i thought it was clear I meant inside their houses, in their rooms. And you know what I mean about japanesee "respect" for someone elses privacy: they'll gossip, sure, but you will never know.
I agree with this. They are really nationalistic and do have some contempt for the different: intolerant cultures do not deserve occident's tolerant attitutde:
My friend, before going any further, this has been a very delicious battle, I have learned and still am learning a lot. I salute you sincerely.
Now, on your points, I will aknowledge some of your criticism first:
1) Its true that the argument about some country having "ulterior motives" for invading another does not preclude the fact that some people in the invaded country might benefit from said invasion.
That this is the case for most afgahnis or irakis, is something that YOU would have to prove, not me. However, I would agree that if the US had fucked up Saddam in the first GW (aint that funny? GW: Gulf War, thus GWB: Gulf War Bush!... the second!), the scenario wouldve been stable enough to accomplish what the US SAYS its trying to accomplish now.
2) I don't think rape is a "necessary" part of war. I merely subject to the fact that rape is always a part of war, without any kind of exception in any side of any war....EVER.
3) I think i've earned you treating me like an idiot because in my initial postings I was just trying to be irrationally provocative, but I also think you intentionally ignore some good points I make here so that you may emerge victorious of a debate. Good technique, but its not my intention to "win" anything, only to voice my opinion that the US is disavowing some of its best values in favor of the personal interests of war criminals like Bush and friends, and abandoning all reason in their government in favor of irrational chauvinism that is what makes nice fascist regimes, not true democracies: I think the US is forgeting what made her what it is.
For me, somebody that has allways admired that particular democracy, its a disheartening process: most Romans were not Italians and suffered greatly at Rome's fall. This is my situation, and the situation of most citizens of occident.
I'll delve into that later. Right now, I list here some of the things i openly disagree about what you are writing:
1) Sure, you can say that all that killing in Irak is to liberate those that survive. Who will those be? You cant say and neither can I. Does that make the Iraki war "wrong"? Not necesarily, but the "liberating" part sure does not make it "right" either.
2) Comparing the iraki war to WWII is like comparing Georgia apples... to Cuban whores, my dear friend. The french WANTED to be liberated, Churchill was very clear in asking (and pushing REALLY HARD) the US into action.... who in HELL asked the US to invade Irak? Did the Israelis request it? Did the turkish request it? Was it to stop a global danger like the fascist axis regimes were?
Great care was taken by all parties in WWII to respect cities like Paris or Rome. Notre Damme was not destroyed either by the germans nor the allies. Of course, many German cities were turned into parking lots, as was London, but there was some romanticism there in not majorly fucking up certain symbolic locations. WWII was majorly a war amongst brethren. After all, in the western front, all countries were christian and had intertwined histories both terribly violent and of close friendship for the past thousend years.
The allies, all of them, were actually under direct violent atack and faced destruction of their governments and the sovereignty of their countries. WWII is the closest the US has ever been under such danger since its Civil War, even more danger than at WWI.
Pray tell what the fuck was Saddam doing to any part of the US or of all of occident for that matter, prior to the second Gulf War? Cause in the first, the idiot actually gave occident good cause to have himself FUBARed, but in the second, he was a puppy licking his own wounds: no Al Quaeda there, the Iranis or even the Saudis would be much easyer to blame for that than Saddam could have ever been.
There has been no evidence of him making any sort of alliance with the Taliban or with Iran or Syria or Al Quaeda prior to the US invasion, he was not ruling a religious state, but was probably the only state of the whole region to a
As are the cam-crazy japaneese, only google does it for profit and they do it for kinks.
I guess its a personal issue.
However, i think you ought to own your own image's copyright so if it irks you, you should be able to sue both the japs AND google for using your image without permission.
Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.
This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.
I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.
Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.
I have acknowledged some of the stupid things I wrote,and was also attacked by strawman in this thread. I have no intention to hurt or be slanderous. If it's of any interest to you search for the post about me posting from my phone, where I try to recapitulate. After all what is discussion for if not for learning?
I appologize if I've offended someone, but I think I still make a good case in that post regarding what i consider to be terrible errors in current u.s. Foreign and local policy related to security and individual freedom.
You have to aknowledge the balls on this guy (however gay he was).
Now no one said that the japs werent fierce and somehow not really all that touchy feely like we are here on occident. Dont get me wrong, im all for occident.
All Im saying is that there is no need to go and say: oh, that was done for the good of the japaneese and nukes are a great idea for humanity!
