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Yes that's why it's important to have a deterrent, so nobody bombs you in the first place
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Jul 7, 2019 22:38
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Why won’t Israel give up their nukes but fights tooth and nail for Iran to not have any ?
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Jul 7, 2019 23:23
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Warbadger posted:It's not really a normal outcome, both in that crews lobbing missiles around should be aware of where not to lob said missiles and a lot of SAMs being designed to detonate once the target has been lost/missed. But the SAA isn't exactly the most competent group around and their missiles are mostly old Soviet stuff that didn't really prioritize those kind of considerations. During the Kosovo war a NATO fighter fired an anti-radar missile against a Serbian SAM site that then flew its own way, landing on an apartment building in Sophia, Bulgaria. Luckily no one was injured but of course it wasn't good optics for the operation. https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/30/richardnortontaylor.kateconnolly The worst outcome of a runaway missile has to be that Ukrainian army's wargame in the Black Sea when a live missile missed whatever practise target it was intended to hit and then acquired and destroyed a civilian airliner, killing 78. I'm sure there are far more 'oopsies' than get reported, but usually the missiles that miss splash to the sea in areas like this. OTOH as missile ranges increase, there will be more incidents.
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Jul 7, 2019 23:27
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Punk da Bundo posted:Why won’t Israel give up their nukes but fights tooth and nail for Iran to not have any ? Probably because israel sees all its neighbors as enemies who have just enough vested cultural history in controlling jerusalem as they do. By the way I hold the personal belief everyone should give up their nukes. However gene drives are also a very bad potential armageddon creator so while we live in the nuke is scary era there will be even worse weapons of mass destruction with less radiation & and more death. Or climate change will wipe the region out and if Iran knows that why wouldnt they create a climate disaster for the rest of the world to suffer with? WAR CRIME GIGOLO fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 7, 2019 23:28
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Hrm, so it's almost like nuclear weapons greatly help with being able to stand on your own in a hostile environment and are an effective deterrent against anyone pushing you too hard?
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Jul 7, 2019 23:38
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Until they don't and just become another weapon.
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Jul 7, 2019 23:53
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Crazycryodude posted:Hrm, so it's almost like nuclear weapons greatly help with being able to stand on your own in a hostile environment and are an effective deterrent against anyone pushing you too hard? Iran already has that capability with their non linear assets that is far greater than one or a few low range nukes. Bombing israeli oil terminals would do far more damage than lovely nukes.
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Jul 8, 2019 00:11
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:Iran already has that capability with their non linear assets that is far greater than one or a few low range nukes. Bombing israeli oil terminals would do far more damage than lovely nukes. So why would Israel be so rock-hard for us to start bombing Iran before they get nukes, if they would definitely sustain nuke+ amounts of damage if a conflict breaks out? Either they're totally insane, or you're wrong. The middle east would be a safer place if Iran had nukes and Israel & Saudi Arabia had none.
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Jul 8, 2019 00:20
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If shooting cruise missiles at oil terminals is just as effective a deterrent as nukes then why does Israel get to have nukes when a cruise missile barrage would work? Large numbers of high-quality missiles are even easier to get for Israel, hell they can probably get bleeding edge world-class US hardware for essentially free as long as whoever's running the US feels like tossing some pocket change at Raytheon (the US government is always willing to toss some money at Raytheon). And on top of that huge advantage the people they'd be shooting at don't have missile defense systems nearly on par with Israel's, so their higher-quality greater-numbers less-defended-against missile strikes should be absolutely god-tier if Iran with none of those advantages is still good enough to not need nukes. And yet Israel still need nukes 
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Jul 8, 2019 00:20
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We were a Trump decision away from at least a limited strike against Iran just last month, with multiple high level officials who wanted him to pull the trigger, which definitely wouldn't have been the case if they had nukes. The idea that nukes offer no added value for deterrence compared to whatever assets they have now is insane.
Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 00:56
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Sinteres posted:We were a Trump decision away from at least a limited strike against Iran just last month, with multiple high level officials who wanted him to pull the trigger, which definitely wouldn't have been the case if they had nukes. The idea that nukes offer no added value for deterrence compared to whatever assets they have now is insane. No it makes complete sense. Why put money into that deterrent when we were so close to a strike a month ago? It's going to take 5 years to get a real arsenal together. They enrich bombs and Israel bombs the enrichment facility with sexy new F-35s. Conventional weapons make the most sense with the time available.
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Jul 8, 2019 01:14
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WAR CRIME GIGOLO posted:No it makes complete sense. Why put money into that deterrent when we were so close to a strike a month ago? It's going to take 5 years to get a real arsenal together. They enrich bombs and Israel bombs the enrichment facility with sexy new F-35s. Conventional weapons make the most sense with the time available. Oh, I completely agree that rushing for nukes would be risky, and they can't be assured of getting away with it just because North Korea did. The fact that they're still under threat of attack if they do rush for nukes kind of proves that they'd be safer if they did manage to get them though. I hope they never do, because I think proliferation is bad and would rather see the number of nuclear states drop to zero (unrealistic as that may be), but negotiating hasn't worked out terribly well for them either, and they have no reason to trust future promises at this point. I assume their current strategy is to slowly continue building up capabilities, while threatening to rush things if pressed, in order to continue shortening the length of time it would take if they ever do decide to rush. If that time gets short enough, maybe they'll even do it without a pressing need, but I think for now they do still fear the consequences enough to deter them from going all out, and if they do want nukes they might figure they have a better chance waiting until the US gets bogged down somewhere else or has less aggressive leadership before betting the house.
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Jul 8, 2019 01:46
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U.S. Push for German Ground Troops in Syria Prompts Backlash Yeah. I don't think the Germans are gonna.
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Jul 8, 2019 05:33
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OhFunny posted:U.S. Push for German Ground Troops in Syria Prompts Backlash
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Jul 8, 2019 05:45
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The same German military that only has four functioning fighters? https://www.thelocal.de/20180502/german-luftwaffe-only-has-four-operation-ready-eurofighter-jets-report
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Jul 8, 2019 05:53
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The only thing German troops could legally get to do in Syria would be training assistance for the local military, so unless Trump wants Germany to help train Bashar's soldiers I think he should drop the idea.Moatman posted:The same German military that only has four functioning fighters? https://www.thelocal.de/20180502/german-luftwaffe-only-has-four-operation-ready-eurofighter-jets-report They're down to two, now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-48746559
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Jul 8, 2019 06:36
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Doesn't Germany have a large Turkish population? How politically fraught is supporting the PKK?
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Jul 8, 2019 07:35
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Doesn't Germany have a large Turkish population? How politically fraught is supporting the PKK? afaik the PKK is still on the terror list but having an alphabet soup of different allied militias to choose from makes that rather meaningless, as does the fact that Erdoghan has thoroughly pissed off most of the country except the most reactionary Turkish Germans. If he complained it would probably make Germany want to support the Kurds even harder. The most effective threat Turkey can make is to send all refugees they have across the Greek border to piss off the EU (and thus Germany) back. suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 09:09
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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What is actually happening in Turkey atm? I know Erdoghan's party lost the Istanbul elections, but have there been any real shifts in how he is perceived by most folks in Turkey?
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Jul 8, 2019 09:14
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Doesn't Germany have a large Turkish population? How politically fraught is supporting the PKK? It also has a big kurdish population, and crying pkk no longer works the way it did in the 90s, paradoxically thanks to Erdogan to a large extent.
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Jul 8, 2019 09:29
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Josef bugman posted:What is actually happening in Turkey atm? I know Erdoghan's party lost the Istanbul elections, but have there been any real shifts in how he is perceived by most folks in Turkey? He just fired the head of the Turkish Central Bank for not lowering interest rates, so we'll see how that plays out.
