I’m a little puzzled as to why the BBC thinks that Washington is the universe. Poor style.
With the Nobel Peace Prize Carter will receive a million dollars. He is donating it to the Carter Center in Atlanta – an organization with the purpose of relieving human suffering. He has built homes for the needy for twenty years and has done more to encourage others to participate in Habitat for Humanity than anyone else I know.
The challenge is still out there: Name a President who has accomplished more after leaving office.
MC, could you provide more detail on BBC’s impartiality rules? IMHO their middle east reporting is shot through and through with horrendous anti-Israel bias.
Regarding the OP, as an ex-President, Carter has been a model of morality. His efforts with Habitat for Humanity are most praiseworthy. Compare this with Gerald Ford, who has merely developed his golf game.
OTOH Carter’s advice hasn’t always been effective. Recall that Nixon :eek: more-or-less rehabilitited himself as ex-Pres and gave quite a bit of foreign policy advice. I cannot recall whether or not it proved to be good advice.
Yes, but you clearly support Israel and infact they have been accused of “a false compromise” as they give Israeli and Palestinian deaths roughly equal overall airtime, despite more Palestinian deaths occuring.Though of course they take the view that the settlements are illegal as there is no other way to read international law.
The BBC is funded by a system that AFAIK is unique to the UK, where anyone who wishes to use their tv to pick up broadcasts (i.e. any use of the tv, not including videos and video games) has to pay for an annual or bi-annual license. This gets rid of coporate pressures that have been the bane of impartial reporting (for example Rupert Murdochs extensive media empire tends to skirt around the Israel issue as Mr.M has extensive buisness interests in I. and does not want to anger the Israeli government).
That isn’t really much of a standard, and I don’t see why Jimmy Carter, of all people, should be given the peace prize. I mean, in a sense he deserves it, if only for his years of shameless self-promotion. Perhaps I am just a hopeless idealist for thinking that the prize should go to people who have actually dedicated their lives to working for peace.
For which one? All of them?
Jimmy Carter is a world class hypocrite. Under Carter, U.S. arms shipments to Indonesia increased. This was the time when Indonesia was committing by far its worst atrocities in East Timor, when more than 100,000 were killed. As Matthew Jardine notes, at the East Timor Action Network, “It was the Carter administration (1977-1980), for example, that provided Jakarta with OV-10 Bronco counter-insurgency aircraft used to bomb and napalm the East Timorese into submission – a situation an Australian parliamentary report later described as one of ‘indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history.’”
Yet, when the Timorese voted for independence, Carter didn’t pass up the chance to look all diplomatic, condemning the very same torturers and murderers he had earlier helped arm: Jimmy Carter poses as friend of the Timorese
Regarding Pol Pot: In 1979, when Viet Nam invaded Cambodia and overthrew Pol Pot, ending two and a half years of horror, Carter chose to support Pol Pot as the government in exile of Cambodia. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser noted: “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.” Carter started sending financial aid to the Khmer Rouge (and Reagan continued it). The American aid, by the late 1980s, reached $5 million officially, with the CIA providing between $20 and $24 million behind Congress’s back. The United States also successfully defended the right of the Khmer Rouge to the United Nations’ Cambodian seat, although their government had ceased to exist in January 1979. cite
Don’t bother. Chumpsky has a near-erotic fixation on how bad the United States is, including all of its presidents and every member of its “ruling class”.
I’ve thought about asking him who he’d consider to be a good president, or the least evil one, but I expect the answer would be “None, they’re all equally and irredeemably evil.”
Carter openly espoused that evangelical Christians participate in politics to work for legislation to christianize the country. He was a typical god-bot that the right loves, and was instrumental in the rise of the Christian right from the ashes after Watergate.
It is amazing how the ideological filter works. No matter how many times I say that I am not against the United States, and only opposed to the ruling class, this becomes, through a process of ideological filtering, “anti-Americanism.” No, my reactionary friend, I do not think the United States is bad. It is the greed-obsessed maniacs who run the country that are bad. But, there is a long history and tradition in this country of resistance which is quite admirable, and is responsible for every liberty we enjoy today.
They are all irredeemably evil, but not equally so. Reagan, for example, (or more correctly, the people behind Reagan) was much more evil, than say, Eisenhower. I would say that Eisenhower was the least evil of the bunch, although he did support the overthrowing of democracy in Latin America and the Carribean. Even so, he was the last conservative of prominence in the U.S.
Carter was out of his league as President, which is why he makes a pretty good ex-one. I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Russian grain embargo or Camp David.
