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At 59 minutes ago, adrshepard wrote: You mean "US and Israeli wars," right?

I think a week ago two journalists died in the shelling of Homs. The resulting press coverage encourages voters to approve of their politicians taking action against Syria. Had no journalist been able to enter Homs, the same way no journalist is effectively allowed entry into volatile regions in China such as Tibet or Xinjiang whenever there's trouble, the bombardments would have much sooner faded into obscurity. The same principle applies there too, although, naturally, voters care most about the perceived misdeeds of their own countrymen. You can see that as a reason to restrict press freedom in Western countries, but it would be even better to see this as a reason to encourage press freedom in (semi-)totalitarian countries.

Peace is not something to be maintained at all costs. Sometimes wars are necessary, and people like Manning get in the way of that.

Right, but that's not what this prize is about. You want to award people who start necessary wars, you should institute a Nobel War Prize. What I care about is whether Manning's nomination is justified.

Since everyone here seems to be negative, allow me to defend it: the reason wars today are so much less dirty than in the past is to a large part thanks to the increased journalistic scrutiny that people in the military have to deal with. If I don't know that my country's peacekeepers in, say, the Congo are responding to local uprisings with mass executions and indiscriminate bombardments of villages, then I can't hold the politicians who are ultimately responsbile for their actions accountable. In that case, generals have no incentive not to commit war crimes apart from their own moral compass --- if information comes out after 50 years barely anyone cares anymore. Hence, it is not illogical that the first steps that a society takes towards totalitarianism involve curtailing the free press.

What Manning might have achieved is reminding generals and politicians that they may be held accountable even for actions that remain classified. Since they will be less eager to start wars, there will be more peace, hence the Peace Prize. I understand that what Manning leaked wasn't the hottest stuff around, but he's more than a random whistle-blower. Then again, the one who should get this years's Nobel Peace Prize is, of course, Julian Assange. I can't find if he's been nominated, though, apparently the nomination committee only leaks (lol pun) the names of a few nomiess but keeps the entire list secret.

Does anyone know if Santorum is a young earth creationists or not? Yahoo Answers thinks he is, but if he is, I do'n't know what to make of this comment regarding Iraqi Christians:

"The last thing we want is for them to abandon the land their ancestors have occupied for nearly 7,000 years, forsake the culture they have preserved in that volatile region for all these millennia, and deprive the country, the region, and the world of the positive contributions they could still make if only some space was created for them in Iraqi society."

6,016 years is not "nearly 7,000" and if it was, it would still have to mean that Adam, who lived up to the venerable age of 930 years old, lived in Iraq. Or was this comment just a fuck-up?

At 20 hours ago, adrshepard wrote: By the way, that bbc article is a joke. We're dealing with a nation of essentially children and they criticize us for "mistakes."

Well, it's typical for the region. You can, through cronyism or mismanagement, ruin a business causing 500 employees to lose their jobs, but such a fired employee will not nearly hate you as much as he would if you had personally "humiliated" him in public, for example by asking him a factual question that he couldn't answer in front of his colleagues. The latter mistake is simply considered far more grave than the former.

We can talk about which cultural attitude towards reputation and responsibility makes for the best recipe for prosperity, but it the end it doesn't matter. If the West doesn't want to incur the costs of forcing a mentality change on the Afghans, then you're going to have to deal with these people and their sensitivities.

So, as I hope you all know, Afghanistan has been in a state of uproar the last few days. Some Afghan prisoners allegedly used copies of the Qur'an to secretly transmit messages to each other, and when they were discovered the US forces at the base where they were held had the books burned. Did they want to punish the detainees thinking the punishment would not be discovered by outsiders or were they simply ignorant of what the consequences might be? In any case, Afghans working at the base found the charred remains of the books and five days of rioting and over thirty casualties have been the result. This all comes one-and-a-half month after photographs were leaked of US soldiers pissing on the corpses of Taliban fighters and a year after similar riots sparked by a US pastor burning a copy of the Qur'an. US officials, including Obama, have been falling over themselves to issue apologies and stress that this was not the intention of the US administration.

I guess no one wants to regurgitate last year's 'Afghanistan riots over Qur'an burning' topic. No worries, because I want to focus on the future of Afghanistan. After all, the saddest thing about all this is that almost eight years ago, one could make a thread about how Afghanistan 'still' sucked, and people in such a thread would talk about "the Taliban slowly making a return" and say that Afghanistan is "sure as hell not democratic" --- the situation is arguably even worse than back then. Will we be to make similar BBS topics eight years from now as well? Basically, I can see three possible courses of action in Afghanistan.

Maintain the Status Quo:
With a similar or maybe moderately increased amount of money, the Taliban can be contained in the southern provinces they control now, a corrupt semi-dictatorship of Karzai or the next guy can be kept in charge in the cities and NATO-minded warlords can control the non-Pashto hinterlands and the heroin trade therein. Anti-Western resentment will linger, and social and economic process will be marginal. Every now and then, there will be another big riot over something seemingly silly. This is all assuming that there are no major external events that would have an impact on the occupation of Afghanistan, such as a debt default by some of the major Western powers that are currently in Afghanistan, or a collapse of the government in Pakistan or something similar that would see troops in the region reshuffled.

