Kill World Globalization
- Thread starter LoboUivante
- Start date
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
What's wrong with a little globalization? I like living in a country in which I can eat hummous and sushi for dinner while drinking a Swedish pear soda, wearing Israeli-cotton socks, watching the BBC, and then go out in a downtown in which everybody smells good.
Obyeybyeogone
New Metal Member
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
Now i'll try to take advatage of his thread which in the long run is my responsability 
...
The USA must be a great coutry for their tenants, lot's of different cultures, women with the height of nasketballl players, Chinatown's fast delivery, people actually WIN lawsuits against major corporations but damm.... i really mean DAMM, stop patroling the world. (i know this kid of threads are way to often, but i got to make use of this)
...The USA must be a great coutry for their tenants, lot's of different cultures, women with the height of nasketballl players, Chinatown's fast delivery, people actually WIN lawsuits against major corporations but damm.... i really mean DAMM, stop patroling the world. (i know this kid of threads are way to often, but i got to make use of this)
VangelicSurgeon
Three Star General
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
Hah, I totally disagree, and I'm a pacifist. I think it's selfish of us to think that American lives are worth more than the lives of people in other countries who are getting totally fucked. The U.S. stayed out of WWII for too long because it was "just the Jews" getting fucked up. America's a wealthy-ass country and we shouldn't shy away from using that wealth and power to help other countries. Just because they're full of browner-skinned people doesn't mean we should huddle in our country/AKA money bin throwing coins up in the air and laughing while despots test poison gas on their ethnic minorities.
I say if something's wrong, whoever's rich and powerful enough should try to fix it, regardless of if it happens in New Jersey or Namibia or Syria or wherever.
I say if something's wrong, whoever's rich and powerful enough should try to fix it, regardless of if it happens in New Jersey or Namibia or Syria or wherever.
mindspell
vvv Jake's ass vvv
The problem is not getting involved in conflicts abroad. The problem is choosing which conflicts it wants for its own commercial or visibility benefits. There is numerous human rights instances where the US didn't do a thing and others where it got involved right away. For example, the Timor situationa couple years back. The exact same genocide was happening for the last 25 years and nobody but the Austalians and the UN got involved in pressuring the indonesian governement in stopping it. All of a sudden the US realized that it had been a little while they got involved in something interesting. Bam! Pressure on the UN to send troops, to restore democracy, give the Timor its independance blah, blah, blah.
Why didn't the US put pressure on Russia to stop the massacres in Tchetchnia? Why did they got involved so quick when it came to Yougoslavia? Without the approval of the UN I might add.
Now its its grand war against terrorism, Bush will lead an already pissed off muslim world into even more violence. I have a few statistics for you people. The US give in average a total of 2 billion dollars, excluding arms, in grants to Israel each year. 2 Billion for 6 million Israelites. That's a lot of money per head ladies and gentlemens. Despite being one of the smallest group in the middle-east Israel has the biggest and most technologically advanced army in the region.
Palestinians are not much better mind you but what choice they do really have against an army that strong? They throw rock and blow themselves to make a point, which nobidy but them seem to understand as they all dismis it as terrorism, which it is but its more than that.
Anyway....
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
The U.S. or another wealthy country should have gotten involved in those conflicts (I'm thinking Rwanda, too). You can't make the argument "America didn't do enough so it should not do anything!".
The Palestinians are not much better than the Israelis? Damn straight, they're quite a bit worse. The poor Palestinians are the assholes of the Arab world (they assassinated the [Arab] king of Jordan a little while back) and the only reason their cause is being backed now is because they're seen as tools to hurt the U.S. and Israel. Not one Arab ruler really gives a damn about the Palestinians--why do you think Jordan, Egypt, and Syria have done everything possible to keep the Palestinians disenfranchised? When something goes wrong in their countries, they can cry "Uhh...ignore that! Look what the blood-drinking Jews are doing to our Palestinian brethren! ATTACK!" Good ol' misdirection has kept many an Arab despot in power when his country has been on the edge of revolt...
The Palestinians are not much better than the Israelis? Damn straight, they're quite a bit worse. The poor Palestinians are the assholes of the Arab world (they assassinated the [Arab] king of Jordan a little while back) and the only reason their cause is being backed now is because they're seen as tools to hurt the U.S. and Israel. Not one Arab ruler really gives a damn about the Palestinians--why do you think Jordan, Egypt, and Syria have done everything possible to keep the Palestinians disenfranchised? When something goes wrong in their countries, they can cry "Uhh...ignore that! Look what the blood-drinking Jews are doing to our Palestinian brethren! ATTACK!" Good ol' misdirection has kept many an Arab despot in power when his country has been on the edge of revolt...
mindspell
vvv Jake's ass vvv
Notice that I didn't make that argument. I simply said that what bothered me was the fac that the US chooses its battle for the wrong reasons. That I have a problem with.