It wasnt. It was a major fucking up of a bunch of people that, as it happens in most modern wars, did not want a part on it, and i see no difference between the japaneese cruelty upon lots of Asia (man, Manchuria!), and them getting a couple of nukes up their ass.
Lots of people getting killed without distinction is all the same if you do it by pressing a big red button than if you line them off and have them beheaded.
Hey, at least beheading is enviromentaly sensible!
Come on... no case can be made in favor of nuking anyone. By the same reasoning, one could justify the bombing of new york saying that the US has fucked majorly, with undue force, with no bussiness whatsoever in the middle east, with most muslim countries there: they've been bombed, destabilized, held under ransom, occupied in countless ocasions by the US with or without moral or even economic justification that the average middle-eastern muslim can or is willing understand or accept.
So what? Were the taliban mearly retaliating?
I think its a pretty bad idea to justify violence in the way you are doing: you justify violence by your enemies at the same time and foster sympathy from other people towards them just because you have the bigger guns.
Okay okay... i went overboard about the japs being about to surrender. But they were in pretty bad shape and had no way to help the Germans or Italians at that point: really, i think nuking them was not justifiable in any way.
But i cannot agree with you on the point that Hiroshima or Nagasaki not being "huge", cause i didnt say they were. I said they were IMPORTANT.
And they were.
But hey, this is precisely my point: to not feel guilty, people will go to extreme lenghts of self delussion.
The post you replied to was really badly written. But i must say that I am not saying the US should never do anything. For example, it was more than justified to go into Afghanistan. But I ask you: was the iraki invasion justifiable, even from the american citizen's standpoint?
Even when the taliban have not been defeated (and they wont if the US keeps wanking in irak when its real enemies were in afghanistan)?
Going into irak was stupid (and while im at it, i think getting out of it in the short term is even more stupid), not pointing its effort into afganistan was stupid (and still is).
First... I had been posting from my new fucking iPhone and apparently im not rich enough to learn to use its keyboard on such short notice so I couldnt really go deep into what im trying to say here.
On your very nicely put answer:
Well... I certaintly went off my main point, so i will recapitulate here, because I do not want to disagree with you in ANY of the judgments you make up here. I agree with most of what youre writing (except perhaps that thing about US invasions generally ending up in the "good" of others, which is certaintly true... for different values of $good and $others! )
What irks me is that SOME people, like to think that the US Government sends their army "to liberate" other people and thease people tend to use this argument to feel less guilty about the mass killing, raping, rapid parking lot construction via mean megaton conventional bombs and general really fucking ugly stuff that happens at war (all of them, but the US is pretty good at war, from where we derive that its pretty good at killing, raping and generally fucking up people in other countries).
So my argument is precisely yours! Wars are waged on interests. Wars coming from democracies even more so: i think democracies TEND to not go to war because of this or that IDEAL, but because most representatives -lets not delve into the issue of representativity right now- of the people think its a good idea to do it.
So no, i withraw my final line in the past post. Its not that mistakes need not be repeated, its that you need not go all 'we do it for freeeeedom and demoooocracy' in your search of justification for a war. You are not liberating anyone from anything nor setting any kind of democracy upon people that dont want it enough to go get it themselves (or are scared enough to attempt to get one for themselves). Youre fucking up another country because some important decision takers thought it was a good idea.
My point here is that you cant go all high in your moral horse and say you're a liberator of a country when every single person in the whole world saw a couple of towers getting knocked down and know WHY do you have troops in afghanistan and most of the world aknowledges (and I certaintly do), that it was for a good reason.
Im not saying that the US has no bussiness in afg. On the contrary: I agree with the guy who wrote here that they should feel lucky they are not a radioactive hole in the ground. But dont come talkin to me about some "liberating" "nice" army that is there to show how freedom is done.
More so, you CANNOT say that youre "the liberator" of an Irak that today has thousends of civilian people killed by US bombings and/or bullets (intentional or not), where you set up a jail to systematically torture people, and where the average citizen (hey, we have to call them something!), is in more daily danger than they ever were under Saddam, at least since the end of the first gulf war.
And then there is your nice optimism about the current Irak war... okay, i can understand where youre coming from, BUT, what remains UNACCEPTABLE from ANY moral standpoint, is the fact that the President of the United States lied to the whole world (which i think may be okay, really, for the advancement of his country's interests, but then he went and lied to HIS OWN PEOPLE!) and still wants to be called "the liberator" of Irak.
That is unexcusable, my friend. That cannot be saved from any rational or ethical standpoint. It was a poor decision from the moral, the ethical and even the global strategic military standpoint: you ended up with Israel in MORE danger, and a strong Iran who is not ruled by a wussie like Saddam, but by a real motherfucker like the Mahmoud (who, by the way, can also be said to be there due to great ideas like the Iran-Irak war of the 80's).