Pull Out:
The Karzai government will collapse, and Afghanistan will devolve into a civil war in which the Taliban will probably end up on top. Oil exports will drop drastically. The initial goal of the invasion of Afghanistan - stripping the al-Qaeda terrorists who masterminded the 9/11 attacks of a safe haven - will no longer be fulfilled. The US could shift to a more Israeli style of dealing with terrorism, by retaliating against terror attacks with drone strikes. However, Afghanistan is a much better place to hide than the 140 sq. mile Gaza Strip. One could wonder how effective Israel's Gaza Strip policy is, anyway.

'Beat' the Taliban:
Do what NATO forces have been trying for the past ten years, but do it effectively. Stalin managed to quell resistance in Chechnya, so Afghanistan must be conquerable as well, it just hasn't been tried in earnest yet. First off, the US will need to increase its military presence in Afghanistan four- or fivefold (at least). This should be possible, given the pull-out from Iraq, otherwise more soldiers need to be recruited or a draft should be instated. The US should basically turn Afghanistan into a big prison: wall off the cities, put up checkpoints every few miles on the roads, force all Afghans to carry ID with them at all times and register when they leave designated residence areas. Mass relocation of civilians should not really be necessary, except maybe in the pro- Taliban areas in the south, where trouble-making villages can be moved as a whole to the north where they're surrounded by other ethnicities. Note that success is again by no means guaranteed: the French were reasonably brutal during the Algeria War, but eight years and a million Algerian casualties (mostly civilians) later, they were forced to pull out nonetheless.

Which one of these three options do you think is the best for the West and/or Afghanistan?

At 5 days ago, Ranger2 wrote: Here are the facts: (...)
-Iran is building nuclear weapons despite sanctions. It is not even hiding them like Saddam did; it is openly flaunting it.

U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb:

Even as the United NationsâEUTM nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of AmericaâEUTMs 16 intelligence agencies. (...)

In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances. (...)

Yet some intelligence officials and outside analysts believe there is another possible explanation for IranâEUTMs enrichment activity, besides a headlong race to build a bomb as quickly as possible. They say that Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call "strategic ambiguity." Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions. (...)

"I think the Iranians want the capability, but not a stockpile," said Kenneth C. Brill, a former United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency who also served as director of the intelligence communityâEUTMs National Counterproliferation Center from 2005 until 2009. Added a former intelligence official: "The Indians were a screwdriver turn away from having a bomb for many years. The Iranians are not that close." (...)

IranâEUTMs efforts to hide its nuclear facilities and to deceive the West about its activities have also intensified doubts. But some American analysts warn that such behavior is not necessarily proof of a weapons program. They say that one mistake the C.I.A. made before the war in Iraq was to assume that because Saddam Hussein resisted weapons inspections âEU" acting as if he were hiding something âEU" it meant that he had a weapons program.

As Mr. Kay explained, "The amount of evidence that you were willing to go with in 2002 is not the same evidence you are willing to accept today."

At 9 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote: why I said Japan was the perfect combination of factors that allowed us to nationbuild successfully.

No, because if we go back to my analogy, this would say that the apartment building of the Japanese nation also had to be built from the ground up, just that the conditions were more favourable, like that the region would less often be hit by mudslides or hurricanes. While what I'm saying is that a lot of the work had been done already by the natives, work that they can claim as their own.

It may be semantical nitpicking, and I'm not even sure if we disagree about details or core issues, but I do think that the degree to which the peoples can claim their governments as their own is important (but not that important) in shame/honour cultures such as Japan or, say, the Arab countries. That's why I think that political Islam has a big edge over Western-imposed ideologies sich as liberalism or "patriotism"(i.e. loyalty to the mere lines on a map that are countries such as Iraq and Jordan) in the Middle East: it is indigenous. But I mostly think that there's a big craving for an indigenous political ideology because their economies are doing like crap, which is also simply because there are too many young people for a limited job market.

Of course, the shame/honour culture part ties into what you write later on about willingness to surrender. I agree that there's a cultural element, but I'm not convinced that Japan and countries in the Middle East are so different culturally regarding this issue. And I'm too much of a materialist to put a lot of importance on culture, and to see it as an almost immovable thing. I believe that, generally, cultural change follows economic change.

There are numerous things engrained in the psyche of modern Japan that were brainchildren of SCAP.

Hmm, what specifically did you have in mind when you wrote this?

However, I don't like you analogy.

Well, I do.
*sticks out tongue*

It indicates that Japan was somehow either more advanced or more ready. That was not the case at all.

If Japanese farmers were all illiterate and staunchly conservative, and a US-installed regime had to force social change in the heartlands without the help of a self-bred middle class that wanted stability more than anything, I think the late '40s and '50s in Japan would have looked radically different. Not saying that it couldn't have been done, but I guess not in a way that's palatable to modern-day Western voters.

