Libya

[Volourn]

"terrible, Gadafi regime"

 

I like how put this in brackets like there's some actual doubt.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Russia is a gangster-state kleptocracy. It's a joke. Anything Putin's regime says or does is predicated on it's own utter self-interest, loss of Cold War hang-ups and defence of authoritarianism.

 

I feel sorry for the average Russian.

 

So, I take it you've been to Russia?

 

*sigh*

 

You know, you could make an effort to expand your knowledge of other countries beyond BBC World News. This aryan supermacy thing where US+UK+western europe+liberal democrat ideologues are the sole proprietors of common sense, best form of government, Justice, Morality and Goodness is getting really really old.

 

Please don't patronise me, and as for the Aryan BS... I'm Jewish. Or is that really scary too?

 

You understand what the latter sentence meant, even without the "aryan supremacy" embellishment.

 

If you don't want to be patronized extend that courtesy to others that you may not know/understand as well as you think you do.

[RPGmasterBoo]

"terrible, Gadafi regime"

 

I like how put this in brackets like there's some actual doubt.

 

The Saudi regime is at least as bad, if not much worse yet I don't see cries for democracy or intervention.

[Monte Carlo]

It's pretty easy to understand. Sadly, the east still stands for absolutism and the west the least-worst route of democracy. China / Russia et. al will always side with the dictator. Why? Look at their system of government. Defending Russia is hilarious, I'm not going to even entertain it. Were it not for it's nukes it'd be a pariah state.

 

Is "West Best?" :: shrugs :: I'll go out on a limb and say I think so. Ask all the people from other places who choose to come and live here that question, we must be doing something right.

[Morgoth]

We have the exact same problem here in Serbia and its not so much a problem of a form of government but a high cost of living that isn't matched by general wealth. Western countries have the same issue, slowed by their reasonably well functioning economies and statistic fixing immigrants.

Albania or Turkey have lower standard of living yet a high fertility rate.

 

Religion.

But you were just saying it has to do with wealth and standard of living.

 

A 100 years ago people were ass poor yet had 4-6 kids on average. Here in the federal state of Styria in Austria politicians thought "Hey, let's make the Kindergarten free and finance Afternoon school and supervision like they do in France", yet people still don't get more children.

 

Money has little do to with it.

Edited April 3, 2011 by Morgoth

[RPGmasterBoo]

We have the exact same problem here in Serbia and its not so much a problem of a form of government but a high cost of living that isn't matched by general wealth. Western countries have the same issue, slowed by their reasonably well functioning economies and statistic fixing immigrants.

Albania or Turkey have lower standard of living yet a high fertility rate.

 

Religion.

But you were just saying it has to do with wealth and standard of living.

 

A 100 years ago people were ass poor yet had 4-6 kids on average. Here in the federal state of Styria in Austria politicians thought "Hey, let's make the Kindergarten free and finance Afternoon school and supervision like they do in France", yet people still don't get more children.

 

Money has little do to with it.

 

Well that's the official, surface reason (one could almost say - excuse).

 

I have my own theories though.

 

What do you think is the right reason?

[213374U]

we must be doing something right.

Yep, we're better at stealing and lying. Dog eat dog etc.

[Volourn]

"The Saudi regime is at least as bad, if not much worse yet I don't see cries for democracy or intervention. "

 

What does that silliness have to do with what i quoted?

 

 

Anyways, I'll bite at your hilarious smokescreen:

 

 

Oh, Mr. judge, I may have murderd only one perosn but Joe Blow down the street murdered two.. so whya pickin' on me?

[RPGmasterBoo]

"The Saudi regime is at least as bad, if not much worse yet I don't see cries for democracy or intervention. "

 

What does that silliness have to do with what i quoted?

 

 

Anyways, I'll bite at your hilarious smokescreen:

 

 

Oh, Mr. judge, I may have murderd only one perosn but Joe Blow down the street murdered two.. so whya pickin' on me?

