That's a lot of people on the streets in France.

But my favorite is still the meeting of world leaders, including Turkey's Davutoglu (highest # of journalists in prison), Bahrain's Sheikh Khalid (#2 on the list of journalists in prison), Polish PM Kopacz (raided newspaper for criticising the government), etc.

When these folks are presented as staunch defenders of the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, you know someone spiked your beer with LSD.

Regimes supported

Juan Vicente Gomez, Venezuela, 1908-1935.
Jorge Ubico, Guatemala, 1931-1944.
Fulgencio Batista, Republic of Cuba 1952-1959.
Syngman Rhee, Republic of Korea (South Korea), 1948-1960.
Rafael Trujillo, Dominican Republic, 1930-1961.[citation needed]
Ngo Dinh Diem, Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), 1955-1963.
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran, 1953-1979.
Anastasio Somoza Garcia, Nicaragua, 1967-1979.
Military Junta in Guatemala, 1954-1982.
Military Junta in Bolivia, 1964-1982.[citation needed]
Military Junta in Argentina, 1976-1983.
Brazilian military government, 1964-1985.
François Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Republic of Haiti, 1957-1971; 1971-1986.[citation needed]
Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay, 1954-1989.[citation needed]
Ferdinand Marcos, Philippines, 1965-1986.[8][9]
General Manuel Noriega, Republic of Panama, 1983-1989.
General Augusto Pinochet, Chile, 1973-1990.
Saddam Hussein, Republic of Iraq, 1982-1990.
General (military), Suharto Republic of Indonesia, 1975-1995.
Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire/Congo, 1965-1997.
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt, 1981-2011.
Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Kingdom of Bahrain, 2012.
Saudi royal family, 2012.
Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan, 1991-2012.[10]
Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia, 1995-2012.[11]
Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Equatorial Guinea, 2006-2012.[12]

I really hate when people pull stats like this out of their asses because it downplays and belittles the difficulties of living in poverty.

There is so much vagueness in your statement that I shouldn't even bother with it, but it is upsetting me, so here we go:

What is the First World? The best current definition is probably the group of countries which have the highest Human Development Index, generally meaning that life there is pretty damn good. That would include countries you might not expect (like Chile, Argentina, Bahrain, and Singapore) but it is a better definition than the historical meaning of First World (basically, US, Canada, and Western Europe).

Combined population of First World countries: 1.136 billion people

Let's assume that poverty is the bottom 10 percent of that population, so you are looking at a non-impoverished First World population of 1.022 billion

Account for China's middle and affluent classes, who are surely better off than poor people in Croatia or Latvia, by adding 350 million

Do the same for India and let's call that 70 million people

Then assume that the top 1% of the rest of the world is probably better off than the bottom 10% of the First World, and you can add a further 33 million people ((World population - First World - China - India) x .01)

So then, the total number of people living better than poverty stricken First Worlders is ...... 1.77 billion people or about 25% of humankind.

So, yes, you are "richer" than 75% of humankind even if you are poor in the First World, but even that is relative if you consider purchasing power.

All of this isn't to say that I am sick of hearing about "first world problems" especially when I am from there but don't live there. I walk out my door everyday and see the very real problems of abject poverty, malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, and on and on. But I also understand how difficult it is to be poor in the US and European countries, and I think we should never downplay that struggle. Telling people to stop complaining because it could always be worse has never been a very convincing argument for me.

In reply to this comment by curiousity:
I don't have time to watch, but have an upvote until I can watch it (so I can make sure it doesn't disappear.)

Thank you for the promote!
In reply to this comment by legacy0100:
*promote

I'm not sure what to make of this video, really. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

In Syria, Bahrain, Libya, and Iran, the mere act of protesting was declared illegal. IIRC, in all four of those countries, violence was the only police response to protests, and in all four countries it escalated to police/military/paramilitary forces firing bullets at protesters.

That's not happening here.

