Russian massacres in Chechnya
- Thread starter otheadp
- Start date
hahaha
You are like a caricature from a cartoon! I don't mean to offend but you really entertain me
I particularly liked this gem of yours:
... especially the "they're almost like Afghanis" part. See, people here have probably missed the meaning - you meant to say "they're almost as wild, primitive and warlike as the Afghanis"... right?
yeah. I don't get what your driving at here? :bugeye: If I entertain you, thank you, because it is my goal mainly to entertain myself and you, it makes me happy.
this is not about muslims. Russia has other muslim states within it and they seem to do just fine. Just look at Kazan. Chechnya is indeed barbaric.
I meant it is of no consequence in the international arena. The entire population of Chechnya and all the Muslims states you mention could be completely massacred and it would not make the headlines in any newspaper in the west. Or if it did, there would be no accounting for it. Like the murders and massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine, they would be a statistic that would be largely ignored.
Thats all some people see scooter.
well they're all dead :roflmao: and soldiers too
Our brave snipers.
At heart, by mind, through spirit.
Bullets of eternal judgement.
the war in Chechnya actually...has a whole different context. It is not about territory, it is not about oil, and not much about independence. It is however about weapons, Chechnya is this field for arms sales...and every general sees it and they sell the young soldiers' hearts for metal gear.
What good would it do for Russian people to have the Russian government control Georgia? What good is it doing for the Russian people to have the Russian Government control Chechnya?
It is debatable whether the British people benefited from the British empire. Maintaining an empire is expensive in money and lives lost at war. Forcing another ethnic group to accept being ruled by foreigners is immoral.
I understand China refusing to give Tibet it's freedom. China needs the natural resources in Tibet. What does Russia need in Chechnya?
How does having Chechnya as part of Russia improve Russia? What natural resources does Chechnya have? Russia should be happy to get rid of any land that has a worse ratio of population to natural resources than Russia has.
What use is it to control people? The British colonial form of mercantilism and outright slavery as practiced in the USA were two attempts to make the control of people increase the wealth of the ruling ethnic group. This was clearly immoral. I don't think you want to exploit the Chechens.
It is true that if the Chechens win their freedom then others would also want their freedom. Which people who would like their freedom, live in a land that has natural resources that Russia can not afford to lose?
Russia can not give arms to those who seek to be free from the USA's neocolonial empire; because if Russia gave arms the USA would retaliate by giving arms to Chechens and Ingush and anybody else that wants freedom from Russians. How many Chechens and Ingush died because of Stalin? Give them their freedom.
Once Russia gives freedom to those who should have freedom, then Russia will be in a position to push the US empire away from Russia's borders by threatening to arm those who want freedom from the US empire.
Holding onto an empire just to have an empire is stupid and vain. Empires are costly to everyone but the war profiteers. When vanity or greed are criticized they pretend to be "national security". Many get fooled.
Empires are for vanity. Napoleon was a nut. It seems that now and in the past many Americans, Russians and French have gotten deluded by the vanity of empire.
I think Chechnya has oil... no?
Islamic terrorism gets a free ride. And Russia too, because there is no robust propaganda infrastructure to attack Russia. And also because the corrupt regimes the world over, the fascist bastards of Venezuella and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Hamas (who by the way officially and publically deemed the Chechnya issue "an internal Russian matter"!!!!!) don't say a word about it.
And of course because Russia actually is a brutal violator of journalistic and human rights. Which means when you talk shit about Russia you fucking die. In Israel they just shrug and provide you an Israeli lawyer to help you fight any REQUEST to have you kicked out.
The world couldn't give a shit. Just like the world doesn't give a shit about the children of Ma'alot or of Tel Aviv15ofthe19 said:
Islamic terrorism gets a free ride. And Russia too, because there is no robust propaganda infrastructure to attack Russia. And also because the corrupt regimes the world over, the fascist bastards of Venezuella and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Hamas (who by the way officially and publically deemed the Chechnya issue "an internal Russian matter"!!!!!) don't say a word about it.