 

Look, these interventions boil down to the US (with or without EU support) picking a country in which they don't have a satisfactory level of control, then systematically accuse it of human rights abuses, authoritarianism and whatnot, to justify (in the eyes of their own people) an intervention whose primary goals are a self centered, selfishly motivated increase of power and resources.

 

You could argue (unsuccessfully) that such an intervention achieves a some good overall, if it were not for a number of countries which contemporary "humanitarian interventions" left a smoking crater of chaos and bloodshed. Even for those that didn't devolve into a protracted civil war, the damage will take decades to fix.

 

Its wrong from a moral standpoint, its based on falsehoods and it ends, inevitably, in disaster.

 

Gaddafi is 68 years old. What would have been wrong with waiting for his inevitable death and supporting "democracy" and "democratic" parties/factions afterwards?

[pmp10]

Gaddafi is 68 years old. What would have been wrong with waiting for his inevitable death and supporting "democracy" and "democratic" parties/factions afterwards?

Similar case could be made for Castro and Cuba.

There doesn't seem to be much improvement following handing down of power.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Gaddafi is 68 years old. What would have been wrong with waiting for his inevitable death and supporting "democracy" and "democratic" parties/factions afterwards?

Similar case could be made for Castro and Cuba.

There doesn't seem to be much improvement following handing down of power.

 

Because there wasn't. Raul is Castro's brother and is wholly commited to continuing his policy. Even so, Raul is only a few years younger than Castro and his stepping down is inevitable in the near future.

Younger CUbans, not shaped in the revolution and cold war will inevitably come into power and some sort of change is guaranteed.

 

Does there have to be an improvement? Is an improvement even possible? Cuba is poor, but it was always poor - even when the US mafia used it as a private gambling den and resort. Cuba has nothing of note to make money with, no valuable resources or comparative economical advantage. Cubans have some of the best healthcare around, and they aren't exactly starving and they're also independent of the US which precious few countries on the American continent can claim.

Cuba is bad when compared to the american middle class lifestyle but so is most of the rest of the world.

[Malcador]

These rebels are an absolute joke.

[RPGmasterBoo]

These rebels are an absolute joke.

 

You noticed, huh? They're bad even by rag tag milita standards.

 

When they get into power is when it stops being funny.

[213374U]

Cuba is poor, but it was always poor - even when the US mafia used it as a private gambling den and resort. Cuba has nothing of note to make money with, no valuable resources or comparative economical advantage.

No. Do some research. During the 50's, Cuba was one of the strongest economies in Latin America in terms of GDP and growth, and only ~30% of the workforce was dedicated to agriculture. Thanks to foreign -mainly American- investment, it was well on its way to becoming a rich, industrialized country. It was de facto integrated into the US economy. That all went to hell with Castro's revolution, and the following economic reorienting the country underwent to become a USSR satellite. For a time things were going dandy, at the tune of $5bn/yr in Soviet subsidies, but when the Soviet Bloc collapsed, so did the Cuban economy.

 

There's no way to know if Cuba would have been a competitive economy if left to its own devices -though data from that period seems to indicate it would-, as it's always been part, de facto or de jure, of one empire or another. But it's preposterous -and ignorant- to chalk up Cuba's present state to a sort of "fundamental unproductivity" and make analyses based on that notion.

Edited April 3, 2011 by 213374U

[lord of flies]

It's pretty easy to understand. Sadly, the east still stands for absolutism and the west the least-worst route of democracy. China / Russia et. al will always side with the dictator. Why? Look at their system of government. Defending Russia is hilarious, I'm not going to even entertain it. Were it not for it's nukes it'd be a pariah state.

 

Is "West Best?" :: shrugs :: I'll go out on a limb and say I think so. Ask all the people from other places who choose to come and live here that question, we must be doing something right.