In Egypt, the police didn't really crack down on the protests themselves. There were attempts to use agents provocateur to provoke violence to give the police some cause to shut down the protests, but that never worked. There were some touch and go moments when it seemed that the police were going to try to storm Tahrir square to forcibly end the protest, but that never happened (largely because the military stepped in and made sure that didn't happen). The result of the protests and accompanying strikes ended up toppling the Mubarak regime.

In America, things are a bit different. People who want to uphold the status quo want the protests ignored, and they know that violence and arrests will only help the protesters in the long run. So the OWS people have had to resort to a little provocation of their own. It's noble and self-sacrificing that they're doing so, and it does make the police look bad when they arrest people for innocuous sounding things (like directly protesting in on the steps of the NYSE itself, or blocking a bridge), but they're intentionally doing so to draw attention. It's called civil disobedience.

So really, I'm left a bit confused by the video. The title of the video is "I'm not moving", but spends a ton of time highlighting police violence at the protests here and abroad (and it's mostly abroad). When they finally show the guy who says he's not moving, they don't show him getting arrested or beaten, they just hear him begging to get arrested, and seemingly being ignored.

So is the point "I have a point to make that I'm willing to get arrested for" (i.e. "I'm Not Moving") or is the point "Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are hypocritical tyrants because the police arrest me when I intentionally try to get arrested to make a point."

You can't really have it both ways.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

But why is it that always seems to be way down on the list. Taken from This site:

III. The Global Deployment of US Military Personnel

There are 6000 military bases and/ or military warehouses located in the U.S. (See Wikipedia, February 2007).

Total Military Personnel is of the order of 1,4 million of which 1,168,195 are in the U.S and US overseas territories.

Taking figures from the same source, there are 325,000 US military personnel in foreign countries:

800 in Africa,
97,000 in Asia (excluding the Middle East and Central Asia),
40,258 in South Korea,
40,045 in Japan,
491 at the Diego Garcia Base in the Indian Ocean,
100 in the Philippines, 196 in Singapore,
113 in Thailand,
200 in Australia,
and 16,601 Afloat.

In Europe, there are 116,000 US military personnel including 75,603 who are stationed in Germany.

In Central Asia about 1,000 are stationed at the Ganci (Manas) Air Base in Kyrgyzstan and 38 are located at Kritsanisi, in Georgia, with a mission to train Georgian soldiers.

In the Middle East (excludng the Iraq war theater) there are 6,000 US military personnel, 3,432 of whom are in Qatar and 1,496 in Bahrain.

In the Western Hemisphere, excluding the U.S. and US territories, there are 700 military personnel in Guantanamo, 413 in Honduras and 147 in Canada.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
>> ^dag:
At least Paul would bring home the troops and close the overseas bases.

And with the debt at incredible levels, can we afford to do anything besides that?

Wait... did that schmuck just refer to Turkey as an Arab dictatorship whose people hate them? This guy is out to lunch. He's had a little too much of the Ron Paul kool-aid.

Further, you intervene where you can, not to be consistent. A handful of tomahawk missiles stood no chance of doing anything in Yemen, or Bahrain. Also, we may yet pay Al-Assad a visit depending on how the situation progresses there. Gaddafi was shelling cities of his own citizens. A couple tomahawks stands a better chance of ending that than stopping police forces from firing on a handful of demonstrators. To me, the solution here is to try and quickly organize talks to settle with a multi-state solution. US ground troops are off the table. Obama has been clear on this. If anyone goes in, it'll be the limeys and the frogs, and a few token Arabs. It's their war. They needed our air/cruise missile support to quickly slow the march, but that's all we agreed to do.

This isn't about American oil at all. It's the Europeans that get 85% of Qaddafi's oil. This is about western Europe's energy independence from Moscow, and trying to position NATO as in support of the recent wave of Arab uprisings.

>> ^bcglorf:

I have troubles cheering a guy who declares the better solution was never go at all. Gadhafi would currently be finishing off the genocide he promised to commit against the opposition if that advice were taken. I have issues with anyone calling that 'better'. Doubly so when the reason it is better is because stopping that genocide created more anti-western Arab sentiments than allowing it would have.

