here's a link to a survey of american foreign policy that doesn't get enough publicity.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/unholy_trinity/

in brief, the cia has been in the torture and murder business since the 50's. anyone who opposes american policy in south or central america, in south east asia, or now in the middle east, was/is liable to be connected to electrical implements, or beaten, or shot, or thrown from helicopters. many just 'disappeared'.

it's going on today. it is the cause of anti-american terrorism. terrorists are people recruited to a cause which even the simplest can understand: resistance to foreign murderers.

nothing to do with us? if you hold his coat while some serial torturer and murderer amuses himself, you will suffer his fate when he is caught. less abstractly, the new 'anti-terrorist' laws which curtail civil freedoms are a penalty for holding america's coat. worse penalties will come, for america has stored up hatred that will not go away, and will spill over onto coat-holders.

the american alliance was never necessary, and has become a source of shame and danger.

Yes agreed. Pilger's War on Democracy is a good example of this, although he does champion the cause of some fairly questionable characters like chavez. Chavez appears to have good intentions on some counts like alleviating poverty, but also starting to come across as power-hungry.

didnt get in to link, just got a car ad.

me too. but if you click the 'enter salon' button,in upper right corner, voila.

I think that only the die-hard clingers onto their own sense of propaganderized (it's a word, shut it) bleated reality would deny such a statement. It's funny how originally that idea was that "they" hate our way of life, and beliefs, when in reality it is merely a massive cosmic boomerang of negative karma that came whistling back and clocked western civilisation smack between the eyes.

" Things are so freewheeling that Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz -- who, at his perch at Harvard would undoubtedly be outraged if he were to be tortured -- thinks that the practice needs to be regulated, as if it were a routine medical act. He has suggested empowering judges to issue "warrants" that would allow interrogators to insert "sterile needles" underneath fingernails "to cause excruciating pain without endangering life." "

sounds like my type of a guy... A responsible torturer. unbelievable.

We can easily propagate the lie that only American torture is horrific and inhumane. We need balance in what actualy happens in all countries regarding torture in foreign policy. At least if a case on inhuman torture treatment can be established in America then the whole world will know.

Take a look at this. Australians are clueless when it comes to knowledge of the CIA and it's fascist, dishonourable foreign policy, that includes the backstabbing of it's allies.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/11/99757.php

"The Hidden Australia - A secret recent History of the Whitlam Dismissal

by Author Unknown Friday November 18, 2005 at 08:13 AM

Whilst the only actual direct piece of evidence of CIA involvement in the 1975 Dismissal comes from Chris Boyce (of "Falcon and the Snowman" fame) who claimed during his esponiage trial that the whole reason why he decided to start spying against the US was because of a misdirected CIA message he received at TRW's Black Room, which acknowledged the involvement of the CIA, there are other pointers.
..........
You have to remember that Australia was a highly important part of the CIA's world-wide intelligence setup. It has thousands of CIA employees stationed here [Australia]
..........
Boyce also revealed that the CIA had infiltrated Australian unions, and had been "manipulating the leadership". They had also apparently, when it suited them, "suppressed their strikes", particularly those involving the railways and airports when they had held up deliveries of the Agency's deliveries of equipment to their installations. In addition some of the unions had been the most vocal in their opposition to the creation of the secret bases in the first place.(17)

To this, should also be added that other aspect, now well known, of the CIA's involvement in Australia: the Nugen-Hand Bank. The Nugen-Hand Merchant Bank of Sydney, is now known to have been a CIA front bank used to launder money.
"

And this:

"In 1996, the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a congressional report estimating that: "Hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world in the face of frequently sophisticated efforts by foreign governments to catch them. A safe estimate is that several hundred times every day (easily 100,000 times a year) DO officers engage in highly illegal activities (according to foreign law)"