Oh he explained that one. He said he was a crybaby and terrified of the big bad Ahmedinedzad. The mere sight of that giant of a man (5 foot 6) is enough to make this hawk (or should we say vulture?) have to sleep with the lights on all until the US military is sent to check under his bed for monsters.
Apparently being a pathetic coward means you can do whatever you want.
Conjecture.
Fear-mongering.
Opinion, not fact.
Since we’re going to mention personal experience- I know plenty of relatives, friends, and business associates around the world that think US politicians are some of the worst liars there could ever be in terms of foreign policy- and they’ve felt this way for decades. Then again they think that all politcians are scum- but the United States is above and beyond the most dangerous with the kind of weapons that they possess- and their ability to invade and bomb anywhere they want in the world without fear of repurcussion(and if anyone DARES retialite, we’ll spend 10 trillion dollars to kill even more of you ungrateful 3rd worlders)
This is a nice pattern.
Mr Smith (or xaxhr) declares he’s a libertarian.
He then explains to stupid radicals that ‘practical’ libertarians like him do things that are not really libertarian.
Now, if you point out that support for the state and its stupid and criminal wars means you are not a libertarian he invokes 1) where he proved he was a libertarian…merely by declaration.
So much fun.
This post needs to be contemplated. Pondered. Mulled in the mind again like a good wine - swish it back and forth, back and forth. And then repeat.
good post. (many other good posts too in this thread by various other people).
Insisting on one and only one possible approach out of many when there are a myriad of people in the world with varying degrees of disagreement with your principles is not logic, it is misanthropy. Which I’m all in favor of so long as it’s admitted and not hidden behind a cloak of ‘reason’.
Bullshit. If you wanted to you could get your own little anarcho capitalist paradise going somewhere. You choose not to because the cost is too high. Just like you choose to drive on government roads because flying in unsubsidized food using an all private air service that deliberately tries to avoid dealing with the government air traffic control rules simply to satisfy principle is ridiculously high cost for little return. You have not shown a difference, you’ve offerred an excuse for your compromises, nothing more. Either live by your own standards of purity or admit others with similar ideals may have differring priorities and degrees to which they are willing to compromise.
Considering that Larijani is the head of their “Physics Research Center in Iran” and his brother is the head of the “Supreme Council for National Security”, these are people who administer specifically related parts of the Iranian government.
There is more to read in that link, and I saw other sources around that seem to back this up. I’m not spending more time on this though.
Fine, let me know when your psychoanalysis of him is done and you have something else to go on.
On whatever basis the stronger country decides. I again find it funny that in such a group of radical anarchists such appeals are made to the UN and to international law.
There’s not a thing wrong with participating in statist society as a matter of self-defense. States claim sovereignty over Earth’s entire land mass and even the moon. What’s important is intentions.
The difference between you and I is that you are willing to compromise on your supposed morals, because you think this will bring about change. I really don’t care what you think or do, but I think your approach lends legitimacy to and helps perpetuate state mythology.
I didn’t claim anyone was crazy. You did. You claimed that your assessment of craziness (along with the appeal to public opinion) justified supporting murder.
Might makes right? You seem to agree on my actual argument, nobody is justified to own nuclear weapons, but it isn’t “practical” enough for you. More practical is murder. I was ratcheting down my argument to your inconsistent/flawed level, not appealing to UN legitimacy. I think it should be quite obvious that I said nothing about the UN and find it a purely criminal organization itself.
I am asking you your justification, in terms of traditionally accepted ius inter gentes (international law), not libertarian law, for your inconsistent position.
If people would not ignore points they would not need repeating. Since I have not advocated keeping troops at current levels and killing tons of civilians accusing me of such positions out of your own ideological blindness forces me to repeat basics about my positions you seem to either have to ignore to make a point, or simply can’t see because you’re too wound up in your ideological paradise world to confront the real world.
Never claimed to be a libertarian, lower or upper case “L,” though I guess you could get that by implication. If I have directly stated so, my mistake. I have stated I share the same ideal of a purely voluntary society. My rejection of labels such as anarcho capitalist and/or (L)libertarian are specifically because I can’t stand how either group deals with the realities of political process, which is to ignore them in favor of maintaining a completely ineffective idealistically pure position that, while maybe allowing better sleep at night, does jack shit to stop this world from marching ever more towards totalitarian ruin.
