RIP REAGAN
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- mrdobolina0
right on, glad you like them.
my point is just because reagan died doesnt make him a great president. communism was slipping away from the soviets anyway, with or without reagan. he made a speech saying "mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall" and in hindsight it looks like that is exactly how it went down, it didn't.
- froww0
I think I'm just a bit frustrated with how the liberal media seems to be rewriting history, per se, regarding his contributions, as well as his character, etc...
My, how uncharacteristically political I am today. Must shake this off.
- mrdobolina0
Iran/Contra really showed how great a man he was.
- Mimio0
It illustrated what a slippery and skillfull liar he really was. Reagan also initiated the divide and conquer economic tactics to the middle class that Bush is seeing through today.
- ********0
Gawd bless Reagan I say. In the same perverse way I say gawd bless Margaret Thatcher and gawd bless Pope John Paul II. For bringing into being the Empire of the corporations. The Pre-Reagan world was 2 military empires carving up the world between them in an show of military strength. The first world faced the second world and fought over the third world through proxy wars and puppet dictators. But then in the 1980s, the first world realised that the military strength of the second had no firm economic foundation. That if pushed, the whole system would implode. And so they unleashed the free market with a push towards democracy. Globalisation was thus fashioned as a system that would secure American asymetric global dominance through corporate America. Through McDonalds on the streets of St Petersburg, and Nike on the T-Shirts of Africans. Ideas of democracy went hand in hand with free trade - and both were pushed with equal venom.
Unfortunately Americans (Democrat & Republicans) realised Reaganism could ultimately lead to the downfall of America as a superpower, and eventually as even a nation state. Free trade trade threatened US economic dominance - maintained through a heavily subsidised and protected economy. The rise of Japan during the 80s was the first such warning. The Reaganites (now repackeged as neo-conservatives) realised their vision of a New American Century (George Bush I's "new world order") based on the global dominance of the dollar must now be backed by asymetric military strength, as during the cold war; to check the ambitions of would-be superpowers. This is the duality of Reaganism - at once contradictory. Both George Bush I and Bill Clinton fought "police wars" designed to reposition the US as the sole guarantor of world security. A world constitution was developed to serve the needs of capitalism based on the internationalism of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, and the multinational corporations. The US served as the monarchical power towering over the UN as the new senate of Rome. A system designed to maintain the freedom of corporations from the interference of nations - and so rendering the state all but obsolete. Free market capitalism as inherent to the spectacle of society.
With the impending super-power status of China and India; the resurgence of Brazil (which will eventually lead to South America dominating the North as it had done for 1000s of years up until 200 years ago), the current US administration is
extending the remit of the US as the worlds police-man to face these challenges. Transferring dollar power into real power; the US posesses the exclusive use of pre-emptive wars; and in fact maintains sole control of the war machine. Failed states
are turned into weak states, only to be allowed to turn back into failed states. The US isn't exclusive in its wars of
geopolitics (witness Israel against the Palestinians, and the Russians in Chechnya). Nevertheless, the US is in the process of creating a world constantly at war with itself. A world in which policing by the US will be the essential funciton of the Capitalist global Empire. War is Americas answer to threat from China, India, Europe, and Russia (the Democrats under Clinton were no different).All these wars will, in the end amount to nothing. Corporate America doesn't need the United States. If (like Margaret
Thatcher said) that the free market was the only form social relations may take - then all social relations are orchestrated by multinational corporations that have no state loyalty. Goods and services will be exchanged freely across open borders. To such a point that social life itself is being produced by the corporation (ala Blade Runner/Robocop). With mass flows of capital goes mass flows of labour. Europe might be voting for right-wing nationalist parties today to keep out the foreigners - but this is a project doomed to failure. States will dissapear and the first and third world will exist in the one and same
place. All that will be left will be these giant multinational corporations. But without the State to defend them - the
multinationals will be naked and defenceless. And, in a democratic moment, the multitude will seize the means of production on a global scale, and Karl Marx will be proved right.RIP Reagan, and take ur beloved country with u. muahhahahahahahaaa!
- e-wo0
"RIP Reagan, and take ur beloved country with u. muahhahahahahahaaa!"
Not a great thing to say.
- jevad0
No Praise for Reagan
by Matthew RothschildSpare me the heapings of praise for Ronald Reagan.
He was one of the worst presidents we've ever had.
In fact, he should have been impeached for the Iran-Contra scandal, and he might have been had Congress and the media just done their jobs. Reagan misappropriated funds, and then he lied about it. He traded with Iran, an enemy of the United States, and he lied about that, too.