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Jul 8, 2019 10:30
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On that note: https://twitter.com/canokar/status/1148116373677232128
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Jul 8, 2019 14:26
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Volkerball posted:What do you think your definition of a pro-democracy and pro-Libyan intervention would've looked like? State actors act on behalf of their interests. Pro-democracy intervention can only be achieved when the interests of the revolutionaries and the intervening states are pointed in the same direction, as it was in the case of Libya. France didn't intervene in the revolutionary war because they believed in what the revolutionaries were trying to do. They were trying to undermine the British. But the effect was the same, because the goals of France and the goals of the revolutionaries were in line with each other. The same was true of the intervention in Libya. Gaddafi was a piece of poo poo who needed to go for Libya to have the opportunity to become something better, and everyone involved in the fight agreed with that. The French government in Libya didn't intervene because their interests aligned with democratic self determination for the Libyan people. In fact their concerns were directly related to Libya's role as a relatively prosperous and functional government and its plans to begin developing a new financial system that would have potentially undermined French power on the continent. It was very much in their interests to reduce Libya to a failed state. Similarly the rebel forces were not primarily composed or liberals or ardent pro-democracy forces - as the report makes clear there was an immediate and predictable threat that Islamist groups would be the beneficiaries of any overthrow of the government. If I didn't know better I would honestly think your arguments are intentionally bad exaggerations and that you were actually a staunch anti-interventionist. They say that the best way to harm a cause is to defend it badly and in that spirit I say carry on. quote:How does the US "using its vast wealth and cultural influence to aid the people of Libya" not equal support for a dictator in Gaddafi? Either you are directly aiding Gaddafi, or you are aiding his people and undermining him, in which case, you are still creating the conditions for the sort of uprising we saw in 2011. What then, do you turn your back on the people when they rise up? I have posted many, many times over the years about how pissed off I was that the US turned its back on Tripoli following the revolution. After the Benghazi consulate attack, and the widespread condemnation among the left for intervening in the first place, Obama basically cut all ties with the country, despite the widespread condemnation of the attacks by Libyan protesters, and the sympathy for the American victims that was displayed. There was a period of years where Libya fell into chaos after the revolution where the world sat back and watched it all unfold. If you want to find something to criticize regarding the lack of humane, peaceful promotion of a democratic agenda, it's in that period of time. Removing Gaddafi is the only positive of the entire story. I feel like most people are likely to skip over your post so I wanted to specifically quote and highlight this in case people otherwise miss that you just tried to blame the failure of the Libyan intervention on the left being too critical of Obama. Squalid posted:My motivations are two fold. Firstly I am offended at the kind of motivated reasoning used by people like Moridin920... That self righteous feeling of offense that you think authorizes you to bitch and moan about Moridin920 and various other posters also coincidentally gives other posters license to say how they feel about the types of posting they don't like. Further, what feel to you like completely self evident examples of poor or motivated reasoning by other people are clearly at least in part a reflection of your own confusions and biases which you seem pathetically reluctant to contemplate or examine. This also helps illustrate the problematic relationship between contemporary political journalism and social media. The interaction between journalists, sources and consumers has been fundamentally changed by the rise of online spaces such as this one, as well as twitter and facebook. None of the arguments we are having here would have been possible a few decades ago. The implications of that change for journalism and the way online interaction changes the journalists mentality, and in particular the way it mediates between the journalist and the rest of the world, have serious implications for how stories are reported. We see that playing out in all kinds of ways, not least of all your fanboyish reflex to defend your hero when you think he's unfairly attacked.
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Jul 8, 2019 15:36
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https://twitter.com/fmkaplan/status/1148304536697745411
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Jul 8, 2019 20:23
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OhFunny posted:He just fired the head of the Turkish Central Bank for not lowering interest rates, so we'll see how that plays out. And is this bad?
