North Korea attacks and sinks South Korean ship, killing 46 people

[Wrath of Dagon]

But he said killing was ok in self defense, Iraq was hardly self defense given that they couldn't even touch us, and weren't close to those WMD's that they kept telling us were gonna jump out of the closet.

See, if you could only foretell the future back then, everyone would've known that.

[Cycloneman]

See, if you could only foretell the future back then, everyone would've known that.

So you are for a policy of immediate withdrawal from Iraq, then? It's hardly even ignorant self-defense now that Saddam Hussein is gone.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Isn't one responsible for fixing what one broke? We're not attacking Iraq, we're defending its legitimate government and ourselves.

[Cycloneman]

Isn't one responsible for fixing what one broke? We're not attacking Iraq, we're defending its legitimate government and ourselves.

Yet Iraq still wants us gone. Funny how that works.

[Calax]

Isn't one responsible for fixing what one broke? We're not attacking Iraq, we're defending its legitimate government and ourselves.

Yet Iraq still wants us gone. Funny how that works.

This, also Iraqi citizens view themselves as defending their own interests against us, so I take it you're a-ok with them blowing us Citizens up then.

[Humodour]

Defense of communism you mean, since when do communists believe in human rights? Do you also give credit to nazis for standing up to the communists?

 

You are truly ignorant.

 

Simply because the overall leaders of communism were despotic totalitarians doesn't mean the average communist (especially prior to the end of WW2) had anything to do with such. They tended to in fact be progressive.

 

Even to this day you have communists and socialists all over Europe who happily coexist with democracy and are staunch champions of human rights.

 

 

You also have far right parties like the BNP and National Front 'happily coexisting'. Honestly, Krez? The only reason eitehr sort of extremist can coexist is because they aren't allowed to enact their planned system.

 

I think Scandinavia might disagree with you.

 

Why do you believe that socialism and democracy are mutually exclusive? It's not really my cup of tea, but...

 

Edit: France, Germany, Japan, Cyprus, Greece to name a few... a much larger list if you include social democracy parties and labour/worker's parties.

Edited June 9, 2010 by Krezack

[Walsingham]

Krez, there's a massive differnce between redistributive taxation and social services, which even the Tories believe in a little bit, and communism.

 

Let me try to be more plain, since it seems my previous explanations sank without trace. In sequence

 

1. Foundation point 1: Humans are not naturally communist. They are acquisitive, self-centred, and driven to achieve personal power at a fundamental level so strong it is hard to overstate

 

2. Foundation point 2: The degree of control required for a purposive system is a function of the discrepancy in energy state between the system and its environment, and the natural tendencies of energy (chaos) in that system.

 

I could find references for these, but I think they speak for themselves or not at all.

 

3. If you follow the logical combination of the first two points then the conclusion must be that humans may find communism acceptable at very low energy states (hunter gatherers like the Bushmen), but the introduction of greater energy whether deliberate or accidental, places intolerable strain on the control systems. The controls fail, and the result is either self-correcting failure which lowers the energy, or evolution into a more natural/chaotic pattern. History shows that the reversionary mode is a sort of bureaucratic feudalism.

 

4. Of course communism isn't simply an economic model. It has an entire philosophical adjunct. One part of which is the notion of revolutionary commitment and the obverse principle of 'heresy'/reaction. This is tied into the fact that they need to exert extreme and pervasive control, not just of the body but the mind. Imprisonment, re-education, atonement through labour, public recanting of 'sin'. These aren't accidents in the history of communism. They are an inescapable component of the need for control.

 

~~

 

My point here and earlier is that you can have communists in a parliament in the same way that you can have right wing white supremacists in a parliament. They can sit there, they can vote on road traffic safety measures, but unless they are living in their ideal state then they aren't actually being either communist or white supremacists. They're just ordinary MPs with **** dreams.

[Cycloneman]

1. Foundation point 1: Humans are ... acquisitive, self-centred, and driven to achieve personal power at a fundamental level so strong it is hard to overstate

This is basically completely untrue on so many levels I don't know how it got to be popular as an idea. Human beings are naturally social creatures, with a huge emphasis on subsuming themselves to greater things. So many political ideas of varying popularity rely heavily upon humanity's social instinct: communism, socialism, nationalism, fascism, even more simple ideas like universal health care are dependent on it.

