To the silly one's with their ideas of who made this movie
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spork4beans — 21 years ago(June 25, 2004 01:54 PM)
born down in a dead man's town
the first step i took is when i hit the ground
end up like a dog thats been beat too much
till you spend half your life just to cover it up now
born in the usa
got in a little home town jam
so they put a rifle in my hand
sent me off to a foreign land
to go and kill the yellow man
born in the usa
come back home to the refinery
hirin' man says "son if it was up to me"
went down to see my v.a. man
he said "son, don't you understand"
born in the usa
i had a brother in khe sahn
fightin' off all the viet kong
there still here, he's all gone
he had a woman he loved in saigon
i got a picture of him in her arms now
born in the usa
down in the shadows of the penitentiary
out by the gas fires of the refinery
ten years runnin' down the road
nowhere to run and 'a nowhere to go
born in the usa
The song is is criticizing the us govt for sending young men and women off to fight an enemy they knew nothing about and who did nothing against us, losing 58,000 soldiers in the process, and then bringing them home and not giving them a damn thing. No jobs and no benefits. -
FirebirdCamaro — 17 years ago(July 28, 2008 06:14 PM)
We (United States) also killed Mossadeq in Iran and installed the Shah, because Mossadeq wanted to nationalize Iranian oil, which would have made us pay more for gas and the CIA couldn't have that.
"You're not from the IRS, you just glued my pubes onto your face!"-Scott Tenorman, South Park -
indy_go_blue44 — 15 years ago(October 03, 2010 04:20 PM)
Can't believe I'm responding to a 6 year old post, but if I'm reading it now then someone else will later, so
When Vietnam started up, draftees and Guards were promised their old jobs back when they returned. SS Kresge was a major retailer in 1964; does anyone under 40 remember that name? Maybe you'll recall the name they reincorporated under in 1965: K-Mart. When vets returned and wanted their jobs back SS Kresge no longer existed; ergo, no job existed. That was just an early example of corporate ugliness surrounding the Vietnam War, this by vets, now CEOs, of the "Big One." -
pacscistaff — 15 years ago(March 19, 2011 10:26 PM)
Questions to old posts:
The military is not in my neighborhood, so they will not be keeping me safe from anyone who wants to start trouble in the streets and who wants to burgle people's homes. Not everyone in America lives in a safe place.
What brand of shoes is that? Something about huts and murder? The military isn't some kind of magic bullet whenever people get paranoid about other countries. -
darksoulnohope — 22 years ago(February 08, 2004 11:15 PM)
If Michael Moore does a documentary on hate or temper tantrums, believe me it will be about Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson or most of the right wing radio hosts out there talking about "better times". (you know, the times when those specific people were isolated in their own little communities and when they find out there is actually differing opinions, ideas, beliefs, and peoples (race, religion, skin color, amount of wealth [or lack thereof] ect) out there then they freak! If there is any good businessman/woman "good guy" out there, I would like to see it. (especally those "businesses" that are supposed to be for charity, you give your clothing to this charity and it gets sold right, well apparently they only have to give 10 percent of what they make from what you give to them for free to the homeless
) -
Sigma6-1 — 21 years ago(June 01, 2004 10:40 PM)
Michael Moore is not generally associated with hate of the . . . oh. . . say. . . lie to the public repeatedly to justify going to war with a country whose citizens you've already been directly and/or indirectly responsible for the deaths of anywhere between 500,000 and 3 million of kind. . .
Or say, the kind of hate that . . . oh. . . say. . . runs a school called SOA/WHISC in Georgia that trains wonderful fellas like Manuel Noriega and his death squads. . . or, perhaps puts guys like Saddam Hussein in power, and then keeps them as 40-year CIA assets and then dumps them when they outlive their usefulness ("He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard" -loved that one. Priceless) (after looking the other way with fighters flying overhead wile he bombs, rockets and gasses towns with helicopters you sold him dropping chemical weapons you also sold him. . .)