I don't think you can make that argument. The other Arab countries are not doing anything because they don't want their butt kicked for 2 reasons: 1.Their army is far inferior the the Israelis' 2.They know that the US will get involved and will kick their butt. Mentionning Egypt is pointless because they are perhaps the most pussy of a country I have seen, they always agree with everynody even though they contradict themselves all the time. Jordan and Syria are very small countries with very small armies and hav no chance against Israel. The only country in the middle east that could, eventually if Bush doesn't attack them first, do something about Israel is Iraq. Why did Iraq did not do anything in the eighties? Because they were US allies against Iran... I might also point you that the most feared leader in the middle east, Saddam, was put in place by the US after an orchestrated killing of Iraq's king by the US secret services... That makes you re-think US' foreign policy....
FuSoYa
Lunarian
I think that often many Americans let social relevance get in the way of objective assessment of the israel-palestine conflict... meaning, very basically, people don't want to believe that Israel is 'righter' than Palestine because that can be construed as a Pro-US/pro-imperialism point of view. These people allow their dislike of or disagreement with US policy or goverment officials and their fear of being seen as supporters of, perhaps, Republicanism (or as opposers of Libertarianism) to keep them from seeing the objective situation of said conflict.
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
1. By doing something I don't necessarily mean "war". Even so, when this happened in the Six-Day War, the combined Arab might was much greater than Israeli might; they also had better weaponry (thanks to the Soviets); shit, Egypt ALONE had more forces than Israel.
2. They did the exact same thing in 1967, which led to the Six-Day War, when that wasn't true (the U.S. refused to aid Israel even though the Soviet Union made promises to aid Egypt and Syria and the Arabs under their command [Lebanon, Jordan's Arab Legion, Iraq, etc.]). Jordan was never happier than the day they gave the West Bank to Israel, saying "The Palestinians are now Israel's problem." The past century of Middle Eastern politics sees the Palestinian issue ignored by Arab governments until it's politically advantageous for them to use it to take the heat off their repressive and ineffective administrations. Iraq's king (not the one immediately prior to Saddam) and prime minister were dismembered by a mob in Baghdad in 1958 because they failed to redirect their peoples' anger. Gamel Abd-Nasser, the head of Egypt, successfully let the pressure off of his boiling country by invoking "the Palestinians" which restored respect to his regime and helped him avoid a similar fate.
Jordan doesn't really want to attack Israel. They were the only Western-aligned country during the Cold War and the recipient of U.S. weaponry; the only reason they ended up fighting the Six-Day War is because Egypt and Syria's state radios continually broadcast messages that the King of Jordan was a Jew, a Jew conspirator, why wasn't he doing anything about the Palestinian issue, overthrow him! His hold on power was so tenuous he had to sign a treaty turning command of Jordan's Arab Legion over to Egypt's command in order to restore some respect in the Arab world, and Egypt, of course, promptly had them join their attack on Israel. (he described his logic along the lines of "If we do not attack Israel and the Arabs win, I will be lynched as a traitor to the Arab cause; if the Arabs lose I will be blamed for not sending my legions"...lose-lose situation)
I would say that because the U.S. is responsible for putting a horrific monster like Saddam in place, that only doubles their obligation to remove him.
I agree that the U.S.'s motivations are often less than noble, but there are dozens of motivational layers for every country's (heck, person's) actions, and INVARIABLY some of them are selfish. The trick is to guide policy so you end up DOING the right thing.
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
I think you're exactly right. I think the hugest mistake of a lot of left-wingers was being reactionary and saying "The conservatives are pro-Israel so dammit, I'm gonna be pro-Palestinian". Now it's an issue you're expected to march in lockstep with them with if you're liberal, and I'm sick of getting tarred as right-wing simply because I think targeting babies and civilians with suicide bombs is evil. I mean, if that's not, what the heck is?
mindspell
vvv Jake's ass vvv
I agree with that. Israel fought a very intelligent war in the six-day war. They immediatly destroyed most of the Arab's air forces very early with their own air attack. That basically make both Jordan and Syria very tentative for the rest of the war. After getting their ass beaten like that, its no wonder the Arabs are very careful in attacking Israel.
The Palestinians have been known throughout history for doing their own thing, without much regard to the rest of the Arab world. Case in point: Arafat and his happy gang invading Lebanon. The fact remains that the Palestinian-Israel is a huge thron in everybody's side. Isreal is the lone orange in the apple basket and that bothers the rest of the muslim world, and since the Israelis are not particularily subtle or nice to "their borthers" Palestinian it becomes easy to use that for an excuse.
Good point.
