) it will be to dig out any hidden nuggets that lie embedded deep in a very public item which has not since been retracted under an umbrella of recriminations and obsequious corrections. Thus, the item on a very large conservative US PAC associate being an employee of the Saudis EVEN as Obama refuses to bomb Assad and further isolate Iran as is vigorously and loudly demanded by AIPAC/Israel and the Right in the US tells me something about the very odd relationships that form right wing opinion in the US (and all across the world) and the widely known alliance that even the Israelis have finally had to forge ties with to survive in the twilight world of the quietly rising House of Saud and its subtle diplomacy (speak of synchronicity. Even as I was writing out this post, I received a rather timely reminder of this diplomacy at work and unfolding in the way of a news story. The link is below along with my reply to my associate beneath it).
So when we hear conservatives point the finger at the naturally liberal bourgeoise capitalists in social democratic parties across the world (as this is not just an American issue, all of the world faces the consequences of this quietly brewing challenge to history) over their tendencies towards Muslims in our midst (which to some extent is necessary to prevent the rest of us from descending into dribbling barbarians...we need diplomatic initiatives, not spontaneous combustion), what remains ever puzzling in the midst of this recrimination is the shared goals the Republicans share with the House of Saud with the removal of Assad. This goes back to Saddam, (granted the Democrats co-opted in Ghadaffis case (as was so loudly trumpeted by Clinton (of a certain Foundation)). But Assad stands out in all of this being a departure from said co-option and of course, one wonders just how engaged the Democrats are with Saudi objectives. It is a very messy picture but the one constant is the Democrat ambivalence versus Republican certitude....all the while not forgetting the Saudi connection and Israels acquiescence in this very murky swamp. The rest is all pretty much conjecture. But the facts paint a strange picture of corruption and disalignment in US politics.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... its-rivalsHi..............Now as regards the item...all I can say is WOW!! Ok, that aside, clearly the Saudis are intent on the Arab elite assuming the reins of capitalism. This is basically an attempt by an elite with an imperial character seeking to become the sole elite in secular capitalism. That we term consolidation and is possible provided Islam is reformed. Only then will what follows continue as capitalism. If no reformation occurs, history will destroy this mutant entity and the entire species.
AD, I would just like to point out that your use of the term "History" is entirely wrong. History is traditionally and most properly defined as that period which ended a century ago with WW1. Everything since then is "Current Events". History has in the past been immutable, completely unchanging, not subject to revisions. The beginning of aviation is History, the entirety of space travel, the WWW, Civil Rights, etc. are all Current Events.
When Current Events are recorded in immutable, unchanging printed texts, they will become History, a century or more after they occurred, after leisurely review and comment and interpretation and written analysis. This is akin to the process used around 431 AD when the Christian church elders decreed which of the scrolls would become the Bible, and which would be Apocrypha. As I have said before, I sometimes regret my role - however small it was - in implementing the WWW. The new societal paradigms are not easy to live with.
It still infuriates me, for example, that the standard for evaluating anything and everything in this Forum, is "give me a link so I can read it myself". That would be total BS - because those pages that purport to document events before 1916 as "history" differ - sometimes subtly and sometimes markedly - from printed texts. I buy dozens of History texts per year, and I publish myself about two areas of interest - the American Civil War and the history of the US whaling industry - and the online versions of History are mutating in front of my eyes.
EVERYTHING you want to talk about in this thread is being edited in realtime on the WWW, by multiple people with multiple agendas. Have you ever actually evaluated the criteria used by Wikipedia or any other online reference? Those criteria are appallingly lax.
Everything that you think you know about these current events is to some degree inadequate. Those news sources that you have access to online are all publishing the facts as revised through the personal agenda of the reporter and/or his editor. You can find multiple versions of each event and you cannot possibly tell which are accurate, which are not accurate, and which are deliberately deceptive. Nor do you or anybody else have a truth/falsehood detector built into your head.
Reality and the online world differ greatly. Those of us on Earth who are the sickest and the least able to cope with the real world are totally immersed in online BS, with little to hope for in terms of a cure. When the online "facts" mutate, such folks unquestioningly alter their own memories to match.
I can only tell you what I did about Current Events and suggest it as a partial solution to the problems I have discussed. After being a subsciber for decades, and accumulating over a ton of magazines, I bought the last 125 years of
National Geographic magazine on CDs. They tend to publish in depth articles about 2-4 years after the events themselves. This perspective is about 90% accurate via the standards we apply to "published history".
The CDs contain medium resolution images of the actual magazine pages, along with searchable indexes - and the indexes are pretty good. But good as they are, these are quite definitely copyrighted material, and useless for any argument at PO.com. (But reading century old advertizing is also a hoot.)
