MARCELL DAREUS POWER

most of the 911 hijackers came from saudi arabia and egypt. also, you dont have to be from an occupied country to be pissed and engage in "terrorist activity". obviously you know this... my point was originally calling out corollas propaganda that, "they hate us because of who we are". this is utter nonsense.

in reality we should probably have a 6 bracket tax system. some people make tons of money... something like 10%-40% in 6 brackets. i would put the top .01% in the 40% bracket. i would put the corporate tax rate at 0%. not sure how this would play out revenue wise.

as long as its progressive, that all i can ask for. thats fair. the whole charity thing is a joke. bill maher talked about this last week. the public should not subsidize the mormon church or the art show that has a toilet seat. lol so i agree with you here.

romney? capital gains? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffett_Rule -The Buffett Rule is named after American investor Warren Buffett, who publicly stated in early 2011 that he disagreed with rich people, like himself, paying less in federal taxes, as a portion of income, than the middle class, and voiced support for increased income taxes on the wealthy.[4] The rule would implement a higher minimum tax rate for taxpayers in the highest income bracket, to ensure that they do not pay a lower percentage of income in taxes than less-affluent Americans.[5] In October 2011, Senate leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) proposed a 5.6 percent surtax on millionaires to pay for new stimulus provisions, but the change did not go through.[6] A White House statement released in January 2012 defined the rule as part of "measures to ensure everyone making over a million dollars a year pays a minimum effective tax rate of at least 30 percent ... implemented in a way that is equitable, including not disadvantaging individuals who make large charitable contributions."[7] The White House also stated that "no household making more than $1 million each year should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle class family pays."[8]

you dont think the right can have cognitive dissonance? they came up with the damn bill( self relaince, personal responsibility), and then only rejected it, because obama decided it was politically possible. remember 92 and hillary? playing politics is not always ideological. generally speaking, the moderate right has said you should go to a charity hospital, and if you cant do that, just go to the emergency room. in other words you should not have to pay for health care.( free rider)- a hyperbolic term to describe the left is now what the mainstream right wants... some fringe groups on the right have actually said hospitals should be able to turn people away if they cant pay. you were the one tom that said barry was an extremist. i would consider lenin in that category. so whats you example?

well, what social programs? unemployment? ss medicare medicaid school lunch program welfare for single mothers tuition assistance? i would say all these are justified. a single mother might have problems if she has little skills. some kids cant afford to go to college. my dad didnt have 6gs, so i joined the military. sometimes markets dont provide basics. so the govt helps out a little to keep a stable political system. but yeah, welfare forever with 10 kids, thats a problem, although its a very small problem. gsa/ge/public workers getting millions a year, yeah, thats a problem. you find corruption, and you deal with it. within any institution, the bigger it gets, the more waste and fraud will happen. this is why leninism does not work. my 2 cents. if someone making millions pays a smaller percentage than a garbage man, than yeah, thats not fair. its a regressive tax system we have. its not the amount, rather the percentage that matters. obviously the more money you have, the more purchasing power you have. this is why 10% of a 1000 is much harder to deal with than 10% of a 100 million.

