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232 comments on DrumBeat: July 29, 2006

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 12:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
No way I am a redneck (ask cherenkov) from tennessee, I work in GOMEX as a medic, but I get a paid flight to and from anywhere so I am moving to Brasil.  My best friend from paramedic school introduced me to his sister a few years back and she is getting her phd in political science at Unicamp near Sao Paulo.  So that is how I ended up there.

Last time I flew her up she was interrogated for four hours and they tore a page from her diary and had her strip searched and made her cry.  Long story but she had all her documents and no contraband and was still treated that way.  So she is a bit anti american.  Odd couple if you know me.

Here is the book it is on amazon, hard to call it a conspiracy theory since it was written a few years back but a lot of things click when you read it.  At the same time though we use similar methods to cajole foreign powers.
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30.    Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America
by Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui

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Nate Hagens on July 29, 2006 - 12:14pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
you might be better off in Brazil. They make better ethanol than we do and also have crazy Carnivale parties that make New Orleans look like catholic school. good luck.
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Twilight on July 29, 2006 - 12:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have confidence she'll bring you around eventually!
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joule on July 29, 2006 - 3:23pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Oilrig Medic -

It both saddens and angers me to learn of yet another example in which someone arriving in the US is bullied by police-state thugs that pose as airport screeners.  The way your fiancee was treated makes me ashamed to be an American, something I never thought I would be saying as recently as only a few years ago.

The irony is that Brazil does not exactly enjoy a reputation for being a paragon of liberty and freedom, and if your finacee finds America repressive in comparison, then that speaks volumes about where this country is headed.

Good luck on your move to Brazil. (If I were younger, I'd seriously consider getting out of Dodge myself.)

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canbrit on July 29, 2006 - 4:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The USA has always behaved like this...

In 1975... having spent 5 years increasingly growing to love American literature & music... I decided I would like to spend 3 months travelling to "all those places" I was reading/ hearing about... so I saved up, quit my job... and was refused a visa in London... "If you don't have a job how do we know you will return from our wonderful country?"

No matter that Mexicans were walking over the border in their thousands (even back then)

So I flew to Canada and ended up getting a US visa in Winnipeg in 5 minutes...crossed over at Vancouver on a Greyhound without even being checked and ended up hitchhiking the length & breadth of USA...

Five years later in 1980 visa restrictions were lifted... so I decided to repeat the exercise... this time I was interrogated at JFK... had my diary & address book scanned... Spent 6 wonderful weeks delivering cars with DriveAway...

But after two bad experiences with US bureaucracy ...I didn't return to the good ol'US of A for another 20 years

( Sorry...not really PO... just an opportunity to vent!!)

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fleam on July 29, 2006 - 4:09pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I think this "welling up from below" stuff is what kills Empires. The "Working independently together" method was espoused by the various US militias in the 1990s and it worked - as awful as his act was, Timothy McVeigh pointed out that if the US internal police forces kept shooting kids, stomping cats to death, terrorizing old people, killing more kids, shooting babes in arms, etc then unpredictable independent operators such as him would make 'em hurt. And he did. His awful act did have the effect of causing the US's internal forces, use of which against the US population was ramping up to a frightening degree, to sit back and reconsider. Other than Waco, McVeigh, etc themselves, the biggest thing that percolated through the media to the proles was a lot of noise about the "militias", first making them out to be scary and then quickly changing to ridiculing them as a bunch of fat old men running around in the woods, since gov't/militia skirmishes were over (the point had been proven and the gov't didn't feel it would win an all-out war with the populace) and the idea was to make militias sound silly and hope they'd disband. Many have, the militia movement has reallly died down, but it's reasy to rise up in a second if needed - this is the lesson the US gov't learned.

Not too long after this, the attention was turned to foreigners, especially those handy ay-rabs, and of course 9-11 gave everyone some bad guys to pay attention to.

Someone posted in another thread, there was a comparison being made between how the collapse of Rome went and how it might go for the US, and they said before there's actual starvation, what really happens is you come to hate your country. By this I think they mean not only literally hating your country, easy to do if your country is the US, but that by hating your country you're willing to leave it, live low enough on the energy scale to be untaxable, etc. (Living low on the energy/income scale enough that you're not taxable is the method advocated by That Guy Who Wrote The Book "Radical Simplicity". I think it's a noble method and the only one available to most of us. Most of us would leave the US if we could.)

You are smart, and fortunate, to leave the US. Your wife is right - she's had one taste of the Evil Empire and No More.

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Oilrig medic on July 29, 2006 - 8:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Luke Skywalker grew up wanting to be a pilot for the Imperial navy......

I am an american and I do not see us as an evil empire.

I want to fix things when they are broken.

I can only hope things go well...........

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fleam on July 30, 2006 - 12:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Luke Skywalker.... yes, good quote because movies are reality.

However, Geo. Washington did grow up wanting to be a British officer. I grew up wanting to be part of The System, working for HP or IBM, building fancier and shinier cogs for a bigger and better machine.

This is what happens when Empires go downhill, they get old and ugly and smelly and when they're not peeing on the carpet or eating the chickens, they're snarling and snapping at the 5 year old kid next door because he made eyes at the food bowl, and next thing you know anyone who gets in the way is getting bit and it's time to put the dangerous bugger down....

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step back on July 30, 2006 - 3:40am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I am an American and I do not see us as an evil empire.

Oilrig MD,

There is much that is good about America.
But which way are the weather-man vanes pointing?

Calling something a "Patriot Act" when on fact it is an Invasion of Rights play? That does not bode well. Talking about "No Child Left Behind" when you mean after the Rapture? That doesn't sound too kosher.

Something is wrong some place.

Did you see Alex Jones on C-SPAN?

Scary stuff if true. He claims the US Governement orchestrated 9/11 and not Bin Laden. Claims to have irrefutable proof.

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oaksmoke on July 30, 2006 - 8:02am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
This is not a new claim. It is interesting that it appeared on CSPAN. I've believed the government was involved from the beginning. It was a very flawed plan. When you have the support of TPTB and the media you just ignore the obvious. The Bush administration has demonstrated their willingness to commit crimes over and over. They are guilty of war crimes and treason. Their energy policy is simply a means to make big oil rich. Our country is completely unprepared for peak oil. This scares me more than anything.
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step back on July 30, 2006 - 1:58pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Our country is completely unprepared

Let's keep hoping Yergin is right, that we have 30 more years and that somewhere in this long era of "undulation" a light bulb goes off and the American populace wakes up and realizes the herd is a headin' for the cliff.

Git along. Go along lill' doggie. Yeeha. Rawhide.

(Right click on image & pick "View Image" for bigger view)

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ignorad on July 31, 2006 - 10:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
http://www.loosechange911.com/

now free on google video!

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Liz on August 1, 2006 - 1:36pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The CSPAN broadcast of the Panel Discussion held on the second day of the conference which featured Webster Tarpley, Steven Jones, Bob Bowman, James Fetzer, & Alex Jones IS BEING RE-AIRED TUESDAY August 1st at 6:10pm EDT.
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Kevembuangga on July 30, 2006 - 12:37am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The way your fiancee was treated makes me ashamed to be an American,

DON'T!

Americans have other qualities and you better bear with the "negatives" because deeply ingrained cultural traits never go away.
Remember the early settlers were a mix of bigots and outlaws, from there you get :

- The righteousness of bigots.
- The ruthlessness of outlaws.
- The entrepreneurial mindset of migrants to a risky yet promising place.

You can't have it all good :-)

P.S. Just think what this kind of "stickyness" of behaviors (not only the ones above) mean with respect to the upcoming and quickly unfolding changes...

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