Exactly. If people want to know how liberals truly think, look no further than 1890-1920, the progressive era.
Yeah, there was stupid shit, like Prohibition that was the last gasp of the movement as it died. But, actually, Prohibition has an interesting story.
What people don't realize is that prohibition wasn't intended to protect people from themselves, it was intended to prevent a common problem in those days: Men who wouldn't support their families, spend all their money on drink, and absure their wives. And women couldn't get a divorce and they couldn't get a job and there was no child support even if they could.
So it was, mistakenly, thought that banning alcohol would get rid of alcoholic and abusive husbands. Yes, it was stupid, but it wasn't the puritanic motives people think, it was fighting a real problem with a somewhat naive solution. And, yes, liberals fixed that problem later, in other ways.
Most of the 'liberal', or 'enlightenment' solutions have good motives. Sometimes they are stupid, but the motives are usually good.
OTOH, so were most conservative motives, at least until the neocons got ahold of them. And the neocons, least we forget, were a bunch of liberals who got, basically, really fascist in the 70s with the idea of 'improving' the entire fucking world, instead of just the US, and switched parties because the liberals said 'hell no'. They said 'Hey, let's coop the religious right' and tada.
Consider that the next time you look at the borrow-and-spend 'conservatives' running the government. They do that because they aren't 'conservatives', they're fucking discredited-by-the-left 'liberals' who've decided to go 'progressive' on the whole fucking world, and found, like Prohibition, you can't just dictate things and have them happen.
There's a theory around that every other country's center is this country's left, but, at least in foreign policy, that theory is exactly wrong. Our foreign policy is way to the left of where current liberals stand, to the point where our government can fix every country in the world with the right law(s). The is the Enlightenment on Steroids, it is 'progressive', extremely so, way past any sane point. This is why our internal and foreign polices seem completely out of joint with each other at times.
I keep waiting for someone to stand up on TV and say 'Hey, isn't starting a war not a conservative position to take?'.
Congress does have the authority to use nuclear weapons, you dumbass. Congress is in charge of controlling where and how our military is used. The President is just in charge of executing the laws and rules they pass, and they can pass laws down the micromanagement level of 'At two o'clock today, you will nuke X'.
A concerted infiltration of soldiers into another country to engage in military offensives and do the typical military things (kill people, break things, take prisoners) counts as an invasion to me, and fits with any reasonable definition of the word. This invasion has involved far more than what you called "a few dozen soldiers" and the numerous buildings and busses blown up and/or attacked is far more than a "single building". Just because it does not look like Omaha Beach does not mean it is not an invasion. Just because it doesn't have orderly ranks of Redcoats marching over the hill does not mean it is not an invasion. In an era of guerrilla warfare invasions can look like this.
Hamas attacks Israel occasionally. (Within Israel, I mean. They attack Israel within Palestine all the time.) They haven't 'invaded' it. There is a difference, especially if you're trying to use that to assert that Israel would not be safe if they withdrew and closed the border.
I am not aware of this incident. News to me.
Basically, CIA agents kidnapped an Italian citizen off the streets of Italy. Google 'cia italy'.
However, I can make some guesses and assumptions and ask some important questions to distinguish it from real invasions such as Palestinian government vs Israel: (1) Was this US invasion of Italy part of a long ongoing effort involving many such incidents?
It's certainly happened before, in Italy and other countries, we just don't know of any other provable instances. This is just the one instance where Italy was able to prove it in court, and even figure out the names of the agents, due to various operational secrecy screwups by the CIA. The courts have issued warrants for their arrest, but the US has refused to turn them over, despite various extradition treaties requiring it.
(2) Did this US invasion of Italy involve the US military operating at its full capacity as part of a military campaign directed from the top levels of government?
What the hell does 'full capacity' mean? All military operations use the amount of people required and available. I assure you Hamas' full military capacity has never been poured into a single operation either. And, yes, it was from the top, as part of the 'war on terror'. And I have to point out that you're assuming that all Hamas operations come 'from the top', when you just mentioned that some of these invasions came from 'Al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade'.
(3) Was this US invasion of Italy part and parcel of an intended and stated and concerted US effort to conquer Italy, even if it didn't do much to accomplish this goal?
The PLO does not have a stated goal to conquer Israel.
And, for that matter, I wasn't trying to suggest the US was at war with Italy. I was just pointing out that invading a country and kidnapping someone happens more often than anyone cares to admit.
The aggression by the neighboring Arab states (with the participation and encouragement of Palestinian political leaders) which forced Israel to occupy the land out of defensive necessity happened before the conquer-and-settle style "settlements". It was a lot like what is going on on Gaza right now: where the attacks from Hamas have forced Israel to move back into the place, and there is a good chance now that Israel soldiers will again have a strong presence in Gaza... with no settlements to defend. Additionally, Israel also occupied south Lebanon for a long time for this same reason (and with no settlements there either).
This is what neutral peacekeepers are for. Just because there is a justification for doing something doesn't mean it's a good fucking idea.
The "settlements" issue is more complicated as well. Some of these settlements are from Jewish families that have lived there for centuries. Some sprang up because of Jewish immigrants in the early "Zionist" era actually buying the land from the Arabs living there legitimately and then bui
You're not paying attention. If Iran is behind this attack, it is a fricking genius and has completely screwed us over. In fact, that's the only reason I'm willing to give credence to the idea, because it helps Iran so much.
Why? Because we were about to invade it. Now, Israel might first, or, at the least, we will be seen as theoretically carrying out Israel's will.
We were seen to have pretty selfish motives for invading Iraq...but they looked like our selfish motives, and despite a bunch of rhetoric, we managed to get countries like Syria and Iran and Eygpt to help us, or at least mostly ignore us. (Of course, in the case of Iran, they were estatic with what we were doing.)
How many countries are going to help us invade Iran if we're seen to be doing to as part of this new Irsael-Arab war that's suddenly happened? Seriously. If Israel is marching through Lebanon to get rid of Hesbollah, and we're bombing Iran...it's the same war in the Middle East's eyes, no matter how much we try to claim it's about Iran's WMDs.
This is what happens when we unconditionally support a country like Israel, we get tarred with the same brush.
Seriously. Two weeks ago, invading Iran was merely impossible thanks to not actually having enough military force and not any way to accomplish our goals. (Although that didn't stop us in Iraq.) Now it's literally imposible unless we want to be fighting the entire Arab peninsula alongside Israel.
That ought to give even the current unconditional supporters of Israel a bit of a pause. We're talking WWIII if we try to do anything about Iran at this time. Hell, Iraq would do something about it, which would be really really awkward. (Please leave our country so we can fight you.)
Check and mate. Win to Iran. They, if they are indeed behind this, managed to make the invasion of themselves politically impossible by pushing a few Israeli buttons.
The repeated invasions have been "provoked" and justified. It is quite similar to the US vs Japan situation. The Japanese eventually had the decently to surrender, and we restored Japanese sovereignty. But, have no doubt, the US would still be trying to bomb Japan into submission if they kept "Pearl Harboring" us the way the Palestinian government keeps invading Israel and killing Israelis.
See, the fun fact of every discussion on this topic, the Israeli apologist will, at some time, imply that Palestians invaded Israel. When was this, because I completely missed it. You mean the infiltration of a few dozen soldiers and subsequent hostage taking of single buildings way back in the 70s? (Before, I might add, any peace accords, while the PLO was still controlled by Egypt. Blaming that on modern Palestine is insane.) Or does kidnapping a single person count as an invasion? (If so, the US invaded Italy a year or so ago.)
Kidnapping a soldier of another nation, from said nation, is, indeed, an act of war. Like I said, I don't like the Palestians's behavior either. Calling it an 'invasion' that requires military forces on the street of the invading country is, OTOH, not only not technically true (To 'invade' somewhere, you must attempt to hold territory.) but insane, not to mention it doesn't explain what they were doing in Palestian for the last two decades.
Also, have no doubt that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory would have ended decades ago if the PLO/etc had called off their war of extermination (and thus given Israel no legitimate reason to have a military presence in the territories).
Erm, the 'legitimate reasons' for havig a military presense in Palestine are, to this day, given as 'to protect Israeli settlers'. Removing them would be a reason to not need the military. Of course, that's exactly what the Palestians are asking for.
The idea that Iran-created Hesbollah is still controlled by Iran is an interesting supposition, and I'd give even odds on it. There is, however, equally likely odds that Hesbollah has slipped their lease, especially since direct control from Syria just ended. (And an interesting third possiblity that Iran is throwing Hesbollah against Israel to get rid of it and distract everyone.)
The real problem is fucking Lebanon, which would have been a useful country to invade if we were going to invade any of them.
I'm not in charge of 'admitting' things on behalf of Iran. I, however, strongly suspect they either want people to think they are developing them, or plan to be in the future.
Anyone who thinks this is some sort of justification for invasion hasn't read the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because, as North Korea figured out, you can just leave the stupid thing.
And Israel and Iran have long made threats against each other. The idea that one of them 'gets to have' nuclear weapons and the other doesn't is absurd. We need to get Iran and Israel to into the non-proliferation treaty as nuclear powers, just like we need to do to India and Pakistan, to get them to agree they won't use nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear strike.