Most of the events on Chumpsky’s list are the result of Carter blindingly heeding advice to head off the Commies at the pass wherever possible, a strategy continued by Reagan. This by no means cleans his slate, but it has to be taken into consideration.
Weren’t the Khmer Rouge commies? Weren’t the Chinese commies? When Carter encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot, and then sent U.S. support to aid in the project, exactly which Commies was he attempting to head off at the pass?
Well, please be so kind as to clarify one minor point, my (what’s the opposite of reactionary?) friend. If every president has been irredeemably evil, then exactly when in its history did the United States conform to your strict moral standards? Was it during the brief period between 1776 and 1789 between the revolution and the inaugeration of George Washington? Maybe it was during the even briefer 5-minute period in 1776 after the Declaration of Independence was ratified but before the evil capitalists hijacked the democratic process.
Did the government of the United States ever do anything that meets with your approval? Fact is, if you can’t find a single positive point, then I daresay you’ve gone from debating to Witnessing.
You want license to criticize the American government for its many errors, refuse to aknowledge its many positive acts, and yet want to escape criticism for your blatant one-sided writing.
Never. The country was founded by wealthy landowners and slave holders. They devised the system for their own benefit. As James Madison, the chief architect of the constitution, explained at the Constitutional Convention, the primary task of government is to “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” They needed a way to have the forms of democracy, but without any of the substance.
Madison explained more about this in the propaganda written for the new constitution, the Federalist Paper #10:
“But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.”
Marx couldn’t have said it better himself. Simply substitute “class” for “faction” and you have a perfect Marxist class analysis. The goal of the new state was to create a government that would look after the “faction” or class that mattered, namely the class which Madison represented. As his colleague John Jay, first Chief Justice of the U.S. remarked, “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”
Never have the people won rights because of the beneficence of their leaders. These rights always have to be won. They have to be fought for and struggled over, and must be protected with eternal vigilance.
Sometimes the ruling class is forced, by popular action, to make some reforms that benefit the people. There are numerous examples, such as the Civil Rights Act, the repeal of the laws on seditious libel, etc. But, it is true that the ruling class is always waging a vicious class war, always pressing relentlessly for more and more power.
And on what objective evidences do you base your statement that the BBC has the strictest rules of impartiality of any news services, exactly? It can’t be on the basis that the BBC is funded by a license to use TV, since it’s pretty common in Europe (and possibly elsewhere) for public broadcasters. And anyway, it wouldn’t in itself it makes the BBC more impartial. You can fund the North-Korean TV with a license, it won’t suddenly become impartial.
You gave a link to the rules governing the BBC. I didn’t read the link because it’s irrelevant to your statement. Perhaps I would find these rules excellent as far as protecting the BBC impartiality, or perhaps not. It still wouldn’t prove the BBC “has the stricter rules”. You would have to compare them with the rules followed by all news outlets all over the world. Did you do such a comparison? I strongly doubt it. Since you didn’t even know that other broadcasters in Europe are funded in the same way, I doubt you’ve any actual knowledge about the rules they follow. Or do you know about some independant and objective study?
And anyway, whether a rule is better than another to protect impartiality is likely to be subjective. And of course it depends also on whether the rules are actually strictly followed or not.
IOW, you’re using an unproven “nice arbitrary assertion” of your own as a basis to state that the OP has made a “nice arbitrary assertion”
Bryan Ekers - you said it better than I can. Ten out of ten to you!
clairobscur - you said it better than I can. Ten out of ten to you!
To others who failed to make the connection between Carter and the other Presidents I compared him with - oh man, is there anyone out there who understands irony and sarcasm??? Kennedy, Lincoln and Roosevelt died in office. They never were “ex-Presidents”:rolleyes: (Do I have to explain how Reagan fits in?)
Again, you equate the ruling class with “the Americans.” It seems to be reflexive with you. That is the mark of the true reactionary.
It is not my standards that the rapacious bastards don’t meet. You make it sound like I just have some petty disagreements, and that they have not met some unattainable standard. Actually, “my standard” as you put it, is quite similar to the standard they themselves proclaim. When Jefferson spoke of democracy, I quite agree with him. His actual behavior, and the behavior of the rest of his class, though, are quite different in reality to his talk. Rather, it is that the ruling class usurpes the power of the people to have a say in public policy. The ruling class runs things for their own interests. According to their standards, they have done a great job in subjugating the world to their own desires. I do not share those standards, though.
[sup]Is this anything like saying “She is the best ex-wife in the world.”?[/sup]