And of course because Russia actually is a brutal violator of journalistic and human rights. Which means when you talk shit about Russia you fucking die. In Israel they just shrug and provide you an Israeli lawyer to help you fight any REQUEST to have you kicked out.
draqon: "the war in Chechnya actually...has a whole different context."
No, it does not. But i find it revealing that you think it does. Chechnya is just another horrible case-study in how humanity is learning not to deal with ethnic clashes. It's another bloody illustration of the same conflict that has been raging through history- but that is ebbing in frequency- as wars have come to disrupt and traumatize civilian life to a greater and greater extent. This causes blood feuds on the nationalistic scale to make less and less sense to most people, because the realities of assymmetrical warfare in the present and future contexts demand we discard more and more of our defining human values in order to participate. Put another way, total, in-your-street, house-to-house war is losing its veneer of glory, nobility and decisiveness.
Rationally and scientifically, it isn't hard to see that violent escalations and provocations are counterproductive to any ethnicity's interest. We can see that in the absence of constructive change away from policy, ethnic conflicts consistently get worse.
But rationality obviously isn't always in the lead. There are throwbacks, and I think draqon is a fitting example of one (don't feel singled-out, draq- our zionist and war-on-terra contingency around here do share your disorder).
Rationality has risen up amid ancient competition, and it continues to gain influence over human behavior. Irrational, impulsive collective thinking is declining, but only gradually- and it's not declining in the way we might first expect in a law-of-the-jungle Darwinism of competition of violence-escalation to settle it.
Chechnya is in the throes of the very same conflict that is perpetuated in all of today's bitter ethnic wars. The Chechen-Russian divide is hardly unique from any other ethnic fault-lines we might compare, and certainly not disconnected. For all of these wars, the difference is in the prevalence of people maintaining participatory attitudes with respect to the violence (direct participants and their supporters). The difference is in the declining popularity of militant nihilism as human awareness (situational awareness that does inevitably include compassion) continues to be enhanced.
Nihilism pollutes both sides of the divides we read about in the news, and is the real ideological fuel of every raging ethnic war. When someone emotes "I'll fucking KILL you, you ____" it's not an attitude that arises from rationality. It's rage- a deceptive portal to, and annihilator of meaning. No "civilized" ideology can survive the experience of hate-war intact. That's why war fueled by pure hatred is finding fewer joiners, in the mutually-collaborative roles of allies and foes.
Putin/Medvyedev have ample evidence for concluding that Chechen resistance can't be snuffed out by force. So do you, Draqon. But something disconnects a component of humanity from reason, pulling victims into participation (physical or intellectual) in the cycle of violence. Your difficulty comparing Chechens with Palestinians reveals a reasoning block.
The closer the afflicted get to a conflict, the more reason becomes handicapped. At the very event-horizon of violent conflict (killing people in hate) beliefs inevitably lose all meaning- All defensible morals fall away in the transformation into life-and-death animalism. Rationally, we can comprehend that's no place to work things out. But nihilism takes the brutal leap without hesitation.
The majority of people do not resort to deadly escalations in response to even violent insults. Nihilists inhabit one side of a the conflict in Chechnya, and everyone else, who would prefer normal life to carnage, are on the other. The real lines, that is the lines along which history is really being written now, are not between combattants, but between opposing combattants on one side, and everyone else on the other.
That's why the real conflict in Chechnya is not between Moscow and violent Chechen separists. The real conflict is over the question of whether irrational violent provocation/escalation is an attractive response to ancient cultural rivalries. Chechen fighters and their Russian "opponents" are co-operative partners in a deadly farce. The rest of the world is indifferent or opposed to the violence- including a silent majority in Russia and Chechnya who want the inconclusive and cyclical brutality to stop.