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Jul 8, 2019 20:29
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Helsing posted:The French government in Libya didn't intervene because their interests aligned with democratic self determination for the Libyan people. In fact their concerns were directly related to Libya's role as a relatively prosperous and functional government and its plans to begin developing a new financial system that would have potentially undermined French power on the continent. Libya was in the middle of a civil war OP. quote:It was very much in their interests to reduce Libya to a failed state. Similarly the rebel forces were not primarily composed or liberals or ardent pro-democracy forces - as the report makes clear there was an immediate and predictable threat that Islamist groups would be the beneficiaries of any overthrow of the government. Funny then that Libya had democratic elections for seats in the GNC in which 60% of eligible voters participated, their first democratic transfer of power (to moderates I might add), and then another two years after that before things degraded into war. A two years where the security situation degraded while the world did next to nothing to help empower the fledgling government. A democracy was put in place and people were participating in it, and you want to ignore it afterwards to slander Libyans as terrorists as an argument against intervening on their behalf in the first place. Get hosed. quote:I feel like most people are likely to skip over your post so I wanted to specifically quote and highlight this in case people otherwise miss that you just tried to blame the failure of the Libyan intervention on the left being too critical of Obama. It wasn't the left, it was everyone in America. Nobody wanted anything to do with Libya after Benghazi, even though the group responsible for the attack was pushed out of their headquarters by protesters and later disbanded. The government was vulnerable and needed support. If you want to talk about peaceful democracy promotion, that was the time to do it. I have a feeling you wouldn't have agreed to anything like that at the time, though. Ya'll wanted it to fail so you could hold it up as an example of the evils of intervening. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jul 8, 2019 |
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Jul 8, 2019 20:34
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Josef bugman posted:And is this bad? if it works the same way as fed rates in the US, yeah it's bad if erdogan keeps wanting to goose the Turkish economy for political reasons while putting it in a position where it can't react to a recession.
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Jul 8, 2019 20:35
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^^ what fauxton said, plus in modern economies based on fiat money you cannot have 0% interest rate all the time, it's insane. Erdogan is coming at it from a religious perspective, no interest is allowed in Islam, as you all know. But it's nuts, since the central bank loans arent the same thing, they are (real economist please correct me) a measure of how much new accounting units you are introducing in the economy to try and match (or modify) the units of resources and, above all, labor. It is really nuts. It's like wanting to burn computers because some components are slaves to other components that are masters and slavery is bad. The words are the same, the meaning is not. Also, I doubt Erdogan is that much of fanatic, there's also massive credit and real state bubble going on that he doesnt want to see explode under his watch (much like America and, in a different way, Europe and China), so instead of allowing a small poo poo to hit the fan now he's fueling the bubble, because he's beholden tO the real stte sector. This makes it so that when it explodes it will be like a radioactive poo poo hitting a turbofan. Lile in the rest of the world, bee tee dubs.
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Jul 8, 2019 21:57
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Dawncloack posted:^^ what fauxton said, plus in modern economies based on fiat money you cannot have 0% interest rate all the time, it's insane. Is it really a religious thing? I know that he's repeatedly stated that higher interest means higher inflation, which of course any economist will disagree with.