I never stated that every culture will react the same towards occupation and torture. strangely, this doesnt give justification for occupation. in other words, because the arab/muslim world is looking for payback, this somehow brings illegitimacy to their anger/cause. this is the equivalent of saying after i punch you in the face, you are now bad for wanting to kick my ass. i reject this implication...not saying you stated this, but i think it was implied. its like you want to put in bold print, THE ARAB WORLD WANTS TO KILL US, and then not say why? and then you say, SEE, OTHER PEOPLE DONT ACT LIKE THIS, well thats becasue people have different ideologies on when it is appropriate to respond to naked aggression/violence. there is also not only differences in ideology, but also differences in circumstance and incentive to engage in terrorist action against the state. there is a rational actor theory on this, i foget who wrote it. pointing to another person not reacting towards occupation does not mean reacting towards occupation is wrong. the fundamental question is why. the solution is not to occupy more... whats funny, is latin american people have reacted, sometimes in violent fashion... as far as why there is difference in violent reaction? i dont think the reaction is really that different on a general level. the cultures are different, but there has been responses in history from latin america. the cuban 5, the sandanistas guerilla war vs the contras. the current alliance between chavez and iran... there is also vast amounts of terror action against the US for its drug war policy. there are tons of columbian mercenaries. there is also direct funding from south american sympathizers to terrorist groups like hezbollah or al-aqsa brigade because of US imperialism in the area. there are thousands of examples of direct action against the US in latin america. read up on the FMLN in el salvador during the 80s. a big one is the cuban missle crisis... its also important to note that during the cold war, many leftist groups were not as isolated as the middle east becasue they had the soviet union to rely on... but i will concede that violent reaction among radical islamists, like 911, is much more prevalent compared to secular leftists groups. i think this speaks more towards religion taking over a cause, like 79 in iran. it brings more zeal to a cause when people think god is on their side. what this does not do is justify our foreign policy, and among many terrorist actions against the US, i feel some of it is a moral response from desperate people... to make one point clear, i feel there are major problems within islam, and an islamic state is disturbing to me, but i would find the same problem with a christian state. and if a foreign country attacked the US, and christians engaged in terrorism against that aggressor, i would see their action as justified. its also important to point out on the issue of iran before 79, our installed dictator and isolation of the iranian people created an environment where a power vaccum is created. many many times during hard times, a country becomes polarized and fringe groups do arise. so we are to blame for this also... there are tons of books on ethnic conflict being created by autocratic regimes and a country being destitute.. e.g. the congo...

yes, obama is center right. he embraces neoliberal trade policy, and passed a heatlh care bill written by a right wing think tank... the reason i said center-right is because he is pro life and let gays in the military. in general terms, are far as american politics, hes about as center as you get... please state your evidence and show a few examples of where obama has been far far left. what lenin like policies has obama implemented?

tom , he passed a health care bill created by the heritage foundation. its a corporate takeover for health care... he kept all major bush foreign policy doctrine except torture, as far as we know.... he kept the bush tax cuts he has offered 3-1 in cuts to revenue to reduce the debt he singed more neoliberal policies with asia on trade , a classic right wing ideology... he has increased the predator drone program, especially in yemen. he has put severe sanctions on iran and has clearly stated iran cannot have a wmd... liberally- i think he let gays in the military, outside of that, the guy is a center right president... but tom, respectfully, you will never change minds by ridiculing them...

dude, are you ok man. seriously, you insult people left and right...

i never said i blamed america for every evil. rather our foreign policy in the middle east post ww1 has been atrocious/disturbing. lets take one example that is very specific. its important to stick to facts. do you think installing the shah, a murderous dictator over iran, has caused any suspicion or anger? or do you think they hate us in iran because we have mcdonalds and a 1st amendment...

you do realize there are multiple definitions of fascism, what we are talking about here is soft-fascism... - ron paul talks about it here with tim russert. the way im using it refers to the ww2- italian style fascism where state and corporate america are working together... seriously man, you mad bro? relax...

i heard peak oil will make oil prices go up and down year to year before they skyrocket... reason being oil prices rise because demand gets higher and higher, economy slows down, demand goes down, prices go down. eventually that downward motion will stop once production cant meet minimal standards of demand.

Sorry, i didnt think mostly was specific enough, but hey.. w/e.. i guess we can just stop now. you want no regs, i do. this conversation would take about 12 hours.. so unless you live near by and want to get a beer, i will just stop now... i never said they were the same thing, only implied they are related, ie corporatism leads to fascism...