Draqon, like any other militant nationalist well represents the nihilist neanderthals who are still pulled into, and still fuel horrific conflicts like this all over the world. The world's most backward governments pander heavily to what I think of as nihanderthals- and the world's most socially-regressive leaders encourage of constituencies willing to sign on to nationalistic/nihilistic/nihanderthal violence. Russia, Israel, and the USA are some examples of governments that are actively appealing to nihilism, even as they couch it in all sorts of ideological camouflage.
Nihanderthals are suffering greater difficulty today, concealing their obsessive worship of violent power. Sometimes the artifice becomes comical, like a caricature of cave-men in modern garb. The masquerade as rational, moral beings is becoming a greater stretch for nihanderthals down through the centuries.
Nihanderthals can only approach morality to a certain depth in the context of conflict. Draqon's attempts at taking sides in the revolving Palestinian/Israeli murderfest reveal how clumsy it is for wartime nihilists to rhetorically masquerade as people who truly value rationality and morality even through times of upheaval. When conflict hits home, Nihanderthals can't maintain any pretense of objectivity, because nationalist-nihilist programming entirely takes over what reasoning faculties they may feign regarding more distant conflicts.
In case it isn't obvious to everyone (Nihanderthal and Homo Moralicus) who read this, I am using the some improvised terms tongue-in-cheek. I know that "Nihanderthals" can metamorphose into reasonable humans, and I've noticed that they tend to follow reason when most of their peers do.
No, it does not. But i find it revealing that you think it does. Chechnya is just another horrible case-study in how humanity is learning not to deal with ethnic clashes. It's another bloody illustration of the same conflict that has been raging through history- but that is ebbing in frequency- as wars have come to disrupt and traumatize civilian life to a greater and greater extent. This causes blood feuds on the nationalistic scale to make less and less sense to most people, because the realities of assymmetrical warfare in the present and future contexts demand we discard more and more of our defining human values in order to participate. Put another way, total, in-your-street, house-to-house war is losing its veneer of glory, nobility and decisiveness.
Rationally and scientifically, it isn't hard to see that violent escalations and provocations are counterproductive to any ethnicity's interest. We can see that in the absence of constructive change away from policy, ethnic conflicts consistently get worse.
But rationality obviously isn't always in the lead. There are throwbacks, and I think draqon is a fitting example of one (don't feel singled-out, draq- our zionist and war-on-terra contingency around here do share your disorder).
Rationality has risen up amid ancient competition, and it continues to gain influence over human behavior. Irrational, impulsive collective thinking is declining, but only gradually- and it's not declining in the way we might first expect in a law-of-the-jungle Darwinism of competition of violence-escalation to settle it.
Chechnya is in the throes of the very same conflict that is perpetuated in all of today's bitter ethnic wars. The Chechen-Russian divide is hardly unique from any other ethnic fault-lines we might compare, and certainly not disconnected. For all of these wars, the difference is in the prevalence of people maintaining participatory attitudes with respect to the violence (direct participants and their supporters). The difference is in the declining popularity of militant nihilism as human awareness (situational awareness that does inevitably include compassion) continues to be enhanced.
Nihilism pollutes both sides of the divides we read about in the news, and is the real ideological fuel of every raging ethnic war. When someone emotes "I'll fucking KILL you, you ____" it's not an attitude that arises from rationality. It's rage- a deceptive portal to, and annihilator of meaning. No "civilized" ideology can survive the experience of hate-war intact. That's why war fueled by pure hatred is finding fewer joiners, in the mutually-collaborative roles of allies and foes.
Putin/Medvyedev have ample evidence for concluding that Chechen resistance can't be snuffed out by force. So do you, Draqon. But something disconnects a component of humanity from reason, pulling victims into participation (physical or intellectual) in the cycle of violence. Your difficulty comparing Chechens with Palestinians reveals a reasoning block.
The closer the afflicted get to a conflict, the more reason becomes handicapped. At the very event-horizon of violent conflict (killing people in hate) beliefs inevitably lose all meaning- All defensible morals fall away in the transformation into life-and-death animalism. Rationally, we can comprehend that's no place to work things out. But nihilism takes the brutal leap without hesitation.
