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Title: Former President Jimmy Carter has been diagnosed with liver cancer that has spread to 'other parts of his body'
Source:
Daily Mail Online
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... y-Carter-diagnosed-cancer.html
Published: Aug 12, 2015
Author: Associated Press and Ashley Collman and
Post Date: 2015-08-12 18:51:02 by cranky
Keywords: None
Views: 3763
Comments: 51
Former President Jimmy Carter has been diagnosed with cancer. The 90-year-old politician announced made the heartbreaking announcement on Wednesday, just weeks after having a small mass removed from his liver. He said: 'Recent liver surgery revealed that I have cancer that now is in other parts of my body. I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment by physicians at Emory Healthcare.' The statement released Wednesday makes clear that Carter's cancer is widely spread, but not where it originated. Since leaving office in 1981, he as remained active in both American and international politics, but recent health issues has forced his overseas trips to be cut short. In May he left Guyana early and flew home to Atlanta after feeling unwell. Scroll down for video Former President Jimmy Carter, 90, announced on Wednesday that he is battling cancer. Pictured above attending an event in Philadelphia last month Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, says 'Our thoughts and prayers go out to President Carter.' Lichtenfeld says, 'There's a lot we don't know,' but the first task likely will be determining where the cancer originated, as that can help determine what treatment he may be eligible for. 'Sometimes the primary site can't be determined, so genetic analysis of the tumor might be done to see what mutations are driving it and what drugs might target those mutations. He adds, 'Given the president's age, any treatments, their potential and their impacts, will undoubtedly be discussed carefully with him and his family.' President Obama released a statement supporting Carter, adding that America is 'rooting' for him. He said: 'Michelle and I send our best wishes to President Carter for a fast and full recovery. Our thoughts and prayers are with Rosalynn and the entire Carter family as they face this challenge with the same grace and determination they have shown so many times before. 'Jimmy, you're as resilient as they come, and along with the rest of America, we are rooting for you.' The liver is often a place where cancer spreads and less commonly is the primary source of it. It said further information will be provided when more facts are known, 'possibly next week.' Carter announced on August 3 that he had surgery to remove a small mass from his liver. He was the nation's 39th president, after beating incumbent Gerald Ford, and served for just one term between 1977 and 1981. He was succeeded by Ronald Reagan. The son of a peanut farmer, he grew up in a house with no electricity of plumbing in Plains, Georgia. He began the tradition of presidents walking down Pennsylvania Avenue when he jumped out of his car during his inauguration parade. After leaving the White House, he founded the center in Atlanta in 1982 to promote health care, democracy and other issues globally. Carter, a Democrat, was the nation's 39th president and only served one term before losing his office. He was succeded by Ronald Reagan, a Republican. Pictured above in 1976 He has remained active for the center in recent years, making public appearances at its headquarters in Atlanta and traveling overseas. Pictured above in 1978 Carter (right) is the second-oldest living president behind 91-year-old George H.W. Bush (left), who was recently hospitalized himself after breaking a bone in his neck during a fall. George W. Bush, 69 (center) and Bill Clinton, 68 (second from left), are the other two living former presidents. They are pictured with current President Obama (second from right) in 2009 Carter signs his book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety' at Barnes & Noble on 5th avenue in New York in July He has remained active for the center in recent years, making public appearances at its headquarters in Atlanta and traveling overseas including a May election observation visit to Guyana cut short when Carter developed a bad cold. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work 'to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development' through The Carter Center. Carter Center spokeswoman Deanna Congileo called the surgery earlier this month 'elective' and said Carter's 'prognosis is excellent' for a full recovery. She declined to answer further questions at the time. Meanwhile, Carter's grandson Jason Carter, a former member of the Georgia senate, issued a statement on Twitter thanking everyone for their support. Carter is the second-oldest living president behind 91-year-old George H.W. Bush, who was recently hospitalized himself after breaking a bone in his neck during a fall. George W. Bush, 69 and Bill Clinton, 68, are the other two living former presidents. Carter and his wife Rosalynn have four children together: John William, James Earl, Donnel Jeffery and Amy. Carter's grandson, former Georgia Senator Jason Carter, issued a statement on Twitter, saying he was thankful for all the support 
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#11. To: rlk, Vicomte13 (#8)
What did Carter do that pissed you off? Criticized Israel?