Ah, yes, the West stands for least-worst route of democracy. That would be why we participated in the overthrow the democratically elected governments of Iran, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Brazil, Chile, etc. Its why our current enemies list includes men who hold free and fair elections (e.g. Chavez) and excludes numerous who don't (e.g. House of Saud). The East stands for absolutism, that's why the Soviet Union had such positive relations with the (democratic) governments of India, Brazil, Chile, etc.

 

Understand international politics through the lens of those who care about social justice and those who don't (or, those who favor economic liberalism and those who have a code of ethics), rather than folks with lofty ideas of "democracy," and all the teams make a ****load more sense.

Edited April 3, 2011 by lord of flies

[Walsingham]

Gaddafi is 68 years old. What would have been wrong with waiting for his inevitable death and supporting "democracy" and "democratic" parties/factions afterwards?

 

So... simply wait maybe another twenty years, by which time one or other of his two sons would have been more than capable of assuming power.

 

Your metric puts rather a high price on having clean hands, and a rather low price on the lives of perhaps two or three generations of Libyans.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Gaddafi is 68 years old. What would have been wrong with waiting for his inevitable death and supporting "democracy" and "democratic" parties/factions afterwards?

 

So... simply wait maybe another twenty years, by which time one or other of his two sons would have been more than capable of assuming power.

 

Your metric puts rather a high price on having clean hands, and a rather low price on the lives of perhaps two or three generations of Libyans.

 

Their lives are in danger, how, exactly?

What's this thing they're going to get that makes it worth having bombs drop onto their heads, infrastructure destroyed and a potential civil war over it?

 

Are you going to make them wealthy? Prosperous? Free?

Or are they going stay piss poor and in ruins like Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo with a puppet government that lives on western donations?

[lord of flies]

Don't bother. Liberals *makes sucking sound through teeth* don't have the ability to learn from history. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, then as a long-drawn out series of repetition of the same tired old joke. The continued existence of suboptimal governments is all because we haven't humanitarian intervened enough! That's the real reason! Not the fact that men are imperfect and the US is lead by counterrevolutionary bandits!

[WDeranged]

is pretty interesting, I always like it when guests go off message, especially how the newsbabes react.

[RPGmasterBoo]

is pretty interesting, I always like it when guests go off message, especially how the newsbabes react.

 

OMG, refreshing honesty. Cool dude, its obvious why he's a former analyst.

Edited April 4, 2011 by RPGmasterBoo

[Morgoth]

The wars must flow.

 

How else would they justify the Military industrial complex?

[213374U]

Their lives are in danger, how, exactly?

What's this thing they're going to get that makes it worth having bombs drop onto their heads, infrastructure destroyed and a potential civil war over it?

Yes, please. I'd really like to see this point expanded upon, seeing how it's the entire rationale for this war. Talk show experts keep bringing up Srbrenica as a precedent but the only similarity is that NATO is running a no-fly zone over the country. No ethnic cleansing going on. Ostensibly no "genocide" outside of the speeches of the asinine and spineless Mr. Ban. All we know is that there's been an armed revolt of suspect origins and composition, which clearly doesn't have enough popular support to topple Qaddafi without massive external support. Well, we also know that Qaddafi wanted nothing to do with the Pentagon's pet project for the region, AFRICOM, and that he's no longer friends with the rest of the Arab League sellouts. But nevermind that.

 

@WDeranged:

[RPGmasterBoo]

I just don't understand why the French were so eager to jump at the opportunity of bombing Libya.

[213374U]

I just don't understand why the French were so eager to jump at the opportunity of bombing Libya.

Sarko's intent

And, http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone03242011.html

 

Also, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12660329

[RPGmasterBoo]

I just don't understand why the French were so eager to jump at the opportunity of bombing Libya.

Sarko's intent

And, http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone03242011.html

 

Also, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12660329

 

I'll read through it.

 

Diana Johnstone also wrote a book against the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia IIRC.

 

Also:

Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and Their Patrons?

by Prof. Peter Dale Scott

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...a&aid=23947