WIKI- Fascist corporatism- Fascism's theory of economic corporatism involved management of sectors of the economy by government or privately controlled organizations (corporations). Each trade union or employer corporation would, theoretically, represent its professional concerns, especially by negotiation of labor contracts and the like. This method, it was theorized, could result in harmony amongst social classes.[30] Authors have noted, however, that de facto economic corporatism was also used to reduce opposition and reward political loyalty.[31] In Italy from 1922 until 1943, corporatism became influential amongst Italian nationalists led by Benito Mussolini. The Charter of Carnaro gained much popularity as the prototype of a 'corporative state', having displayed much within its tenets as a guild system combining the concepts of autonomy and authority in a special synthesis. This appealed to Hegelian thinkers who were seeking a new alternative to popular socialism and syndicalism which was also a progressive system of governing labor and still a new way of relating to political governance. Alfredo Rocco spoke of a corporative state and declared corporatist ideology in detail. Rocco would later become a member of the Italian Fascist regime Fascismo.[32] Italian Fascism involved a corporatist political system in which economy was collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at the national level.[33] This non-elected form of state officializing of every interest into the state was professed to reduce the marginalization of singular interests (as would allegedly happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in the democratic voting process). Corporatism would instead better recognize or 'incorporate' every divergent interest into the state organically, according to its supporters, thus being the inspiration for their use of the term totalitarian, perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus: When brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.[34] and [The state] is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual... Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State... Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers.[34] This prospect of Italian fascist corporatism claimed to be the direct heir of Georges Sorel's anarcho-collectivist, such that each interest was to form as its own entity with separate organizing parameters according to their own standards, only however within the corporative model of Italian fascism each was supposed to be incorporated through the auspices and organizing ability of a statist construct. This was by their reasoning the only possible way to achieve such a function, i.e. when resolved in the capability of an indissoluble state. Much of the corporatist influence upon Italian Fascism was partly due to the Fascists' attempts to gain endorsement by the Roman Catholic Church that itself sponsored corporatism.[35] However fascism's corporatism was a top-down model of state control over the economy while the Roman Catholic Church's corporatism favored a bottom-up corporatism, whereby groups such as families and professional groups would voluntarily work together.[35][36] The fascist state corporatism influenced the governments and economies of a number of Roman Catholic countries, such as the government of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria and António de Oliveira Salazar in Portugal, but also Konstantin Päts and Karlis Ulmanis in non-Catholic Estonia and Latvia. Fascists in non-Catholic countries also supported Italian Fascist corporatism, including Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists who commended corporatism and said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole".[37] Mosley also considered corporatism as an attack on laissez-faire economics and "international finance".[37]

What part?