It's purely cultural. Japan has a history of very Western style warfare. That is, when armies won or lost the people altered their allegiances accordingly. While surrender was considered taboo, Japanese history is full of situations in which surrender was common. Turkic (and Vietnamese) military history prides itself on never ending guerilla warfare. In these cultures, there was no surrender and to change allegiances was worse than death.

Yeah, I don't know. The Turkic peoples of Central Asia were also brought into line by the Russians, before and during the USSR period. But if you're right than this bodes well for a US occupation of Iran, because the Persians have a history of being occupied and transformed by foreigners, although in the end they always rewin their indepedence.

At 8 hours ago, Th-e wrote: It would also encourage more Al Qaeda terrorists to come to Iran,

Al-Qaeda is ferociously anti-Shi'a. Al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda in Iraq focused nearly all their effort on blowing up Iraqi Shi'ites. A Western occupation will probably be good for al-Qaeda because Western forces are probably less able than the Iranian government to control the Sunni-dominated border region with Afghainstan and Pakistan. People should not think that just because George W. Bush coined the term "War on Terror", this means that there's one unified front of terrorists to fight against. For example, if the Assad regime in Syria were to fall, this would be a short-term victory in the conflict with Iran, but a long-term blow in the war against al-Qaeda.

At 13 hours ago, streetbob wrote: He even contradicted himself once, when he spoke about Israel not having the right to exist

He did not say that. You misheard him. If he had publicly questioned Israel's right to exist, the shit storm would be so massive that I'd see feces fall out of the sky on this side of the Atlantic.

At 3 hours ago, aviewaskewed wrote:

You'd have to provide a video of him mentioning Israel not having the right to exist before i'd believe that one.

It's midway down the page

No, he says that Hamas and Fatah both say "we agree, Israel has no right to exist". Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, thinks that questioning Israel's right to exist is a good reason to not pressure Israel into a peace process.

At 7 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote: Actually, we did build Japan. Having read much of the SCAP reports written during the occupation of Japan, this is most definitely the case. It is also widely rumored (by very reliable folks) that The Japanese Constitution was MacArthur's baby, and that he possibly even wrote much of it.

Rereading my post, I'm not sure if I made my point clear enough, so allow me to reformulate: the Japanese as a nation in '45 were a multi-storey apartment building with a damaged roof, where the only "building" that the US needed to do was fix the roof. In Afghanistan, '01, they had to build it from the ground up, in a swampland. The challenge levels are almost uncomparably different.

At 7 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote: Actually, we did build Japan.

Nation building really should mean nation building and not country building or state building. You can build a well but if the people end up in a tribal argument over who gets to use it when it'll only serve as a source of conflict. You can build a girls' school but if the people refuse to send their daughters to it then it's a waste of concrete. You can tell some installed leaders to write a pro-democratic semi-secular constitution but if the people don't care about these principles then it's dead letter from the start.

The Japanese had, as a nation, long evolved socially and intellectually beyond tribalism. When their country was wrecked, the people knew how to rebuild. Same in Germany. Afghanistan on the other hand, despite some experiments with modernism in the cities in the '50s and '60s, has an enormous heartland in which the people did no go through a hundred+ years of social evolution, and after thirty years of gruesome conflict even the people of the cities are utterly traumatised. The US did not have to "build" the 100+ years of evolution in Japan that it will need to build in Afghanistan. I'm not even sure to what extent you can force social change on shame cultures if you don't do it brutally. The Japanese could see the post-war regime as the continuation of what they had acheived themselves during the Meiji era. A lot of Afghan clerics and tribal leaders on the other hand just see Western attempts to force gender equality and freedom of speech on their country as a humiliation.

Iran is actually interesting in this respect, because it has a decent self-educated middle class and, unlike Iraq, it is largely a nation-state. But yeah, if the US invade Iran, I don't think that the Iranian people will ever see the casus belli as even remotely just, and considering the large uncontrollable border regions with Shi'a-minded Iraq I don't think there's a lot to achieve. If the US force the 'Green' pro-democracy movement in Iran to form the core of the new government then it will permanently mark them with the stain of a collaborator.

The earliest insurgency that the US will have to quell, though, might well be the one of the (now US-minded) Sunni Jihadis near the Afghan and Pakistani border. As Sunnis, they can count on a lot of foreign support. As Shi'ites, this will be harder for Iran. They only have the Hezbollah and Iraq as natural allies, with Alawite-controlled Syria on the verge of collapse.

This is not a response to anyone in particular, but I thought it was relevant to the topic:

Russia is not completely wrong about Syria

Russia has been roundly criticised for vetoing a draft UN Security Council resolution aimed at stopping the violence in Syria and ousting President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow is reluctant to give up on the al-Assad regime for the moment: it has a direct interest in the survival of the regime, which buys its arms and provides a naval base; it is strongly opposed to Western-led interventions, on principle; it believes that Arab revolutions are likely to lead to takeovers by Islamic fundamentalists; and it is still fuming that, after it refrained from vetoing UN Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya âEU" about the protection of civilians âEU" the West abused the resolution by using it to justify regime change.