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Jul 8, 2019 22:17
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Volkerball posted:Libya was in the middle of a civil war OP. Sadly, that doesn't change the truth of what I said. Libya had extensive oil reserves that were almost entirely state owned as well as substantial capital which the French government was concerned would be used to create a new African-centric financial system that would have severely undermined the position of the French government. There's plenty of official documentation establishing this as well as leaked memos from one of Clinton's time in the state department that explicitly identifies this fear on the part of the French as a primary motivation for the military action. quote:Funny then that Libya had democratic elections for seats in the GNC in which 60% of eligible voters participated, their first democratic transfer of power (to moderates I might add), and then another two years after that before things degraded into war. A two years where the security situation degraded while the world did next to nothing to help empower the fledgling government. A democracy was put in place and people were participating in it, and you want to ignore it afterwards to slander Libyans as terrorists as an argument against intervening on their behalf in the first place. Get hosed. A democracy can't be "put in place" in a year. Democracies are extremely fragile governments that take at minimum decades to properly develop and require all kinds of attendant economic and cultural institutions. You can't just blow up the existing government and then casually implant a "democracy" in the rubble. You are trying to treat the overthrow of the last government, the attempts to establish a new government, and the failure of those attempts, as completely discrete and disconnected events rather than a single extended process. But that is not how large scale social upheavals work - these processes take place on a much larger scale than even a single human life, and trying to pretend democracy briefly existed in Libya because they had a single election is completely wrong headed. A democratic state is a state that has survived multiple competitive elections each of which ended in a peaceful transition of power. This is key to understand because once we acknowledge that establishing a democracy is an extended and difficult process, and once we further acknowledge that you have to measure democratic nation building in decades rather than months, the utter madness of your previous statement about the alignment between the interests of the French government and the interests of the Libyan people starts to become clearer. Because while you might be able to convince the government of France or America or another great power to smash up the local state apparatus - especially when that state apparatus controls reserves of oil - actually expecting them to stick around and assist in genuine nation building is completely irrational. Any intervention that didn't come with a full, detailed and credible plan to spend decades carefully rebuilding and aiding the country that is being attacked is irresponsible, immoral and will predictably end in chaos and destruction. You're acting like its some huge coincidence that all these interventions keep failing but it really isn't. Since the interventions were never actually intended to help the people on the ground - and indeed are often motivated in large part by a desire to cripple a hostile state regardless of the human costs - they typically end up harming the cause of freedom and democracy rather than aiding it. So much of what your position just seems to reduce to this impotent rage you feel toward the people trying to explain to you that not all complex problems in the world can be magically solved by killing the Bad Guys. quote:It wasn't the left, it was everyone in America. Nobody wanted anything to do with Libya after Benghazi, even though the group responsible for the attack was pushed out of their headquarters by protesters and later disbanded. The government was vulnerable and needed support. If you want to talk about peaceful democracy promotion, that was the time to do it. I have a feeling you wouldn't have agreed to anything like that at the time, though. Ya'll wanted it to fail so you could hold it up as an example of the evils of intervening. Actually the Libya intervention and its total failure was one of the reasons that I've become so skeptical of these interventions.
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Jul 8, 2019 22:19
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Count Roland posted:Is it really a religious thing? I know that he's repeatedly stated that higher interest means higher inflation, which of course any economist will disagree with.
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Jul 8, 2019 22:48
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FAUXTON posted:if it works the same way as fed rates in the US, yeah it's bad if erdogan keeps wanting to goose the Turkish economy for political reasons while putting it in a position where it can't react to a recession. Watch Erdo collapse his loving country
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Jul 8, 2019 22:51
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suck my woke dick posted:Watch Erdo collapse his loving country It'll be horrifying if that happens, tiananmen on steroids is probably the low end.
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Jul 9, 2019 01:23
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Dawncloack posted:^^ what fauxton said, plus in modern economies based on fiat money you cannot have 0% interest rate all the time, it's insane. Erdogan is not especially religious at all, however if you are extremely wealthy you want low interest rates so you continue to be extremely wealthy in perpetuity, as opposed to inflation undercutting your worth. Erdogan has always paid lip service to religious concerns far, far more than meaningfully giving a gently caress about them. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 02:49
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Helsing posted:That self righteous feeling of offense that you think authorizes you to bitch and moan about Moridin920 and various other posters also coincidentally gives other posters license to say how they feel about the types of posting they don't like. Further, what feel to you like completely self evident examples of poor or motivated reasoning by other people are clearly at least in part a reflection of your own confusions and biases which you seem pathetically reluctant to contemplate or examine. I may have been overly hostile previously i think. I actually do enjoy reading your posts, as you are one of relatively few posters worth remembering. I might not agree with you on much but your arguments are clear and well constructed, which is what makes engaging with them worthwhile. In particular I regret when I suggested you were being dishonest, as you have always come across as forward and straightforward to me. Maybe its unfair to call specific people out when I'm making a point, but I try to avoid jousting with straw-men. Calling Moridin out specifically might not be fair, but if I have mischaracterized him then I want to see his response. I realize I'm somewhat anomalous in that I dislike conversations with those who agree with me. After all, if two people read the same paper, watch all the same movies, go to all the same political rallies, they couldn't possibly have anything to say that the other hadn't already heard. There would be nothing they could learn. On the subject of something that's not meta: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/yemen-uae-reduce-troop-presence-consulting-riyadh-190708155534616.html Yemen: UAE to reduce troop presence after consulting with Riyadh posted:The United Arab Emirates announced it will reduce its troop presence throughout war-torn Yemen, moving from a "military first" to a "peace first" strategy. tl;dr UAE is pulling troops out of Yemen. Analysts are divided as to why, but its either: A) The accomplished their objectives and can go home successful (lol) B) They have given up on defeating the Houthi and are pulling back to defend what they hope will become an effectively independent South Yemen, or C) They are concerned that there will be a real war with Iran and need to their soldiers to defend the home front.