In addition, we need to remove our claimed loophole to that that we can use them against 'rogue states' that aren't nuclear. That's just completely idiotic and violates the whole point of a treaty which is that wars, even including one or more nuclear powers, will not turn into nuclear wars.
In fact, we might want to rethink how this whole nuclear thing works, because right now we have one treaty, and if countries sign it they can't develop nukes, until they withdraw from it, at which point they can do anything they want. That's just stupid.
We need to have one treaty, that every damn country signs, that says they won't use nukes in a war unless the other side uses nukes too, period. We need to have another one that says 'This country is nuclear weapon free, and willing to submit to inspections for any nuclear power plant to prove that', which all the non-nuclear powers sign.
So, when you said 'Thousands of innocent people have died in Lebanon and Israel at the hands of the Iranian military', regardless of where 'this area' is, you were basically making shit up, because no one has died in Israel at the hands of the Iranian military? Okay, good to know.
"because Iran and Israel have never been at war."
It makes the gibbering madmen in Iraq and their Job One of extermination of the Israelis all the LESS rational.
Likewise, the fact the US and Australia have never been at war makes their Job One of extermination of all Americans LESS rational. Or, possibly, it means they aren't trying to do that and you're just been lied to.
It is as clean as it gets when you behave like Israel has, and only engaged in military action when forced to by unprovoked attacks by its enemies
Oh, I freely admit, if you don't count 'occupation' as military action, Israel has only engaged in military action when forced to.
Sadly I, along with international law, do count that. Israel, UNPROVOKED, repeatedly invaded Palestine and conquered parts of it. Dress that up however you like it.
Not yet. Iran's military branch in south Lebanon happens to be making big headlines recently. They even started a major war a few days ago. Discussing Iran is "useful" at this point because their current headline-shattering bomb blitz against Israel puts the lie to your repeated false assertion that the gibbering madmen in Tehran are harmless and rational.
Hezbollah is not a branch of Iran's military.
In an earlier message, you defended Iran's actions in light of some sort of "Western conquest of the Middle East". If you have any ideas like that, you are either easily given in to paranoid delusions concerning things that are not happening, or Osama is paying you to lie about foreign affairs.
What are you talking about? The west is conquering the middle east. In fact, it's repeated conquered it over the past 100 years. Almost every single country in the middle east has been invaded or overthrown by a western power in the last century, most of them more than once. Is this actually debatable?
Perhaps I should not have let slide your earlier thinly-veiled reference to the US as a "ZOG".
I don't know what a ZOG is. It appears to be some sort of claim that Zionist occupy the government. Well, I hate to point this out, but, um, they do. Zionists are merely people who think Jews should have their own homeland. Well, I'm pretty sure the US recognized Israel. I guess I'm a Zionist too, in that I have no problems with Israel existing. I just have a problem with their behavior. (And, as I pointed out at the start and you've apparently forgotten, I have plenty of problems with Palestine behavior too.)
The PLO has always called for the annihilation of the Jews. It has been recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people for decades. Even after the Oslo accords, Arafat went around stating that the PLO's imperialist demands for taking over Israel and wiping out its people had not changed. Divisions of the Palestinian government military (Al Aksa, Hamas) openly and frequently stated their goals of invading Israel and wiping out its people, and the Palestinian government launched attacks toward this end.
While Israel doesn't waste time with words and just sends in troups and settlers.
On one hand, we have word and guerrilla warfare, including instances of terrorism. On the other hand, we have an invasion, complete with troups and evicting of residents and shooting at anyone who opposes them.
The map used by the Palestinian government also happens to show Palestinian land as including all of Israel.
Well, that's certainly undocumented and misleading, but go ahead and repeat that if it makes you feel better.
There has hardly been a time they have not been sending soldiers into Israel to intentionally kill civilians.
And, yes, mysteriously, the wall isn't up, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are trying to live in Palestine, which of course requires a military presence. Odd, that.
Yes, I'm one sided, I admit it. It is easy to be for such one-sided conflicts where one nation wants merely to live and others want to exterminate that nation's people for no reason.
Wait, you missed some words. I'll fix: It is easy to be for such one-sided conflicts where one nation wants merely to live inside that other nation and others want to exterminate that nation's people for no reason except that nation keeps invading it with settlements and bombing runs..
I side with Israel against those who invade it. Likewise, I think that Poland was in the right in the 1939 conflict with Germany.
And no discussion of Israel would be complete without insanely comparing Palestines to Nazis, calling me antisemitic, and calling me anti-American. You've got two of three, I suggest you get to that last one real quick, you never know when I might give this whole conversation up as a lost cause.
There is just no need for the aggression. Imagine if Hamas had called off its attacks, and recognized the rights of Israelis to live.
Oooo, can I play? Imagine if Israel had released the prisoners who it's kidnapped from Palestine. Imagine if they pulled their people out of Palestine. Imagine if they just manned the crossing and let Palestine do whatever it wanted as long as they stayed in Palestine areas?
Why, even if the Palestines wanted to attack, they couldn't, unless they want to charge the borders in some sort of miltary invasion.
Again and again, Israel gives the aggressors a chance to drop the whole matter.
And, again and again, they yammer and stall the talks everytime some random person who thinks they aren't withdrawing fast enough does something stupid, and then they bomb random ares, and start the whole damn mess over.
It's a fucking trick. Do you not grasp this? Palestine has long-term grievances with Israel, and the fight could be stopped in a week if those were settled. Israel has taken land and people, and the fight will not stop until Palestine gets them back. (And, once more, these issues aren't really up for debate, Israel is in the wrong here, even Israel says it will fix these things.)
Instead, Israel forces a ceasefire and draws everything out long enough for some Palestine group (Remember, Palestines' government is a not very functional because Israel keeps attacking it, so they don't have good control over all this.) to attack them. Then Israel uses enough force to provoke more reactions, and so on and so on, until it's a war again, and then, in a year or two when it'
Thousands of innocent people have died in Lebanon and Israel at the hands of the Iranian military occupying in this area.
What. The. Hell. Are you talking about? Iran hasn't ever occupied Israel. In fact, no country has occupied Israel as far as I can recall, except temporarily during wars which Israel won, and Iran is not included in those countries, because Iran and Israel have never been at war. Would you like to explain exactly what you're talking about?
Come on. I say 'That didn't happen' and you say I'm a liar. Well, go ahead. Demonstrate when it happened. I certainly can't demonstrate when it didn't, the burden of proof is on you.
And why you think Iran's interaction with Lebanon is a useful thing to talk about here, I don't know. They left Lebanon. I don't know exactly what your point is, if you want to talk about Iran's interaction with Lebanon go ahead, but that will be a conversation I don't actually find interesting. I'm pretty much talking about American's and Israel's interaction with other Middle East countries.
Iran is only the most "rational actor" if you think it is rational for it to center its foreign policy around the proposed extermination of a nation of millions that has never really lifted a finger against it.
Which it is doing by...what actions, exactly? Telepathic bad vibes? It's certainly an interesting foreign policy to attempt to destroy a country by not ever doing anything.
You're just asserting motives. You're asserting Israel has the cleanest motives in history, self defense, and Iran is Snidely Whiplash. Well, that's interesting considering how Israel steadfastly refuses to the logical thing for self-defense and just build a big wall, and how Iran hasn't, actually, ever done anything at all.
Oh, and before you mention this newest thing, the external wing of Hamas!=the PLO, and neither does Hesbollah.
And Hamas kidnapped soldiers because they want thousands of their civilians back that Israel is holding as prisoners, something they've apparently been planning for quite some time. But, no, everything Israel does is logical and makes sense, and every reaction to it is 'the PLO derailing the peace process'.
Hesbollah, on the other hand, is just stirring up trouble.
From Day 1, the Palestinian government declared its goal of exterminating the Israelis. It invaded Israel and forced Israel to bomb and occupy: just like Japan forced a US retaliation. Unlike the Japanese, the Palestinians did not have the decency to call off their Final Solution and surrender, naturally resulting in a near-permanent occupation. Who in their right mind would give land away to a nation that has declared it wants to kill you off? After this, it is hard to blame Israel for settling the lands the Palestinians are all but giving away.
On day one after the creation of Israel and before the creation of Palestine, various countries (Not Palestine.) attacked Israel, and had a war in Palestine. That's what happened 'first'. Palestine never invaded Israel, and, no, it wasn't even people living there. That's just where they had the damn war.
As a result of this war, all the lands of 'Palestine' were under the control of various other countries, including Israel. The treaty that ended the war essentially ignored Palestine as a political entity, and it ceased to exist until 1988 in any form. The PLO, meanwhile, was founded in 64 by the losers in the war, and, yes the goal was the destruction of Israel, but it wasn't the 'government' of anything. It didn't become the government until 1988, which, incidentally, is when it modified its position to the idea that it could live with Israel.
Anyway, I'm not going to discuss it further, but your version of history is completely screwy. The PLO hasn't called for the destruction of Israel ever since it has actually been the government of Palestine. The published draft constition says the territory of Palestine is based upon its borders on June 4th 1967, which is basically what is currently Palestine. You're just completely, flat-out, wrong.