That is true.
He hit the Exacta -- he was an incompetent man as President. And schemer. AND an evil man afterward. For too many reason to list. I know I'll take flak for saying this but he doesn't deserve the shit you scumbags dish out. Naaah. Just surprising disappointment that for some reasons(s) Commie-Muzzie lobbyist Jimmah Carter has fooled you this badly...But you're not alone.
Bernice King. Big whoop. She characterized peanut as a "Servant-Leader"? Jimmah Carter?? OF WHAT?? WHO?? Allah? The Devil?? The highlight of his career was bringing Begin and Sadat together...PERIOD. And the wheels fell off afterward. He became a HUGE shill for militant, radical Islam; A best pal of the murderous Arafat. Carter conspired with radical Islam to destroy Israel. These points aren't even debatable. The lowlights were many. He nearly cratered the US military prestige, and American power, the US economy. He gave away the Panama Canal -- a potential tactical disaster during what was still the Cold War. Carter was a flaming Commie.
True dat.
He's 90 and he's going to die? How shocking. this diagnosis came 60 years too late for any liberal I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
Besides the crap he dumped in the middle east, that was always a biggie with me!! And the sad part is the Repukes could have stopped it. But did they? Nope,nada, didn't even raise an objection. That clearly showed both sides are controlled by the corporatist, globalist, NWO, CFR crowd. They should all be hanging from light posts Si vis pacem, para bellum
Observations that get overlooked totally. The RINO-GOPe should have just eventually re-asserted the right of the US to administrate the Canal. Instead, they succumbed to one of the dopiest tactical giveaways in US history... BIG PICTURE -- you're right; THIS was clearly a case of treason that indicted BOTH parties as puppets of the NWO syndicate.
At the time I got out of the Navy in 1978, I took a job in Oklahoma to be near my parents. I got a very early lesson in political realities (those same political realities are on display daily here on LF here 37 years later). The specific reality I am referring to is the assertion that there is but one party - the ruling party - and it has two branches. In the 60s and the 70s, some states like Oklahoma were in transition from being reliably D to reliably R. (they had been reliably yellow dog D, but as the social issues came to the forefront, people started falling away from democrat party hedonism) Henry Bellmon had been elected senator from OK in the 60s as an R. His term was up in 1978 and he had declared he was not running for another 6 years - he was retiring. Here's where my "lesson" comes in: The ruling party decided the Panama Canal Treaty was going to be a reality. They needed votes in the Senate. And even though Bellmon represented a conservative state for whom the Treaty was anathema, his vote was needed to pass the Treaty. (just as an aside, the difficulty the Ruling Class had in passing this is why they just bypass the treaty process now and go directly to decrees from the Emperor). So Bellmon voted yes (against the wishes of his constituents, but knowing he'd never have to face them again). The lesson? Be it unpopular treaties, NAFTA, GATT, or Zero-Care - what the Ruling Class wants, the Ruling Class gets.
Yep. And the American people snoozed. When I mentioned any of this to GOP bots, I was accused of heresy. I was told it was all Jimmah's fault. Then, like now, GOP Bots refuse to recognize the faults of their own. That is why the GOPe remains a shit sandwich. Si vis pacem, para bellum
Yep, and there is not a damn thing we can do about it! Si vis pacem, para bellum
Yeah - if only Trump had been president then! Don’t Be Fooled by the Political Game: The Illusion of Freedom in America In a Cop Culture, the Bill of Rights Doesn’t Amount to Much Wow, an old timer debate about the Panama Canal. The canal was a liability for the USA of that era both in diplomacy and in actual dollar amounts. The fears of what would happen if the USA gave Panama control of the canal never materialized.
Followed by a comment from a punk in the peanut gallery. Si vis pacem, para bellum
My parents went through The Great Depression. When they talked about it, they accused me of not understanding. They were right. I did not go through it, so I could not understand it in the same way they did. Those of us who came of age during the "Cold War" era have an understanding of it that is different from those who did not. At the time the PCT was proposed, we were in the midst of the cold war. Given that, the treaty was viewed as a concession and a giveaway. Perhaps you see it differently because you did not go through it, plus you have the benefit of history? For instance, no one could have foreseen at the time the fall of the Berlin wall in '89 or the USSR collapse a couple years later. In other words, the world's political dynamic changed drastically in ways that were not predicted. We're still sorting it out today. Now - regarding "old timers." How you choose to present yourself on this anonymous discussion board is completely up to you. You can choose to be funny; irrelevent; cynical; serious; or whatever. Or you can simply be an ass. Your choice.