I don't know what makes you think that he is such a monster. He is a dictator like there a bunch of in the world. He just doesn't want to listen to anyone else than himself. More to that is that he has means because his country is pretty rich. In the eighties it was Khadafi that the americans were afraid of. If I remember well he his still in function in Libya and is still not a very sane person. Yet as soon as the USSR pulled funding he was considered less dangerous. What makes you think that he doesn't have bacteriological warfare back there? It really is the same thing, Saddam is just the new fear factor that the government uses to keep americans interested and supportive of their foreign policy.
Sometimes it is the right thing sometimes it isn't. That doesn't mean you have to be supportive of everything they do. Why not follow UN policy where ther is more than one country that has their say in the security council? The Afganistan raid had its merits, making a point that the US would not be pushed around, the extent in which they did it I have a problem. They even bombed Canadians for christ's sake! They completly destroyed a country that was already in pretty bad shape. Why don't you just pour some salt all over so that nothing grows anymore, like Alexandre the Great?
My 2 cents
mindspell
vvv Jake's ass vvv
Are you, by any chance, saying that I do that? First of all I might point out that I am not American ( which you might have figured out by the way I sometimes strangely construct my sentences, english is a seconfd language here). Second I have been called a right-wing fascist so many times I don't count anymore. I am an outsider looking in from all standpoints. I am not jew or muslim, nor am I even close to want to become an American. I think I view the conflict with a relative objectivity and view the American foreign policy with its merits and failures. Internal American politics bore me very much because I don't think American have much choice (Republicans are from the right and Democrats are center-right, and no the green party isn't really an option its more of a release
Anyway....
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
Why do I always get sucked into these Mideast arguments?
Eh, sort of. Egypt's first action after seeing their entire air force--pride of the Arab world--destroyed was to immediately cable the other Arab countries saying "Attack! Attack! We have destroyed the Jew air force and we are at the gates of Tel Aviv! We will meet you there!" Thankfully for the Arabs, Egypt wasn't the only state with a culture of lies, and Syria responded with something along the lines of "We're on our way, brother!" And then they sat out the next five days of the war. Only poor Jordan took them at their word, and were very confused when their forces got 0WN3D by Israeli Mysteres.
Ah, Saddam, how evil art thou? Let me count the ways.
Saddam's loyalist guard is divided into two factions. One night, Faction A crept into Faction B's sleeping quarters and put guns to their heads, awakening them. "It's a coup, brother, are you with us?" they whispered. Anyone who answered in the affirmative received a bullet in the brain.
Saddam periodically shelled the cities of the secular Kurdish government in the north as part of his long-running campaign to ethnically cleanse Iraq of non-Arabs. One evening, the Kurds noticed Iraqi helicopters taking photographs overhead. Shelling began; they retreated to their bomb shelters, as usual. Then it was oddly silent except for some clinks outside. Then people began to die.
Saddam had dropped canisters of deadly gases on the Kurds. Spitefully, he had shelled them first, meaning they would be in their basements, meaning the heavier-than-air gas would kill many more of them. Horribly, the gas also contained aflaxin, which is a toxin that no other nation has weaponized. Why? Because it's a shitty weapon. It doesn't kill troops or disable them or anything. What it does is cause, years down the line, horrifically malignant liver cancers in children. There is NO REASON to use aflaxin as anything other than a long-term Holocaust-style cleansing campaign.
Worse, when the surviving Kurds emerged from their shelters, they found the helicopters had returned, taking photographs. It became clear that the Iraqis had created a careful map of the village and were now mapping exactly how far dead bodies lay from each canister drop. The entire gassing campaign against the Kurds was, ultimately, an experiment in the effectiveness of unconventional warfare. Saddam was practising for Israel.
Saddam ripped Kurdish graves from the ground and illegalized Kurdish names and required all existing Kurds to change their names to Arabic ones; hes trying to wipe out all evidence they ever existed. Millions of Iraqis have died from malnutrition and lack of medical care, which he blames on the "American and Jew sanctions". Those sanctions do not prohibit food and medicine and the like from entering the country, however; Saddam takes what comes in and sells it to finance his war machine.
Man, I could go on about Saddam for ages. He's a baby Hitler and if his plans for Israel go through Hitler will be asking him for Evil Lessons in the afterlife.
Well, no shit, I'm a big proponent of take-each-case-individually.
The UN is full of schleps. For Christ's sake, Syria is on the human rights board! Syria, one of the few nations in the world whose alignment I would clearly peg as "Chaotic Evil".
I think you're maybe falling victim to anti-American propaganda. Of all the American military activities of the past few decades, the Afghanistan one was one of the most just. It was destroying an evil, repressive, religious regime (before September 11th, we liberals had been criticizing the conservatives for NOT wiping out the Taliban) and it inflicted a staggeringly low number of civilian casualties. Afghanistan's only chance at being anything other than Ass-Fucked Nation of the Century lay in getting the Taliban toppled. Each action needs to be seen separately and you can't confuse the Afghanistan activity with unjust activities in the past, such as American involvement in South and Central American countries.