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Jul 9, 2019 04:47
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Thanks for all the good points to complement mine.
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Jul 9, 2019 09:34
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Squalid posted:My motivations are two fold. Firstly I am offended at the kind of motivated reasoning used by people like Moridin920. It must be a false flag, because if it isn't it could be used as an excuse for a war. In fact it doesn't even matter what actually happened, the important thing is taking a strong stand against imperialism, why are you asking questions anyway? This is a mischaracterization of what I said. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume I wrote unclearly, which definitely wouldn't be a first. I definitely don't think that any event that happens must be the US' fault somehow otherwise I might be somehow supporting imperialism. What I said was that the USA and specifically Trump's administration are liars who lie nonstop and thus to present anything they say as just the opposing side of an equal equation is nonsense. They are to be treated as hostile witnesses, almost. Anything they say has to be assumed to be untrue and proven true. You can't take anything at face value. Presenting them as the other side of an equal argument is nanners. They should be handled as the belligerent aggressive liars that they are. I'm specifically not saying no one should ask questions. We should ask all the questions. We should be fully informed before we decide whether to start yet another war instead of running off half cocked in an outrage. I have no idea where you're getting "it doesn't even matter what happened" from. It's just that no one believes the US about the tankers, not even the owner of the company. This really isn't some 50/50 oh well who knows what the truth really is - it is another lie from a bunch of liars and until it is shown to be accurate with substantiating evidence then I will assume it is just another fabrication. When a bunch of liars show me a grainy video of something they claim to be nefarious deeds by Iran while the rest of the international community is going "uhh what? no?" then yeah I'm going to assume they are full of poo poo and anyone worth their salt should as well. When Volkerball said: quote:There's no evidence to suggest it was a total fabrication. I said nonsense, the evidence is clear: Trump and Co are liars, the USA has traditionally been a liar and a treaty breaker, this is a grainy video of nothing much, literally no one else is buying the story. This is not a 50/50 well who knows both sides might be correct instance. You're not being a mature adult by giving both sides the benefit of the debt in attempt to 'find the truth,' you're being had. quote:Whatever your ideology you have to be able to actually look at the world and figure out what really is, you can't just always assume that the truth is what's convenient at the moment. I agree. What I'm railing against here is people who purport to be non-ideological and are 'just reporting the facts' - except the reported facts are often defined by a bunch of liars with an ideological purpose and aren't being treated as such. e: and if BM said as much in the article then fine I jumped down their throat too quickly. In my experience though, people who try to be "unbiased non-ideological" journalists just reporting facts end up doing some "give all sides equal chance to speak" false equivalencies and perhaps I keyed off on that too hard. But this is what he said in the thread: quote:I just wanted to show that the evidence presented so far is inconclusive for either viewpoint, but apparently that's a rabidly pro-war/anti-American position, depending on your ideology. Which... loving lol frankly. The evidence so far is NOT inconclusive. The evidence so far is the USA has accused Iran of doing a crime and has provided nothing credible to convince anyone. To present this as a '50/50 who knows both sides' thing is exactly why we have half the US population wandering around thinking the science is not conclusive on climate change. It is conclusive, 99% of the world's scientists agree and are just nitpicking matters of degree... but the media runs it as a scientist debating a climate denier as if this is at all an equal argument. This would be like if I accused Squalid of robbing a bank and I have a grainy video of Squalid near a bank and that was literally it and the court is taking it seriously even though the bank said it wasn't even robbed (because remember, the ship's owner said they don't think it was a mine). Well hey, I accuse and Squalid denies so that's one person for each side right? Equal