United States | News & Politics

it always was like that even before citizen's united. This just made it more convenient

I am from Canada. I still remember my social studies teacher bringing up Citizens United and asking us all what we thought about it. I still think about our naive answers years later lol.

better late than never

And how long did neoliberalism last? From the early 1980s to 2008 in its entirety? A quarter century or 25 odd years only? With the peak of "end of history" neoliberalism not even lasting a single decade, from December 1991 to September 2001.

Was all the death and destruction that enabled such a system to exist even worth it? Even from the cynical point of view of capital, this seems like an abject failure.

No nothing as powerful as mayor of Chicago, he was only the president of the US

Cough Suharto cough East Timor.

So much has improved since then regarding oligarchies with unlimited political bribery, right?

So much has improved since then regarding oligarchies with unlimited political bribery, right?

Its still true

President's are really into dropping bombs

Bazinga

I love the truth bombs that Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski also dropped in his 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur!

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Amazing truth bombs there. No way any of this could have aged badly since then...

I mean this is an old article (2015) but up until 7 mo ago when he entered hospice care he was continuing to do good left and right it seems like.

I feel like he is one of the few politicians that wasn't a corrupt asshole. We need more like that at all levels of government to walk back all the corruption. Hard to get a critical mass of non corrupt jerks though. The greedy sociopaths are drawn to political office like moths to flame.

PS: happy bday JC

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4233246-jimmy-carter-turns-99-as-tributes-roll-in/