It is true a large segment of the American population had become deranged with paranoia over the Cold War and made them fight stupid wars like in Vietnam for some imagined Domino effect. As for many people not foreseeing the fall of communism - that is a lie. Anyone who was not paranoid or not making money from the Cold War govt programs knew it would happen soon. U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews argued in January 1975 that the Soviet Union was so weak economically, and so divided ethnically, that it could not long survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_the_dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Union In the mid 1960s Panama was gripped with violence over the Canal - this was making America unpopular in Latin America but especially in Panama. The fear that the Panamanians would close the canal to the American military was the biggest fear mentioned if I recall my readings. The USA negotiated the right to intervene and other national security concerns were incorporated into the treaty. In fact, the biggest threat to the Panama Canal came not from the left wing but from a right wing dictator the CIA had installed. In any case, the canal is now expanding to allow even larger ships to pass through and is in better shape than when America ran it as a colony.
That's an oversimplication. The facts are - there WERE nukes. It WAS possible for mankind to commit suicide on a mass scale. Those are the facts. What you call "paranoia" was simply an acknowledgement of those facts. I'll give you the adventure in VN was stupid - but it was bi-partisan stupidity (Ike through JFK, LBJ and finally Nixon). It came into the American consciousness gradually. Early on, the average Joe or Jane did not even know where VN was much less anything about a domino theory. There was certainly no clamor for a war there. After about '65 when body bags started coming home, it became a matter of young vs. old, and my country right or wrong. Congrats on finding one citation. And even if that WERE the prevailing notion (which, I assure you, it was not), why then give them anything? Isn't that just delaying their "inevitable" collapse? I'm going to diverge a bit here and say that I personally have never been on board with the idea of the US being an empire. But we are never given the choice to vote on that. Instead, we are presented with the strawman choice of "interventionalist" vs. "isolationist". And we're told that isolationism is "bad." With that out of the way, let me say that unrest in Latin America was (and is) nothing new and generally not a concern of the PTB in Washington. That would not have been a factor in their pushing the PCT The public in the late 70s saw any effort to cede it back as weakness and capitulation. The public was overwhelmingly against it. There was much discussion at the time by the PTB in an effort to persuade the public otherwise. At the end of the day, the public was still opposed. The PTB got it passed, anyway. That was my point.
And there we go - nationalism was the biggest reason many of your generation were having a freak out over the loss of the Panama Canal - and the fear of commies controlling the canal was just justification arguments. There is no way I can argue with nationalistic arguments because they are based on feelings and emotions rather than facts. The loss of the PC has not hurt the USA one bit. Since the USA had not even bothered to upkeep the canal since it was built it can be argued American control of the canal was a hinderance to its modernization. In any case many Americans felt it was a sign of 'decline' at that time. So I can see why this was a hot button issue.