 

If human beings are so self-centered, we would not have such an advanced civilization because everyone would have tried to cut everybody else's throat before they could get beyond agriculture.

 

There are two primary characteristics of human's social behavior which are fundamentally opposed to the idea that we are all selfish pricks:

 

Firstly, (neurotypical) human beings do not generally enjoy to see others come to harm. There are some circumstances where this is not true (I'm thinking primarily of vengeance, which factors into my second point), but there is a reason we naturally react to images of dead bodies with revulsion, to images of torture with hatred, and so forth. We are responding on a very basic level to others - even others we do not know and never will know - coming to harm.

 

Secondly, human beings are fundamentally and constantly seeking social acceptance. If you want evidence, just look at advertising; a large portion of ads are based solely upon the idea that people want other people to like them. This requires them to behave in certain ways, i.e. the social mores of their particular society. If someone pisses in the street, for example, people won't like them.

 

There are some other examples of humanity's fundamental interfacing with reality as social creatures. In fact, there are countless. Have you ever changed or created a belief based solely upon what others were saying, rather than evidence or facts? That's an example.

 

Communists generally believe far too much in the idea of tabula rasa, but the general idea which has come about in the political center that people are selfish pricks is demonstrably untrue. I believe LoF posted a meta-study a while back of a bunch of different psychological experiments where the author examined various people placed in various competitive/cooperative models and discovered that they did not behave in the most rational way (i.e. be a prick).

[Walsingham]

Ok. I obviously didn't express that foundation point with sufficient depth. I was trying to be focussed on teh chain of reasoning, not each point.

 

I actually think you're pretty correct that human's aren't generically bastards. We do cooperate. We often make the most tremendous collaborative efforts. However there's a big difference between sharing when and how we feel at a given point in time, and being bound to share consistently.

 

This is the point I made about power, which I think is central to both this point and my whole practical understanding of human dynamics. People NEED to feel in control. The next time you see some poor unfortuante, even yourself, getting upset ask if it's because something happened which they couldn't do anything about.

 

Now, having said that, LoF is going to argue as he has done that wealth will be controlled by local committees, hence greater control. I haven't fully formulated my objection to this, and need to work on it. But I feel very strongly that such local committeees will either be amateur and ineffective or professional and favour the class of professionals who will accumulate in those committees. More crucially, what recourse will the dissenter have? They cannot elect to remove themselves from the committee's decisions or the entire foundation of the communist state is void. Abuses of power become inevitable, and stupidity almost unpunishable.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Isn't one responsible for fixing what one broke? We're not attacking Iraq, we're defending its legitimate government and ourselves.

Yet Iraq still wants us gone. Funny how that works.

They want us gone once order has been reestablished, which isn't exactly surprising.

 

Edit: Humans have evolved to function in society while still prioritizing their personal reproductive success, that much should be obvious.

Edited June 9, 2010 by Wrath of Dagon

[Cycloneman]

Isn't one responsible for fixing what one broke? We're not attacking Iraq, we're defending its legitimate government and ourselves.

Yet Iraq still wants us gone. Funny how that works.

They want us gone once order has been reestablished, which isn't exactly surprising.

They want us gone now.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

[Calax]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

Actually he's just saying what's obviously true based on the citizens actions and investigations that have shown that due to americas arrival in Iraqi recruitment skyrocketed for anti-american groups.

[Rostere]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

Actually he's just saying what's obviously true based on the citizens actions and investigations that have shown that due to americas arrival in Iraqi recruitment skyrocketed for anti-american groups.

 

I always find it kind of ironic when American military leaders say "we will be gone from Iraq when the fighting stops" when they being there is a main reason for the violence. You would be hard pressed to find a country more widely despised in the Middle East than the US. I feel the US is very much giving the western democracies bad relations with that part of the world with all the fighting, unconditional support for Israel et.c. If the US had not propped up the undemocratic regime in Saudi Arabia, there would be no Al Qaeda and if the Palestine conflict had been resolved long ago a lot of radical extremist movements had not gained the kind of prominent position they have today. In a way, a lot of unrest has been sown in the Middle East due to Western powers acting only in their own immidiate interest without regards to ethical considerations.

