Was the Cold War real and the Soviet Union a threat or Not?

Everyone was locked out of China before the British opium wars...
USA declared Korea and Japan their "Zones of Interest" at the Washington Naval Treaty, repeating a claim that had been made following the annexation of Hawaii...
The Washington Naval Treaty of 1925 formalised the Japanese occupation of Korea and captured German ports in China, restated the British colonial claims in Malaya and hong Kong, restored Taiwan Island to the Republic of China...

 

Also British indentured labor from China, working in colonies in Africa and in Malaya, was cheaper and more efficient than maintaining a slave labor force... Britain didn't abolish slavery to replace it with nothing...

 

They did want to be free but America kept giving them dictators they didn't want...
Right now, with a communist Government, the Vietnamese people are the happiest they've been since the liberation of Saigon, and the happiest they've been in 150 years...
It's trade with Communist China that means Vietnam isn't in the Global Financial Crisis...

 

A bit of a generalisation.

The South Vietnamese elites and middle class wanted to be capitalists. You have to remember at the time Vietnam was an agricultural society and most were subsistence farmers, meaning they ate what they grew. The people on the land really didn't give a buggar. For centuries the farmers didn't even own their own land and were under the boot of the Dynastic rulers who kept them poor.

The same can be said about Laos.

 

Who is generalising..? The Vietnamese were more educated under French Colonial rule than the Lao and the Khmer people, but still the majority of South Vietnam didn't want the South Vietnamese regime... True freedom recognises national sovereign democracy...
The west is told that in Cambodia Pol Pot targetted ppl with glasses or an education... Truth is that Vietnamese in phnom penh who were more likely to be allied with the Nixon installed regime which ousted Prince Sihanouk than the less educated Khmer were...

 

Only the elite, middle class and urban dwellers in Vietnam had any advantages in education under the French rule. The poor farmers on the land remained uneducated. It wasn't until the communists took over that education was available to all. The communists later set a task of supplying general education for all and made it compulsory up to the age of 15.

This was mirrored in Laos also. The French rule did nothing for the country except stripping it of resourses. It was the Pathet Lao and the government since who allowed the poor and people on the land to be educated. Lao royalty didn't give a sh!t about anyone except themselves.

 

Much of Western Europe around Russia were captured by the Russians during WWII and made part of the Soviet Union. I don't think they could complain. But two of those states tried to break free and met Russian tanks for their effort.

 

Western Europe is not near Russia. I believe you mean Eastern Europe

 

You are correct sir, I got caught up in the other poster's statement

 

Not a problem mate

 

To be more precise the Vietnamese middle class and wealthy may have wanted to be capitalist and trade with the west, but they were a minority, and they needed the working landless labourers of the rest of Vietnam to make their undemocratic capitalist dreams come true... A bit like any colonised nation, or like European nations at the time of the industrial revolution...

 

It looks like from what I can find, the biggest problem we have had, is lack of good intelligence. We found that out in Iraq and I just found out it was wrong in judging the Soviet's intentions in the 1970's which led up to the weapons buildup by Reagan.

"The Soviet strategic modernization program of the 1970s was one of the most consequential developments of the Cold War. Deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and the dramatic increase in the number of strategic warheads in the Soviet arsenal created a sense of vulnerability in the United States that was, to a large degree, responsible for the U.S. military buildup of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the escalation of Cold War tensions during that period. U.S. assessments concluded that the Soviet Union was seeking to achieve a capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Estimates of missile accuracy and silo hardness provided by the U.S. intelligence community led many in the United States to conclude that the Soviet Union was building a strategic missile force capable of destroying most U.S. missiles in a counterforce strike and of surviving a subsequent nuclear exchange. Soviet archival documents that have recently become available demonstrate that this conclusion was wrong. The U.S. estimates substantially overestimated the accuracy of the Soviet Union’s missiles and the degree of silo reinforcement. As the data demonstrate, the Soviet missile force did not have the capability to launch a successful first strike. Moreover, the data strongly suggest that the Soviet Union never attempted to acquire a first-strike capability, concentrating instead on strategies based on retaliation."

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/18410/window_of_vulnerability_that_wasnt.html

 

Christ alive. The US, like in Iraq, knew it was making (*)(*)(*)(*) up when it said there was a threat. There wasn't an "intelligence stuff up." In both cases they FABRICATED the truth and constructed their own reality so as to scare the US populace into supporting their aggression. This is only one , but a huge, aspect of American propaganda imbedded in US policy making and the resulting advertising to the US public. Since we are talking about Reagan, take for example the Sate Department Office of Latin American Public Diplomacy. It operated such noble endeavors as "Operation Truth" in which the government conducted "public diplomacy". Can you imagine that? A supposedly liberal, open and free speech-orientated government actually employing "public diplomacy"? Well it is the worse than you probably think. One government official's description of the projects conducted:

"a huge psychological operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in denied or enemy territory." That's right, the Reagan saw the US people as part of "enemy territory" that had to be conquered.

These institutions, receiving orders from the NSC, Reagan included, was later declared illegal in 1987 by the Comptroller General of the GAO.