I can't even begin to address the rest of what you say, because they are founded on the same 'interpetation' of all events in the most extreme pro-Israeli light. You are wearing Israel-color glasses.
Howver, I'd like a single example of this. 'They've tried, many times. This includes numerous unilateral cease-fires (always broken when the Palestinian government blows up a bus or the like) or even large-scale land retreats. Time and again, hostilities die down, but then the Palestinians launch new attacks.'. Something that's happened 'many times' should be easy to find.
Did you just simultaneously assert that Iraq was more insane than Iran, and didn't do anything when bombed, and that Iran is already acting crazy without any provocation at all?
I've heard of 'doublethink' before, but that's an astonishing level right there. What, exactly, was the point you were trying to get across, or did the attempt to paint Iran as toothless and crazy at the same time just short out some logic circuits?
Israel has sold Iran quite a lot of weapons, ('Iran-Contra' ring any bells?), even after they offically broke off ties, and they were on generally good terms for two countries that weren't speaking to each other, until Israel and the US couldn't stop Iran's nuclear arms development, back in 2003, at which point Israel started the threats, with the US joining in in 2005.
Yes, Iran has since elected a president more hostile to the country that's threatening them (Whoa, big surprise there.) and also made threats in response, but no worse than Israel's, and it is Israel that has somehow decided it has the right to nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't, and started threats based on that. (Which is only really relevant if we are operating under the idea that issuing threats to other countries is somehow morally wrong, which is idiotic, as the US beats the entire world combined there. Regardless, if that's the rule, Israel threw the first punch.)
Ignoring Iran's threats that basically amounted to 'leave us the hell alone or we're going to punch you in the face', Iran hasn't ever done anything. Iran might have the cleanest hands of any middle-east country in that regard. The only 'bad thing' Iran appears to have even vaguely done to other countries in modern times was the Iran hostage crisis, and that, of course, didn't involve Israel. They never bombed anyone,they never invaded anyone, they haven't done anything to Israel ever.
No, politicians denying the holocaust doesn't count as aggression towards Israel, nor does calling Israel an 'illegal state' or cutting off relations. And as of now, Iran hasn't done anything despite Israel (just now) attacking their neighbor Lebanon, although if it looks like Israel is headed towards Iran, that could changed rapidly.
Anyone who thinks Iran is the fucking aggressor here needs to have their head examined. Iran just figured out it was next in the 'conquer the middle east' plan of the west, and decided have the fight now when the US is overreached in Iraq, and just hope they can get nukes fast enough, which, of course, would mean the US can't attack them. (re: North Korea)
In fact, at this point in time, Iran is possibly the most rational actor in this entire mess, as in, I can actually figure out all their motives.
I disagree with what you're saying, I think we should use 'the carrot and the threat of the stick', but, hell, it can't possibly be worse than what we are doing currently.
However, I'd extend it past 'no terrorist support'. Let's have some damn free societies over there. Yeah, it's going to make gas cost more for us, but if we're already not using their gas, that doesn't really matter.
And we can say to their leaders 'You know, we're friends with England, and they still have royalty, and their queen has it pretty easy. You can even set up a state religion, like them, as long as you don't persecute other religions. Take a mansion as a retirement present for yourself, set up a parliment, declare yourself a figurehead, and you get to ride around waving to everyone during the day and relax by the pool at night. You can even set it up where you can knight people.'.
A lot of the problem over there is us interfering in their politics. It's better for us to have a government there that dislikes us and actually has popular support than one than is our puppet and the people hate it and create terrorist organizations to fight it and us, and then the people elect parts of that to their government. (Although, ironically, if that goes far enough, the organizations get absorbed into the government, and, hey, we get what we needed...a government with popular support that dislikes us.)
As for foreign aid...I say we'll do it, but only all the way. They need medical care, well, here's some doctors and nurses and mobile hospitals that will roam the country and treat people. They need food, well, here's some food we will hand out of the streets. They need clean water, here is the clean water dispenser we are operating, come up and fill up your cooking pots with it, and here's some paper cups. Everything should be 'here is some aid for this person, which we personally hand to them and they will (mostly) use in sight of us', not random distribution of money to a government that steals half of it.
That whole 'We'll give you aid and you hand it out.' doesn't work, as that whole 'Food for Oil' demonstrated. (Which, although the media mysteriously decided not to report it, had 95% of the billions in cash going into American pockets, and the oil right though American blockades. American companies were the big cheaters in that, they ended up with something like 12 out of the 13 billion, the other countries were just small fries.)
In fact, that's what the frickin Peace Corps is for, and what the 'International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' is for. More than 40 'relief societies' under that banner helped after the tsunami in Asia. Instead of handing out cash to corrupt government, let's give relief organizations, say, a few hundred generators or whatever they need when a disaster hits. And let's be sure to slap American flags on them so everyone knows who gave them.
Hamas, Hesbollah and the Iranian dictatorship existed prior to George W. Bush. Perhaps you can blame the older Bush or Reagan if you want. But the fact remains that they existed and two of them were in power prior to Bush. Hamas was recently elected, but if you look at it, this group has been engaging in attacks prior to and after their election. Prior to the recent election, Hamas was part of the Palestinian government, anyway, and was an active part prior to Bush.
1) Iran is not a dictatorship, nor are they an actual problem except WRT their nuclear program.
2) Hamas gained power solely because Israel kept wiping out the existing government.
3) Hesbollah went from eight seats to triple that amount in the election of 2005. A lot of that is due to the assassination of Ghaleb Awwali by what Hesbollah claimed were Israeli forces. (Granted, they might be lying.) I will trivially admit that Hesbollah is trying to stir up trouble in Palestine, but like I said, Israel could solve that problem in a week by staying the hell out of Palestine.
Only someone who knows nothing about foreign affairs thinks there is NO difference between what we want to happen in Iran (that they stop their nuclear weapons program) and what Iran wants for Israel (utter annihilation of an entire nation)
Iran has not threatened to invade Israel. We, however, have threatened to invade Iran. Take off your blinders. We aren't magically right in everything we demand other countries do, and we have exactly as much right to use force against countries that threaten us as Iran has to use against countries that threaten it.
One side wants to live in security. The other side wants to invade and exterminate the first side. Both are equal to you?
And if Israel wants to live in peace, why don't they build a fence and do so, instead of continually provoking Palestine? Come on, let's have a straight simple anwser to this.
Bush, whatever his faults, told the truth about Iraq. I think the "lie" here is on your side. How many WMD have to be found before we can put to bed the old lie "Bush knew there were no WMD"? It seems that 500 shells is not enough, is it?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present what is left of the GOP. Where 500 non-working shells left over from before the first Gulf War, and what the Pentagon itself has said wasn't what we were looking for, are a good enough reason to invade a country.
This explains a lot. You are enamored of a whacky conspiracy theory involving a group that is not even in power.
You think the neocons aren't in power? Just how stupid are you?
I mean, this isn't some 'JFK is really working for the aliens' or anything. The people who actually came up with the whole thing are in power. To quote Wikipedia: 'Modern neoconservatism is associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard and some of the foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).'
See Dick Cheney and William J. Bennett and Donald Rumsfeld and, oddly enough, Jeb Bush. (Did we elect the wrong Bush by accident?) Please explain how the Vice President (Who Bush has, himself, said does a lot of the foreign policy stuff.) and Secretary of Defense and Assistant Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and President of the World Bank and, of course, Steve frickin Forbes are not 'in power'. That's out of a mere 23 people, incidentally.
Now, you can try to argue that that's not what the term 'neocon' means, that it has some other unknown meaning. I'm pretty certain they coined the name, but fine. Whatever. Change all instances of 'neocon' in my post to 'PNACer'. Happy?
As if your thinly-veiled antisemitism wasn't enough.
And, of course, the last resort of the neocon. (Ooops, the PNACer.) Calling for anything less than unconditional support of Israel is antisemitic.
The right to live does not contain the right to settle a neighboring country and bomb them when they get pissed and start shooting at your citizens who are now living in their country, nor does it contain the right to attack a neighboring country when they elect a government you don't like, especially when you also bombed their previous government. It also, in case you're not clear where I'm standing, doesn't contain the right to blow up civilians with car bombs. Neither car bombs nor bombing runs on civilians in retalition for said bombs are acceptable behavior.
This is not entirely Israel's problem. It is, however, partially their problem, and any objective observer would come to the conclusion they want this problem so they have an excuse to continue to their little war with Palestine, because they sure as hell aren't trying to stop it. Palestine has an excuse, they don't have a functioning government or military or the control of 'their forces'. Israel has all that and the ability to build a fucking wall and stay on their side of it, and, yet, they don't. If anyone could stop this idiotic war, it's Israel, in less than a week, but they don't.
Why? Because they want to get rid of Palestine as much as Palestine wants to get rid of them. They want 'all' of Israel back. They're just smarter about how they do it, and smart enough not to say it outloud.
We need to call all countries on their unacceptable behavior. We need to stop funding countries that continue to use our money for that unacceptable behavior. This includes basically the entire goddamn Middle East. We should be using 'The carrot and the always-existing possiblity of the stick' theory, not 'give some people globs of money and hit others for no apparent reason' theory, because it, oddly, is pissing off the people we're hitting.
