What leads you to believe humanity will soon live in peace?? Observing that cigs are terribly harmful to health does NOT mean I am happy about it. It is a fact. Focus your angst on those getting rich selling cigs. Unless Ragic is getting rich off war, famine, blah blah... you are focused on the messenger instead of the cause.
... Yeah, what leads me to believe that? I don't know, considering I don't actually believe it ... And I'm critisizing Ragic because perpetuating the stance that cooperative peace is impossible leads to cooperative peace being impossible.
These threads are great. I don't have a firm stance on anything discussed cause humans are statistically immoral. But it's cool to hear what y'all think. Crazy or not, I think when you discuss issues like this you need to have every possible opinion to move forward. I'll leave you with a poem. Lost in the vastness of this madness There I see the curse of an inverse mind Spun and unlined Done but shun the wise With crumbs to idolize Satisfied with alibis Trying to shine amongst the blind Enamored by glamour and outlandish standards Stranded in disbanded bandits Endorsing sideline bleacher preachers Teaching platinum leeching tactics and retroactive practices Parasitic critics and diminished exorcists The democracy of hypocrisy Pseudo-evolution Meddling with trues, embellishing in mass confusion The illusion is this The divine straight path is really a cyclical quest Not a mystical guess, nor a judgmental sect riddled in biblical texts But invisible chess We must consider all the pieces as we formulate our thesis in hopes of reaching God status Push the apparatus past the stratosphere of fear Only in the darkness shall the truest light appear.
Moving back to the subject, I wonder if the timing of this agreement is not just because the Obama administration would like to build bridges, but also because it's hard to look at hostile but relatively orderly nations as the enemy when there are whole countries overrun by mental religious cults who make 'death to America' mobs sound like a bedtime story. If anything was learnt from the last decade of wars it's surely that even a bad government is better than a free for all.
Dunno about that. Seemed not to bother them when it was Libya or Syria, and US efforts to destabilize and overthrow those governments was ultimately a large factor in the spread and success of ISIS and other such groups in the first place (which the Pentagon itself predicted as being likely). Depends. Certainly for the US that's the often case. It's why, for example, the US had helped set Saddam Hussein into power, why they were allies with Gaddafi in Libya, and why they supported Papandoupolos in Greece, though of course much of this is Cold War mentality. But that's a large part of what's going on here. It might (hopefully) not be entirely about disrupting Russian interests this time but the "War on Terror" has lead allowed the Cold War mentality to entrench itself once again. Anyway, like I said, I'm not sure what to make of the deal, whether the terms of it are good or bad, and whether or not the Iranian government (or other involved parties for that matter) can or should be trusted to be doing this deal in an earnest bid for (relative) peace or not. I simply don't have enough information. What I do know, is that as I was watching C-Span this morning (as you do), I was listening to an inquiry about the IAEA agreement regarding Iran, and when/if/could Congress be allowed to look at it maybe sometime soon, since Rice had said that she'd seen it and Congress would soon see it as well. The Secretary of State said he has not seen it, and that he has no idea what Rice was talking about. So... Lots of question marks about what all is precisely going on, let alone whether or not it's a good thing.
Congress has not seen the 2 secret agreements. And possibly never will. But we should trust that all is fine?? Those that worship government might just be the biggest zealots on the planet. Insanity!
I get what you're saying, but here's my question: Say we don't expect them to be total morons, sure, but why would we trust that they'd do the right thing? There are many persons, businesses, industries, etc. that can find some way to benefit from war, even a nuclear war. There are plenty of hardened bunkers that the elite have made for themselves, perhaps (rightly or wrongly) they believe that would be sufficient protection, among other measures, that some won't care if billions die so long as they get what they want? One does not need to be a moron to cause an escalation of problems, one merely needs to be unscrupulous. Again, I'm not saying that's what's going on in this case, but presuming that the power-brokers of government are not total morons doesn't mean we should trust that they won't do something that might get us all killed. At least not by default. Just something to consider is all.
You have a heck of a lot of faith in certain peeps. Where does that faith come from? Also, intelligence and integrity share lots of letters.