See more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Public_Diplomacy

Yes, the US government uses, actively and passively, propaganda all the time. They should not be excused for believing their own tripe where that occurs.

 

Occam's razor says your conspiracy theory is bull (*)(*)(*)(*).

 

How's that? Also, it isnt a conspiracy theory - its simply historical fact.

 

There is nothing "fact" about your personal interpretation of the motivations behind historical events and the reasoning behind the decisions that led to them.

You have about as much credibility interpreting historical motivations as the "historians" of Communist Russia.

 

Red Ice Radio - Richard Grove - Hour 1


Richard Grove was trained in Business Management and Administration. He worked in the WTC in 2001 and discovered corporate ties to 9-11. He blew the whistle but was met with deaf ears by corporate media. He proved in court the SEC was involved in covering-up the biggest financial fraud in America, and learned that if he wanted anyone to ever know what happened that he would have to learn how to create media. And he did. He released Project Constellation, several films and many hours of talk radio. He is also behind the website tragedyandhope.com. Tragedy and Hope creates educational media and provides a comprehensive, open-source, educational model for adults; providing individuals with the resources to attain coherent perspectives at/and/above the Ph.D. level. Tragedy and Hope provides a portal through which individuals can stimulate and fortify Cognitive Liberty and educational methods which facilitate consciousness. Richard will discuss useful tools of learning verses schooling.

http://rediceradio.net/radio/2012/RIR-120614-rgrove-hr1.mp3
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Lineage of Royals = perpetual deception leading to enslavement.

 

I'm using government interpretation - and its pretty clear, it aint pretty.

LOL There is nothing about conspiracy theories here - its all simple fact.

 

There is no evidence that they fabricated the truth in either one. A a matter there were two investigations with the intelligence Congress was getting compared to what Bush got and both those investigations determined they were basically the same. I think we don't want to believe that our intelligence was that bad.

 

The AmeriCons gave us their reasons, publicly or they were exposed... Nothing conspiracy about it...

 

You can believe what ever you like - it wont change the truth. The US government manufactures consent all the time:

"The S/LPD collaborated with Central Intelligence Agency propaganda experts and Army psychological operations specialists to disseminate what it called "white propaganda" with the goal of influencing public opinion and spurring Congress to continue to fund the Reagan administration's military campaign against Nicaragua's Sandinista government. By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to journalists, it sought to trump up a Nicaraguan "threat," and to sanctify the U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua's government as "freedom fighters."

The S/LPD drafted pro-Reagan op-ed pieces that ran under fabricated bylines in U.S. newspapers. It also planted stories designed to embarrass or contradict the Sandinista regime. In addition to manipulating the press, the S/LPD also supplied information to pro-Reagan lobbying groups and political organizations that favored the Contra war."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Public_Diplomacy

Do I really need to go through the entire falsity of the US' evidence of Iraqi wmds and support for terrorists?

 

Well I'll take the two studies done compared to your Wikipedia.

You might also like to look at the Soviet's involvement in Nicaragua and Peru, along with Cuba. Reagan had every right to worry about the Soviet involvement. Reagan was also enforcing the Monroe Doctrine.

[PDF]



SOVIET MILITARY ASSISTANCE TO LATIN AMERICA By


www.disam.dsca.mil/pubs/Vol 7-2/Hidalgo.pdf


File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - Quick View
spread reports of recent events in Nicaragua, however, have highlighted the potentially .... The mid—1960s was a significant period for Soviet involvement in the ...


In the Soviet period, the main reasons for involvement in Latin America were not historical, cultural, or economic, but related to strategic competition with the United States. Accordingly, the Soviet Union endeavored to foster leftist insurgencies and other distractions to interfere with United States foreign policy in the region.

The main bases of Soviet involvement in Latin America were Cuba and Nicaragua, but the Soviet Union also attempted some involvement in Peru and Grenada. The Soviet Union placed military and intelligence facilities in Cuba to spy on the United States. It also supported Cuba as an attractive and successful model of Latin American socialism that would induce other countries to move into the same sphere and become export bases for ideology.

http://countrystudies.us/russia/89.htm

 

Your studies HAVE NOTHING TO DO with what I was just talking about!

Yes, and the Monroe Doctrine is itself imperialistic, hence my point about US aggression. Tell me about the influecne of the USSR and each I will refute you with actual evidence.

These are pathetic. The first study was written in the early 80s by army intelligence - exactly the the kind of biased propaganda I was talking about. It even cited an article showing the US was the worlds biggest supplier of arms and yet he spun that into evidence they were lagging behind the USSR! His "evidence" of funding to Latin America is either biased estimates form the government again or totally contextualized summaries of trade deals - deals I have already shown the US has often imposed on countries in order to make them appear as though they are sucking up to the USSR. I have shown RECENT data about a lack of Soviet aggression - something you have yet to address let alone refute.

As for the second "study" it isn't a study at all. Its a copy and paste form the library of congress with no sources or references. Furthermore the only discussion of the USSR is in one paragraph with no details pertaining to your supposed examples of Soviet intrusion - just the same old whining about Cuba.

As I said, the US was the aggressor a thousand times more so than the USSR.