A memorable example is the Tucson shooting. He was brought down during a reload. Hence, it would have ended sooner if the gunman didn't have easy access to extended clips.
He was not reloading. His "extended clip" jammed.
And shortly after Reagan created the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
This is, of course, a lie. The mujahedeen in Afghanistan that was supported by the United States became the Northern Alliance, whose leader was murdered by the Taliban the day before 9/11.
The whole point of Sarbanes-Oxley is people had no clue Enron was doing weird shit.
Untrue. Those who carefully examined Enron's books smelled something funny, and then when word got out, investors and creditors panicked, causing Enron's demise. Compare this with MF Global, where nobody who carefully examined MF Global's books could tell that MF Global had pissed away its customer's money.
"Fascism should more correctly be known as corporatism as it's the alignment of corporate and state power." - Mussolini
That quote is a fake.
Unregulated capitalism ALWAYS and INEVITABLY can ONLY devolve into outright fascism [syn: corporatism] (which is exactly what is happening in the USA right now).
You obviously don't know what fascism is.
Fascists have a view of world history in which ethnic or national groups are primary, and a Hobbesian theory of society and the State where the nation must be reified as an individual, where disagreement and competition must be forcibly suppressed. Economic ideology is corporatist - having nothing to do with business corporations. Rather, it is a form of guild socialism - central planning, where market competition is suppressed by the State, and sectors of society and the economy, such as agriculture, business, labor, etc. are regimented into organizations under a single governing body and forced to negotiate with each other to establish policies in the interest of each organization and the body as a whole.
Capitalism is diametrically opposed to fascism.
The US was not responsible for starting either the Korean or Vietnam wars, and certainly did not kill 2 million people during the Vietnam war, which is actually the figure for both sides. In Iraq, most of the killing done was Muslim-on-Muslim violence.
Mao, on the other hand, was responsible for around 30 to 60 million deaths, possibly as high as 76 million, according to R.J. Rummel. Pol Pot, around 3 million.
Your assertion is not so much absurd as it is insane. I'll see your "The US has killed more civilians since WW2 than everyone else put together", and raise you a Mao and a Pol Pot.
Therefore we should cut-off food and starve 1 million Iranians just like we starved 1 million Iraqis during the 1990s embargo.
The sanctions on Iraq never restricted food or medicine.
And when that doesn't work (because it won't), we should bomb the hell out of them and kill (or maim) another 1 million innocent men, women, and children like we did in Iraq in 2002 to 2011.
The vast majority of civilian deaths in Iraq during that period was due to Muslim-on-Muslim violence, not US bombs.
We encouraged our long-time friend Saddam to invade Kuwait (document revealed by wikileaks & read on the floor by Congressman Paul). And then we acted surprised and attacked Saddam. We set it up. We executed it.
Untrue. (Yes, I know who April Glaspie is, and no, she did not give Hussein permission on behalf of the US government to invade Kuwait.)
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
After the communists lost an election and a referendum, the armed forces of the Greek communist party fought to impose a totalitarian dictatorship on Greece, with substantial moral and material support from the Soviet Union, against those who either fled or fought against the Nazis, causing a considerable loss of life.
After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.
"Popular progressive forces" being Stalin, who ordered the invasion and conquest of Korea, right?
The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
I suppose you honestly do believe that the Berlin Wall was built to keep people out.
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament
After the murder of his predecessor, whose policies Mossadegh opposed.
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz,
Arbenz never won a free and fair election.
initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Or rather, what happened was that Arbenz instituted land reform, but then banned opposing political parties, dismissed the supreme court, arrested the parliament, suspended civil rights, murdered his opponents, and sought arms from the Soviet Union to deal with his enemies. Only then did the CIA start sending guns to the resistance.
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American.
Bullshit.
Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country.
Ho Chi Minh was sent from Moscow, where one of his duties prior to 1944 was organizing the murder of Vietnamese nationalists, to rule over Vietnam. Once in power, he purged 85 percent of the Communist party. During forced collectivization, which happened long before the US responded to his making war against the South, Ho Chi Minh set execution quotas of five people or five percent of each village.
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client.
I suppose you could say that, seeing as he permitted military attacks from his territory on US troops.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of course was the idea.
Cuba has been "left alone" for decades now, yet the terror remained.
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points,
The United States did not support Suharto nor his coup.
He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular.
Allende had no respect for the constitution. He destroyed democracy, and set about imposing socialism in violation of Chilean law.
Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms
All arms sold to Indonesia were sold on the condition that they not be used in East Timor.
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978,
The Sandinistas were seemingly a minority part of a united front that overthrew Somoza in a popular conservative bourgeois revolution, headed by Violetta Chamorro. The Sandinistas had loudly proclaimed that they were in favor of a mixed economy and bourgeois democracy, though their actual intention was socialism. After the dust settled, and the Sandinistas were found to be in a stronger position, Chamorro agreed to a compromise cabinet with two rightists, one centrist and two Sandinistas, who would rule for a short time until elections could be held. The "centrist" turned out to be a Sandinista mole, and all the while the Sandinistas were quietly building up their forces with the assistance of Cuba and the Soviet Union, and bringing in armed Cuban "advisers", who were quietly given positions of authority in the police and armed forces. Soon afterward, the Sandinistas stole the revolution and cancelled the proposed elections. The Contras began their revolt a month later.
it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba." Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington's proxy army, the Contras,
They were not "Washington's proxy army". The Contras began their revolt before Reagan funded them, and continued their revolt after funding was cut off.
formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard
If some proportion of Contras came from Somoza's National Guard, an even larger proportion of Contras were ex-Sandinistas.
and other supporters of the dictator.
Under Somoza, the secret police numbered around four hundred men, and had limited power. The Sandinistas took Somoza's secret police, expanded it to four thousand men, and granted them unlimited power.
It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government,
You mean, of course, forced collectivization and totalitarian terror and enslavement.
burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters."
There were 30,000 refugees fleeing the Sandinistas. There were only a handful of refugees fleeing the Contras.
There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
The Contras restored democracy to Nicaragua at gunpoint. Subsequent free and fair elections were won by candidates who associated themselves with the Contras.
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights
In response to Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait.
...that the US would plummet on World Press Freedom rankings given that Fox News literally won the right in court to lie to its viewers.
Untrue. The reporters employed by the Fox affiliate in question were not told to lie, they were told to give the opposing side of the story. Furthermore, the court ruled that the plaintiffs had no case because the Fox affiliate broke no laws, not that Fox News could lie to its viewers.
all supported by gobs of cash from the NRA which represents gun manufacuters
This is, of course, a lie; unless you can show that the majority of the NRA's funding comes from gun manufacturers.
The CIA did not help form Al Qaeda.
Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags. -- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"