The majority of people do not resort to deadly escalations in response to even violent insults. Nihilists inhabit one side of a the conflict in Chechnya, and everyone else, who would prefer normal life to carnage, are on the other. The real lines, that is the lines along which history is really being written now, are not between combattants, but between opposing combattants on one side, and everyone else on the other.
That's why the real conflict in Chechnya is not between Moscow and violent Chechen separists. The real conflict is over the question of whether irrational violent provocation/escalation is an attractive response to ancient cultural rivalries. Chechen fighters and their Russian "opponents" are co-operative partners in a deadly farce. The rest of the world is indifferent or opposed to the violence- including a silent majority in Russia and Chechnya who want the inconclusive and cyclical brutality to stop.
Draqon, like any other militant nationalist well represents the nihilist neanderthals who are still pulled into, and still fuel horrific conflicts like this all over the world. The world's most backward governments pander heavily to what I think of as nihanderthals- and the world's most socially-regressive leaders encourage of constituencies willing to sign on to nationalistic/nihilistic/nihanderthal violence. Russia, Israel, and the USA are some examples of governments that are actively appealing to nihilism, even as they couch it in all sorts of ideological camouflage.
Nihanderthals are suffering greater difficulty today, concealing their obsessive worship of violent power. Sometimes the artifice becomes comical, like a caricature of cave-men in modern garb. The masquerade as rational, moral beings is becoming a greater stretch for nihanderthals down through the centuries.
Nihanderthals can only approach morality to a certain depth in the context of conflict. Draqon's attempts at taking sides in the revolving Palestinian/Israeli murderfest reveal how clumsy it is for wartime nihilists to rhetorically masquerade as people who truly value rationality and morality even through times of upheaval. When conflict hits home, Nihanderthals can't maintain any pretense of objectivity, because nationalist-nihilist programming entirely takes over what reasoning faculties they may feign regarding more distant conflicts.
In case it isn't obvious to everyone (Nihanderthal and Homo Moralicus) who read this, I am using the some improvised terms tongue-in-cheek. I know that "Nihanderthals" can metamorphose into reasonable humans, and I've noticed that they tend to follow reason when most of their peers do.
Are the French irrelevant? The also had a hard time with being just another nation. The French fight to hold Algeria and Vietnam killed a lot of people. Compared to the USA the French are irrelevant.
Who competes with the USA for influence and control of natural resources in Africa. It is China, not Russia. Russia has natural resources, they don't need to play games in the world.
Russia opposing USA placing an anti-missile/anti-sattellite interceptor system in Eastern Europe is Russian self defense against an unproved US attempt to end the military stale mate with Russia in Europe. Most people believe that the proposed system is targeted at Russia, and not Iran as claimed by the Bush administration.
Russia opposing USA placing an anti-missile/anti-sattellite interceptor system in Eastern Europe is Russian self defense against an unproved US attempt to end the military stalemate with Russia in Europe. Most people don't believe that the proposed system is targeted at Russia, and not Iran as claimed by the Bush administration.
Bush has done things that threaten Russia's national security. Now we can't say if the Russians are responding to Bush's aggression, or just doing what they would have done when Clinton was in power had they had high oil revenues in the Clinton years.
What has Russian done in the world? If it is OK for Kosovo to leave Serbia with US blessing, then it is OK for Chenhnya to leave Russia with US blessing. The post WW2 world sort of had a rule, "no changes in borders". Many wars had been fought over borders that refusing to allow borders to change seemed like a way to stop war. US policy in Yugoslavia is a shift towards a rule of no changes in borders without the US President giving his/her blessing.
You appear to think those who oppose the US president controlling the world are bad and those who support the US president controlling the world are good. Therefore if Russia does not participate in the US embargo of Iran, then Russia is being active in the world in a bad way. I don't see non-participation in US attempts to dominate the world to be an active foreign policy.