I wonder when the World will stop having to deal with the fallout of Colonialism and Western interference. I mean, one can only do what one thinks is best at a given time (best, of course, being fairly subjective and context sensitive). But everything from Israel to Boko Haram can all be traced back to outside influences. That's not to say there wouldn't be other issues, but, for example, I'd be very curious to see what the Middle East would look like without having Israel in the middle of it all.
ON THST NOTE. IMAGINE IF THE CRUSADES DIDN'T HAPPEN. THE MIDDLE-EAST HAD ONE OF THE MOST PREDOMINATE CENTERS OF LEARNING IN THAT ERA. WITH MOST OF WHAT WE FIND BEING CONCEPTS FOR IDEAD THAT DIDNT OCCUR IN WESTEN CIVILIZATION UNTIL THE RENESAUNCE MANY CENTURIES LATER. IPOD POST, SPOLOGIES FOR CAPS & SPELLING ISSUES. IY HATES NE
I don't trust them to act in my interests at all, I think they act in their own interests. However, I think their and my interests overlap at the point of "not have a nuclear war". Right idea, wrong enemy; more relevant for the fall of the Islamic empire were the Mongols. But also internal mismanagement and infighting, as usual. Very similar points could be made about China several times in its history, btw. Did you know the Chinese piped and used natural gas a few thousand years ago?
I don't care for this website or it's bent (I picked it because it came up first on my search), but the video still has very interesting data in spite of all that: http://allenbwest.com/2015/02/jihad-vs-crusades-facts-pain/ Point being, that there's more than just Western and Judeo-Christian Imperialism influencing the region's history, and some historical context in why certain ideologies are more readily accepted in some areas than others. Indeed, but I also wonder if not having the common enemy of Israel and "The West" might have allowed for even more in-fighting between Shia, Sunni, and so on; or if maybe one side or the other would have "won" by now if not for such interference. There's a lot of potential "what ifs" if you consider such large changes in history. For example, "what if" Japan had not attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941? At the time, the US (citizenry anyway) had doubled down isolationist policies and politics. While they weren't ashamed to provide non-military aid and had relatively no problem with individuals choosing to get involved, they didn't want another Great War. It was the attack on Pearl Harbor that provided the political impetus to get involved in the war properly, though certainly there were a few other incidents which caused a stir as well. This newfound desire to be involved in foreign affairs ostensibly carried on through and past World War Two, into the Marshall Plan and other various anti-Communist and Cold War policies. It was a major switch from "passive defensive" to "proactively defensive." From "if anyone tries to enter my home, I'll shoot 'em" to "that guy looks like he might try to enter my home sometime in the future, guess I'll go over there and shoot 'em." For other nations that type of policy was likely already existent, at least to an extent. I'll speak more on this later, but I appreciate your thoughts. I will, however, ask this rhetorical question: "Why assume that?"
I feel like getting NYC reduced to rubble would be a black mark on your reelection campaign. To be slightly pointed.
This assumes you get blamed for it rather than X for breaking their end of the deal or whatever. It also assumes that you're going for re-election. For one, NYC getting reduced to rubble would be a "good" time to declare a national emergency, disband Congress, have the contingency Government step in, suspending elections, maybe performing a full on military coup, etc. For two, it's possible for those not in elected positions to redirect blame to others, and so on. Of course, the majority of Congress and such ARE going for re-election, and I'm rather inclined to agree that they don't want a nuclear war, but they're also being largely kept out of the loop. (Note, I'm not saying that Obama wants a nuclear war, though I can understand how some might infer that from this context. No, what I'm saying is that by compartmentalizing and cutting off the greater majority of government it is theoretically possible for an element within or through that government to enact something which the greater government as a whole doesn't want, if not now, then still possibly in the future. It'd be criminal and through skirting the law, yes, but it's not good to assume that people will always follow laws.) Anyway, like I said, I'll post more on this later, for now, I'll be taking a break from this as it's distracting me from my continued research on Greece, which I want to finish before moving on to that particular topic.