However, Russian diplomats concede that change is inevitable if the violence in Syria is to be contained. Russia wants a managed transition that preserves its influence. The draft UNSC resolution called for the confinement of the Syrian army to barracks and endorsed the Arab League plan for al-Assad to hand over power to his vice president prior to the holding of elections. Russian diplomats are right to say that such a resolution would have been unenforceable and, if implemented, would have led to the sudden collapse of the Syrian government without a credible alternative to take its place. Anarchy could have ensued. The Kremlin may be playing realpolitik and taking pride in blocking the West, but it has a point.

Western leaders have been sincere in expressing revulsion at the continued crackdown by the Syrian military upon largely peaceful protestors. But their diplomacy has been ineffective. Preferring to issue ultimatums from afar, they have given up on dialogue with the Syrian regime when there is no other viable alternative.

A number of diplomatic rules have been ignored by Western governments in Syria. First, never rule out force publicly even if you have done so privately. (...) Second, the main function of an embassy is to act as a liaison with a host government, even one as odious as that in Damascus. (...) Third, do not encourage regime change without any concept of how, and with what means, such a revolution might come about. (...)

Given the enduring strength and resistance of the Syrian regime, and the lack of any immediate military means to weaken it, it is disappointing that Western countries have all but cut off diplomatic contacts with Damascus. The West should re-start diplomatic dialogue with Syria without pre-conditions. In the end an unsavoury deal such as that made with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen âEU" granting him immunity from prosecution âEU" may be appropriate for key members of the Syrian elite. Western leaders need to grapple with what an acceptable deal could look like. Issuing statements that condemn a regime is easy; but it is tough diplomatic negotiations with the government in Damascus that can best help the Syrian people.

However, there are limits to the role Western diplomacy can play. Although the West can embark on a supportive dialogue, it is now impossible for the West to play a leading role as an intermediary in the conflict. A trusted interlocutor is urgently required to negotiate a credible transition in Syria. Such leadership cannot come from Europe, the United States, the Arab League, or Russia âEU" none of whom are trusted by all sides. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been content to sit on the side-lines, choosing not to deploy his 'good offices' in the manner of his more courageous predecessors. It is time to appoint a UN Special Representative to engage with the regime and opposition alike. Even if his or her proposals are ultimately rejected by Moscow or Washington, some options are better than none.

At 7 hours ago, PsyhcoWalrus wrote: It's also okay to believe that the Jews all descended from the Biblical Abraham and Isaac.

Indeed. Just like it's okay to believe that all Italians descended from the war god Mars.

At 5 hours ago, satanbrain wrote:

At 7 hours ago, lapis wrote: Can you find me a genetic test that can separate a German Jew from a German, a Moroccan Jew from a Moroccan, put the German and Moroccan Jew together but separate both Jews from a Palestinian Arab? Bet you can't.

First - "Two studies by Nebel et al. in 2001 and 2005, based on Y chromosome polymorphic markers, showed that Ashkenazi Jews are more closely related to other Jewish and Middle Eastern groups than to their host populations in Europe ". Second - Ethnic communities in Israel: The genetic blood markers of the Moroccan Jews- "Comparisons with meager data on the neighboring non-Jewish populations do not disclose any resemblance to either Arab or Berber inhabitants of Morocco.".

You're missing the crucial third and fourth steps of what I asked for, and hence the point; I'm not saying that you can't distinguish Jews from their "host" populations, I'm saying that the genetic markers that you use to group Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews together to separate them from the hosts are also carried by Palestinian Arabs, making your "we own the land through genetic ancestry" claim silly.

But whatever, I'll refrain from posting on this topic in the future in order to allow the thread to get back on track.

Don't feel bad. I guess this thread was destined to (d)evolve like this anyway.

At 5 hours ago, satanbrain wrote:

At 1 hour ago, mhb18 wrote: The modern day Jewish people are a fusion of many different groups of people.

Genetic studies have proved else. Every jew is mostly jewish.

Yea.. wait, what? What do you mean by "mostly"? We share most of our DNA with fish, for fuck's sake.

Can you find me a genetic test that can separate a German Jew from a German, a Moroccan Jew from a Moroccan, put the German and Moroccan Jew together but separate both Jews from a Palestinian Arab? Bet you can't. Because thanks to 1000+ years of genetic intermixing between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews of Jerusalem, Tzfat and Tveria, I bet most Palestinians can trace at last some of their genetic lineage back to king David, even if they completely self-identify as Arab, rendering your whole genetic argument nonsensical if it wasn't so already.

At 15 minutes ago, Camarohusky wrote: The nature of these being public means anything they do is considered a "state action" and thus subject to the rules under the bill of rights.

Hmm, but are they state-funded or not? It may not matter for judicial arguments, but I understood 'public library' to mean something like 'public school'.

Why have that when you can just block the material altogether and stop these two things from happening?

Because it's unnecessarily restrictive? You might as well prohibit people from bringing iPads or whetever into the library or any other public place because they could be used to browse the Internet and watch porn while sitting next to children (and just to be sure: I'm not arguing whether or not they could, but whether or not they should). All these issues have some degree of benefit and cost associated with them. Admittedely, the benefits or allowing people to discreetly watch porn or borderline art in the library may not be so great, but I also don't find the risk of some hobo not being discreet enough to not hide the fact that he's surfing porn websites from children to be very grave. Just my two cents, though.