I don't share your attitude towards, Iran (+ Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas) therefore I don't share your attitude that Russia is doing something when they also do not share your attitude towards Iran. Does not joining the proposed embargo against Iran make Russia relevant? OK, Russia has some relevance, but much compared to the USA.
If Russia is going to keep Chechnya they will have to be brutal. It can't be done any other way, but is it worth doing?
I agree with you that wounded imperial pride is a factor in Russian actions. It's not the only factor.
Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Saudi Arabia are the only regimes that claim there legitimacy is based in being Islamic. They have never even managed lynch 2 bit nations for anti-Islamic actions. Sudan can't even win it's civil war. These 4 "Islamic" nations don't particularly like each other and mostly don't work together.
Any nation that screws with Muslims is likely to likely to get some hostile attention from all across the Muslim world.
Israel is unique in 2 ways. For Pro-Americans and anti-Americans the financial and political intertwining of Israel and America singles Israel out for criticism by anti-Americans and singles Israel out for praise and defense from criticism by pro-Americans. Israel is the only nation that can make the government of the USA dance to it's tune and the USA is the only nation that can make the government of Israel dance to it's tune. The USA give so much money to Israel and this makes American voters responsible for what Israel does. As an American voter I am responsible for what Israel does and what the Iraqi government does, but I am not responsible for what Russia and Sudan do.
The religious sites in Israel of course make Israel significant for Jews, Christians and Muslims.
If European Jews had moved to Burma and made New Israel there rather than in Palestine and were not getting big money from the USA, and the Jews were doing to the Burmese the things they do to Palestinians, nobody would care. We never would here about that in the USA.
If the Russians just got grief in Turkey for what they are doing in Chechnya, how would I ever learn that while living here in the USA? otheadp, am I right in assuming that you also live in the USA?
We know that Russia has gotten grief in the Islamic world in the past. The International Islamic extremists were important partners, with the USA, Pakistan, and most importantly Afghans in giving the Russians very serious grief in Afghanistan. What are they saying in the Saudi Mosques about Chechnya?
From http://www.jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=23471:
Abu Al-Walid Al-Ghamdi, one of the most prominent Arabs fighting in Chechnya, creates a major dilemma for the Saudi regime, which has so far escaped the attention of the western press, despite Russian media attention to Arab/al-Qaeda links. Recently, the Arabic press has provided greater insight into the motivations and background of Abu Al-Walid, revealing much about his aims and the tribal composition of Al-Qaeda. Such reports have posed still larger strategic questions about Saudi Arabia’s internal stability – particularly in regard to the House of Saud’s reluctance to revoke the citizenship of the numerous numbers of Saudis fighting overseas.
To date, the only known case of the Saudi government’s revoking the citizenship of a Jihadi fighter is that of Osama Bin Laden in 1994. Coming to grips with this reality is something that goes to the very heart of the Saudi regime. Nothing illustrates this internal contradiction within the regime more clearly than the response given by Saudi Prince Sultan Bin Abd al-Aziz, Minister of Defense and the Second Deputy Prime Minister, when questioned by a journalist from the Al-Watan newspaper on the citizenship of Abu Al-Walid. In his response, Prince Sultan observed: “Any Saudi living abroad who is involved in terrorism destroys the Saudi reputation” and “is not a Saudi.”[1] Why, then, is Saudi Arabia so reluctant to reject the citizenship of Abu Al-Walid, one of the most notorious Saudi fighters living abroad [2] and a man who is known to have been fighting in Chechnya since the late 1990s? The answer to this question requires an in-depth analysis of the larger question over who is Abu Al-Walid.
Who is Abu Al-Walid?.....
Israel gets more than it's fair share of critics and apologists. No question about that. We don't criticize Russia for what they have done in Chechnya, but we also don't defend Russia for what it has done in Chechnya. It seems that Russia is irrelevant accept when what they do interferes with US foreign policy. Us foreign policy does not care if Russia exterminates the Chechens so long as Russia embargoes Iran when asked to do so.
