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REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS
America: Arms dealer to the stars!
Thursday, September 10, 2009 12:28 PM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Thursday, September 10, 2009 12:31 PM
WULFENSTAR
http://youtu.be/VUnGTXRxGHg
Thursday, September 10, 2009 5:45 PM
AG05
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: So it is that a new report has just emerged, announcing with a sort of drab and bitter capitalistic glee that America is once again the number one weapons dealer in the world. It's true: We sell more guns, more major weaponry, tanks and rocket launchers, fighters and Gatling guns and all sorts of brutal devices specifically designed to destroy human life and induce fear and dread and all manner of sadistic horror, than any other developed nation on the planet. By a long shot. But that's not all. Despite the bleak economy, despite what you might expect to be a major downturn in such transactions, sales of American-made guns and weapons of mass annihilation worldwide are actually way up. As far as U.S.-made weapons are concerned, it appears to be a boom time for war and death and conflict. Isn't that fun to swallow with your hopes and dreams for a peaceful and calmly evolving future?
Quote: Translation: the U.S. now owns a whopping 68 percent of the arms games worldwide. We're just like Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart sold Browning M2s and Stingers and flamethrowers. Isn't that reassuring?
Quote: Sure, you can water it down a bit, maybe propose to your exhausted soul that we only sell said weapons to our friendly, peace-seeking allies so they may protect themselves from various evildoers and swarthy terrorists whom we also detest and wish death and hate upon, or you could tell yourself that most of said weaponry is really for defense and for shielding babies and puppies and virgins from the darker nature of man.
Quote: You can even go so far as to suggest that our arms deals are not promoting war, per se, but actually promoting peace, in that inverse, bad-is-good, multiple-wrongs-make-a-right sort of way. It's the classic, ridiculous NRA argument: if everyone owns a few thousand warheads, no one will shoot anyone simply because they don't want to get shot themselves. It's pathetic nonsense, but hey, whatever gets you through, right?
Quote:Sad fact is, capitalism trumps all rational arguments, all notions that we are out only to promote good in the world, and we will sell weapons to just about anyone anywhere short of Al Qaeda itself.
Quote:Guerrillas?
Quote:Dictators?
Quote:Drug lords?
Quote:If they somehow serve our global agenda, hell yes. We sell billions in arms to our pals in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, for example, regimes second only in oppression and totalitarianism to the Taliban. We buy their oil, we turn around and sell them fighter jets and grenades and sniper rifles. It's a win-win, where everybody loses.
Quote: Of course, it's all nothing new. America has always been the world's foremost arms dealer.
Quote: I can't help but recall that cute little scene in Iron Man, when Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark character, a cocky, heartless arms dealer, finally realizes the horrible human consequences of his trade, what sort of mayhem and death he has helped promote, and decides to turn his life around and fight for justice and help save the world.
Quote: Isn't that a charming little cartoon fable? Isn't that just ridiculous, ultraviolent fantasy? Don't we nevertheless love to rub such childish ideological balm all over ourselves
Quote:and think that's really what America is all about, that selling death to oppressive regimes is merely a necessary evil and, gosh golly, if we could, we'd put a stop to all such sales tomorrow in favor of ensuring a peaceful and utopian future?
Quote:Sure we do. In many ways, such a mass delusion is the only way we can really get out of bed in the morning.
Quote: I'm not exactly certain how you counterbalance such bleak data. I'm not sure where to look for an equally powerful story to battle the dour fact that we are, at heart, a rather ruthless capitalist military juggernaut that will gladly sell a sharpening stone to an axe murderer if it serves our purposes and makes Lockheed Martin a tidy profit.
Quote: Where do you look for proof that $37 billion in weapons sales does not, in fact, exert a simply massive downward thrust on the desire to imagine humanity is moving in an ultimately positive, hopeful, nonviolent direction? The green movement? Solar power? Hybrid cars? As if.
Quote: Maybe you don't look at all. Maybe there is no such story, no way to offset the fact that war and violence are a major engine of capitalism, and always will be. Maybe you only swallow it whole, hope it doesn't tear a permanent gash in your spirit, and eagerly await Iron Man 2.
Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:06 PM
FREMDFIRMA
Thursday, September 10, 2009 7:13 PM
KWICKO
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)
Friday, September 11, 2009 2:53 AM
Quote:Don't worry, AG, I've never taken you seriously. Not about to start now, especially with your insinuation that the AK series is somehow inferior to American-built weapons. Refresh my memory - who was it that won the Vietnam War, with little more than AKs and a strong will, in the face of the most mighty military the world had ever seen? Yeah, what a shitty rifle that AK is. Mike
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:07 AM
Quote:We'll not only sell you guns, we'll sell you Humvees, MANPADS, and all sorts of stuff, along with the training to learn how to use it.