At 7 days ago, Camarohusky wrote: the UN as an organization has always condemned attacks upon civilians by their governments.

At 3 days ago, J1993 wrote: As a stand alone its obviously right to pressure anyone butchering their own citizens.

This isn't just about killing civilians. The resolution put forth before the SC didn't just tell Assad to stop the bloodshed, it called on him to step down. Russia and China have also supported calls on both sides (Assad and the rebels) to stop the violence, but will not support regime change forced from the outside. I am not asking if it's good that the UN is standing up against civilian casaulties, I'm asking if trying to do so through forcing Assad to resign is beneficial, even in terms of civilian casualties. The five to seven thousand confirmed civilian casualties so far are still dwarfed by the 100,000+ that got killed in the near-civil war in Iraq a few years back. If Assad were to fall, and the Sunni Islamist rebels unleash their vengeance upon the Shi'ites and the Christians, who still largely support the Assad regime, it might make the current killings look mild by comparison. This is something that must be considered, awful as it may be.

At 22 minutes ago, Iron-Hampster wrote: I don't think this is a matter of libraries wanting people to be watching porn or not, I think its just a matter of people being able to control what goes on in their business on their own terms or not.

I think these are public libraries.

I don't see why they can't just officially disallow watching porn or other obscene material, but not block the relevant websites. Who cares if someone watches porn discreetly enough to not get noticed? But if he does it in such a fashion that other people can see him doing it, then the library can kick him out without legitimate complaints. I mean, if it's not that busy in the library then all he has to do is switch browser tabs if someone passes him on the back.

At 2/4/12 05:25 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 2/4/12 03:00 PM, lapis wrote: 1) Are the US and its allies right

the UN definitely has the right

I'm not asking whether they have the right, I'm asking whether they should, even from a Western perspective. Although the ideological background of the protesters in Syria is a complete mystery to Westerners, there are some that warn that there might be a hard core of Jihadi Iraq veterans behind a lot of the anti-government violence --- the same kind of elements that were the cause of the 2007 Lebanon conflict in which 168 Lebanese soldiers and 226 Jihadists were killed. Remember that the Assad regime in Syria is a minority Shi'ite clan ruling over a majority Sunni country. Should the Assad regime in Syria fall, there is the serious risk of a civil war in which the Shi'ites and the Christians will be the big losers. Remember also that alongside the dead protesters, some 700 Syrian soldiers have also been killed --- far too much for a peaceful protest, and if there's an insurgency going on, then one could wonder what kind of forces are prepared to wage an insurgency.

Here's an (unfortunately rather long) opinion article about the Syrian protests written by a former MI6 agent in the Middle East: I recommend everyone to read it and not dismiss it completely depsite the fact that it is published in a Chinese newspaper. The West seems eager to dispose of Iran's main ally in the region, and (sometimes US-funded) Syrian expats might make it look like the protest movement is completely pro-democratic and secular, but we really have no idea what dark forces might lurk in Homs' shadows. With that in mind, it might not be a good idea to pressure for quick regime change through the UN. I aksed that question because I've seen people make this case on other forums.

At 2/4/12 10:36 PM, orangebomb wrote: Of course. All China and Russia care about is themselves,

In what way does that make them different from other countries?

"An Arab and Western-backed resolution condemning the violent crackdown in Syria has been vetoed at the UN Security Council by Russia and China.

The two permanent council members rejected the draft resolution, which came hours after activists accused Syrian security forces of killing at least 55 people at Homs. The US ambassador said the vetoes were "shameful", Britain was "appalled". China and Russia defended their move, saying the draft was "unbalanced"."

On one hand:

US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice: "The United States is disgusted that a couple members of this council continue to prevent us from fulfilling our sole purpose here, addressing an ever-deepening crisis in Syria, and a growing threat to regional peace and security. For months, this council has been held hostage by a couple members. These members stand behind empty arguments and individual interests, while delaying and seeking to strip bare any text that would pressure Assad to change his actions."

On the other hand:

"But Russian policymakers have developed an allergy to Western leaders' moralizing. Just as it was pressing al-Assad to resign, the U.S. State Department quietly lifted a ban on military aid to the Karimov dictatorship in Uzbekistan, which had butchered its own protesters a few years earlier. (Uzbekistan is important for supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan.) Neither did Washington press the king of Bahrain -- where the U.S. Navy has a port -- to step down after he crushed popular demonstrations in his capital." (see links in this article)

What I find more interesting that the usual power play between the global powers is the rather powerful wording used to condemn the Russian/Chinese veto. Two questions:

1) Are the US and its allies right in trying to put pressure on Syria through the Security Council by means of a resolution supported by the Arab League?
2) Do the US and its allies have the moral authority to be "disgusted" and/or "appalled" at the Russian/Chinese decision to veto said resolution?

I'm curious about what you think about this.

There's a also the rivalry between AS Roma, which is said to tradtionally have had left-wing supporters, and Lazio Roma, whose fans were far-right and who'd sometimes fly swastika flags in the stadium during matches. But I'm personally hesitant to try to search for the high political motivations that supposedly drive a bunch of morons looking for a fight.