Or you can simply be an ass. Your choice. " Rufus, see my # 24 Si vis pacem, para bellum
WRONGO!!! Look kid, only the ruling "elites" believed in that domino theory crap. They were the ones, along with their CFR masters that were making money off of the war, and used that crap as their justification. I don't even know if they believed it. But they harped on it to justify their money making war. Nobody bought that, just them. Si vis pacem, para bellum
Pericles is probably blaming Reagan for the "Domino theory." This "domino theory" derives from the Truman doctrine. And what might interest you Pericles is that this containment theory helped Greece from turning commie...well until they did it voluntarily. I will caveat that Truman probably did not intend for the Cold War to turn piping hot in Asia as it did with Korea...and then later in Vietnam. Kennedy (D) and LBJ (D) just took Harry's (D) containment theory and applied it to SE Asia. "When Americans reach out for values of faith, family, and caring for the needy, they're saying, "We want the word of God. We want to face the future with the Bible.'"---Ronald Reagan
Moynihan was wrong. The Soviet Union had many positive aspects - no starvation, universal housing, universal medical care, universal education of a high quality, universal employment, and on the leisure side, a level of personal sexual freedom (particularly regarding abortion)(I write from the viewpoint of a nonbeliever, as most Russians were and are), leisure time and available sporting and outdoors activities, and a buttonhole lower, really cheap tobacco and alcohol and working class attitudes about them, that were all at levels exceeding America. I do not speak of the QUALITY of housing or the DELECTABILITY of the food, or the meaningfulness of the jobs, merely their universality. The people of the Soviet Union were not itching to throw all of that away. It was a successful, sustainable socio-economic structure, on its own theological terms, and it could have survived and flourished, slowly and steadily, over time. But for it to survive, the Soviet leaders - specifically Leonid Breshnev - had to become a realist about military force. The Soviets were first in space, but they never grasped the complete futility of amassing an overwhelming conventional army, air force and a massive navy they could never use other than in defense because of nuclear weapons. The Soviets had a massive nuclear arsenal. They were secure from invasion, and any reasonable Soviet strategist knew that. It was precisely BECAUSE the Soviets knew that the USA and NATO would never attack them that they felt emboldened to waste blood and treasure on imperial meddling. Economic analysis shows that the Soviet Economy grew at an average pace of 4.9% annually in the 1960s, dropping to 3% in the first half of the '70's, to 1.9% in the second half. It was down to 1.8% in the first term of Reagan, and rose back to 2.7% in Reagan's second term. Until the 1980s, Soviet capital productivity was always positive: the USSR was a growing economy until Reagan. Then in the 1980s, until the Reykjavic Pact and its aftermath, the Soviet capital productivity severely contracted: the Soviets were eating their capital seed-corn, burning it up in an arms race with the USA. After Reykjavic, this began to recover. Gorbachev's glasnost aimed at political openness, but what the Soviet Union always needed is what China has done far more successfully to date - to NOT focus the economy on a conventional arms buildup. Reagan's calculation was correct: the mindset of the Soviet leaders - old, stubborn - was endlessly focused on preparing for perpetual war. By engaging in a US buildup, and operating all around the USSR, and pressing on their external imperial efforts, Reagan played Soviet paranoia like a Stradivarius. However, the Soviet error: to spend themselves to collapse in an arms race, was an unforced error. An intelligent strategist would have looked at 10,000 nuclear weapons and said "The world combined could never attack us. If the Americans want to bankrupt themselves, we will respond by CUTTING forces." Glasnost should not have been directed at freeing up political speech. It should have been aimed at transitioning the Soviet economy away from massive military building into improving Soviet standards of living, universally, across the board, in that egalitarian way that First Century Christians would love and moderns hate and fear. And it needed to start earlier. Once the Vietnam War was over and America was exhausted and unwilling to participate in global adventures, the Soviets had their opportunity to also draw back, draw down, and free up their economy for domestic improvement. By this I do not mean a bunch of frivolous consumer spending. I mean the basics: agriculture: Soviets were importing wheat - they have more land than anybody else. Infrastructure: to get goods and people around. Housing - everybody has shelter, now let's improve it generally so that it is more modern, more comfortable. The Soviets had the kind of political control, and acquiescence of their population, to be able to do that. If they wanted to "prove their model" overseas, they could extend the same program to the rest of the Warsaw Pact, and had they done that, there would have been far less eagerness for rebellion. The Americans were not, in fact, ever pressing on the USSR in a way they truly threatened their national integrity after 1956. Had the Soviet leader - he did not need a coalition, he could have decided to move in this way, just as Gorbachev DID move, when he decided to - been sensible and practical, the USSR would have become a comfortable place. It still would not have been politically free, but people would have had comfortable lives and interesting sex lives and sports, and would have remained as patriotic as Russians always have been. Gorbachev came too late, probably, but perhaps even he could have turned it around. However, he turned to political issues, such as free speech (with many limits) and political idealism, instead of practical bread and butter issues. At any point until the late 80's, had the Soviets slashed their military, pulled out of their overseas adventures, and put that money into agriculture, housing, and converting industry from defense to consumer basics back home, they would have survived and prospered and been a competitive model - a sort of gigantic Finland. But that's not what they did. Instead, they behaved just like their American rivals, but on an economic base on a third of the size. So they exhausted themselves and failed. We didn't learn from their failure. We are making exactly the same unforced error as the Soviet Union, because we too are fixated on inappropriate baubles abroad and have not shored up our economy at home. Our economy being three times larger, it is taking us much longer to fail, but failing we are, just as the USSR did, for just the same reasons. Why don't we see it? Because most of each are little Brezhnevs: we see US aircraft carriers and battle tanks and warplanes and we do not think "these things are addictive drugs that are killing us slowly". We think "Cool!", and "How mighty we are!" But these displays of power dilute our power, and wear us out. Ours, as the USSR's before, as the English and French before them, as the Spanish before them, as the Romans before them. We have the capacity to learn, but we are remarkably resilient oo learning. Brezhnev likes his toys, and most of us have a little Brezhnev in us.