weight? Each of us is as likely to be in the right as the other? Except that's not how sane people handle weighing of evidence - especially not if the accusing party is a known compulsive liar. To say that THIS is the most un-biased way it can be and then to call everyone who disagrees an extremist of some flavor is... loving nanners. e: In fact yeah that's exactly how manufacturing consent works, BM. There is no conspiracy where your editor specifically said "aha let's railroad Iran" but you yourself do it when you present the US' clear provocative LIE as a 50% possibility because hey 'both viewpoints don't be biased' and so then half the population thinks "well we gotta maybe do something then" and the other half is unsure. It steps us a little bit closer to war. It makes it a little bit easier for Trump's next fabrication to pass muster. You (the media) did it with Iraq; you'd think you would have learned. But apparently not - and that's why people accuse you of being a mouthpiece of US propaganda btw. You give it a platform, you spread it around, and your unbiased "presenting both sides" only gives it more credence. Frankly, because of that, reporting what Trump's administration says as an equally weighted possibility with what literally the rest of the world outside the US is saying is misinformation. I don't think that makes me a tankie. Dunno what it has to do with suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. In fact I think it hits upon a pretty fundamental criticism of US media that has been made by various people for years at least. So idk you can call us tankies or assholes or ragers and handwave away but the fact remains my generation doesn't trust mainstream media sources because of exactly this kind of bs (among other things - like burying a retraction a month later after eagerly repeating lies that Bolton said). Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 16:11
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Moridin920 posted:
It allll comes back to Rumsfeld's answer as to: "How come you didn't find any WMDs, like you said Iraq had?" "Well no, we didn't...but we had to act cuz there are also UNKNOWN unknowns!" The semantic logic behind which does not erase what happened: USA invaded Iraq on a completely false premise. And seems to be more than happy to do so again with Iran. Except this time around, the precedents for this sort of justification are so well-ingrained and the consequences of adhering to it revealed as so ugly that no one's willing to buy it as easily anymore. At least not without another recent 9/11.
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Jul 9, 2019 17:54
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Yeah Rumsfeld's answer basically justifies literally any invasion: "well we don't know what we don't know so they might have anything so we need to act. It doesn't matter if we made all that up because they might have been bad anyway." I guess maybe that's why he wanted a defense budget of world conquest proportions. Moridin920 fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 17:59
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I mean several important international leaders have come out and said Iran was the likely culprit-- Merkel, for example. She also said that even if it was Iran, it should not be used as an excuse by the US to escalate the situation, for what it's worth. It might be justified to assume that US statements are lies on these matters. However the problem is that Saudi Arabia and Iran are not any more trustworthy. Almost certainly one of these countries was responsible, since nobody else really has the capability or the motive. Therefore a safe starting assumption is that each nation has a 1/3 chance of being responsible, before any other evidence is presented. Making any statement more firmer than that is going to demand more evidence, and in the meanwhile we have to be able to acknowledge the uncertainty. Speaking of US accusations of international crime. . . https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/world/middleeast/us-missiles-libya-france.html quote:WASHINGTON — A cache of powerful American missiles was sold to France before ending up in the hands of rebel fighters loyal to Gen. Khalifa Hifter, who is seeking to overthrow the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. France. . .no. . . why of course if we have to assume the US government is a compulsive liar, well I guess France has nothing to worry about and must not have really been violating UN arms embargos! Squalid fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Jul 9, 2019 |
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Jul 9, 2019 21:59
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