fannie and freddie was protected by the govt... they knew there was no risk, only risk to the tax payer. they had the govt backed loan plus 20% or so... plus aig. WIKI- 2000s In 2000, because of a re-assessment of the housing market by HUD, anti-predatory lending rules were put into place that disallowed risky, high-cost loans from being credited toward affordable housing goals. In 2004, these rules were dropped and high-risk loans were again counted toward affordable housing goals.[25] The intent was that Fannie Mae's enforcement of the underwriting standards they maintained for standard conforming mortgages would also provide safe and stable means of lending to buyers who did not have prime credit. As Daniel Mudd, then President and CEO of Fannie Mae, testified in 2007, instead the agency's underwriting requirements drove business into the arms of the private mortgage industry who marketed aggressive products without regard to future consequences: "We also set conservative underwriting standards for loans we finance to ensure the homebuyers can afford their loans over the long term. We sought to bring the standards we apply to the prime space to the subprime market with our industry partners primarily to expand our services to underserved families. "Unfortunately, Fannie Mae-quality, safe loans in the subprime market did not become the standard, and the lending market moved away from us. Borrowers were offered a range of loans that layered teaser rates, interest-only, negative amortization and payment options and low-documentation requirements on top of floating-rate loans. In early 2005 we began sounding our concerns about this "layered-risk" lending. For example, Tom Lund, the head of our single-family mortgage business, publicly stated, "One of the things we don't feel good about right now as we look into this marketplace is more homebuyers being put into programs that have more risk. Those products are for more sophisticated buyers. Does it make sense for borrowers to take on risk they may not be aware of? Are we setting them up for failure? As a result, we gave up significant market share to our competitors."[26] On January 26, 2005, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 (S.190) was first introduced in the Senate by Sen. Chuck Hagel.[27] The Senate legislation was an effort to reform the existing GSE regulatory structure in light of the recent accounting problems and questionable management actions leading to considerable income restatements by the GSE's. After being reported favorably by the Senate's Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs in July 2005, the bill was never considered by the full Senate for a vote.[28] Sen. John McCain's decision to become a cosponsor of S.190 almost a year later in 2006 was the last action taken regarding Sen. Hagel's bill in spite of developments since clearing the Senate Committee. Sen. McCain pointed out that Fannie Mae's regulator reported that profits were "illusions deliberately and systematically created by the company's senior management" in his floor statement giving support to S.190.[29][30] At the same time, the House also introduced similar legislation, the Federal Housing Finance Reform Act of 2005 (H.R. 1461), in the Spring of 2005. The House Financial Services Committee had crafted changes and produced a Committee Report by July 2005 to the legislation. It was passed by the House in October in spite of President Bush's statement of policy opposed to the House version.[31] The legislation met with opposition from both Democrats and Republicans at that point and the Senate never took up the House passed version for consideration after that.[32] [edit] The mortgage crisis from late 2007 Following their mission to meet federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) housing goals, GSEs such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) have striven to improve home ownership of low and middle income families, underserved areas, and generally through special affordable methods such as "the ability to obtain a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a low down payment... and the continuous availability of mortgage credit under a wide range of economic conditions." (HUD 2002 Annual Housing Activities Report) Then in 2003-2004, the subprime mortgage crisis began.[33] The market shifted away from regulated GSEs and radically toward Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) issued by unregulated private-label securitization conduits, typically operated by investment banks. As mortgage originators began to distribute more and more of their loans through private label MBS, GSEs lost the ability to monitor and control mortgage originators. Competition between the GSEs and private securitizers for loans further undermined GSEs power and strengthened mortgage originators. This contributed to a decline in underwriting standards and was a major cause of the financial crisis.[34] Investment bank securitizers were more willing to securitize risky loans because they generally retained minimal risk. Whereas the GSEs guaranteed the performance of their MBS, private securitizers generally did not, and might only retain a thin slice of risk.[34] Often, banks would offload this risk to insurance companies or other counterparties through credit default swaps, making their actual risk exposures extremely difficult for investors and creditors to discern.[35] The shift toward riskier mortgages and private label MBS distribution occurred as financial institutions sought to maintain earnings levels that had been elevated during 2001-2003 by an unprecedented refinancing boom due to historically low interest rates. Earnings depended on volume, so maintaining elevated earnings levels necessitated expanding the borrower pool using lower underwriting standards and new products that the GSEs would not (initially) securitize. Thus, the shift away from GSE securitization to private-label securitization (PLS) also corresponded with a shift in mortgage product type, from traditional, amortizing, fixed-rate mortgages (FRMs) to nontraditional, structurally riskier, nonamortizing, adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), and in the start of a sharp deterioration in mortgage underwriting standards.[33] The growth of PLS, however, forced the GSEs to lower their underwriting standards in an attempt to reclaim lost market share to please their private shareholders. Shareholder pressure pushed the GSEs into competition with PLS for market share, and the GSEs loosened their guarantee business underwriting standards in order to compete. In contrast, the wholly public FHA/Ginnie Mae maintained their underwriting standards and instead ceded market share.[33] The growth of private-label securitization and lack of regulation in this part of the market resulted in the oversupply of underpriced housing finance[33] that led, in 2006, to an increasing number of borrowers, often with poor credit, who were unable to pay their mortgages - particularly with adjustable rate mortgages (ARM), caused a precipitous increase in home foreclosures. As a result, home prices declined as increasing foreclosures added to the already large inventory of homes and stricter lending standards made it more and more difficult for borrowers to get mortgages. This depreciation in home prices led to growing losses for the GSEs, which back the majority of US mortgages. In July 2008, the government attempted to ease market fears by reiterating their view that "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in the US housing finance system". The US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve took steps to bolster confidence in the corporations, including granting both corporations access to Federal Reserve low-interest loans (at similar rates as commercial banks) and removing the prohibition on the Treasury Department to purchase the GSEs' stock. Despite these efforts, by August 2008, shares of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had tumbled more than 90% from their one-year prior levels. On Oct 21, 2010 FHFA estimates revealed that the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will likely cost taxpayers $224–360 billion in total, with over $150 billion already provided.[36]