And then you can revise other US allies that are every single bit as repressive and murderous as the taliban, the irani regime, or saddam: look into the saudis and lets not forget the wonderfull Pinochet in Chile. If "l
well pointed out my prickness, I apologize. About the Saudis, I point them out because thy are regarded as allies, like saddam was until he became a little too much of a prick regarding us oil interests. He wasn't fucked in either war to liberate anyone. If liberating people was why the us attacks countries he woulve never come into power.
The main point here is that no, there is no nice justification to invading and killing people in Irak, or nuking japan when it was already defeated just to test the new gizmo. There might be good reasons, but it shouldn't be justified in any way: ujjustified murder is what it is, why try to find ways to feel better about it instead of realizing mistakes so that you don't go fuck it up again.
What a way to liberate, vaporizing a cuple of important population centers of a country that was about to surrender anyhow.
I agree though that the japaneese are generally very fond of america (hell, Im not an american and I AM VERY fond of its culture and country -although not with the Bushes). But put yourself in their shoes: after decades of invasion and basically the us surgically removing their balls, how else are they gonna think?
About the SKs, well, yeah. Thats a whole other ballgame. Ill give you that one.
On the other hand, how did it go with the cambodians and the vietnameese? Wonderful, ey?
And still, how is that blissfull american influence going for Myanmar? How about the wonderful state of things in "allies" like the nice government of singapur?
And hey!, lets not forget the democratic republic of Saudi Arabia, where people are beheaded for crimes against humanity... like being gay! On the other hand, there is the evil, soon to be "liberated" Iran, who has say.... such different tactics in their justice system!
Shall I go on?
Get a grip... better yet.... get a book and please, READ IT
Well... some terrorism is certaintly like that. Narc-Colombian terrorism srpings to mind. Palestinian intra-israeli terrorism and al-quaeda terrorism elsewere is obviously that way.
But there are plenty of examples where guerrilla tactics (hitting an oil line, destroying an embassy, bombing a military cargo ship, blowing up a military vessel), are regarded by the US as "terrorism".
So... whos to say that there is actually an acurate definition of terrorism if governments seem to put that label to whatever organization threatens them?
And then again, its hard to swallow the "evil terrorist" label after seeing what an antipersonal cluster bomb does when launched, and them many years after...
Slashdot Mirror
i thought it was clear I meant inside their houses, in their rooms. And you know what I mean about japanesee "respect" for someone elses privacy: they'll gossip, sure, but you will never know.
I agree with this. They are really nationalistic and do have some contempt for the different: intolerant cultures do not deserve occident's tolerant attitutde:
If you dont play ball, you cant hit a homerun.
My friend, before going any further, this has been a very delicious battle, I have learned and still am learning a lot. I salute you sincerely.
Now, on your points, I will aknowledge some of your criticism first:
1) Its true that the argument about some country having "ulterior motives" for invading another does not preclude the fact that some people in the invaded country might benefit from said invasion.
That this is the case for most afgahnis or irakis, is something that YOU would have to prove, not me. However, I would agree that if the US had fucked up Saddam in the first GW (aint that funny? GW: Gulf War, thus GWB: Gulf War Bush!... the second!), the scenario wouldve been stable enough to accomplish what the US SAYS its trying to accomplish now.
2) I don't think rape is a "necessary" part of war. I merely subject to the fact that rape is always a part of war, without any kind of exception in any side of any war....EVER.
3) I think i've earned you treating me like an idiot because in my initial postings I was just trying to be irrationally provocative, but I also think you intentionally ignore some good points I make here so that you may emerge victorious of a debate. Good technique, but its not my intention to "win" anything, only to voice my opinion that the US is disavowing some of its best values in favor of the personal interests of war criminals like Bush and friends, and abandoning all reason in their government in favor of irrational chauvinism that is what makes nice fascist regimes, not true democracies: I think the US is forgeting what made her what it is.
For me, somebody that has allways admired that particular democracy, its a disheartening process: most Romans were not Italians and suffered greatly at Rome's fall. This is my situation, and the situation of most citizens of occident.
I'll delve into that later. Right now, I list here some of the things i openly disagree about what you are writing:
1) Sure, you can say that all that killing in Irak is to liberate those that survive. Who will those be? You cant say and neither can I. Does that make the Iraki war "wrong"? Not necesarily, but the "liberating" part sure does not make it "right" either.