But Congress went weak in the knees when Ollie North showed up strutting in his uniform.
And the media fell down, too. Katherine Graham, owner of The Washington Post, said the country couldn't handle another impeachment crisis, and so the Post downplayed it.
Let's be clear on Reagan's record.
Reagan was responsible for killing tens of thousands of innocent people in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Honduras as he waged illegal wars and funded brutal militaries. The truth commission of El Salvador investigated the murders of 75,000 people during the civil war in the 1980s, and it found that the Salvadoran military, or death squads connected to the military, had committed the bulk of those crimes. At the time, Bush was lavishing hundreds of millions of dollars on the Salvadoran government, and his CIA was working with the death squads.
Reagan was responsible, as Christopher Hitchens has noted, for approving Israel's invasion of Lebanon, which killed about 18,000 civilians.
Reagan was responsible for his own unilateral invasion of that huge threat to the United States called Grenada. (Oh, the great liberator!)
Reagan was responsible for inciting a racist backlash. He kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in--of all places--Philadelphia, Mississippi, where Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Cheney were murdered in 1964. Reagan also fueled racism with his stories about "welfare queens" and his defense of the apartheid regime of South Africa.
Reagan was responsible for attacking women's rights, as he tried to legitimate the backlash against feminism. He appointed the far right justice Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court, and he loaded the lower court benches with anti-choice ideologues.
Reagan was responsible for a woeful response to the AIDS epidemic, which needlessly jeopardized the lives of millions of people. He also consorted with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who called AIDS divine revenge on homosexuals.
Reagan was responsible for shredding the social contract between labor and management, and he declared open season on trade unions when he fired the air traffic controllers.
Reagan was responsible for flattening out the progressive income tax and for giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and to corporations. His economic policies, as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Policy and Research has noted, dramatically redistributed income--to the rich.
Reagan was responsible for hooking millions of people overseas on tobacco, as he turned the Commerce Department into the advance team for Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.
Reagan ("We begin bombing in five minutes") was responsible for the multi-billion dollar boondoggle that goes by the name of missile defense.
Reagan was responsible for launching an assault on our environment (remember James Watt!) that is now reaching its apotheosis under George W.
In a way, Reagan was W's father. The macho swagger, the studied anti-intellectualism, the infatuation with military spending, and the overriding concern for corporations and the rich--all these Bush has inherited from Reagan.
And while Reagan consulted Nancy's astrologer for advice, Bush does him one better by consulting the Lord Himself.
The only difference is that Reagan knew how to read his lines.
- e-wo0
"He was one of the worst presidents we've ever had."
this is so historically ignorant
- ********0
amen jevad.
- xaoscontrol0
I think it's a sad day when any president dies.
On another note, I can't think of a president in my lifetime that hasn't lied about one thing or another. I lie is a lie...no matter how big or small.. It's all the same in my book. They've all been bed partners involved in an unethical business deal of some sort. Welcome to Politics.
- ********0
i unknowingly was flipping through the cable news last night and fell upon something they call the Joe Scarborough show (you can practically see the remnants of the asshole he has plastic surgery on to resemble a mouth) Anyway, vanity fairs Christopher Hitchens was on remarking on the remarkable Gorbachev and how Reagan, unlike Gorbachev, funded terrorists in Nicauraga....CUT______
- Mimio0
In my book Reagan is in the top 10 worst US presidents ever, easily.
- emerican0
hey jevad, why don't you go fuck off back to your own country?
- e-wo0
Studied much history, Mimio?
I'd love to hear your complete list.
I don't think you have one.
- ********0
also, Reagan was certainly not the father of Neo-Conservatives, maybe insomuch as they cultivated their fangs and thirst for blood while he was in office, but Reagans agenda was simply not the same (it was antique, uninformed, and basically racist) but it was not the irradiated, steroid pumped Motherbrain that NeoCon is. NeoCons are the last digitized gasp of the religious rights right to terrorize.
- jevad0
lol @ emerican!!
uh...no?
twat
- lowimpakt0
"NeoCons are the last digitized gasp of the religious rights right to terrorize."
brilliant
- ********0
"and the rockets red glarraehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...
http://www.thenewmexicochannel.c…
this is the personified America praising a LIAR.
- ********0
"Authorities say the cause of death won't be determined until the body is recovered from White's Butte."
i'll say
- Mimio0
Sure e-wo, I've already stated my opinion quite clearly in my previous posts.