At 2/1/12 07:01 PM, Proteas wrote: It causes too many drunken riots

I'm not sure if this was part of the joke, but I don't think that drunkenness is a big problem in Egyptian stadiums.

What's going on?

People who'd throw their life away in a football riot usually have little else to live for. Egypt's economy is in toilet, even moreso than right before the protests started (and it was already pretty shitty then). Older males have trouble feeding their families, and the younger ones are unlikely to earn enough to pay for an apartment and marry a woman before they're 30, if ever. In these conditions you'll see violence occur for all kinds of seemingly silly reasons. Yesterday it was a match, next week it will be some brawl between Muslims and Christians and next month it will be another excuse.

As a sidenote, I don't think that political factions are behind it, although you never know in countries like Egypt.

At 1/26/12 06:46 AM, Zultra wrote: a nation is just dirt

No, it never is. A nation is, by definition, a group of people that identify themselves as sharing culture, history, genetics or whatever. On the other hand, a bunch of dirt inside some recognised boundaries is a country. Then the political community that governs the country is called a state. The term is often misused, especially in global diplomacy (United Nations, international), but I expect a Nationalist, someone whose polticial ideology is founded on the principle that the only legitimate state is one that represents a group of people that identify themselves as sharing culture, history or genetics (at which point it can be called a nation state), to care about the terminology.

At 1/25/12 08:28 PM, Zultra wrote: Yes a Nation is just dirt, but a people make a nation, but having loads of different cultures in one nation

You're abusing the word 'nation'. A nation is not just dirt, a country is. Now I know that the term is often misused, but I'd expect a Nationalist not to make that mistake in a topic about a Nationalist movement.

At 1/22/12 02:34 PM, Zultra wrote: I don't know what you mean by 'overpowering Nationalism', scare tactics? We just show it how it is, we don't purposely go around scaring people,

Seriously, a sentence like "Many Christians now face discrimination and persecution because of their beliefs in many areas such as employment, business, and adoption" makes it sound like the UK has already devolved to the level of Somalia or rural Pakistan. Don't you think you may be exaggerating just a little?

At 1/22/12 01:26 PM, adrshepard wrote: That's not what you wrote, but whatever.

I guess we have different understandings of what those parentheses could possibly have meant in that sentence.

the person or group most responsible

Who's the most responsible is irrelevant. As an analogy: let's say that person A and B want to burn down the house of person C. Person A sets the house on fire while person B distracts the fire department with a prank call. Even if person A is more responsible than person B, then this event will still determine the relationship between person B and C, and give person C legitimate concerns about the extent to which person B is willing to mess with his safety.

The case that I'm trying to make with referring to the '53 coup is that Iran has concerns about its national security that stem from something other than its own support for terrorists since the mid-eighties or its WMD program.

If Mossadegh hadn't been so quick to confiscate foreign assets and demand more domestic authority, perhaps the west wouldn't have saw the need for him to go.

Maybe so, but the response on the part of the US and UK was completely disporportional to the severity of the vice.

Israel a US proxy? Hardly. It uses US weapons and money, but it doesn't act at our behest. If anything the US has had to urge Israel to restrain itself.

Having to urge Israel to restrain itself does not mean it's not a proxy, it means that Israel is an overenthusiastic proxy. Israel is like an enormous spy satellite for the US. But its biggest threat to Iran is that it can carry out dirty work that the US can't (like the way it took out a nuclear reactor in Syria).

Which would do absolutely nothing to save Iran or discourage the US.

The added effect of a wider conflict involving Lebanon, Syria and Palestine always raises the bar for invasion. Even if these countries/movements are struck down a for a few more years, it weakens the position of US-minded governments like the one in Saudi Arabia and (still, since the military is bascially in charge) Egypt who will come under domestic criticism from militants over not getting involved. Refugees could (further) destabilise countries like Iraq and Jordan. It in any case increases the amount of damage done to US interests in the region by an invasion, even if it at the same time increases the threat level and legitimacy of an invasion.

Ok, but you said he used it against civilians. Deploying it against Iranian soldiers isn't the same thing.

Shelling a village with chemical weapons inevitably leads to civilian casualties, even if the primary purpose is to attack troops. Indeed, civilian casulaties were reported by Iran, although the UN inspectors that visited Iran for six days only examined a few shells and wounded soldiers in hosptials and neither denied nor confirmed civilian casulaties due to Iraq's chemical weapon strikes.

And if those programs hadn't collapsed or been abandoned, who's to say there wouldn't still be international pressure on those countries today? South Africa was certainly hit by sanctions.

Yeah, but that didn't happen because of its nuclear weapons program. If Brazil or South Africa were hit by sanctions it would have been a shift in policy compared to the past few decades. The only argument that I can think of in favour of sanctions is that it would seem consistent on part of the US, but since Israel, India or Pakistan have also never been put under significant pressure I doubt it.

Perhaps there wouldn't be as much talk of a military strike, but obviously the Middle East is far more important to US interests than southern Africa or South America.