The road to hell is oft paved with good intention.
-Saint Bernard of Clairvaux,Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Sir Walter Scott, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Marx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with_good_intentions

I think that the more important question here is why Libya? Why not Bahrain? Why not Yemen? Why not Syria? Why not any other number of countries where there is revolution?

The problem with becoming involved in Libya is that the risk of Blowback is much more dangerous than actually helping. Which is what the gentleman, former CIA analyst, is saying.

No, the better choice would be to stop all of the mass killings that are taking place everywhere, but that is unrealistic; meaning not the better choice. Indeed, the better choice is to leave well enough alone.

I kinda surprised that I disagree with a lot of what these people are saying. One point I hear all the time is that Gaddafi was going to "massacre" thousands of people. When did he threaten this? Seems to me his goal has always been to stop an armed insurrection. The real mistake seems to have been made when the Libyan "protesters" quickly/suspiciously picked up arms against the government. Did Gaddafi do something worse than the Bahrain and Yemen governments, who were firing machine-guns into crowds of unarmed protesters?

And then... the west attacks Lybia and continues its support for Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Yemen. Giving Al-Qaeda's violent philosophy another shot at success.

ie: Burma, Ivory Coast, Bahrain, Yemen, Sudan... >> ^JAPR:

We only intervene if we have other interests or stand to gain something. We use these positive reasons for intervening in something as a reasonable screen, but ultimately, we just do what the fuck we want and don't care about shit.

On the whole "going to war in Libya is unconstitutional" score, I think Yglesias has it right when he says it's congress's abdication of power rather than a Presidential power-grab.

I don't mind if something changes and we generally see Congress assert and enforce their sole control of the power to declare war, but I do mind if it just turns into the casus belli for Republicans to "impeach" Obama for doing what every post-WWII President has done without consequence.

On the specific merits of military intervention in Libya, I don't buy that this is about helping Libyans. I don't doubt that there are many people who believe that's what this is about inside the administration. I might even believe Obama himself has been convinced of this. I personally think that if Libya didn't have oil, then the very prospect of intervention never would've been seriously raised in the White House.

If it is for humanitarian reasons, then I think we need a formal code of ethics and conduct for these sorts of things that would explain why Libya is in need of urgent intervention, and why Darfur, Iran, Bahrain, North Korea, Myanmar, etc. aren't.

>> ^NetRunner:

To me it seems pretty obvious why Libya was urgent for us to get involved in, while not intervening in neighboring countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemmen, etc.).
OIL.
Everything in the economic world stayed curiously stable through all the unrest in the middle east, until Libya's oil supply burped for a second. Then everything went haywire on the markets, gas prices immediately jumped like $0.50, and the Dow plunged.
Now I see that today we had a near 200 point rally after the news that we're going to be liberating Libya.
These events are not unrelated. Obama got his marching orders, and then he issued them to the UN, who sent in the missles, bombs, and little kids with guns.
Wall Street is all cheshire smiles today, fat and happy with the knowledge that once more worthless blood will be traded for precious oil.


http://www.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm

They constitute less than 3% of our oil in the US, not that big of a deal in that respect. In raw crude, it is less than 2%.

To me it seems pretty obvious why Libya was urgent for us to get involved in, while not intervening in neighboring countries (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemmen, etc.).

OIL.

Everything in the economic world stayed curiously stable through all the unrest in the middle east, until Libya's oil supply burped for a second. Then everything went haywire on the markets, gas prices immediately jumped like $0.50, and the Dow plunged.

Now I see that today we had a near 200 point rally after the news that we're going to be liberating Libya.

These events are not unrelated. Obama got his marching orders, and then he issued them to the UN, who sent in the missles, bombs, and little kids with guns.

Wall Street is all cheshire smiles today, fat and happy with the knowledge that once more worthless blood will be traded for precious oil.