Or, at least, that's what we needed to do, five years ago. At this point, we have basically lost all the moral high ground.
if you privatized the schools and they were actually, you know, accountable, then there wouldn't be a "need" for unions.
Holding school 'accountable' has resulting in the horrible 'No Child Left Behind' where test scores become more important than actual learning.
The "right to work" teachers suffer from the worst of two evils: socialism and monopolies. The state runs the schools and has a monopoly on them.
How the fuck is a union 'socialism'? If you're talking about forced dues, you're backwards...right-to-work means unions can't require union membership as a condition for working. My state, GA, has right-to-work...and also no right to strike, half the teachers are in the 'alternative union' PAGE that doesn't do a damn thing ever, not even 'collective bargaining' which I thought was the defination of a union, and consequently teachers have almost power at all and get paid crap. And, surely coincidentally, Georgia is in the lowest ten states, educationally.
As for the CTA (California), for instance, they are ever working for increasing taxes and lowering the bond threshhold. I'm a home owner, when you lower the bond threshhold, it simply raises my property taxes. Hell, it's hard enough to buy a home in Cali without assessing even more property taxes.
You let the teacher's union write the state budget in California? Wait, no you don't. You can blame the state for wasting money, you can even blame the school system and the teachers, but blaming the teacher's union is idiotic. The teacher's union isn't spending too much money in schools.
And, as for the unions, they work to define the standards, the curriculum, and infest (right word) the teacher colleges. Their reach is far and wide. And it's not just in California.
Dear god, a union that works to define the standards of their industry. Ho-ly crap. No, wait, all unions do that.
Look, the union may be too strong in the California, I don't know. I suspect you're just living in the wrong damn state. What I do know is what happen when it goes away. Wages plummet, ability to keep teachers plummets, and teaching plummets.
As for portrayal of gays, it doesn't matter at all of a "portryal". Here's two examples: Charles I and John Maynard Keyens. The former was influenced by his gay lover and made bad decisions from raising excessive taxes on the nobility and even the poor, to sending his troops overseas to help his brother-in-law (or cousin, it might be) regain the Palatinate. This eventually led to the English Civil War and his beheading. The latter was perhaps the most influential economist of the 20th century, and gay. The former it matters only as much as history is concerned, but it would certainly cast a negative light on gays. The latter it matters not one iota, but might cast a positive light on gays. So, do we exclude Chuck (where it matters) and include JMK where it doesn't? If it matters to Chuck and we exclude, we rewrite history, include and offend. If we include for JMK, it is trivialized, paternalizing, and egregious, if we exclude, we can concentrate on what is truly important. You decide...
You can write the portrayal of Charles I in three ways. (Incidentally, the English Civil War wasn't really considered important enough to cover in my schools. In their universe, the history of England started about their politics with the US about 1770 and ended at 1812 or so, until it started back up 1914, thus leaving students with no clue what, for example, 'The Victorian Era' is referring to.)
Anyway, you can write about without mentioning the gay thing at all, which is basically what every grade school textbook I've ever seen that mentioned him has done. This is the old, stupid way.
You can write about how he was corrupted and seduced into evil and gayitude. This would be the new, stupid way.
Or, you can talk about him exactly how every other ruler who's had stupid relat
Those organizations only exist, or, at least, only were elected into political power because of the mismanagement of Bush.
They didn't just magically spring into existence and power. They are the result, not the problem. The problem is our unconditional support of Israel while they continually try to get rid of Palestine instead of trying to work with both sides, our rhetoric about 'Axis of Evil' (If you can tell the actual difference between what we're saying should happen to Iran, and what Iran says should happen to Israel, please tell me.), and, of course, our semi-random invasion of Iraq, which the Middle East figured out Bush was lying about before we did, and, what's more, doesn't believe we could be that stupid, because, after all, we didn't do anything about the lies and even reelected him.
We could have gone in entirely different way after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. We could have worked with the Middle East, we could have made it clear that certain things wouldn't be tolerated, even from our 'allies', both old and new, and if they would help us with stopping those things, we could become friends. A good hard look at our policies in the Middle East and a realignment of our priorities could have happened, with the likely result that radical organizations would have lost most of their support.
Or, and this was the other options, we could just fixed Afghanistan and gotten out of the whole area. Not the best idea, but ignoring the Middle East has worked in the past.
Instead we picked the third option, the insane one. We turned into a bull in their china shop. With a machine gun. Us, and Israel (Who they sometimes having trouble telling apart, considering us as little more than the 'enforcer for Israel'.) are throwing actual bullets at some people, and attempting to control everyone else. The fact the Middle East is shooting at us and Israel is fully predictably by any slightly intelligent person who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the Middle East.
But, you see, we all already know this. The neocons are trying to pick a fight with Iran because there's no way in hell the American public will let them drag us into yet another war.
But if they can get Iran to act irrational long enough to do something, they can say Iran started the war. Sadly for them, while they've managed to piss off Lebanon and possibly even Syria enough to start shooting at us, Iran is having too much fun taking over Iraq politically to screw around with actually shooting at us. So we'll probably have use the backup plan of Israel 'bombing their WMD factories' or something, which will immediately cause them to invade Iraq and start killing American soldiers.
I would point out that girls getting socialization from just men would be equally disasterous. And, although it's a bit more subtle, boys from only men and girls from only women is not that great either.
Boys and girls need men and women in their life to show them how to behave, both within their own gender and when interacting with the other one.
However, yes, in modern schools, it's almost entirely women until high school, and that's a bit late. It's not sexism, it's more that women like the job better. Schools have tried solutions like male priciples and male gym teachers, but I'm not seeing a lot of solutions.
But don't go blaming women for the stupidity you mention. Half the time that's the fault of Zero Tolerance policies, which are imposed from above.
Of couse, this online student will lack social skills, such as knowing where the nearest crack house is, and the current price of various street drugs.
This is pretty poor planning on his part. When society collapses in ten years and the only job available for 60% of the workforce is running errands for the rich, knowledge of illegal things will come in very handy.
Erm, how do teachers have more job security than anyone else? And the legal inability to strike in several states has resulted in teacher's wages going to crap, and incidentally, schools having to hire incompetant people because the wages are so low. (No, schools can't just decide to pay their teachers more, that comes down from the top.) Teachers should at least be allowed to strike instead of signing contracts for the next year, i.e, start the strike between the school years. Right now the 'teacher's union', like any union that can't legally strike, is a complete joke.
And your problem isn't with schools, or teachers unions, or anyone like that. It's with California. Don't go acting like California's gibberish is some sort of 'educational' problem. Did you not even read the article? 'The state's social-content guidelines should be abolished. They put the state Board of Education into the absurd position...' It's not even the Board of Education's fault, much less any teacher's.
There is no fucking way that 'teachers unions' have a damn thing to do with any of that. You're anti-union, so have decided to conflate teacher lobbying and teacher unions with the government of California deciding to do stupid things.
And, incidentally:
So it's not surprising that in recent months gays and lesbians have stepped forward to demand a place at the state's capacious table. They too want their roles to be portrayed positively in textbooks purchased by the state. And frankly, they've got a point. In view of the state's broad inclusion of every other group in its list of those deserving such treatment, the state has no principled reason to exclude any new claimant.
shows exactly where that author is coming from and where, I suspect, you are too. Damn, it sucks we don't seem to have a good excuse under the law to portray gay people as evil.
Yes, there is such thing as 'Too much tolerance' or whatever, where no one can can ever be portrayed in a negative light, or just no one except straight WASPs (SWASPs?) can be portrayed in a negative light, and the California school system has managed to reach that point, about 20 years after Hollywood and everyone else did and then passed it. That's a bad point to be at, history needs to tell facts, and even fiction needs realistic villians.(1) OTOH, there are people like your writer, who was involved in writing the textbooks at one time, and who are annoyed that there's no 'principled reason' to exclude the mere existence of gay people from all the textbooks in school system, so maybe there's a fucking point to those rules.
1) I remember on Angel where there was an inner-city gang in LA, and someone said 'Damn, that's the most multi-racial inner-city gang in LA I've ever seen.', which was interesting because it was a mostly positive portrayal (They were fighting vampires who were preying on them, which mistakenly put them at odds with the protaganist who of course was one, but it was more a classic 'superheroes not trusting each other when they met' instead of 'these are the bad guys'.) and thus it would be hard to see how anyone would be offended with accuracy. In latter episodes when the gang returned, they were more realisticly almost entirely black and hispanic, and at the end got even more interesting when they started killing off completely harmless demons, although they did raise an interesting point about these 'harmless demons' working with horrible ones, and that beings who laugh and joke with murderers are probably 'evil' even if they aren't actually committing evil acts. (Which is an analogy about race and racism in more ways than one.)
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Exactly. If people want to know how liberals truly think, look no further than 1890-1920, the progressive era.
Yeah, there was stupid shit, like Prohibition that was the last gasp of the movement as it died. But, actually, Prohibition has an interesting story.