2) Comparing the iraki war to WWII is like comparing Georgia apples... to Cuban whores, my dear friend. The french WANTED to be liberated, Churchill was very clear in asking (and pushing REALLY HARD) the US into action.... who in HELL asked the US to invade Irak? Did the Israelis request it? Did the turkish request it? Was it to stop a global danger like the fascist axis regimes were?
Great care was taken by all parties in WWII to respect cities like Paris or Rome. Notre Damme was not destroyed either by the germans nor the allies. Of course, many German cities were turned into parking lots, as was London, but there was some romanticism there in not majorly fucking up certain symbolic locations. WWII was majorly a war amongst brethren. After all, in the western front, all countries were christian and had intertwined histories both terribly violent and of close friendship for the past thousend years.
The allies, all of them, were actually under direct violent atack and faced destruction of their governments and the sovereignty of their countries. WWII is the closest the US has ever been under such danger since its Civil War, even more danger than at WWI.
Pray tell what the fuck was Saddam doing to any part of the US or of all of occident for that matter, prior to the second Gulf War? Cause in the first, the idiot actually gave occident good cause to have himself FUBARed, but in the second, he was a puppy licking his own wounds: no Al Quaeda there, the Iranis or even the Saudis would be much easyer to blame for that than Saddam could have ever been.
There has been no evidence of him making any sort of alliance with the Taliban or with Iran or Syria or Al Quaeda prior to the US invasion, he was not ruling a religious state, but was probably the only state of the whole region to a
Not me, but Id wager that in larger families its quite normal.
Imagine the average american teenager with an open doors policy towards their parents...
Doesnt fit the stereotype.
As are the cam-crazy japaneese, only google does it for profit and they do it for kinks.
I guess its a personal issue.
However, i think you ought to own your own image's copyright so if it irks you, you should be able to sue both the japs AND google for using your image without permission.
Huh?
The japaneese take pictures of sidewalks.... they have this love for the cammera that i will never understand.
However, dont get them wrong: its completely harmless and they dont go publizicing them all over.
On the other hand, google is selling your life for profit: there is a difference there.
Yup...
Few things will irk the average japaneese more than invasion of privacy.
This is a country and culture so different from occidental ones that they tend to have no locks in their rooms because nobody would imagine entering without knocking, where people police each other in the subway so that you dont scream or make any kind of fuss that might irk the guy next to you.
I admire that part of their culture very much because its clearly a civilizatory trend: it makes people very councious about the rights of the next guy: its an insular culture ripe for pure individual freedom at its best.
Interestingly enough, their rigid social side follows very clear rules and is never very personal: the japaneese keep their inner self... erm.. to themselves.
I like that a lot.
I have acknowledged some of the stupid things I wrote,and was also attacked by strawman in this thread. I have no intention to hurt or be slanderous. If it's of any interest to you search for the post about me posting from my phone, where I try to recapitulate. After all what is discussion for if not for learning?
I appologize if I've offended someone, but I think I still make a good case in that post regarding what i consider to be terrible errors in current u.s. Foreign and local policy related to security and individual freedom.
I guess we will never know.
Nothing that Ive said is contradictory to your chauvinistic, although well justified statement.
As Ive said in countless posts, I believe the US is the modern Rome, and I love Rome, since its inception, all the way its end.
Now see if you can read some Roman history to find out where the US is fucking it up.
delving into the unknown land of prediction , id say the us is about to make yet another unilateral attack. All this spin tells me things.
YEah, I love Mishima. And hey, what a way to go!
You have to aknowledge the balls on this guy (however gay he was).
Now no one said that the japs werent fierce and somehow not really all that touchy feely like we are here on occident. Dont get me wrong, im all for occident.
All Im saying is that there is no need to go and say: oh, that was done for the good of the japaneese and nukes are a great idea for humanity!
It wasnt. It was a major fucking up of a bunch of people that, as it happens in most modern wars, did not want a part on it, and i see no difference between the japaneese cruelty upon lots of Asia (man, Manchuria!), and them getting a couple of nukes up their ass.
Lots of people getting killed without distinction is all the same if you do it by pressing a big red button than if you line them off and have them beheaded.
Hey, at least beheading is enviromentaly sensible!
Come on... no case can be made in favor of nuking anyone. By the same reasoning, one could justify the bombing of new york saying that the US has fucked majorly, with undue force, with no bussiness whatsoever in the middle east, with most muslim countries there: they've been bombed, destabilized, held under ransom, occupied in countless ocasions by the US with or without moral or even economic justification that the average middle-eastern muslim can or is willing understand or accept.
