Are for that special someone in your life that you want to bomb the living shit out of and spread their entrails all over the fucking bleeding Christmas tree while watching the blood ooze down off the pine needles onto the neatly wrapped presents below. Sound a bit much? Well unfortunately we don't have any Youtube videos, or Tweets from the Pakistani and Afghan weddings that were hit by Raytheon's Remotely Operated Drone technology though I do know that the guys who operate the Predator technology are having psychological problems because taking out innocent people a couple of continents away with a joystick and a couple of beers on the side (no spliffs) before heading home to tuck the kids into bed and kiss their foreheads is not working out.
The good news is you can now follow the latest military industrial complex social meeja superstars Raytheon on twitter or follow on Facebook. I thought I was missing the obvious or something when I stumbled across their website and noted that they actively encourage sharing of their media releases including updates on the latest iphone app that can be used in modern warfare situations.
This company were creating killing machines long before the CIA's recruiting and funding of the mujahedin in Afghanstan came back to haunt the United States of America (thumps clenched right fist to flag loving heart) on 9/11 as home command fighter jets had their lines of communication scrambled long enough to see the twin towers implode vertically (Queue The Beatles: I get by with a little help from my friends), a full hour and a twenty minutes before the next attack on the nervous system of the worlds most sopisticated military headquarters the Pentagon.
If you didn't know by now that military intelligence (and all the other spooks and peddlers of fear) is an insult to the intelligence then it's down to shitty ol' moi with freedom fries in hand to share that Raytheon are the people who now make dollars out of misery with their latest sexy iphone app while the enemy they continually build up before trying to hack down (it's just business) are currently hacking into the video feeds of the war drones flying long distant remote over the hills of Afghanistan (and Pakistan) and are now only a tweet away: Pimping their latest software.
I welcome the military industrial complex' coming out party into social media. Transparency can only be a good thing. Which allows me to say this. Get a fucking grip America. They don't hate your freedoms. They despise the fork tongued, rattle tail, snakeskin salesmen and their utter, utter contempt for anyone elses freedom to have a life. They bury their infant corpses the day after a wedding (time and again) while the US goverment deliberates over whether to pay the Taliban off, now that woman's rights have slipped down the priority list, while bribing the current corrupt and unloved but installed dictator who has an opium druglord brother on the CIA payroll.
If you tolerate this.
The Angolan Civil War was a major civil conflict in the Southern African state of Angola, beginning in 1975 and continuing, with some interludes, until 2002. The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in November 1975. Prior to this, a decolonisation conflict had taken place in 1974--75, following the Angolan War of Independence. The Civil War was primarily a struggle for power between two former liberation movements, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). At the same time, it served as a surrogate battleground for the Cold War, due to heavy intervention by major opposing powers such as the Soviet Union and the United States.
Each organisation had different roots in the Angolan social fabric and mutually incompatible leaderships, despite their sharing the aim of ending colonial occupation. Although both the MPLA and UNITA had socialist leanings, for the purpose of mobilising international support they posed as "Marxist-Leninist" and "anti-communist", respectively. A third movement, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), having fought the MPLA alongside UNITA during the war for independence and the decolonization conflict, played almost no role in the Civil War. Additionally, the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), an association of separatist militant groups, fought for the independence of the province of Cabinda from Angola.
The 27-year war can be divided roughly into three periods of major fighting -- between 1975 and 1991, 1992 and 1994, and 1998 and 2002 -- broken up by fragile periods of peace. By the time the MPLA finally achieved victory in 2002, an estimated 500,000 people had been killed and over one million internally displaced. The war devastated Angola's infrastructure, and dealt severe damage to the nation's public administration, economic enterprises, and religious institutions.
The Angolan Civil War reached such dimensions due to the combination of Angola's violent internal dynamics and massive foreign intervention. Both the Soviet Union and the United States considered the conflict critical to the global balance of power and to the outcome of the Cold War, and they and their allies put significant effort into making it a proxy war between their two power blocs. The Angolan Civil War ultimately became one of the bloodiest, longest, and most prominent armed conflicts of the Cold War. Moreover, the Angolan conflict became entangled with the Second Congo War in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as with the Namibian War of Independence.
President of the United States Gerald Ford approved covert aid to UNITA and the FNLA through Operation IA Feature on July 18, 1975, despite strong opposition from officials in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ford told William Colby, the Director of Central Intelligence, to establish the operation, providing an initial US$6 million. He granted an additional $8 million on July 27 and another $25 million in August.
Two days before the program's approval, Nathaniel Davis, the Assistant Secretary of State, told Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State, that he believed maintaining the secrecy of IA Feature would be impossible. Davis correctly predicted the Soviet Union would respond by increasing involvement in the Angolan conflict, leading to more violence and negative publicity for the United States. When Ford approved the program, Davis resigned. John Stockwell, the CIA's station chief in Angola, echoed Davis' criticism saying the success required the expansion of the program, but its size already exceeded what could be hidden from the public eye. Davis' deputy, former U.S. ambassador to Chile Edward Mulcahy, also opposed direct involvement. Mulcahy presented three options for U.S. policy towards Angola on May 13, 1975. Mulcahy believed the Ford administration could use diplomacy to campaign against foreign aid to the communist MPLA, refuse to take sides in factional fighting, or increase support for the FNLA and UNITA. He warned however that supporting UNITA would not sit well with Mobutu Sese Seko, the president of Zaire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angolan_civil_war
Never confuse my criticism of the United States as anything other than a love for what America does better than anyone else on the planet. I can't believe my luck that there are four episodes of Emilio de Antonio on "Alternative Views" on Youtube.
Emilio de Antonio is interesting because he grew up in the Kennedy milieu in fact he was a class mate of Kennedy at Harvard.