Certainly not that kind of hate. And certainly not the kind of hate that supports (with direct military assets and training, as well as economic and media support) oh. . . say. . . the violent overthrow of the first working democracy in South America in favour of a brutal dictator (Augusto Pinochet, placed in power on easily obtainable record by the US, and recently arrested for crimes against humanity) who kills or 'disappears' 30 thousand of his own people and incarcerates hundreds of thousands more for political reasons. . . why? because democracy in Chile would have been "detrimental to US financial interests in the region" (says the CIA) , like perhaps, the American business interests Michael Moore 'hates', who controlled nearly every aspect of Chilean life (with resultant horrible poverty) until Chile decided to do something about it (with the result that they were Crushed by those interests, and Washington, and a bunch of guys led by Pinochet who were trained at SOA in Georgia). . .
Sure. People confused about what kind of 'hate' is dangerous ought to spend 17 years under US-installed Pinochet before deciding that one so-called 'system' is 'good' and one is 'bad'. (simplistic, childish black-and-white politics.)
Or maybe the kind of Hate that excercises direct financial control over Bolivia's water table, denies this fundamental source of life to people who can't afford to buy their own goddamned water (most of the Bolivian people), and then declares the resulting uprising the work of communists and militant leftists, despite the fact that the only people who killed anybody during the popular revolt were the US backed police, and the uprising set up a democracy (which is, needless to say, STRONGLY frowned upon by the interests (Bechtel, same guys rebuilding Iraq) who tried to OWN THEIR WATER TABLE. That includes rain, streams, rivers. . . yeah, all water in Bolivia was owned by Bechtel, and if you used it without their permission, you owed them money)
Certainly not that kind of hate. After all. . . nobody would make a documentary about that kind of Hate, eh?
As for Whatsisname's cartoon understanding of communism and capitalism and the childish (not to mention entirely off the point) question of how many people either has killed in the twentieth century. . . until recently they were neck and neck. Now, I'm afraid, Capitalism and the Fascist dictators it supports are quite ahead in the running; by a long shot. The difference is, it doesn't happen here, because we do all that nasty business elsewhere, where wage-slaves make our clothes and our shoes and our soccer balls and our computer chips for 70 cents a day, with which they feed their families,and if they don't like it, we contract people (they don't work for us, so it's not our problem) to kill them or arrest them, and that's 'good business'
I'd be amused to hear a few definitions from the learned mental giants here as to exactly what defines a 'leftist', 'socialist' or a 'communist' nowadays. . . or say, where the ideas came from . . . who their current proponents are, etc. . . I'm always amused by that kind of mindless tripe, and more amused by people who think (in line with their simplistic, ignorant "I've only ever been to America and a few high-priced hotels in foreign countries" linear view of the globe) that anyone who thinks rampant, unregulated, centralized capitalist control of the entire globe, relegating 80% of the world to hopeless poverty isn't necessarily a good idea must be a 'leftist', a 'liberal', or a 'communist', and by definition must worship Stalin and carry around pictures of Mao Tse Tung (Though I find that, aside from not knowing that it was the US Robber barons who supported Hitler's bid for power (rockefeller, et al) and finally got him installed, they don't know where Stalin and Mao came from either, nor anything else about them).
Here's a hint. There's an old adage: You sleep well at night, and you have shoes and big macs because somebody is paid to go into a hut somewhere and shoot someone. That's how it works. Get over it. You do yourself, a -
OCSka — 21 years ago(June 23, 2004 02:22 PM)
This will surely disgust you, but its a legitimate point:
After the Cold War has become some sort of distant dream, a lot of rehtoric has been floating around about how the US is a horrible state for supporting these brutal murderers in far flung places likes Chile and Panama. These regimes were horrible and they were murderous. Why did we support them? is it because we are hyprocritical fat lazy bastards?not exactly.
During the time these various military personalities were installed in third world places around the world the options were as follows: our ****head dictator or the Soviet's ****head dictator? I think it was and to some degree still is a valid conclusion that many of these places are not even close to democracy and probably wont be for a number of decades due to ethnic struggles, poor political culture, colonial blunders, etc. So given this rotten choice, who should the US have chosen? At least with "our bastard" we can 100% guarentee that Soviet missles wouldnt find their way into more places o nthe map. Look at Cuba: Castro and his predecessor were both scumbags, but when it came down to practical politics, the latter was not inviting the USSR to install nuclear weapons aimed at the United States. As a leader of a country I'd have the responsibility to choose the lesser of 2 evils.
Ideally it would have ben nice to start some sort of democratic uprising that would have been neutral or pro-West, but most countries i nthe world simply do not have the foundations for suh a movement. Murderous bastards were installed by not only the US, but by the Reds as well: Vietnam, Zimbabwe, etc.