What people don't realize is that prohibition wasn't intended to protect people from themselves, it was intended to prevent a common problem in those days: Men who wouldn't support their families, spend all their money on drink, and absure their wives. And women couldn't get a divorce and they couldn't get a job and there was no child support even if they could.
So it was, mistakenly, thought that banning alcohol would get rid of alcoholic and abusive husbands. Yes, it was stupid, but it wasn't the puritanic motives people think, it was fighting a real problem with a somewhat naive solution. And, yes, liberals fixed that problem later, in other ways.
Most of the 'liberal', or 'enlightenment' solutions have good motives. Sometimes they are stupid, but the motives are usually good.
OTOH, so were most conservative motives, at least until the neocons got ahold of them. And the neocons, least we forget, were a bunch of liberals who got, basically, really fascist in the 70s with the idea of 'improving' the entire fucking world, instead of just the US, and switched parties because the liberals said 'hell no'. They said 'Hey, let's coop the religious right' and tada.
Consider that the next time you look at the borrow-and-spend 'conservatives' running the government. They do that because they aren't 'conservatives', they're fucking discredited-by-the-left 'liberals' who've decided to go 'progressive' on the whole fucking world, and found, like Prohibition, you can't just dictate things and have them happen.
There's a theory around that every other country's center is this country's left, but, at least in foreign policy, that theory is exactly wrong. Our foreign policy is way to the left of where current liberals stand, to the point where our government can fix every country in the world with the right law(s). The is the Enlightenment on Steroids, it is 'progressive', extremely so, way past any sane point. This is why our internal and foreign polices seem completely out of joint with each other at times.
I keep waiting for someone to stand up on TV and say 'Hey, isn't starting a war not a conservative position to take?'.
Congress does have the authority to use nuclear weapons, you dumbass. Congress is in charge of controlling where and how our military is used. The President is just in charge of executing the laws and rules they pass, and they can pass laws down the micromanagement level of 'At two o'clock today, you will nuke X'.
A concerted infiltration of soldiers into another country to engage in military offensives and do the typical military things (kill people, break things, take prisoners) counts as an invasion to me, and fits with any reasonable definition of the word. This invasion has involved far more than what you called "a few dozen soldiers" and the numerous buildings and busses blown up and/or attacked is far more than a "single building". Just because it does not look like Omaha Beach does not mean it is not an invasion. Just because it doesn't have orderly ranks of Redcoats marching over the hill does not mean it is not an invasion. In an era of guerrilla warfare invasions can look like this.
Hamas attacks Israel occasionally. (Within Israel, I mean. They attack Israel within Palestine all the time.) They haven't 'invaded' it. There is a difference, especially if you're trying to use that to assert that Israel would not be safe if they withdrew and closed the border.
I am not aware of this incident. News to me.
Basically, CIA agents kidnapped an Italian citizen off the streets of Italy. Google 'cia italy'.
However, I can make some guesses and assumptions and ask some important questions to distinguish it from real invasions such as Palestinian government vs Israel: (1) Was this US invasion of Italy part of a long ongoing effort involving many such incidents?
It's certainly happened before, in Italy and other countries, we just don't know of any other provable instances. This is just the one instance where Italy was able to prove it in court, and even figure out the names of the agents, due to various operational secrecy screwups by the CIA. The courts have issued warrants for their arrest, but the US has refused to turn them over, despite various extradition treaties requiring it.
(2) Did this US invasion of Italy involve the US military operating at its full capacity as part of a military campaign directed from the top levels of government?
What the hell does 'full capacity' mean? All military operations use the amount of people required and available. I assure you Hamas' full military capacity has never been poured into a single operation either. And, yes, it was from the top, as part of the 'war on terror'. And I have to point out that you're assuming that all Hamas operations come 'from the top', when you just mentioned that some of these invasions came from 'Al-Aksa Martyr's Brigade'.
(3) Was this US invasion of Italy part and parcel of an intended and stated and concerted US effort to conquer Italy, even if it didn't do much to accomplish this goal?
The PLO does not have a stated goal to conquer Israel.
And, for that matter, I wasn't trying to suggest the US was at war with Italy. I was just pointing out that invading a country and kidnapping someone happens more often than anyone cares to admit.
The aggression by the neighboring Arab states (with the participation and encouragement of Palestinian political leaders) which forced Israel to occupy the land out of defensive necessity happened before the conquer-and-settle style "settlements". It was a lot like what is going on on Gaza right now: where the attacks from Hamas have forced Israel to move back into the place, and there is a good chance now that Israel soldiers will again have a strong presence in Gaza... with no settlements to defend. Additionally, Israel also occupied south Lebanon for a long time for this same reason (and with no settlements there either).
This is what neutral peacekeepers are for. Just because there is a justification for doing something doesn't mean it's a good fucking idea.
The "settlements" issue is more complicated as well. Some of these settlements are from Jewish families that have lived there for centuries. Some sprang up because of Jewish immigrants in the early "Zionist" era actually buying the land from the Arabs living there legitimately and then bui
You're not paying attention. If Iran is behind this attack, it is a fricking genius and has completely screwed us over. In fact, that's the only reason I'm willing to give credence to the idea, because it helps Iran so much.
Why? Because we were about to invade it. Now, Israel might first, or, at the least, we will be seen as theoretically carrying out Israel's will.
We were seen to have pretty selfish motives for invading Iraq...but they looked like our selfish motives, and despite a bunch of rhetoric, we managed to get countries like Syria and Iran and Eygpt to help us, or at least mostly ignore us. (Of course, in the case of Iran, they were estatic with what we were doing.)
How many countries are going to help us invade Iran if we're seen to be doing to as part of this new Irsael-Arab war that's suddenly happened? Seriously. If Israel is marching through Lebanon to get rid of Hesbollah, and we're bombing Iran...it's the same war in the Middle East's eyes, no matter how much we try to claim it's about Iran's WMDs.
This is what happens when we unconditionally support a country like Israel, we get tarred with the same brush.
Seriously. Two weeks ago, invading Iran was merely impossible thanks to not actually having enough military force and not any way to accomplish our goals. (Although that didn't stop us in Iraq.) Now it's literally imposible unless we want to be fighting the entire Arab peninsula alongside Israel.
That ought to give even the current unconditional supporters of Israel a bit of a pause. We're talking WWIII if we try to do anything about Iran at this time. Hell, Iraq would do something about it, which would be really really awkward. (Please leave our country so we can fight you.)
Check and mate. Win to Iran. They, if they are indeed behind this, managed to make the invasion of themselves politically impossible by pushing a few Israeli buttons.
The repeated invasions have been "provoked" and justified. It is quite similar to the US vs Japan situation. The Japanese eventually had the decently to surrender, and we restored Japanese sovereignty. But, have no doubt, the US would still be trying to bomb Japan into submission if they kept "Pearl Harboring" us the way the Palestinian government keeps invading Israel and killing Israelis.
See, the fun fact of every discussion on this topic, the Israeli apologist will, at some time, imply that Palestians invaded Israel. When was this, because I completely missed it. You mean the infiltration of a few dozen soldiers and subsequent hostage taking of single buildings way back in the 70s? (Before, I might add, any peace accords, while the PLO was still controlled by Egypt. Blaming that on modern Palestine is insane.) Or does kidnapping a single person count as an invasion? (If so, the US invaded Italy a year or so ago.)
Kidnapping a soldier of another nation, from said nation, is, indeed, an act of war. Like I said, I don't like the Palestians's behavior either. Calling it an 'invasion' that requires military forces on the street of the invading country is, OTOH, not only not technically true (To 'invade' somewhere, you must attempt to hold territory.) but insane, not to mention it doesn't explain what they were doing in Palestian for the last two decades.
Also, have no doubt that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory would have ended decades ago if the PLO/etc had called off their war of extermination (and thus given Israel no legitimate reason to have a military presence in the territories).
Erm, the 'legitimate reasons' for havig a military presense in Palestine are, to this day, given as 'to protect Israeli settlers'. Removing them would be a reason to not need the military. Of course, that's exactly what the Palestians are asking for.
The idea that Iran-created Hesbollah is still controlled by Iran is an interesting supposition, and I'd give even odds on it. There is, however, equally likely odds that Hesbollah has slipped their lease, especially since direct control from Syria just ended. (And an interesting third possiblity that Iran is throwing Hesbollah against Israel to get rid of it and distract everyone.)
The real problem is fucking Lebanon, which would have been a useful country to invade if we were going to invade any of them.
I'm not in charge of 'admitting' things on behalf of Iran. I, however, strongly suspect they either want people to think they are developing them, or plan to be in the future.
Anyone who thinks this is some sort of justification for invasion hasn't read the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because, as North Korea figured out, you can just leave the stupid thing.
And Israel and Iran have long made threats against each other. The idea that one of them 'gets to have' nuclear weapons and the other doesn't is absurd. We need to get Iran and Israel to into the non-proliferation treaty as nuclear powers, just like we need to do to India and Pakistan, to get them to agree they won't use nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear strike.
In addition, we need to remove our claimed loophole to that that we can use them against 'rogue states' that aren't nuclear. That's just completely idiotic and violates the whole point of a treaty which is that wars, even including one or more nuclear powers, will not turn into nuclear wars.