Reference number one. Advocating an end to US military hostilities is not forgetting about my own government. How does one forget about one’s own government and its military when the policy in question directly relates to that subject and calls for a fundamental change in current policy aimed at eventual nonintervention? Translation: you simply don’t like the policy. You’re like a chef diagreeing with a recipe for fish and saying the other chef knows nothing about fish. Bullshit, he’s just doing something you don’t like or agree with. Many responses exist to that situation, yours is remedial, uninformative, ill conceived, poorly thought out, amateurish, and unrealistic. I have repeatedly said I am worried about both Iran and my own government. However your own philosophy works against you here; all governments are a threat, not just the one you live under. And when those governments make it clear that they intend to fight each other in actuality by punishing their citizens, I find those that take a position opposed to the government I happen to live under more of a threat. You are either incapable of understanding that or unwilling to admit it is possible.
Direct lie. I have said quite clearly I feel the threat from the US government, especially to me, vis a vi nukes, is nothing compared to the threat DinnerJacket in Iran poses. The the US has used nukes before in the past and on foreign soil is not necessarily relevant to what the US government would do to its own citizens on its own soil with nukes. The threat the US military poses to me is in them executing current policy and pissing off foreigners en masse, which I have said several times I support stopping. I just disagree on the timeline and nature of the ultimate pull out everyone here seems to agree is the best option.
So you are either illiterate or being deliberately obtuse. Which is it?
No, but I think I can be reasonably sure the US president will not decide to bomb NY any time soon, regardless of who it is. I don’t think even McCain/Palin would have been that batshit. Iranian leaders on the other hand might, and if not I don’t see it as impossible that some people in that government would have no moral qualms in ‘sponsoring’ someone like UBL, who might be happy to find some disaffected middle eastern youth, promise him T&A in the afterlife, and convince him to walk into my home town with a nulcear present on his back. I support: stopping US military hostility and withdrawing from the middle eastern region which will lead to fewer such youths out there to recruit; and, holding individuals responsible for attacks on the US where appropriate and killing them if necessary.
I’ve met him. I wouldn’t trust him to deep fry a chicken without starting a war over it or over doing the needed heat to get it done. I’ve actually met more than a few of the freaks in DC thanks to my father’s involvment in politics and my subsequent activist years. Bob Barr for example, was reasonable. Certainly not a libertarian, but more concerned with individual liberty than your typical DC dipstick. Charles Schumer would legalize pot tomorrow if he didn’t think it would cost him votes. Never met Dole, would have liked to.
Ad Metuis, the fallacy of blaming all opposing positions on fear because you’d rather not deal with their nicer points, including practical applicability and possibility of actually happening in the real world. I could just as easily accuse you of fearing the real world political process and the test of your ideals it would engender as what causes you to stick to your ‘pure’ position. I’m polite enough to acknowledge that it’s a valid position at least. What’s clear from thsi exchange though is that you guys can’t even acknowledge when someone agrees with you in ideals but differs in practical application and where and when, if at all, to make compromises. That being the case, how the hell do you ever expect to change anything in this world when you would even take those who would be your allies in the real political arena and throw them under the bus?
Yes, the american murderers are less likely to target you who are an american (and a nationalist and militarist to boot).
But the point that the “stupid radicals” are making is that the american murderers are a global threat to liberty. I don’t think that people in this forum give a damn about you ‘feeling’ safe or not.
At any rate what I am saying is that if you were truly interested in freedom you’d do something about the BIGGEST threat to freedom on earth - that is the american governemnt. But you don’t give a damn about freedom. You are only interested in your own safety. Wait. Even that is a lie since iran is not going to attack NJ or wherever you live any time soon.
In your case I think you are either a war propagandist or a war propagandist. Which is it ?
Once more we have a moronic reply. No, the Iranians generally don’t tend to do that. However there is somewhat of a divide between the Iranian people and THEIR GOVERNMENT, specifically the people at the top who tend to be more radical. If the people of Iran were the issue, there would be no issue. I could give a shit less if they had a reasonably representative democracy and had nukes. The problem is those at the top are not of a piece with the people they rule, and might not be against developing nukes and ‘losing’ one or two, said nukes ending up in the hands of those who would willingly explode in a disco.
But hey, thanks for the attempt at painting me as a racist. Take your cues from CNN or directly from Obama’s supporters?
Again, and for the hard of sight on this board, I DO NOT SUPPORT THOSE FUCKING POLICIES SO WHAT IS THE RELEVANCE OF CONSTANTLY REFERRING TO THEM AS IF I DO?
How pathetically and ideologically blinded are you people?
Not noticing a somewhat medieval mindset among the culture at large with which you’re dealing has to be a joke. If they were still using the iron maiden or thumb screws would that be relevant? I would sure as hell think so. Treating women like dogs and dogs like lunch is a problem. And yes that is rhetoric, not to be taken literally genius. The point is other cultures can be just as screwed up as western culture and worse. Stop bathing in the self righteous pleasure of rebelling against your own government for five minutes and take a moment to realize the problem with all governments, and then that practically speaking your only defense from an aggressive foreign government might be the one you currently live under.