I don't think that that's an argument that's going to make a big impression on Iranians.

It's accelerating now, but its still the same people behind the scenes as in the past.

The clerics, sure. I'm just arguing that the "Axis of Evil" speech alarmed Iran's leadership, which caused them to speed up development.

It wouldn't. But it would remove the critical justification for a US invasion.

If the US government really wanted, it could provoke a small-scale naval engagement in the Persian Gulf that could serve as a casus belli, like with the Tonkin incident. I don't think that the Obama administration is that eager to start a war, but it could have happened anyway back in 2006-8 if the anti-US insurgency in Iraq had never gotten off the ground or it could happen anyway in the next few years if, say, a Rick Santorum becomes president. Developing nuclear weapons is a long-term endeavour and Iran is willing to play a long-term game. I won't deny that it's risky, but so is relying on US forbearance.

Nuclear weapons don't safeguard against domestic unrest.

True, although an Israeli or US strike on Iranian soil could cause Iranians to rally behind their government. While I think that a lot of Iranians will blame their own government for the sanctions, in case of an actual attack many will resort to patriotism. Anyway, I do think that a lot of Ahmadinejad's antagonism towards other countries in the region is meant to rally people behind his government, but I'm not cynical enough to think that he's actually fishing for a violent response from the West in order to use the emergency situation to clamp down on internal dissenters. I still think they're mostly trying to make themselves as unattractive as possbile for invasion. Whether the increased risks weigh up to the possible benefits remains to be seen, of course, but they're not just crazy.

At 1/22/12 09:19 AM, satanbrain wrote:

At 1/22/12 09:12 AM, lapis wrote: Can you think of an official who would have any interest in stating this publically?

So your answer is no.

Fuck off, satanbrain. I'm not going to engage in a debat founded on the premise that Western officials are selfless individuals who would spark diplomatic crises without gaining anything other than the knowledge that they helped advance the truth.

Since when do the golan heights belong to syria? They belonged to aramaics and then to us.

Ugh.

At 1/21/12 11:40 PM, satanbrain wrote: I was wondering if there is even one official publicily stating this allegation.

Can you think of an official who would have any interest in stating this publically?

At 1/21/12 11:43 PM, adrshepard wrote: No, you "come on." All you're saying now is that our word alone overthrew the Iranian pm, that the US somehow took out Mossadegh through the international equivalent of "peer pressure."

Money combined with promises of money, hence the parentheses.

If promises of money were all that was needed to get our way we would never have fought Vietnam, Korea, or either Iraq campaign.

Single cause fallacy; of course the factions opposed to the US in those countries were much stronger and more organised than in Iran. All you need to accept is that a dictatorship can exist; that a faction that does not represent the majority of the population can hold power through an abundance of military strength, money or strategic positioning. What's possibly just as vital is that the dictatorship is perceived as being in charge; people on the fence might decide to back the dictatorship or not join a rebellion if they expect Mossadegh's faction to lose in the end.

The US had the power to influence all these aspects: they could supply the loyalist faction with weapons, cash and intelligence. By paying for crowds to demonstrate against Mossadegh they may not have been able to permanently improve public opinion about the Shah, but they could create momentum for the coup. Then, after the coup had been completed, the pro-US faction would have a strategic advantage to cling to its new position of power. But they could especially embolden reluctant generals or dissuade potential rebels by (covertly) throwing their weight behind the coup. By doing so, a coup that would normally have barely failed can be emboldened to the point where it can barely succeed.

In Chile and Iran the pro-US and anti-US factions were balanced enough for US pressure to tip the scales in favour of the pro-US faction without direct military involvement, in Afghanistan and Iraq this wasn't the case. While you may say that the Iranians are themselves guilty for letting the pro-US faction get strong enough to be able to be emboldened into pulling off a coup with US support, this doesn't excuse the fact that the US intervened in the politics of a sovereign nation and allowed a dictator to seize power in doing so.

That would be relevant if Hezbollah and Hamas targeted the US and not Israel.

For Iran those are two heads of the same hydra. Seriously, since Israel acts as a proxy for the US in the region, the same way Iraq acted a proxy for the US during the 80s, I don't see the need to split hairs here.

What did Israel ever do to Iran?

The same way Iran maintains good relations with Venezuela because they share opposition to the US, Iran backs faction that are opposed to both the US and Israel. This way, if the US were to invade Iran, they could ask groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to return favours. Iran's only Arab ally during the Iran-Iraq war, Syria, is also hostile to Israel (which holds the Golan Heights that belong to Syria), so you could even see it as a return of favour for when they were still fighting US-backed Iraqis.

Ever ask yourself that?

Did you? If you believe that Iran's foreign policy can solely be explained by them being Muslim fanatcis, then why would they strive for good relations with a kâfir nation like Venezuela? And if they're pragmatic, then why would they not support terrorists against Israel?

That would be pretty impressive considering US support predated Saddam's gas attack on the Kurds.

I was talking about chemical attacks against Iranian troops in border villages in '84 and '85.

Ok. Except I've never said those things, so I don't care.

Did I say you did?