In fact, we might want to rethink how this whole nuclear thing works, because right now we have one treaty, and if countries sign it they can't develop nukes, until they withdraw from it, at which point they can do anything they want. That's just stupid.
We need to have one treaty, that every damn country signs, that says they won't use nukes in a war unless the other side uses nukes too, period. We need to have another one that says 'This country is nuclear weapon free, and willing to submit to inspections for any nuclear power plant to prove that', which all the non-nuclear powers sign.
So, when you said 'Thousands of innocent people have died in Lebanon and Israel at the hands of the Iranian military', regardless of where 'this area' is, you were basically making shit up, because no one has died in Israel at the hands of the Iranian military? Okay, good to know.
"because Iran and Israel have never been at war."
It makes the gibbering madmen in Iraq and their Job One of extermination of the Israelis all the LESS rational.
Likewise, the fact the US and Australia have never been at war makes their Job One of extermination of all Americans LESS rational. Or, possibly, it means they aren't trying to do that and you're just been lied to.
It is as clean as it gets when you behave like Israel has, and only engaged in military action when forced to by unprovoked attacks by its enemies
Oh, I freely admit, if you don't count 'occupation' as military action, Israel has only engaged in military action when forced to.
Sadly I, along with international law, do count that. Israel, UNPROVOKED, repeatedly invaded Palestine and conquered parts of it. Dress that up however you like it.
Not yet. Iran's military branch in south Lebanon happens to be making big headlines recently. They even started a major war a few days ago. Discussing Iran is "useful" at this point because their current headline-shattering bomb blitz against Israel puts the lie to your repeated false assertion that the gibbering madmen in Tehran are harmless and rational.
Hezbollah is not a branch of Iran's military.
In an earlier message, you defended Iran's actions in light of some sort of "Western conquest of the Middle East". If you have any ideas like that, you are either easily given in to paranoid delusions concerning things that are not happening, or Osama is paying you to lie about foreign affairs.
What are you talking about? The west is conquering the middle east. In fact, it's repeated conquered it over the past 100 years. Almost every single country in the middle east has been invaded or overthrown by a western power in the last century, most of them more than once. Is this actually debatable?
Perhaps I should not have let slide your earlier thinly-veiled reference to the US as a "ZOG".
I don't know what a ZOG is. It appears to be some sort of claim that Zionist occupy the government. Well, I hate to point this out, but, um, they do. Zionists are merely people who think Jews should have their own homeland. Well, I'm pretty sure the US recognized Israel. I guess I'm a Zionist too, in that I have no problems with Israel existing. I just have a problem with their behavior. (And, as I pointed out at the start and you've apparently forgotten, I have plenty of problems with Palestine behavior too.)
The PLO has always called for the annihilation of the Jews. It has been recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people for decades. Even after the Oslo accords, Arafat went around stating that the PLO's imperialist demands for taking over Israel and wiping out its people had not changed. Divisions of the Palestinian government military (Al Aksa, Hamas) openly and frequently stated their goals of invading Israel and wiping out its people, and the Palestinian government launched attacks toward this end.
While Israel doesn't waste time with words and just sends in troups and settlers.
On one hand, we have word and guerrilla warfare, including instances of terrorism. On the other hand, we have an invasion, complete with troups and evicting of residents and shooting at anyone who opposes them.
The map used by the Palestinian government also happens to show Palestinian land as including all of Israel.
Well, that's certainly undocumented and misleading, but go ahead and repeat that if it makes you feel better.
There has hardly been a time they have not been sending soldiers into Israel to intentionally kill civilians.
And, yes, mysteriously, the wall isn't up, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are trying to live in Palestine, which of course requires a military presence. Odd, that.
Yes, I'm one sided, I admit it. It is easy to be for such one-sided conflicts where one nation wants merely to live and others want to exterminate that nation's people for no reason.
Wait, you missed some words. I'll fix: It is easy to be for such one-sided conflicts where one nation wants merely to live inside that other nation and others want to exterminate that nation's people for no reason except that nation keeps invading it with settlements and bombing runs..
I side with Israel against those who invade it. Likewise, I think that Poland was in the right in the 1939 conflict with Germany.
And no discussion of Israel would be complete without insanely comparing Palestines to Nazis, calling me antisemitic, and calling me anti-American. You've got two of three, I suggest you get to that last one real quick, you never know when I might give this whole conversation up as a lost cause.
There is just no need for the aggression. Imagine if Hamas had called off its attacks, and recognized the rights of Israelis to live.
Oooo, can I play? Imagine if Israel had released the prisoners who it's kidnapped from Palestine. Imagine if they pulled their people out of Palestine. Imagine if they just manned the crossing and let Palestine do whatever it wanted as long as they stayed in Palestine areas?
Why, even if the Palestines wanted to attack, they couldn't, unless they want to charge the borders in some sort of miltary invasion.
Again and again, Israel gives the aggressors a chance to drop the whole matter.
And, again and again, they yammer and stall the talks everytime some random person who thinks they aren't withdrawing fast enough does something stupid, and then they bomb random ares, and start the whole damn mess over.
It's a fucking trick. Do you not grasp this? Palestine has long-term grievances with Israel, and the fight could be stopped in a week if those were settled. Israel has taken land and people, and the fight will not stop until Palestine gets them back. (And, once more, these issues aren't really up for debate, Israel is in the wrong here, even Israel says it will fix these things.)
Instead, Israel forces a ceasefire and draws everything out long enough for some Palestine group (Remember, Palestines' government is a not very functional because Israel keeps attacking it, so they don't have good control over all this.) to attack them. Then Israel uses enough force to provoke more reactions, and so on and so on, until it's a war again, and then, in a year or two when it'
Thousands of innocent people have died in Lebanon and Israel at the hands of the Iranian military occupying in this area.
What. The. Hell. Are you talking about? Iran hasn't ever occupied Israel. In fact, no country has occupied Israel as far as I can recall, except temporarily during wars which Israel won, and Iran is not included in those countries, because Iran and Israel have never been at war. Would you like to explain exactly what you're talking about?
Come on. I say 'That didn't happen' and you say I'm a liar. Well, go ahead. Demonstrate when it happened. I certainly can't demonstrate when it didn't, the burden of proof is on you.
And why you think Iran's interaction with Lebanon is a useful thing to talk about here, I don't know. They left Lebanon. I don't know exactly what your point is, if you want to talk about Iran's interaction with Lebanon go ahead, but that will be a conversation I don't actually find interesting. I'm pretty much talking about American's and Israel's interaction with other Middle East countries.
Iran is only the most "rational actor" if you think it is rational for it to center its foreign policy around the proposed extermination of a nation of millions that has never really lifted a finger against it.
Which it is doing by...what actions, exactly? Telepathic bad vibes? It's certainly an interesting foreign policy to attempt to destroy a country by not ever doing anything.
You're just asserting motives. You're asserting Israel has the cleanest motives in history, self defense, and Iran is Snidely Whiplash. Well, that's interesting considering how Israel steadfastly refuses to the logical thing for self-defense and just build a big wall, and how Iran hasn't, actually, ever done anything at all.
Oh, and before you mention this newest thing, the external wing of Hamas!=the PLO, and neither does Hesbollah.
And Hamas kidnapped soldiers because they want thousands of their civilians back that Israel is holding as prisoners, something they've apparently been planning for quite some time. But, no, everything Israel does is logical and makes sense, and every reaction to it is 'the PLO derailing the peace process'.
Hesbollah, on the other hand, is just stirring up trouble.
From Day 1, the Palestinian government declared its goal of exterminating the Israelis. It invaded Israel and forced Israel to bomb and occupy: just like Japan forced a US retaliation. Unlike the Japanese, the Palestinians did not have the decency to call off their Final Solution and surrender, naturally resulting in a near-permanent occupation. Who in their right mind would give land away to a nation that has declared it wants to kill you off? After this, it is hard to blame Israel for settling the lands the Palestinians are all but giving away.
On day one after the creation of Israel and before the creation of Palestine, various countries (Not Palestine.) attacked Israel, and had a war in Palestine. That's what happened 'first'. Palestine never invaded Israel, and, no, it wasn't even people living there. That's just where they had the damn war.
As a result of this war, all the lands of 'Palestine' were under the control of various other countries, including Israel. The treaty that ended the war essentially ignored Palestine as a political entity, and it ceased to exist until 1988 in any form. The PLO, meanwhile, was founded in 64 by the losers in the war, and, yes the goal was the destruction of Israel, but it wasn't the 'government' of anything. It didn't become the government until 1988, which, incidentally, is when it modified its position to the idea that it could live with Israel.
Anyway, I'm not going to discuss it further, but your version of history is completely screwy. The PLO hasn't called for the destruction of Israel ever since it has actually been the government of Palestine. The published draft constition says the territory of Palestine is based upon its borders on June 4th 1967, which is basically what is currently Palestine. You're just completely, flat-out, wrong.
I can't even begin to address the rest of what you say, because they are founded on the same 'interpetation' of all events in the most extreme pro-Israeli light. You are wearing Israel-color glasses.
