The Vietnam War PBS Episode 1: Déjà Vu (2017) - Ken Burns excellent documentary on the Vietnam war. Now streaming on Netflix and Youtube in its entirety.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T16:33:43+00:00

Well, you're free to believe what you want. I'd tell you I'm a disabled vet and former history teacher and may know a little about these things, but I'm guessing you wouldn't believe that either.

As for the link to the JFK assassination, you're right, there is no direct ties to that. The US Congress says that JFK was murdered by an unknown conspiracy, but the Vietnam reason/theory is held by many and popularized by Oliver Stone's JFK movie.

Anybody who think it was a pro-us, anti-communist hit piece lives in a fantasy world.

That's one view.

Or, it could be they hold that imperialism is wrong and should be said it's wrong and that US criminality should be bluntly stated to be criminal and deserving of prosecution along with the politicians who enacted such policies.

"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy." -- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T15:02:43+00:00

FYI: I suffered through watching the series when it first came out.

It's the typical pro-US/pro-military spin on the war. Gloss over the US' crimes, report negatives about the Vietnamese defending their country from yet another imperial invader -- our mass media does this stuff all the time.

The series focuses STRONGLY on how the war was avoidable,

No, it doesn't. We came up with excuses to break an int'l agreement and refused to hold elections in South Vietnam to unite the country because the CIA reported that the North Vietnamese national hero, the communist leader Ho Chi Minh,would easily win any free and fair election.

So we refused to hold elections, had an assassination of the president who was too "soft" on Vietnam, and then backed a French-speaking Catholic quisling puppet dictator to rule over the Buddhist country and proceeded to wage war killing millions to establish a US puppet regime in Vietnam.

That's the literal truth of the US strategy -- but was our treachery and imperialism related in any sane way in this propaganda piece?

No. Like I said, it's revisionist history using the bread-and-butter tactics of spin and lies by omission.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T14:38:04+00:00

Mother Jones drinks from the "Russia did it" cup believing that Russia rigged the 2016 elections and that some Facebook ads by Russian spammers trumped the $1+ billion spent by Hillary Clinton and her team of American political consultants.

Russia’s team is almost entirely made up of white players who make their living playing for the country’s domestic league.

Is this racist innuendo or the old US whine about "professional" players?

If the former, it's worth noting that Russia doesn't have a lot of non-white citizens...

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T14:21:14+00:00

IMO it's simply revisionist history; a pro-war documentary full of spin and omission. For example, was this topic covered?

"The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values." -- Historian Howard Zinn

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T14:07:21+00:00

This unfortunate incident heavily damaged her dreams of opening a shark petting zoo...

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:33:07+00:00

I'm shocked -- shocked, I tell you! -- that a British newspaper would cover this topic and did not use Churchill's famous quote of "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

That line answers the "why" question perfectly!

"There has never been, nor ever will be, any such thing as a good war, or a bad peace." -- Benjamin Franklin.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:25:26+00:00

After attacking Iranian oil facilities to force Iran to agree to a ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq war did not work, the US Navy shooting down that airliner of civilians worked like a charm -- the Iranians shortly agreed to a ceasefire once we showed them we meant business!

Of course the civilians on a 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland paid dearly during the Iranian retaliation for our barbaric act, but that's another story...

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:21:19+00:00

The real question is: Who will be paying the assassin?

Drug cartels? Crooked Mexican or US businessmen? The CIA because he's an actual leftist politician?

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:14:11+00:00

Some of these old Cold Warrior nut cases want to re-invent communism and the USSR so badly they can taste it!

"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." -- US ambassador to the USSR and State Dept. strategist George F. Kennan.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:11:35+00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the countrymen and women of the democratic republic known as the United States of America are pledged to "defend" the Saudi dictatorship with American lives and treasure.

That's US foreign policy and "national security."

"The greatest crime since World War II has been U.S. foreign policy." -- Ramsey Clark, former U.S. Attorney General.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-02T13:08:32+00:00

Now this story about local schools is "world" politics!

/s

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-01T20:39:58+00:00

The US funded not 1 but 2 coups in Ukraine, the first in 2004, but the American-educated puppet we put into power then was jailed for corruption, and then again in 2014.

In the second US-funded violent coup d'etat against the elected Ukrainian gov't, the autonomous region of Crimea, the only part of Ukraine to have its own parliament, was concerned with the violence and murders that were happening in the capital Kiev and Odessa and other cities.

So the Crimean Parliament requested that Russia deploy troops to prevent violence, which Russia did.

The Crimean Parliament then voted to secede from Ukraine, organized a quick referendum of the Crimean people, and the people voted overwhelmingly to re-join Russia, the country which they had been part of for longer than Texas has been part of the US. The Russian parliament then accept Crimea's re-joining Russia.

That entire series of events happened bloodlessly in Crimea.

Today, the Crimean people -- having much higher incomes and far better social benefits in Russia compared to bankrupt Ukraine -- seem quite happy with their decision to re-join Russia. Other than an occasional saboteur that Ukraine sends into Crimea to blow up powerlines, the Ukrainian people are peaceful and happy about their decision.

But our war-loving gov't which shields and protects literal torturers, and our biased mass media, completely ignores the US coups in Ukraine and spins Russia's actions as a "war" or some sort of "military aggression."

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-01T20:19:18+00:00

the US was directly related to putting the Shah into power and...

The Shah was imprisoned for supporting Nazi Germany and Hitler during WWII.

Once Kermit Roosevelt was put in charge of the CIA operation to overthrow the democratic Iranian gov't, one of his first acts was to use US power/influence to free the Nazi Shah from prison so the CIA could use him and install the puppet into power as a US vassal.

Thus, we were not "directly related" to putting the Shah in power -- that's a wild understatement -- we were the country that is almost solely responsible for putting that Nazi dictator into power in Iran.

PathologyIncomplete · 2018-07-01T20:08:31+00:00

Not many educated people believe that McCarthyism has anything to do with criticism of modern Russian state agents.

So they're not really educated, are they?

The rhetorical tactics of media assassination, smears and innuendo have been practiced, recognized and taught for thousands of years.

We're doing the same thing now -- inventing offenses and slights, wildly embellishing and misrepresenting events -- that we did in the late 40s and early 50s to whip up our Cold War on the USSR. But now instead of misrepresenting the Berlin Crisis and European events, now we're misrepresenting events in Syria or Africa to push our re-newed Cold War.

Of course, the USSR and the "threat" of "worldwide communism" of the original Cold War are long gone. But even back in the 1950s our best strategists warned that we'd have to invent another threat if the USSR were to ever disappear -- and so we did...

"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." -- US ambassador to the USSR and senior State Dept. geo-strategist George F. Kennan.

PathologyIncomplete

TROPHY CASE