and why did the panic start? a few big firms knew they were betting against investments and used aig for the parachute... only aig was deregulated, and after a few margin calls, the dominos were set in motion. these firms were selling **** mortgages that they knew would fail, or had a high chance of failing, hid the info, and bet against them with aig... it was compounded because glass steagall was deregulated... the fbi, not the ny times has reported this, unless you think the fbi is some liberal conspiracy.. it wasnt regulation, not regulation in the sense that protects people or is rational. it was law that was set in place to protect big business... ie corporatism/fascism. again, its not govt, its when govt is taken over by corporate america... why do you think fannie and freddie did this? its called lobbying, ie deregulation of political contribution, ie bribes... they knew that giving **** loans to people would make big money in the short run, and they knew when the bottom fell out, the govt would protect them... the college loan bubble is the same right now and is a big reason for the debt. if the person defaults, the govt backs the initial loan by 120%. basically you cant lose. who do you think wrote that law?

and we can make all those new propaganda movies again, like rocky 4, top gun, and red dawn... YEAH!

obviously anyone that has studied the banking crisis must realize what deregulation did. not only that, but the deregulation happened, billions were stolen, and then when the money ran out, the govt bailed them out. this is the very definition of corporatism/fascism...

can you please be respectful? where have i gone wrong? im simply stating a regulated market is better than lawlessness... market incentive does not always work, and where it does not check power, the powerful become more powerful. i also stated that corporations and lobbyists are now writing laws or having a major influence over our political system, rendering our democracy into corporatism. i simply stated we need regs against this and some minimal protection, just like laws with traffic...

i can agree with this. noam is more of a critic than a person offering great solutions. but thats his gig. hes great at pointing the mirror right back at the US. and i used his intellect to crush the notion that the arab world " hates us for who we are". that is utter nonsense and propaganda from the state dept...

no, i was just trying to illustrate that the market left to its own devices will create massive structures of power. everybody in a market does not have fair competition, nor should we want perfect competition, but what we dont want is something on the opposite spectrum where might makes right. some are smarter than others, some have more private property, some states have different rules, i think this goes without saying. i think we should have a decent level of some protection. anybody thats talked to a lawyer knows this on a very basic level. markets are not the same, and if there are no laws outside of market incentive, people can get away with tons of crazy ****, or even get in bed with the govt. keep in mind, im not simply for " regulation" but rather regulation that actually keeps markets semi-efficient and have a minimal standard of decent ethics... this is why i used the traffic analogy. forget utopia, that doesnt exist. even with traffic regs, we still have accidents, but if there was no law, well,like i said, things would get crazy or at the very least not be as good or as efficient as our system... fascism starts because corporations have taken over govt. this does not mean we dont want govt, rather regulations preventing cronyism at some base level.

ron paul wants lawlessness among markets. hes a pure neoliberal. in his ideology he feels humans will act moral with market forces. i would argue markets are not all the same, and some have much more power than others, creating a system which is tempting to say the least... imagine if we deregulated the highway or all traffic regulations... well yeah, just think of that scenario for 60 seconds..