Howver, I'd like a single example of this. 'They've tried, many times. This includes numerous unilateral cease-fires (always broken when the Palestinian government blows up a bus or the like) or even large-scale land retreats. Time and again, hostilities die down, but then the Palestinians launch new attacks.'. Something that's happened 'many times' should be easy to find.
Did you just simultaneously assert that Iraq was more insane than Iran, and didn't do anything when bombed, and that Iran is already acting crazy without any provocation at all?
I've heard of 'doublethink' before, but that's an astonishing level right there. What, exactly, was the point you were trying to get across, or did the attempt to paint Iran as toothless and crazy at the same time just short out some logic circuits?
Israel has sold Iran quite a lot of weapons, ('Iran-Contra' ring any bells?), even after they offically broke off ties, and they were on generally good terms for two countries that weren't speaking to each other, until Israel and the US couldn't stop Iran's nuclear arms development, back in 2003, at which point Israel started the threats, with the US joining in in 2005.
Yes, Iran has since elected a president more hostile to the country that's threatening them (Whoa, big surprise there.) and also made threats in response, but no worse than Israel's, and it is Israel that has somehow decided it has the right to nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't, and started threats based on that. (Which is only really relevant if we are operating under the idea that issuing threats to other countries is somehow morally wrong, which is idiotic, as the US beats the entire world combined there. Regardless, if that's the rule, Israel threw the first punch.)
Ignoring Iran's threats that basically amounted to 'leave us the hell alone or we're going to punch you in the face', Iran hasn't ever done anything. Iran might have the cleanest hands of any middle-east country in that regard. The only 'bad thing' Iran appears to have even vaguely done to other countries in modern times was the Iran hostage crisis, and that, of course, didn't involve Israel. They never bombed anyone,they never invaded anyone, they haven't done anything to Israel ever.
No, politicians denying the holocaust doesn't count as aggression towards Israel, nor does calling Israel an 'illegal state' or cutting off relations. And as of now, Iran hasn't done anything despite Israel (just now) attacking their neighbor Lebanon, although if it looks like Israel is headed towards Iran, that could changed rapidly.
Anyone who thinks Iran is the fucking aggressor here needs to have their head examined. Iran just figured out it was next in the 'conquer the middle east' plan of the west, and decided have the fight now when the US is overreached in Iraq, and just hope they can get nukes fast enough, which, of course, would mean the US can't attack them. (re: North Korea)
In fact, at this point in time, Iran is possibly the most rational actor in this entire mess, as in, I can actually figure out all their motives.
I disagree with what you're saying, I think we should use 'the carrot and the threat of the stick', but, hell, it can't possibly be worse than what we are doing currently.
However, I'd extend it past 'no terrorist support'. Let's have some damn free societies over there. Yeah, it's going to make gas cost more for us, but if we're already not using their gas, that doesn't really matter.
And we can say to their leaders 'You know, we're friends with England, and they still have royalty, and their queen has it pretty easy. You can even set up a state religion, like them, as long as you don't persecute other religions. Take a mansion as a retirement present for yourself, set up a parliment, declare yourself a figurehead, and you get to ride around waving to everyone during the day and relax by the pool at night. You can even set it up where you can knight people.'.
A lot of the problem over there is us interfering in their politics. It's better for us to have a government there that dislikes us and actually has popular support than one than is our puppet and the people hate it and create terrorist organizations to fight it and us, and then the people elect parts of that to their government. (Although, ironically, if that goes far enough, the organizations get absorbed into the government, and, hey, we get what we needed...a government with popular support that dislikes us.)
As for foreign aid...I say we'll do it, but only all the way. They need medical care, well, here's some doctors and nurses and mobile hospitals that will roam the country and treat people. They need food, well, here's some food we will hand out of the streets. They need clean water, here is the clean water dispenser we are operating, come up and fill up your cooking pots with it, and here's some paper cups. Everything should be 'here is some aid for this person, which we personally hand to them and they will (mostly) use in sight of us', not random distribution of money to a government that steals half of it.
That whole 'We'll give you aid and you hand it out.' doesn't work, as that whole 'Food for Oil' demonstrated. (Which, although the media mysteriously decided not to report it, had 95% of the billions in cash going into American pockets, and the oil right though American blockades. American companies were the big cheaters in that, they ended up with something like 12 out of the 13 billion, the other countries were just small fries.)
In fact, that's what the frickin Peace Corps is for, and what the 'International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' is for. More than 40 'relief societies' under that banner helped after the tsunami in Asia. Instead of handing out cash to corrupt government, let's give relief organizations, say, a few hundred generators or whatever they need when a disaster hits. And let's be sure to slap American flags on them so everyone knows who gave them.
Hamas, Hesbollah and the Iranian dictatorship existed prior to George W. Bush. Perhaps you can blame the older Bush or Reagan if you want. But the fact remains that they existed and two of them were in power prior to Bush. Hamas was recently elected, but if you look at it, this group has been engaging in attacks prior to and after their election. Prior to the recent election, Hamas was part of the Palestinian government, anyway, and was an active part prior to Bush.
1) Iran is not a dictatorship, nor are they an actual problem except WRT their nuclear program.
2) Hamas gained power solely because Israel kept wiping out the existing government.
3) Hesbollah went from eight seats to triple that amount in the election of 2005. A lot of that is due to the assassination of Ghaleb Awwali by what Hesbollah claimed were Israeli forces. (Granted, they might be lying.) I will trivially admit that Hesbollah is trying to stir up trouble in Palestine, but like I said, Israel could solve that problem in a week by staying the hell out of Palestine.
Only someone who knows nothing about foreign affairs thinks there is NO difference between what we want to happen in Iran (that they stop their nuclear weapons program) and what Iran wants for Israel (utter annihilation of an entire nation)
Iran has not threatened to invade Israel. We, however, have threatened to invade Iran. Take off your blinders. We aren't magically right in everything we demand other countries do, and we have exactly as much right to use force against countries that threaten us as Iran has to use against countries that threaten it.
One side wants to live in security. The other side wants to invade and exterminate the first side. Both are equal to you?
And if Israel wants to live in peace, why don't they build a fence and do so, instead of continually provoking Palestine? Come on, let's have a straight simple anwser to this.
Bush, whatever his faults, told the truth about Iraq. I think the "lie" here is on your side. How many WMD have to be found before we can put to bed the old lie "Bush knew there were no WMD"? It seems that 500 shells is not enough, is it?
Ladies and gentlemen, I present what is left of the GOP. Where 500 non-working shells left over from before the first Gulf War, and what the Pentagon itself has said wasn't what we were looking for, are a good enough reason to invade a country.
This explains a lot. You are enamored of a whacky conspiracy theory involving a group that is not even in power.
You think the neocons aren't in power? Just how stupid are you?
I mean, this isn't some 'JFK is really working for the aliens' or anything. The people who actually came up with the whole thing are in power. To quote Wikipedia: 'Modern neoconservatism is associated with periodicals such as Commentary and The Weekly Standard and some of the foreign policy initiatives of think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).'
See Dick Cheney and William J. Bennett and Donald Rumsfeld and, oddly enough, Jeb Bush. (Did we elect the wrong Bush by accident?) Please explain how the Vice President (Who Bush has, himself, said does a lot of the foreign policy stuff.) and Secretary of Defense and Assistant Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and President of the World Bank and, of course, Steve frickin Forbes are not 'in power'. That's out of a mere 23 people, incidentally.
Now, you can try to argue that that's not what the term 'neocon' means, that it has some other unknown meaning. I'm pretty certain they coined the name, but fine. Whatever. Change all instances of 'neocon' in my post to 'PNACer'. Happy?
As if your thinly-veiled antisemitism wasn't enough.
And, of course, the last resort of the neocon. (Ooops, the PNACer.) Calling for anything less than unconditional support of Israel is antisemitic.
The right to live does not contain the right to settle a neighboring country and bomb them when they get pissed and start shooting at your citizens who are now living in their country, nor does it contain the right to attack a neighboring country when they elect a government you don't like, especially when you also bombed their previous government. It also, in case you're not clear where I'm standing, doesn't contain the right to blow up civilians with car bombs. Neither car bombs nor bombing runs on civilians in retalition for said bombs are acceptable behavior.
This is not entirely Israel's problem. It is, however, partially their problem, and any objective observer would come to the conclusion they want this problem so they have an excuse to continue to their little war with Palestine, because they sure as hell aren't trying to stop it. Palestine has an excuse, they don't have a functioning government or military or the control of 'their forces'. Israel has all that and the ability to build a fucking wall and stay on their side of it, and, yet, they don't. If anyone could stop this idiotic war, it's Israel, in less than a week, but they don't.
Why? Because they want to get rid of Palestine as much as Palestine wants to get rid of them. They want 'all' of Israel back. They're just smarter about how they do it, and smart enough not to say it outloud.
We need to call all countries on their unacceptable behavior. We need to stop funding countries that continue to use our money for that unacceptable behavior. This includes basically the entire goddamn Middle East. We should be using 'The carrot and the always-existing possiblity of the stick' theory, not 'give some people globs of money and hit others for no apparent reason' theory, because it, oddly, is pissing off the people we're hitting.