Moynihan was wrong. No, he was right - as history bore out.
Reagan probably agreed with it.
Family and doctors do not let him go. I tend to like him.
He is better man than you think.
He gave human face to America - it had tremendous effect in Soviet block countries and gave motivation for reforms there.
No, he was wrong. Ethnic division had nothing to do with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The USSR fell apart on ethnic lines after the government collapsed. It was not torn apart on ethnic lines. There was no ethnic ferment or rebellion at all. The government failed and winked out, and the nations walked free. Moynihan thought the Soviet Republics would behave like Hungary and Czechoslovakia had behaved, and become insurrectionist. Nothing like that ever began to happen in the Soviet Union. It happened in occupied (conquered) Eastern European satellites that had been either allies of Nazi Germany, or incorporated directly into Greater Germany. It never happened in the Soviet Republics. Moynihan was wrong. He was also wrong about the economic weakness of the Soviet Union. For reference' sake, in the 1960s and first half of the 1970s - the period into which Moynihan was looking - the Soviet Union's economy was growing at an annual average of 3.95% per year, which would be a boom by our standards. From 1975 to 1979, the Soviet economy grew at only 1.9%, and during the first five years of Reagan, it grew by 1.8% - which is about the current growth rate of the US economy. The Soviet Union consistently grew, and it grew pretty fast until the mid-1970s, It wasn't growing as fast as the US was, because the Soviets were wasting money on an unnecessary arms building. Still, it was growing at a pace that the United States has not experienced since Clinton was President. Then it slowed down in the 1970s, but was not in recession. From 1975 until 1985 it hovered at about the growth rate of the US in the years since coming out of the Great Recession. For reference sake, when Moynihan wrote in 1975 that the Soviet economy was so weak, the Soviet GDP growth was 1.9% annual. 3.9% higher than the US recession rate of -2% that year. The Soviet Union, during the Carter years and the first half of Reagan, was in its worst growth slump since 1960, but it was still growing - at about the current pace of the US economy. Moynihan was completely wrong. The Soviet economy was NOT too weak to survive. It was sustainable, and there was no appreciable ethnic unrest within the USSR. Moynihan was engaging in wishful thinking. The Soviet Union was destroyed by one thing: they went absolutely mad with military expenditure, built armies approximately 7 times the size of what they needed, and in doing so sucked the marrow and vigor out of their economy. Their people were eating and sheltered, but they were eating dull gruel and sheltered in decaying buildings...and they were doing this in the richest country in the world in natural resources. And their Warsaw Pact forced allies had it even worse. The Russians CHOSE Communism and grimly soldiered on, but the Eastern Europeans were conquered and never willingly accepted the Communist system. And the Poles, for their part, were pure victims - first of the Germans, then of the Russians. The Russians endured privation stoically, and there was no ethnic agitation in the Soviet Union, it isn't even revisionism to claim it - it's outright fantasy. There WAS ethnic agitation in occupied Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the fact of being conquered rankled, but beyond that, the Eastern Europeans were really impoverished by the Communist system. The post- war recovery passed them by, and they were very sullen. Unrest in Eastern Europe was unavoidable: conquered Catholic peoples do not like it, and Western Slavs and Germanics or Eastern Latins do not like to be ruled by Russians. They were enemies on the battlefield only a few years before. It was Eastern Europe that fell away first. Then the USSR fell apart, after the Right Wing staged a military coup, failed, Gorbachev was restored, but the real power had passed away. Only then, in the vacuum, did Soviet nationalities opportunistically assert themselves against a vacuum. There was no MOVEMENT there before that, as there had been in Eastern Europe. Could the Soviets have placated Eastern Europe, ever? Probably part of it. Bulgaria and Slovkia and Belarus. Probably. Rumania? Maybe. The Czechs and the Hungarians? Probably not. The Baltics? No. The Poles? Never. To do it, they needed to improve the standard of living. To do THAT, they needed to invest the money they were spending on the military into agriculture, housing and industry. Had they done that, the Soviet economy would have grown faster - they would not have been