Eh, sort of. Egypt's first action after seeing their entire air force--pride of the Arab world--destroyed was to immediately cable the other Arab countries saying "Attack! Attack! We have destroyed the Jew air force and we are at the gates of Tel Aviv! We will meet you there!" Thankfully for the Arabs, Egypt wasn't the only state with a culture of lies, and Syria responded with something along the lines of "We're on our way, brother!" And then they sat out the next five days of the war. Only poor Jordan took them at their word, and were very confused when their forces got 0WN3D by Israeli Mysteres.
Ah, Saddam, how evil art thou? Let me count the ways.
Saddam's loyalist guard is divided into two factions. One night, Faction A crept into Faction B's sleeping quarters and put guns to their heads, awakening them. "It's a coup, brother, are you with us?" they whispered. Anyone who answered in the affirmative received a bullet in the brain.
Saddam periodically shelled the cities of the secular Kurdish government in the north as part of his long-running campaign to ethnically cleanse Iraq of non-Arabs. One evening, the Kurds noticed Iraqi helicopters taking photographs overhead. Shelling began; they retreated to their bomb shelters, as usual. Then it was oddly silent except for some clinks outside. Then people began to die.
Saddam had dropped canisters of deadly gases on the Kurds. Spitefully, he had shelled them first, meaning they would be in their basements, meaning the heavier-than-air gas would kill many more of them. Horribly, the gas also contained aflaxin, which is a toxin that no other nation has weaponized. Why? Because it's a shitty weapon. It doesn't kill troops or disable them or anything. What it does is cause, years down the line, horrifically malignant liver cancers in children. There is NO REASON to use aflaxin as anything other than a long-term Holocaust-style cleansing campaign.
Worse, when the surviving Kurds emerged from their shelters, they found the helicopters had returned, taking photographs. It became clear that the Iraqis had created a careful map of the village and were now mapping exactly how far dead bodies lay from each canister drop. The entire gassing campaign against the Kurds was, ultimately, an experiment in the effectiveness of unconventional warfare. Saddam was practising for Israel.
Saddam ripped Kurdish graves from the ground and illegalized Kurdish names and required all existing Kurds to change their names to Arabic ones; hes trying to wipe out all evidence they ever existed. Millions of Iraqis have died from malnutrition and lack of medical care, which he blames on the "American and Jew sanctions". Those sanctions do not prohibit food and medicine and the like from entering the country, however; Saddam takes what comes in and sells it to finance his war machine.
Man, I could go on about Saddam for ages. He's a baby Hitler and if his plans for Israel go through Hitler will be asking him for Evil Lessons in the afterlife.
Well, no shit, I'm a big proponent of take-each-case-individually.
The UN is full of schleps. For Christ's sake, Syria is on the human rights board! Syria, one of the few nations in the world whose alignment I would clearly peg as "Chaotic Evil".
I think you're maybe falling victim to anti-American propaganda. Of all the American military activities of the past few decades, the Afghanistan one was one of the most just. It was destroying an evil, repressive, religious regime (before September 11th, we liberals had been criticizing the conservatives for NOT wiping out the Taliban) and it inflicted a staggeringly low number of civilian casualties. Afghanistan's only chance at being anything other than Ass-Fucked Nation of the Century lay in getting the Taliban toppled. Each action needs to be seen separately and you can't confuse the Afghanistan activity with unjust activities in the past, such as American involvement in South and Central American countries.
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
I think a lot of Europeans and Canadians think the same way as the American left, meaning there's a knee-jerk "America must be wrong" attitude. Careful examination shows that they're sometimes right and sometimes wrong. You can separate the moral & intelligent lefties (Christopher Hitchens) from the political dumbasses (Noam Chomsky; damn Noam, I love your shit on transformational linguistics, but you don't have a freakin' clue when it comes to politics).
FuSoYa
Lunarian
You don't have to get defensive, I didn't name names. I've just noticed that it happens, often.
Alex, you know you can go over to Cafe Algiers and ream Chomsky (or have a nice conversation), he goes there and sits and drinks coffee all the time.
xfer
I JERK OFF TO ARCTOPUS
No shit? I shall.
"Excuse me sir, might I have a word with you regarding your theories of structural plosives? Oh, and, by the way, I HOPE YOUR BUDDY MULLAH OMAR LOSES HIS OTHER EYE RAAAAGHHHH!!!"
"Excuse me sir, might I have a word with you regarding your theories of structural plosives? Oh, and, by the way, I HOPE YOUR BUDDY MULLAH OMAR LOSES HIS OTHER EYE RAAAAGHHHH!!!"