The very worst case is Congo and it did not even make your list. Chechnya, Darfur, Burma, and Tibet all get more coverage than Congo and Congo is 3 to 20 times worse than Darfur, Burma, Tibet and Chechnya combined.
Even Iraq deaths seem to attract less critics and apologists than Palestinian and Israeli deaths.
From http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3321
The media's neglect of these statistical studies is particularly striking when contrasted with their regular citation of similar studies whose results do not reflect badly on U.S. military policy. The Johns Hopkins studies employ the method accepted around the world to measure birth and death rates in the wake of natural and man-made disasters: a cluster survey. It is the same method that was used to estimate that 200,000 have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region (Science, 9/15/06). Yet, while the Darfur figure has been cited over 1,000 times by major U.S. press outlets just within the last year (e.g., AP, 12/6/07; New York Times, 12/6/07; Miami Herald, 12/5/07), the estimate for Iraq is ignored.
Yah! and if you don't defend others then don't defend Israel!
Why are they dumbfounded, what do they think the world is logical and objective? Would there be any nations based on religion if people were logical and objective?
Antisemitism is not dead. I recently saw some on Yahoo Finance's Bear Stearns Forum.
Israel backers would like to believe that all criticism of Israel comes from antisemitism. What was done to Palestinians and is being done to Palestinians is an injustice and Israel is in the wrong but why should anybody care when they don't care about more serious injustices? Why should anybody care enough to defend Israel when they don't care enough to defend any other nations that do wrong? Are they prosemitic?
Most of the Extra attention that Israel gets is in America. I rarely saw media coverage on Israel when I was in India. (I am not Indian)
I found 14 reasons why Israel gets gets more than it's logical share of attention.
Reason 14, antisemitism
Reason 13, Has Islamic Holy sites
Reason 12, Has Jewish Holy sites
Reason 11, Has Christian holy sites
Reason 10, Belief that Israel's creation, rebuilding the temple and war with the nations of the world, must happen so that Jesus can return and the world can end.
Reason 9, general Pro-Americanism
Reason 8, general Anti-Americanism
Reason 7,Islam forbids Muslims from tolerating Infidels unjustly taking land from other Muslims.
Reason 6, Pro-Islamism
Reason 5,Pro-semitism
Reason 4,Anti-Islamism
Reason 3,Anti-American foreign policyism.
Reason 2,Pro-American foreign policyism
Reason 1, because the media covers Israel (because the media covers Israel(Because the media..().))
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WOW - that is a long post. No wonder people here are discouraged from commenting. I'll try to respond to as much as I can.
That's quite a paranoid thing to say
I do oppose paranod hackery. It's one thing to have a local perspective on things. It's quite another to do what Putin's Russia has been doing. You don't see Canada signing strategic military pacts with China and Russia and allowing both to build up their militaries on Canadian soil because of trade disagreements with the US and US cultural intrusions. We have a local perspective on things, and I am pretty pissed with the US about some of those things, but it would be uncivilized and stupid to talk about war and "resistance" to US's perceived "control of the world", as you put it.
The US gives money to over 100 countries to help support their economies, encourage trade, fund local infrastructure, pay for hospitals, etc.
What's wrong with that?
It's alright, your conscience about Sudan's genocide is clear - because you're not funding it directly. But you know what, you are. Sudan receives millions in UN aid, and guess who is the biggest funder of the UN? That's right. Good ol' U S and A.
You're right. I think it goes to show how tragically little I and the rest of the world are exposed to the massacres in congo and other places. The world is obsessed with its usual whipping boy, Israel.
There is one set of rules for all the countries (not being condemned, getting just a nominal amount of criticism, etc.), and then there's the other set of rules for the Jews' country... which I illustrated already.
It's not fair. It doesn't make Israeli actions pure as snow, but the criticism and incitement are entirely disproportionate. It should be reduced to the same level as other nations and religions get.