[Volourn]

Balony. ME countries use the West as scapegoats when the ones who treat their people the worst or the ME leaders. Just look at how they treat Palestine all the while bashing Isreal. Don't blame the US for the sorry state of the ME. That's the ME's doing.

Edited June 9, 2010 by Volourn

[Cycloneman]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

Actually, they appointed Nouri al-Maliki to speak for them. But I understand your confusion, we look very similar.

[~Di]

Never should have gone into Iraq, it was based on lies and dishonesty, a poorly-prepared war waged by a bunch of incompetent, egomaniac politicians. Obama promised to get us out. He lied. We should pull every soldier out of there today.

 

Of course, civil war will break out within hours of our departure... which was a known consequence before invading such an ethnically unstable country in the first place. What we broke in Iraq can never be fixed, not in our lifetime. It was our nation's biggest shame, in my view.

[Orogun01]

Never should have gone into Iraq, it was based on lies and dishonesty, a poorly-prepared war waged by a bunch of incompet

[Humodour]

Was there anything more to that Orogun?

[Thorton_AP]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

 

Weren't you just doing the same?

 

[Walsingham]

Never should have gone into Iraq, it was based on lies and dishonesty, a poorly-prepared war waged by a bunch of incompetent, egomaniac politicians. Obama promised to get us out. He lied. We should pull every soldier out of there today.

 

Of course, civil war will break out within hours of our departure... which was a known consequence before invading such an ethnically unstable country in the first place. What we broke in Iraq can never be fixed, not in our lifetime. It was our nation's biggest shame, in my view.

 

So you should be ashamed of removing Saddam and his regime of rapists and mass murderers? Both your country and mine have many things to be ashamed of, but the decision to go in is not one of them. Failing to handle the peace we can be ashamed of.

[Orogun01]

Was there anything more to that Orogun?

Sorry my PC crapped out on me in the middle of the sentence.

 

My point was that after destabilizing the area we need to ensure that the right group assumes power since the Anti-American sentiment on the zone must be at an all time high.

[Wrath of Dagon]

I'm glad they appointed you to speak for them.

Actually, they appointed Nouri al-Maliki to speak for them. But I understand your confusion, we look very similar.

That link says he demanded a timetable for withdrawal, not an immediate withdrawal which is what you claimed. To my knowledge we are actually ahead of the negotiated timetable.

[~Di]

Never should have gone into Iraq, it was based on lies and dishonesty, a poorly-prepared war waged by a bunch of incompetent, egomaniac politicians. Obama promised to get us out. He lied. We should pull every soldier out of there today.

 

Of course, civil war will break out within hours of our departure... which was a known consequence before invading such an ethnically unstable country in the first place. What we broke in Iraq can never be fixed, not in our lifetime. It was our nation's biggest shame, in my view.

 

So you should be ashamed of removing Saddam and his regime of rapists and mass murderers? Both your country and mine have many things to be ashamed of, but the decision to go in is not one of them. Failing to handle the peace we can be ashamed of.

 

We'll have to disagree here, Wals. Afghanistan, yep, I was all in favor. But Afghanistan had wronged us and we had proof of it. The decision to invade Iraq was made based upon deliberate lies and falacies, without a single, solitary thought as to how to keep the "liberated" country from imploding into civil war. Thousands upon thousands of dead soldiers, hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, all brought about by the lies and treachery of our own government. If that's not a national shame, I don't know what is.

 

We broke that nation into pieces, and after we leave the bloodshed will continue until there is only one religious sect left. I honestly predict genocide of either the Sunnis or the Shiites. That will be on us, all on us.

 

Yes, I'm ashamed.

[Volourn]

That nation was already in pieces. And, if there's any genocide of anyone it's all on the people who commits it. Also, Iraq commited its share of attempted genocides. It wasn't all lies. Saying that is a lie inofitself.

 

Iraq is better off without Hussein in power. Sure, things could have been handled better, no doubt about it.