small segment of an interview with noam chomsky on this whole issue of 911 and war on terror... Q: The media have been noticeably lacking in providing a context and a background for the attacks on New York and Washington. What might be some useful information that you could provide? A: "There are two categories of information that are particularly useful because there are two distinct, though related, sources for the attack. Let’s assume that the attack was rooted somehow in the bin Laden network. That sounds plausible, at least, so letsay it’s right. If that’s right, there are two categories of information and of populations that we should be concerned with, linked but not identical. One is the bin Laden network. That’s a category by itself. Another is the population of the region. They’re not the same thing, although there are links. What ought to be in the forefront is discussion of both of those. The bin Laden network, I doubt if anybody knows it better than the CIA, since they were instrumental in helping construct it. This is a network whose development started in 1979, if you can believe President Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. He claimed, maybe he was just bragging, that in mid–1979 he had instigated secret support for Mujahedin fighting against the government of Afghanistan in an effort to draw the Russians into what he called an “Afghan trap,” a phrase worth remembering. He’s very proud of the fact that they did fall into the Afghan trap by sending military forces to support the government six months later, with consequences that we know. The U.S., along with Egypt, Pakistan, French intelligence, Saudi Arabian funding, and Israeli involvement, assembled a major army, a huge mercenary army, maybe 100,000 or more, and they drew from the most militant sectors they could find, which happened to be radical Islamists, what are called here Islamic fundamentalists, from all over, most of them not from Afghanistan. They’re called Afghanis, but like bin Laden, they come from elsewhere. Bin Laden joined very quickly. He was involved in the funding networks, which probably are the ones which still exist. They were trained, armed, organized by the CIA, Pakistan, Egypt, and others to fight a holy war against the Russians. And they did. They fought a holy war against the Russians. They carried terror into Russian territory. They may have delayed the Russian withdrawal, a number of analysts believe, but they did win the war and the Russian invaders withdrew. The war was not their only activity. In 1981, groups based in that same network assassinated President Sadat of Egypt, who had been instrumental in setting it up. In 1983, one suicide bomber, maybe with connections to the same networks, essentially drove the U.S. military out of Lebanon. And it continued. By 1989, they had succeeded in their holy war in Afghanistan. As soon as the U.S. established a permanent military presence in Saudi Arabia, bin Laden and the rest announced that from their point of view this was comparable to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and they turned their guns on the Americans, as had already happened in 1983 when the U.S. had military forces in Lebanon. Saudi Arabia is a major enemy of the bin Laden network, just as Egypt is. That’s what they want to overthrow, what they call the un–Islamic governments of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, other states of the Middle East and North Africa. And it continued. In 1997, they murdered roughly sixty tourists in Egypt and destroyed the Egyptian tourist industry. And they’ve been carrying out activities all over the region, North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, for years. That’s one group. And that is an outgrowth of the U.S. wars of the 1980s and, if you can believe Brzezinski, even before, when they set the “Afghan trap.” There’s a lot more to say about them, but that’s one part. Another is the people of the region. They’re connected, of course. The bin Laden network and others like them draw a lot of their support from the desperation and anger and resentment of the people of the region, which ranges from rich to poor, secular to radical Islamist. The Wall Street Journal, to its credit, has run a couple of articles on attitudes of wealthy Muslims, the people who most interest them: businessmen, bankers, professionals, and others through the Middle East region who are very frank about their grievances. They put it more politely than the poor people in the slums and the streets, but it’s clear. Everybody knows what they are. For one thing, they’re very angry about U.S. support for undemocratic, repressive regimes in the region and U.S. insistence on blocking any efforts towards democratic openings. You just heard on the news, it sounded like the BBC, a report that the Algerian government is now interested in getting involved in this war. The announcer said that there had been plenty of Islamic terrorism in Algeria, which is true, but he didn’t tell the other part of the story, which is that a lot of the terrorism is apparently state terrorism. There’s pretty strong evidence for that. The government of course is interested in enhancing its repression, and will welcome U.S. assistance in this. In fact, that government is in office because it blocked the democratic election in which it would have lost to mainly Islamic–based groups. That set off the current fighting. Similar things go on throughout the region. The “moneyed Muslims” interviewed by the Journal also complained that the U.S. has blocked independent economic development by “propping up oppressive regimes,” that’s the phrase they used. But the prime concern stressed in the Wall Street Journal articles and by everybody who knows anything about the region, the prime concern of the “moneyed Muslims”—basically pro–American, incidentally—is the dual U.S. policies, which contrast very sharply in their eyes, towards Iraq and Israel. In the case of Iraq, for the last ten years the U.S. and Britain have been devastating the civilian society. Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement about how maybe half a million children have died, and it’s a high price but we’re willing to pay it, doesn’t sound too good among people who think that maybe it matters if a half a million children are killed by the U.S. and Britain. And meanwhile they’re strengthening Saddam Hussein. So that’s one aspect of the dual policy. The other aspect is that the U.S. is the prime supporter of the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory, now in its thirty–fifth year. It’s been harsh and brutal from the beginning, extremely repressive. Most of this hasn’t been discussed here, and the U.S. role has been virtually suppressed. It goes back twenty–five years of blocking diplomatic initiatives. Even simple facts are not reported. For example, as soon as the current fighting began last September 30, Israel immediately, the next day, began using U.S. helicopters (they can’t produce helicopters) to attack civilian targets. In the next couple of days they killed several dozen people in apartment complexes and elsewhere. The fighting was all in the occupied territories, and there was no Palestinian fire. The Palestinians were using stones. So this is people throwing stones against occupiers in a military occupation, legitimate resistance by world standards, insofar as the targets are military. On October 3, Clinton made the biggest deal in a decade to send new military helicopters to Israel. That continued the next couple of months. That wasn’t even reported, still isn’t reported, as far as I’m aware. But the people there know it, even if they don’t read the Israeli press (where it was immediately reported). They look in the sky and see attack helicopters coming and they know they’re U.S. attack helicopters sent with the understanding that that is how they will be used. From the very start U.S. officials made it clear that there were no conditions on their use, which was by then already well known. A couple of weeks later Israel started using them for assassinations. The U.S. issued some reprimands but sent more helicopters, the most advanced in the U.S. arsenal. Meanwhile the settlement policies, which have taken over substantial parts of the territories and are designed to make it virtually impossible for a viable independent state to develop, are supported by the U.S. The U.S. provides the funding, the diplomatic support. It’s the only country that’s blocked the overwhelming international consensus on condemning all this under the Geneva conventions. The victims, and others in the region, know all of this. All along this has been an extremely harsh military occupation. Q: Is there anything else you want to add? A: There’s a lot more. There is the fact that the U.S. has supported oppressive, authoritarian, harsh regimes, and blocked democratic initiatives. For example, the one I mentioned in Algeria. Or in Turkey. Or throughout the Arabian Peninsula. Many of the harsh, brutal, oppressive regimes are backed by the U.S. That was true of Saddam Hussein, right through the period of his worst atrocities, including the gassing of the Kurds. U.S. and British support for the monster continued. He was treated as a friend and ally, and people there know it. When bin Laden makes that charge, as he did again in an interview rebroadcast by the BBC, people know what he is talking about. Let’s take a striking example. In March 1991, right after the Gulf War, with the U.S. in total command of the air, there was a rebellion in the southern part of Iraq, including Iraqi generals. They wanted to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They didn’t ask for U.S. support, just access to captured Iraqi arms, which the U.S. refused. The U.S. tacitly authorized Saddam Hussein to use air power to crush the rebellion. The reasons were not hidden. New York Times Middle East correspondent Alan Cowell described the “strikingly unanimous view” of the U.S. and its regional coalition partners: “whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for stability than did those who have suffered his repression.” Times diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman observed, not critically, that for Washington and its allies, an “iron–fisted Iraqi junta” that would hold Iraq together just as Saddam’s “iron fist” had done was preferable to a popular rebellion, which was drowned in blood, probably killing more people than the U.S. bombing. Maybe people here don’t want to look, but that was all over the front pages of the newspapers. Well, again, it is known in the region. That’s just one example. These are among the reasons why pro-American bankers and businessmen in the region are condemning the U.S. for supporting antidemocratic regimes and stopping economic development."