The u.s. is over-there. over-there. and as auction- mentioned by his first-hand conversations with people outside of the u.s. the u.s is the threat and many in those other regions of the earth feel the need of self-defense is in order against the u.s. it’s a he said, he said game, ‘no i’m acting out of self-defense.’ ‘no, i am.’ ‘no, i am’., etc…
so for you it doesn’t matter as long as there are no wars going on in NY, as long as they are over across the ocean or in Mexico (? i don’t know), but as long as they are not in NY you feel safe. I guess you are looking out for #1 eh?
You are dialoguing out of fear. ‘the threat of iran’ because as you said…
Logically anything is possible that is NOT impossible.
it’s because of those that compromise that the need arises to engineer the next crop of people to declare all over again: ‘let’s make compromises’. and then the next generation comes along notices the faults of those that previously compromised, but again they repeat the same old, same old by selling off their soul to the devil, ‘let’s make compromises’.
too much ego for me in that statement.
who’s my ally? the person advocating for peace, justice, and liberty or the person advocating compromises of peace, justice, and liberty
THIS is the real world - and - in this real world there are amazingly people who’s efforts are NOT to compromise their morality. yes, it’s amazing that these people practically exist.
I adhere to the NAP so i don’t advocating throwing anybody under the bus.[:P]
They were right in Iraq, and people using your precise rationale, went head and murdered hundreds of thousands of people.
Based on your argument, if the NSA agrees with the UN, how can the NSA be right?
I’d also like an answer about what proof you have of a nuclear weapons program. Have you inspected Iran? Can you provide a source of anyone who has inspected Iran?
More fear-mongering. Do you have anything with substance? Or is that all you do, is use fear-mongering? Because this is just opinion. Nothing else.
Fact. Denying it is an act of idiocy. The rhetoric of blame is on display this very moment at the Copenhagen conference where at once the ‘capitalist’ US is denounced as evil while at the same time dictators beg for US money. Hypocrisy is not limited to the US government. There are people abroad, both in and out of politics, who want our troops there because they prosper in some way from our presence. This is true from corrupt contractors to people who would otherwise be dead in a blood feud,
Fact.
Granting this point, since it has never been done before, your claim there would be no consequences is just as much opinion as mine. However history backs me up, not you. You think Afganistan was an accident? The US government helped the Afgans up until it was convenient and then pulled out when it wasn’t, leaving a country with a population of largely teenagers with no infrastructure, no schools, and no purpose anymore for a good many but to stew in their own crap about being abandoned. Granted the US should not have gotten involved to begin with, but it did. The question is not whether or not the US government committed an error; it did. The question is whether or not a massive pull out with little to no concern for what was being left behind politically and sociologically had negative consequences. I say it did.
They are.
Once more, I am advocating pulling our troops out, so what is your point? That if I don’t advocate doing so immediately and without qualification then I am exactly the same as someone who wants to carpet bomb the rest of the planet into submission to a US empire? Seems even in the world you guys occupy there might be more shades of differentiation than that…
Bullshit. My intentions are for a complete pull out of troops, merely over a longer time frame than immediately, now, with no questions asked! However more than one person here has been quite clear about ignoring those intentions and arguing that even considering the possibility of negative consequences to an immediate pull out is tantamount to raping women and children and carpet bombing cities. You can come up with all the excuses you want, the bottom line is you have looked at the costs of establishing an anarcho capitalist paradise and have decided it is not in your interest to do so, and thus have accepted the state as a matter of practicality. You still argue against it, you still maintain your ideals, but you live in it as you must. So do I, to a differring degree. Stop coming up with excuses for your compromises to put balm on your precious ideological purity and either label yourself as a statist as you have done to me or admit that in a less than ideal world different people with the same ideals come to different conclusions about where and how to compromise those ideals for the best overall result in their individual evaluations of their own lives. You would not expect any two people when faced with marginal decisions to necessarily agree on anything per se, but somehow practical compromises to our ideals must agree 100%, or one of us is evil? Pure nonsense. Cow twinkies of the first order. All you’re doing is coming up witj excuses and rationalizations as to why your particular compromises are reasonable while mine aren’t. You think no one sufferred or was wronged to create the infrastructure you rely on every day for travel, communication, food, shelter, etc? Open your eyes for Christ’s sake. Compromise is not the problem, we all do it because we don’t live in a perfect world. The problem is when you get a bug up your ass about your own purity of vision and try to make excuses for all your deviations from that pure vision while everyone else has to be drawn and quartered for theirs.