That's quite a paranoid thing to say
I do oppose paranod hackery. It's one thing to have a local perspective on things. It's quite another to do what Putin's Russia has been doing. You don't see Canada signing strategic military pacts with China and Russia and allowing both to build up their militaries on Canadian soil because of trade disagreements with the US and US cultural intrusions. We have a local perspective on things, and I am pretty pissed with the US about some of those things, but it would be uncivilized and stupid to talk about war and "resistance" to US's perceived "control of the world", as you put it.
That's because Putin's Russia has a paranoid delusion problem. I've talked about it in my previous posts.
In the post-Soviet era, nothing much, other than bullying its neighbours (Georgia, Ukraine, etc.) and doing its best to try to stick a finger in the US's eye because of the above said paranoia.
Fair enough.
The thing is, they are not helping Iran because they think Iran is not a rogue fascist pariah state. They are only helping Iran for these dirty reasons:
- to stick a finger in the US' eye
- to piss in the US' soup
- to make a few billion $$ (which they badly need to fund their new ultra modern weapons)
- to gain favour with the Islamic world over their massacres in Chechnya
- Let's not forget the Afghanistan massacres - over 1,000,000 Afghans died! This is like 10-15 Chechnyas!!! In all of Israel's conflicts against Arabs in 60+ years, the complete death toll on the Arab side is approximately 60,000 (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat4.htm#Israel)
That is just stating the obvious. If a master wants a disobedient subject to submit, he'll have to use the rod. Just ask Machiavelli. That is a timeless truism. Remember what this thread is about - the doublestandard that this reality is ignored for Russia and other tyrants, but applied to Israel (which is only 1/20th as brutal as Russia is, if you compare the death toll, and 1/100th as brutal if you compare the tactics)
The only thing Arabs/Muslims have in common is their book and their hate of Israel. They still prefer to solve inter-Muslim conflicts with the sword. Israel is just a unifying distraction.
In a master-servant relationship there is only 1 servant. And in the case of US and Israel, Israel is the servant. If it wasn't for US medling and intervention, Israel would have been much more decisive to act against countless "Palestinian" and Arab massacres.
The US gives money to over 100 countries to help support their economies, encourage trade, fund local infrastructure, pay for hospitals, etc.
What's wrong with that?
It's alright, your conscience about Sudan's genocide is clear - because you're not funding it directly. But you know what, you are. Sudan receives millions in UN aid, and guess who is the biggest funder of the UN? That's right. Good ol' U S and A.
Toronto, Canada, actually.
You're right. I think it goes to show how tragically little I and the rest of the world are exposed to the massacres in congo and other places. The world is obsessed with its usual whipping boy, Israel.
Anti-Semitism can be parsed into different types. A new form is discriminationg against the country of the Jews, as opposed to discriminating against the 1 Jew.
There is one set of rules for all the countries (not being condemned, getting just a nominal amount of criticism, etc.), and then there's the other set of rules for the Jews' country... which I illustrated already.
It's not fair. It doesn't make Israeli actions pure as snow, but the criticism and incitement are entirely disproportionate. It should be reduced to the same level as other nations and religions get.
muslim states.....mmm.
any way, muslims kill muslims on a daily basis, and thst doesnt get any attention at all. guess what does instead?
There are so many rouge fascist style states. What makes Iran special?
Iran's mistreatment of it's own people is unusual because it is a religious based mistreatment of it's own people. Half the nations of the world mistreat their people as badly or worse than Iran treats it's people so that it not why Iran is a "pariah" state.
Iran is a Pariah state because the USA's government says Iran is a pariah state.
I am aware of Iran funding Hezbollah and Hamas. Did they fund anybody else? Did they fund the Chechen rebels?
I consider Hezbollah and Hamas to be fighting for just causes so I don't fault Iran for giving them money.
If the US government desires that every Persian gulf state be submissive to the US government then the US government rather than Iran is out of line.
Who needs nuclear weapons? A state facing a real enemy that has a superior conventional military needs nuclear weapons. Iran needs nuclear weapons until the USA stops being a real enemy.