eating their seed corn through military excess and imperialism. The economy would have grown faster and the standards of living would have improved. These were not people accustomed to luxury, but by investment in agriculture, the stores would have been full of food to cook and the lines would have gone away - a major improvement. This could never happen as long as the Soviets were massively overspending on the military. Moynihan was wrong on both points. The USSR in no way was falling apart on ethnic lines, and the Soviet economy was not unsustainably weak. It was the arms race and imperialism what did in the USSR. Moynihan did not write the truth because he could never accept it: the Soviet Communist system WAS sustainable, long term, as long as the Soviets relied on nuclear weapons for their defense and took the money they poured into offensive arms into agriculture and industry instead. The fault lay in the temperaments of Leonid Breshnev and his heirs as Premier. They could not get past playing "Risk" with big armies on the map. And by doing so, they destroyed their own economy. They did not have to do that, and if they hadn't, the USSR could have survived and even thrived. Had they done THAT, and relied on their nuclear deterrent, they would have laughed at Reagan's arms' race and not engaged in it themselves. If the Amerikantsi want to bankrupt themselves, let them. If they invade, we shall nuke them. We are not going to invade them. China has adopted policies much more like that - though far more capitalist. And China is not going to fall apart and disappear. Soviet Communism was sustainable, but it was not sustainable as a military empire with overseas engagements. Moynihan was completely wrong. The USSR failed because it spent itself to death on tanks and subs, nothing more.
Like Suez canal?
Very astute
Cpacibo.
He was and is, but it requires someone who doesn't share his particular type of evil to recognize it.
Well, I assume he was pro-choice. Not sure about that, but he's a Democrat. That's evil, an evil shared with the bulk of Americans. What else?
Incorrect - he was stating it was a 2 part weakness - failed economy and non viable ethnic amalgamation of a nation.
Look, Jimmy Carter is soon to shit the bed. He's gonna die. It won't cost me an ounce of sorrow... but it looks like you are all broken up. A liberals karma. lol I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
Show me where that is? Are all Americans stupid like you or some?
You can't even be honest. You will feel bad when that peanut farming pile of shit croaks.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
Show my post in question or be called a stupid American.
Ok... then I'll expect you to party like its 1999, when he vapor locks.
I'm the infidel... Allah warned you about. كافر المسلح
He stated those two things, and he was wrong. The USSR was a viable amalgamation of nations. If defeated the Axis and was not coming apart on ethnic lines. After the government winked out of existence, the pieces slid away, but they stayed flying in close formation. Lenin was a Russian. Stalin was a Georgian. Krushchev was Ukraininan. Breshnev was visibly Eurasian Russian. Nor did the Soviet Union fall because of an economic collapse. It was experiencing economic dislocation due to military overstretch, but it was always a choice. The Soviets did not have to be mad about arms buildups. They chose to be. The USSR failed because of the intellectual weaknesses and blind spots of its leaders from Breshnev to the end. Breshnev through Andropov were playing Risk in a nuclear age when mass conventional was no longer possible. They didn't actually bankrupt the Soviet Union, but they so grievously overspent that the USSR could not keep anything more than the most threadbare of goods available to its people. A rich country full of people living at subsistence, unnecessarily, was a sullen country. The sullenness was enhanced by the lack of political outlet. Gorbachev's fundamental error was that he did not realize that what he needed to do was to slash the military itself. The Soviet military was at least four times the size it needed to be. There were no breakaway Soviet Republics, parts of Eastern Europe would have remained affiliated anyway. Poland was going to go its own way no matter what. It was not necessary to Soviet security to hold those places in an iron grip, but even if it was, the Soviet military was at least four times too large for that simple task. But Gorbachev just did not see it. Instead, he sought to give the Soviet population a way to politically VENT, so that they would be able to more readily go on in their shabby existence supplying an overlarge war machine. Instead, as the press and people began to speak and grumble, the