Invaded now?

Sigh, that was a hyperbole. The point is that Iran's interest in nuclear weapons prior to 2002 is irrelevant, other countries such as SA and Brazil were also interested in nuclear weapons up to a similar level. What's relevent is that Iran's nuclear program did not begin in earnest until Ahmadinejad got to power.

Not at all. One option would be to abide by the Additional Protocol to inspections, which is voluntary, but would nonetheless do a hell of a lot to defuse the situation if the Iranian effort is as peaceful as they claim.

Look, I'm not naive up to the point that I believe that if Iran were to give up its nuclear weapons program and stop backing terrorists, that the West would stop being hostile. Not only does Iran still sit on massive oil reserves, but, like Cuba, they represent defiance. The very existence of Iran as an Islamic theocratic state is a threat to the interests of the US in the region. Fundamentalists in Egypt, Palestine and so many other Arab countries may not like Iran being a Shi'ite state, but they still look towards the revolution in Iran for inspiration. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the US government believes that if the regime in Iran were to fall, that this would be a blow to Islamists worldwide. As such, the Iranian government is constantly under threat, and their nuclear weapons program is a response to said threat. Going public about their desire to build a nuke is only to make it harder for powers like Russia and China to keep tacitly supporting Iran, so they don't.

On the other hand, I believe that the best blow that can realistically be struck at the Islamists at this point is to let the Iranian regime collapse in on itself due to sanctions and a popular protest movement that does have lie about not being supported by Western puppet masters.

At 1/21/12 02:36 PM, satanbrain wrote:

At 1/21/12 01:51 PM, lapis wrote: Right, but in doing so they lost all claims to moral superiority. I guess you don't care much about abstract concepts such as "morality", but when someone uses the fact that Iran supports terrorists as reinforcing the notion that they're crazy and evil, then it doesn't help that your major ally in the region is guilty of the exact same thing.

Can you prove we were funding terrorists? Can nonsecretive officers in the CIA affirm that?

Can you prove Iran is building nuclear weapons? If not, what do you think is the purpose of this thread?

At 1/21/12 01:51 PM, lapis wrote:

At 1/21/12 01:18 PM, lapis wrote:

At 1/21/12 12:33 PM, Korriken wrote:

Hmm, not sure where's an angry emoticon above this post, by the way. Must have clicked it accidentally. I was actually trying to get closer in terms of positions.

Not sure why there's an angry emoticon ...

I can explain the emoticon above this post, though.

At 1/21/12 01:18 PM, lapis wrote:

At 1/21/12 12:33 PM, Korriken wrote:

Hmm, not sure where's an angry emoticon above this post, by the way. Must have clicked it accidentally. I was actually trying to get closer in terms of positions.

At 1/21/12 12:55 PM, adrshepard wrote: That's a fantasy devised by Iranians to disguise the fact that they themselves were responsible for reinstituting the shah. Do you honestly believe a handful of CIA agents could take down a leader over the resistance of all Iranians?

Oh come on, (promises of) US financial support bolstered the elements of the royalist faction to the point where they were stronger than the majority of the population. Of course there were elements in Iranian society that backed the coup, but foreign cash (Iran wasn't very rich at the time) and careful crafting of the momentum can put a dictatorship in place that otherwise would never have emerged.

After how many years of Iranian support of Hezbollah and Hamas?

Hmm, answer that one for me, will you? I would like to know if it predates US support for Saddam Hussain.

The Israelis don't mess around.

Right, but in doing so they lost all claims to moral superiority. I guess you don't care much about abstract concepts such as "morality", but when someone uses the fact that Iran supports terrorists as reinforcing the notion that they're crazy and evil, then it doesn't help that your major ally in the region is guilty of the exact same thing.

What did they expect? Saddam was getting hammered and Iran was our enemy.

They expected that you wouldn't support a dictator who used WMDs against civilians? And this stuff at the very least influences the debate in the US. If Bush's only argument in favour of the Iraq war had been "we want their oil and $500 is worth more to us than the life of an innocent Iraqi civilian" then the public reaction to the invasion within the US might have been a little different. Just sayin'.

I mean, if you want to have a debate just about the banal economic and geopolitical pros and cons of such an invasion for the US then that's great. But you have to understand that it irritates me when these kinds of invasions are justified by politicians using all sorts of allusions to high moral standards that they themselves would never follow.

Except that they had been doing the same sort of covert research and material purchasing for the past decade. http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/ir anbackground032100.pdf
Iran hasn't exactly been forthcoming and open about its nuclear work. They have to know what it looks like to the rest of the world.

South Africa and Brazil have also been interested in nuclear weapons in the past and nobody's saying that they should be invaded. Iran's nuclear weapon program didn't seriously get off the ground since the Ahmadinejad got to power, with the real threat of an US invasion looming over his country.

You forgot "stop screwing around and start actively cooperating."

Cooperating with what? Turning over sovereignty over their oil industry to the USA?

No, because they risk more from this sort of secret weaponization act than they would if they just played ball. You can still save face as a leader without deliberately antagonizing other countries all the time.

Please elaborate on what you mean by "just playing ball"?