I don't want religious extremists of any faith to have nuclear weapon because religious people are more likely to do Irrational things. So I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. As long as the USA seeks to interfere in Iran's freedom it is immoral hypocrisy for any nation that has nuclear weapons to seek to deny nuclear weapons to Iran.
I think you misread Russia because you misread Iran. I think you misread Iran because you misread the USA and or Israel/Hamas/Hezbollah.
What makes you think that there can only be master-servant relationships?
Husbands and Wives are usually not a master servant relationship. Every pawn in world intrigue is using his master. Every pawn tries to spin the master. The master expects obedience. The Pawn knows the local situation better. Both the Master and the Pawn and all humans in general, are half blinded by their biases.
Any well organized, well funded special interest can turn the mighty US government into it's servant. The American voters are not very informed and the American media only cares about selling advertising. Even when the American people do clearly oppose something, (like GATT or media consolidation) the American people don't always get their way with the American government. Having 65% of the American people being moderately against something does not outweigh having motivated special interests on the other side. Congress only favors the will of the people over the will of special interests when the people are united and motivated.
My feeling is that about 30% of Americans support Israel, 30% don't care and are not interested but sort of support Israel, 20% don't care and have no leaning, 10% don't care but sort of oppose US support for Israel, and 10% clearly oppose US support for Israel. I am in the last ten percent. Of that las ten percent that opposes US support for Israel, I think only a fifth of them are antisemites. Most who oppose support for Israel do so because they care about justice. Some are Arab Americans.
Idealism and justice favor the Palestinian argument. Even from a Machiavellian realpolitik stand point supporting Israel is not in the interest of the American people. There is a noticeable pro Israel lobby in the USA. Prior to 9-11 the only way that I can explain the US government's and US people's support for Israel was that the pro Israel lobby was very good at it's job.
The government of Israel can get the pro Israel lobby to get the American politicians to do what they ask up to a point. The oil industry can get the oil lobby to get the politicians to do what they ask up to a point. Corn growers, NRA...Lobbies and PR; That is how my government works.
I agree. It would much less complicated for Israel to just load all the Arabs in Israel and the occupied territories onto trucks and drop them off in Jordan. If the USA withdrew it's support, then I think Israel would do that. It would be tactically correct.
How does the extra attention for Israel phenomena work? You and I make decent lab rats.
I would spend less time defending the Palestinians and criticizing Israel if others were not criticizing Palestinians and defending Israel.
You, I assume, would spend less time defending Israel and criticizing Palestinians if others were not criticizing Israel and defending Palestinians.
Which came first the chicken or the egg?
The American media is very pro Israel and mentions Israel quite a bit. Only gentle understated criticism of Israel is allowed in the American media. I can only think of 2 US TV news pundits who would cut off aid to Israel. Anybody frustrated by the American media position on Israel only has internet to sooth his frustrations.
Why would people get frustrated by the US government and media support of Israel when they don't get frustrated by other things? In general the people frustrated by US support of Israel were also frustrated by the Iraq war. Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, general Islamic extremism, and to a lessor degree Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, and Cuba are the only foreign policy stories the US media has touched outside of the business pages.
I am interested in foreign policy. God knows why. I have a little Sciforums binge once or twice a year. The main topic in the world forum, as usually, is Israel or US foreign policy or anti-Islam. To me these are all one topic because they are inextricably connected to each other. When something else like Chechnya is brought up it is easy to see that USA/Islam/Israel is lurking there. Somebody brings up Chavez and Venezuela when they don't care or know anything about Chavez and Venezuela other than that Venezuela is against USA/Bush.
I think if you want to stop the criticizing of Israel you need for the American media to stop covering Israel. Israel would also get less criticism if it was clear that unpopular US foreign policy was not in part for the benefit of Israel .
I agree under the condition that the defense of Israel and criticisms of Israel's enemies also be reduced to the same level as other nations.