military itself went berserk, staged a coup - which offended other elements of the system - notably the intelligence directorates who would not accept military rule. Yeltsin took a visible leadership role, the obedience structure of the military broke down while the intelligence directorate did not, and Gorbachev was restored to power...over a system that no longer had a point. The Soviets had exhausted themselves on a military machine, and now the military machine had turned on the Premier of the Supreme Soviet, and failed, and the Supreme Soviet had failed. The government itself was completely rotten from within, there was no structure to hold, and the Soviet Union was gone with the wind. Had Gorbachev, instead of trying to make the Soviets happier about being poor, cut the military with a will and turned those resources back to developing agriculture and industry, the Soviet and Eastern European standard of living would have improved quite dramatically in short order, without sacrificing the ideals of the Soviet Union. A massive military machine was not a Soviet ideal - it was the obsession of the Soviet leaders. Would the Army have rebelled under a directive to shrink? Less likely. Less likely because there was a logic to it that was not contrary to a Soviet future. But just opening up the floodgates to emotional political outbursts by the general public, and venting, was never going to stabilize or improve anything. It was only going to make people mad, and make agitators talk about bringing down the system. Gorbachev himself never had an inkling that it was the size and fact of the Soviet military empire that was destroying the prospects of the USSR. In this regard, he was no different regarding the actual fatal flaw in his country than most Americans are about theirs: massive military spending and imperial outreach in the era of nuclear weapons is completely wasteful, and when done on a grand scale ensures the ultimate wearing out of your economy. Our economy was bigger than the Soviet, so it has taken us longer to fall. but we are on the path to the same degredation and economic slippage as the USSR, for exactly the same reason. We need to learn from this. And if we listen to Moynihan, we're going to learn two very wrong points. No, ethnic amalgamations are not doomed to fail - the Soviet Union was successful at putting a national imprint on a welter of different ethnicites, and no, there is nothing inherent in a socialist economy that dooms it. But there IS something inherent in musclebound military states with empires that dooms them, and it is simple: the cost of large armies, navies, air forces, wars and military aid will destroy any economic - even the biggest. Always has, always will. THAT is the lesson to be learned from the fall of the USSR, and of Spain, and of Britain and France. And that is why we need to fundamentally rethink our militarism, because IT is the source of our economic stagnation, and IT is THE thing that, in the age of nuclear weapons, is completely voluntary, completely useless, and completely self destructive. Military overspend and empire are like cigarette smoking. There is only an evanescent benefit, and the toxic side effects get worse and worse the more that is done. Eventually, it produces a fatal cancer.
Amen
The world will be a better place without him.
#12. To: Deckard (#10)
Carter... was not and is not an evil man.
#13. To: Deckard, Pericles, Vicomte13, rlk (#10)
Carter may have been an incompetent president, but he was not and is not an evil man.
#14. To: cranky (#0)
#15. To: Stoner (#2)
Carter owes Ovomit a huge debt of gratitude, since Carter is no longer the worst President the US has ever had. Although he does hold the #2 position.
#16. To: cranky (#0)
#17. To: Liberator (#14)
" He gave away the Panama Canal "
#18. To: Stoner (#17)
And the sad part is the Repukes could have stopped it. But did they? Nope,nada, didn't even raise an objection. That clearly showed both sides are controlled by the corporatist, globalist, NWO, CFR crowd. They should all be hanging from light posts
#19. To: Stoner, Liberator (#17)
" He gave away the Panama Canal "
#20. To: Liberator (#18)
" THIS was clearly a case of treason that indicted BOTH parties as puppets of the NWO syndicate. "
#21. To: Rufus T Firefly (#19)
" what the Ruling Class wants, the Ruling Class gets "
#22. To: Liberator (#18)
THIS was clearly a case of treason that indicted BOTH parties as puppets of the NWO syndicate.
“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” - Ron Paul
Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.
Paul Craig Roberts
#23. To: Rufus T Firefly, Stoner, Liberator (#19)
The ruling party decided the Panama Canal Treaty was going to be a reality. They needed votes in the Senate.