It sounds cold and its sounds super-Machievellian, but when it comes down to it, the government's 1st priority is to the protection of its people. I will acknowledge that it is a bit unlikely that Chile or somewhere else in C. America would setup nuclear arms backed by our enemies, but given the very grave climate we lived in between 1945-1989, I would not call it impossible or a risk worth taking. Look at the missle crisis with JFK. He realized what was at stake and that was a worst case scenario come true.
I cannot stay that the US flag has stood for freedome and equality around the world throughout our history. It has been tied to the masts of some horrid dictators around the world. But as to why? Consider the alternatives, consider the geo-political situation, and also consider how much we knew about Pinochet and Sadam before they recieved our blessings? Had Pinochet or Hussein governed a country before? No, they were complete tosses of the dice. Not ideal, but under the Cold War conditions, the best we could hope for. Unlike some countries that have installed scumbags (France, Belgium) we are finally taking responsibility and cleaning out the closets.
Just because we lived in dangerous times does not excuse these actions completely, but I bleive the US was doing the best it could. I realize this sort of thinking raises very very disturbing issues about the value of lives in one country vs. another and so on, but when it gets to the very core of geo-politics, all countries make decisions based on this. -
niflheim — 21 years ago(June 25, 2004 09:13 PM)
Hum
You do make some good points but considering that Chile had elected a democratic socialist government (kinda like Canada is right now) I doubt sincerely that there was any threat, most likely they would have sided with the US during the cold war.
But, i repeat, you do make a good point, as I thought about this aspect of the issue myself. Canada probably benefited almost as much as the USA from USA control over America (the real America, South, Central and North).
I'm from Canada and I do realize that our history is tainted with blood. Our society is working the way it is because we took advantage of the poorer countries. Maybe Canada's hands are a bit cleaner, but it's mostly because the dirty work was done by the US. It's important to note that I'm not bashing on the US here, all the richer countries have a part in this mess.
Now, what we do with the world from now on is another story. I think that some great steps toward a pacified world were made. The U.N. is probably the biggest of all : all the nations of the world sitting together to talk to me that is a giant leap toward peace. That's probably why when Bush basically told the UN it was beginning to be obsolete and that he would go to Irak by himself if needed, that a lot of countries in the world got mad at americans (his administration mostly). If Bush truly belived what he said, he had an opportunity to ask himself : why, oh, why does Canada, which normally ALWAYS stand by our side, does not follow? I mean, we are so alike on so many issues we are like cousins. And this coming from a french-canadian In no way I ask you to consider Canada in all your decisions, you are a free country and so are we. But this should have given him a hint. IF he truly believed in what he was preaching
That a country looks out for its own interest (Oil here), I have no problem with this. That a country starts a war which kills thousands of people, destroy a country's infrastructure, alienate a whole part of the world (not just Irak but the whole middle east) and create a breading ground for countless TRULY muslims fanatics who TRULY hate the western civilisation. now I have a problem but then again that's maybe my altruist side speaking
I've heard some claim that islam preach : Convert or die forever! But that is just BS maybe the fanatics believe that but a great majority of muslims don't. Anyway, with time, good living conditions and education, people in general tend to be less religous (international poll) NOW THAT . would probably be the best way to fight terrorism. So, in some way, in the interest of the world (USA included).
Anyway, that's my two cents
P.S. Sorry for third grade english i usually speak french. -
OCSka — 21 years ago(June 27, 2004 05:03 PM)
Good points there as well.
Allende wasn't really democraticaly elected, he had a bout a 3rd of the vote but managed to form a coalition. We didn't feat Allende, but the chaos that ensued after the his government fell. The US didn't topple Chile's elected government, but supported the military regime AFTER. -
WhatsInAUserID — 21 years ago(June 30, 2004 05:49 AM)
I don't understand why a documentary film maker seems to need to be a perfect and flawless person. I don't care if Moore's a great guy 24/7, what really matters is that he makes thought provoking documentaries highlighting incidents that need our attention. No-one spends their time moaning about what directors of fiction are 'really' like, they just judge them by the films they produce. It doesn't even matter so much whether Moore lives by what he preaches, as long as the right message is getting out there.