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:10 AM
Quote:Posted by ag05: Glad to see SOMEBODY's makin' money these days.
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:13 AM
Quote:Hell, next time we go to war, we've got a better chance of fighting against F-16's than we do against MiG's and Mirages.
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:14 AM
Quote:Wulf: Right on, only it doesn't work (how many wars have we been in since WWII which were never "declared" or approved by Congress?). Sigh...
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:17 AM
Friday, September 11, 2009 7:30 AM
Quote:Hell, next time we go to war, we've got a better chance of fighting against F-16's than we do against MiG's and Mirages. You say that like it's a good thing...
Friday, September 11, 2009 12:48 PM
GEEZER
Keep the Shiny side up
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: I'm sure you wholeheartedly approve of Hugo Chavez's recent buying spree in Russia, then, right? He's rumored to have ordered a half a billion bucks worth of military armaments.
Friday, September 11, 2009 1:04 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AG05: But it does beg the question: why pay US prices for AR's and M240's when you can get AK's and PKM's at much better prices?
Friday, September 11, 2009 1:05 PM
PIRATENEWS
John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!
Friday, September 11, 2009 1:52 PM
DREAMTROVE
Friday, September 11, 2009 3:17 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Geezer: Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: I'm sure you wholeheartedly approve of Hugo Chavez's recent buying spree in Russia, then, right? He's rumored to have ordered a half a billion bucks worth of military armaments. Get your facts straignt, Mike. It's $.5 billion for the tanks alone. The total purchase was around $4 billion. "Keep the Shiny side up"
Friday, September 11, 2009 3:25 PM
Quote: Re: Chavez. You're taking me too seriously. I'm just sayin that Smith and Wesson stock is doing fine right now. And that's not entirely bad. (It'd been better if he'd bought American, but I guess we DON'T sell to anybody after all)
Friday, September 11, 2009 3:36 PM
GINOBIFFARONI
Quote:Originally posted by AG05: Quote:Don't worry, AG, I've never taken you seriously. Not about to start now, especially with your insinuation that the AK series is somehow inferior to American-built weapons. Refresh my memory - who was it that won the Vietnam War, with little more than AKs and a strong will, in the face of the most mighty military the world had ever seen? Yeah, what a shitty rifle that AK is. Mike The Romy in my gun case would agree with you. But it does beg the question: why pay US prices for AR's and M240's when you can get AK's and PKM's at much better prices? I'm willing to bet that it's because of the other perks of buying American. We'll not only sell you guns, we'll sell you Humvees, MANPADS, and all sorts of stuff, along with the training to learn how to use it. Not that it guarantees victory or anything. Ask Georgia about that one. (And yes Mike, thats another AK win over the M16. I know.) Mercy is the mark of a great man. Guess I'm just a good man. Well, I'm alright.
Saturday, September 12, 2009 4:32 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: Just imagine how much easier the training would be for our guys if we could get Chavez buying OUR rifles and howitzers, eh? By the way, the Israelis would like to remind you not to ever assume that the person who buys your old fighter jets has any plans to use them in the same fashion YOU thought they were designed to be used. Izhmash (Kalashnikov) stock seems to be doing pretty well, too. They've just gotten a new rifle caliber into the U.S. - the AK-74 style Saiga chambered in 5.45x39mm. Rifle's cheap, ammo's even cheaper. Mike "It was already blue when we got here!"
Saturday, September 12, 2009 5:33 AM
Quote:but hell, incoming is incoming
Quote:Id personally would rather be fighting against a weapon system I was familiar with (and had used before myself) than one who's capabilities are unknown to me.
Saturday, September 12, 2009 6:53 AM
Saturday, September 12, 2009 1:20 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Kwicko: My apologies, Geez - I was using the figures you quoted in another post. I guess I wrongly assumed you had YOUR facts straight.
Quote:While there for the singalong Pres Chavez also ordered half a billion dollars worth of tanks, plus other sundries such as submarines and armored personnel carriers, to fight off the Americans in Colombia...
Saturday, September 12, 2009 4:36 PM
Quote:Anyhows, the reasons folk buy our equipment in the first place often has jack shit to do with it's quality so much as political points, although we *do* have some nice stuff here and there - damned if I ever got to play with any though.
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