#24. To: Pericles, Rufus T Firefly, Liberator (#23)
" Wow, an old timer debate about the Panama Canal. "
#25. To: Pericles (#23)
(Edited)
Wow, an old timer debate about the Panama Canal.
#26. To: Rufus T Firefly (#25)
(Edited)
At the time the PCT was proposed, we were in the midst of the cold war. Given that, the treaty was viewed as a concession and a giveaway.
#27. To: Pericles (#26)
It is true a large segment of the American population had become deranged with paranoia over the Cold War and made them fight stupid wars like in Vietnam for some imagined Domino effect.
As for many people not foreseeing the fall of communism - that is a lie. Anyone who was not paranoid or not making money from the Cold War govt programs knew it would happen soon.
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews argued in January 1975 that the Soviet Union was so weak economically, and so divided ethnically, that it could not long survive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictions_of_the_dissolution_of_the_Soviet_Uni on
In the mid 1960s Panama was gripped with violence over the Canal - this was making America unpopular in Latin America but especially in Panama. The fear that the Panamanians would close the canal to the American military was the biggest fear mentioned if I recall my readings.
The USA negotiated the right to intervene and other national security concerns were incorporated into the treaty.
In fact, the biggest threat to the Panama Canal came not from the left wing but from a right wing dictator the CIA had installed.
In any case, the canal is now expanding to allow even larger ships to pass through and is in better shape than when America ran it as a colony.
Just to bring the discussion full circle: The PC would never have been built but for the US. By hook or by crook, it belonged to the US.
#28. To: Rufus T Firefly (#27)
Just to bring the discussion full circle: The PC would never have been built but for the US. By hook or by crook, it belonged to the US.
#29. To: Rufus T Firefly (#25)
" You can choose to be funny; irrelevent; cynical; serious; or whatever.
#30. To: Pericles (#26)
" a large segment of the American population had become deranged with paranoia over the Cold War and made them fight stupid wars like in Vietnam for some imagined Domino effect. "
#31. To: Stoner, tomder55, Pericles (#30)
Look kid, only the ruling "elites" believed in that domino theory crap. They were the ones, along with their CFR masters that were making money off of the war, and used that crap as their justification. I don't even know if they believed it. But they harped on it to justify their money making war. Nobody bought that, just them.
#32. To: Pericles (#26)
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews argued in January 1975 that the Soviet Union was so weak economically, and so divided ethnically, that it could not long survive.
#33. To: Vicomte13 (#32)
U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in a series of articles and interviews argued in January 1975 that the Soviet Union was so weak economically, and so divided ethnically, that it could not long survive.
#34. To: Stoner, tomder55, redleghunter (#31)
Pericles is probably blaming Reagan for the "Domino theory."
#35. To: Pericles (#1)
He is 90. Why is he going for treatment? As a Christian he should not fear going into the light.
#36. To: rlk (#8)
I reserve my sympathy, sorrows, and kind words for those who have earned them in life.
#37. To: Liberator (#14)
He gave away the Panama Canal
#38. To: Pericles (#33)
No, he was right - as history bore out.
#39. To: Rufus T Firefly (#27)
Just to bring the discussion full circle: The PC would never have been built but for the US.
#40. To: Vicomte13 (#32)
#41. To: A Pole (#40)
#42. To: Vicomte13 (#12)
Carter... was not and is not an evil man.
#43. To: rlk (#42)
He was and is, but it requires someone who doesn't share his particular type of evil to recognize it.
#44. To: Vicomte13 (#38)
No, he was wrong. Ethnic division had nothing to do with the breakup of the Soviet Union. The USSR fell apart on ethnic lines after the government collapsed. It was not torn apart on ethnic lines.
#45. To: Pericles (#44)
#46. To: GrandIsland (#45)
... but it looks like you are all broken up.
#47. To: Pericles (#46)
#48. To: GrandIsland (#47)
You can't even be honest. You will feel bad when that peanut farming pile of shit croaks.
#49. To: Pericles (#48)
#50. To: Pericles (#44)
(Edited)
Incorrect - he was stating it was a 2 part weakness - failed economy and non viable ethnic amalgamation of a nation.
#51. To: Vicomte13 (#50)
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