Or, at least, that's what we needed to do, five years ago. At this point, we have basically lost all the moral high ground.
if you privatized the schools and they were actually, you know, accountable, then there wouldn't be a "need" for unions.
Holding school 'accountable' has resulting in the horrible 'No Child Left Behind' where test scores become more important than actual learning.
The "right to work" teachers suffer from the worst of two evils: socialism and monopolies. The state runs the schools and has a monopoly on them.
How the fuck is a union 'socialism'? If you're talking about forced dues, you're backwards...right-to-work means unions can't require union membership as a condition for working. My state, GA, has right-to-work...and also no right to strike, half the teachers are in the 'alternative union' PAGE that doesn't do a damn thing ever, not even 'collective bargaining' which I thought was the defination of a union, and consequently teachers have almost power at all and get paid crap. And, surely coincidentally, Georgia is in the lowest ten states, educationally.
As for the CTA (California), for instance, they are ever working for increasing taxes and lowering the bond threshhold. I'm a home owner, when you lower the bond threshhold, it simply raises my property taxes. Hell, it's hard enough to buy a home in Cali without assessing even more property taxes.
You let the teacher's union write the state budget in California? Wait, no you don't. You can blame the state for wasting money, you can even blame the school system and the teachers, but blaming the teacher's union is idiotic. The teacher's union isn't spending too much money in schools.
And, as for the unions, they work to define the standards, the curriculum, and infest (right word) the teacher colleges. Their reach is far and wide. And it's not just in California.
Dear god, a union that works to define the standards of their industry. Ho-ly crap. No, wait, all unions do that.
Look, the union may be too strong in the California, I don't know. I suspect you're just living in the wrong damn state. What I do know is what happen when it goes away. Wages plummet, ability to keep teachers plummets, and teaching plummets.
As for portrayal of gays, it doesn't matter at all of a "portryal". Here's two examples: Charles I and John Maynard Keyens. The former was influenced by his gay lover and made bad decisions from raising excessive taxes on the nobility and even the poor, to sending his troops overseas to help his brother-in-law (or cousin, it might be) regain the Palatinate. This eventually led to the English Civil War and his beheading. The latter was perhaps the most influential economist of the 20th century, and gay. The former it matters only as much as history is concerned, but it would certainly cast a negative light on gays. The latter it matters not one iota, but might cast a positive light on gays. So, do we exclude Chuck (where it matters) and include JMK where it doesn't? If it matters to Chuck and we exclude, we rewrite history, include and offend. If we include for JMK, it is trivialized, paternalizing, and egregious, if we exclude, we can concentrate on what is truly important. You decide...
You can write the portrayal of Charles I in three ways. (Incidentally, the English Civil War wasn't really considered important enough to cover in my schools. In their universe, the history of England started about their politics with the US about 1770 and ended at 1812 or so, until it started back up 1914, thus leaving students with no clue what, for example, 'The Victorian Era' is referring to.)
Anyway, you can write about without mentioning the gay thing at all, which is basically what every grade school textbook I've ever seen that mentioned him has done. This is the old, stupid way.
You can write about how he was corrupted and seduced into evil and gayitude. This would be the new, stupid way.
Or, you can talk about him exactly how every other ruler who's had stupid relat
Um, what?
Did you read like every fifteenth word I wrote or something?
Those organizations only exist, or, at least, only were elected into political power because of the mismanagement of Bush.
They didn't just magically spring into existence and power. They are the result, not the problem. The problem is our unconditional support of Israel while they continually try to get rid of Palestine instead of trying to work with both sides, our rhetoric about 'Axis of Evil' (If you can tell the actual difference between what we're saying should happen to Iran, and what Iran says should happen to Israel, please tell me.), and, of course, our semi-random invasion of Iraq, which the Middle East figured out Bush was lying about before we did, and, what's more, doesn't believe we could be that stupid, because, after all, we didn't do anything about the lies and even reelected him.
We could have gone in entirely different way after 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. We could have worked with the Middle East, we could have made it clear that certain things wouldn't be tolerated, even from our 'allies', both old and new, and if they would help us with stopping those things, we could become friends. A good hard look at our policies in the Middle East and a realignment of our priorities could have happened, with the likely result that radical organizations would have lost most of their support.
Or, and this was the other options, we could just fixed Afghanistan and gotten out of the whole area. Not the best idea, but ignoring the Middle East has worked in the past.
Instead we picked the third option, the insane one. We turned into a bull in their china shop. With a machine gun. Us, and Israel (Who they sometimes having trouble telling apart, considering us as little more than the 'enforcer for Israel'.) are throwing actual bullets at some people, and attempting to control everyone else. The fact the Middle East is shooting at us and Israel is fully predictably by any slightly intelligent person who has the slightest bit of knowledge about the Middle East.
But, you see, we all already know this. The neocons are trying to pick a fight with Iran because there's no way in hell the American public will let them drag us into yet another war.
But if they can get Iran to act irrational long enough to do something, they can say Iran started the war. Sadly for them, while they've managed to piss off Lebanon and possibly even Syria enough to start shooting at us, Iran is having too much fun taking over Iraq politically to screw around with actually shooting at us. So we'll probably have use the backup plan of Israel 'bombing their WMD factories' or something, which will immediately cause them to invade Iraq and start killing American soldiers.
I would point out that girls getting socialization from just men would be equally disasterous. And, although it's a bit more subtle, boys from only men and girls from only women is not that great either.
Boys and girls need men and women in their life to show them how to behave, both within their own gender and when interacting with the other one.
However, yes, in modern schools, it's almost entirely women until high school, and that's a bit late. It's not sexism, it's more that women like the job better. Schools have tried solutions like male priciples and male gym teachers, but I'm not seeing a lot of solutions.
But don't go blaming women for the stupidity you mention. Half the time that's the fault of Zero Tolerance policies, which are imposed from above.
Of couse, this online student will lack social skills, such as knowing where the nearest crack house is, and the current price of various street drugs.
This is pretty poor planning on his part. When society collapses in ten years and the only job available for 60% of the workforce is running errands for the rich, knowledge of illegal things will come in very handy.
Anyone paying 5 times as much as a normal school for a 500-student classroom isn't smart enough to get a college degree.
Just make sure they are accredited and recognized by the Department of Education and you'll be OK.
And this does not include the damn University of Phoenix, who are accredited only in their own mind.
Shouldn't that be Nomology?
Erm, how do teachers have more job security than anyone else? And the legal inability to strike in several states has resulted in teacher's wages going to crap, and incidentally, schools having to hire incompetant people because the wages are so low. (No, schools can't just decide to pay their teachers more, that comes down from the top.) Teachers should at least be allowed to strike instead of signing contracts for the next year, i.e, start the strike between the school years. Right now the 'teacher's union', like any union that can't legally strike, is a complete joke.
And your problem isn't with schools, or teachers unions, or anyone like that. It's with California. Don't go acting like California's gibberish is some sort of 'educational' problem. Did you not even read the article? 'The state's social-content guidelines should be abolished. They put the state Board of Education into the absurd position...' It's not even the Board of Education's fault, much less any teacher's.
There is no fucking way that 'teachers unions' have a damn thing to do with any of that. You're anti-union, so have decided to conflate teacher lobbying and teacher unions with the government of California deciding to do stupid things.
And, incidentally:
So it's not surprising that in recent months gays and lesbians have stepped forward to demand a place at the state's capacious table. They too want their roles to be portrayed positively in textbooks purchased by the state. And frankly, they've got a point. In view of the state's broad inclusion of every other group in its list of those deserving such treatment, the state has no principled reason to exclude any new claimant.
shows exactly where that author is coming from and where, I suspect, you are too. Damn, it sucks we don't seem to have a good excuse under the law to portray gay people as evil.
Yes, there is such thing as 'Too much tolerance' or whatever, where no one can can ever be portrayed in a negative light, or just no one except straight WASPs (SWASPs?) can be portrayed in a negative light, and the California school system has managed to reach that point, about 20 years after Hollywood and everyone else did and then passed it. That's a bad point to be at, history needs to tell facts, and even fiction needs realistic villians.(1) OTOH, there are people like your writer, who was involved in writing the textbooks at one time, and who are annoyed that there's no 'principled reason' to exclude the mere existence of gay people from all the textbooks in school system, so maybe there's a fucking point to those rules.
1) I remember on Angel where there was an inner-city gang in LA, and someone said 'Damn, that's the most multi-racial inner-city gang in LA I've ever seen.', which was interesting because it was a mostly positive portrayal (They were fighting vampires who were preying on them, which mistakenly put them at odds with the protaganist who of course was one, but it was more a classic 'superheroes not trusting each other when they met' instead of 'these are the bad guys'.) and thus it would be hard to see how anyone would be offended with accuracy. In latter episodes when the gang returned, they were more realisticly almost entirely black and hispanic, and at the end got even more interesting when they started killing off completely harmless demons, although they did raise an interesting point about these 'harmless demons' working with horrible ones, and that beings who laugh and joke with murderers are probably 'evil' even if they aren't actually committing evil acts. (Which is an analogy about race and racism in more ways than one.)