So what? Were the taliban mearly retaliating?
I think its a pretty bad idea to justify violence in the way you are doing: you justify violence by your enemies at the same time and foster sympathy from other people towards them just because you have the bigger guns.
Okay okay... i went overboard about the japs being about to surrender. But they were in pretty bad shape and had no way to help the Germans or Italians at that point: really, i think nuking them was not justifiable in any way.
But i cannot agree with you on the point that Hiroshima or Nagasaki not being "huge", cause i didnt say they were. I said they were IMPORTANT.
And they were.
But hey, this is precisely my point: to not feel guilty, people will go to extreme lenghts of self delussion.
Well.... i do agree that the japs started their war with america. I do agree that they had SOMETHING coming.
But nukes?
If there is one thing to learn about WWII is that nukes arent good for anything other than deterance: once you use them, there is nothing left.
Dont justify the use of nukes. It just cant be done.
The post you replied to was really badly written. But i must say that I am not saying the US should never do anything. For example, it was more than justified to go into Afghanistan. But I ask you: was the iraki invasion justifiable, even from the american citizen's standpoint?
Even when the taliban have not been defeated (and they wont if the US keeps wanking in irak when its real enemies were in afghanistan)?
Going into irak was stupid (and while im at it, i think getting out of it in the short term is even more stupid), not pointing its effort into afganistan was stupid (and still is).
First... I had been posting from my new fucking iPhone and apparently im not rich enough to learn to use its keyboard on such short notice so I couldnt really go deep into what im trying to say here.
On your very nicely put answer:
Well... I certaintly went off my main point, so i will recapitulate here, because I do not want to disagree with you in ANY of the judgments you make up here. I agree with most of what youre writing (except perhaps that thing about US invasions generally ending up in the "good" of others, which is certaintly true... for different values of $good and $others! )
What irks me is that SOME people, like to think that the US Government sends their army "to liberate" other people and thease people tend to use this argument to feel less guilty about the mass killing, raping, rapid parking lot construction via mean megaton conventional bombs and general really fucking ugly stuff that happens at war (all of them, but the US is pretty good at war, from where we derive that its pretty good at killing, raping and generally fucking up people in other countries).
So my argument is precisely yours! Wars are waged on interests. Wars coming from democracies even more so: i think democracies TEND to not go to war because of this or that IDEAL, but because most representatives -lets not delve into the issue of representativity right now- of the people think its a good idea to do it.
So no, i withraw my final line in the past post. Its not that mistakes need not be repeated, its that you need not go all 'we do it for freeeeedom and demoooocracy' in your search of justification for a war. You are not liberating anyone from anything nor setting any kind of democracy upon people that dont want it enough to go get it themselves (or are scared enough to attempt to get one for themselves). Youre fucking up another country because some important decision takers thought it was a good idea.
My point here is that you cant go all high in your moral horse and say you're a liberator of a country when every single person in the whole world saw a couple of towers getting knocked down and know WHY do you have troops in afghanistan and most of the world aknowledges (and I certaintly do), that it was for a good reason.
Im not saying that the US has no bussiness in afg. On the contrary: I agree with the guy who wrote here that they should feel lucky they are not a radioactive hole in the ground. But dont come talkin to me about some "liberating" "nice" army that is there to show how freedom is done.
More so, you CANNOT say that youre "the liberator" of an Irak that today has thousends of civilian people killed by US bombings and/or bullets (intentional or not), where you set up a jail to systematically torture people, and where the average citizen (hey, we have to call them something!), is in more daily danger than they ever were under Saddam, at least since the end of the first gulf war.
And then there is your nice optimism about the current Irak war... okay, i can understand where youre coming from, BUT, what remains UNACCEPTABLE from ANY moral standpoint, is the fact that the President of the United States lied to the whole world (which i think may be okay, really, for the advancement of his country's interests, but then he went and lied to HIS OWN PEOPLE!) and still wants to be called "the liberator" of Irak.
That is unexcusable, my friend. That cannot be saved from any rational or ethical standpoint. It was a poor decision from the moral, the ethical and even the global strategic military standpoint: you ended up with Israel in MORE danger, and a strong Iran who is not ruled by a wussie like Saddam, but by a real motherfucker like the Mahmoud (who, by the way, can also be said to be there due to great ideas like the Iran-Irak war of the 80's).
And then you can revise other US allies that are every single bit as repressive and murderous as the taliban, the irani regime, or saddam: look into the saudis and lets not forget the wonderfull Pinochet in Chile. If "l
well pointed out my prickness, I apologize. About the Saudis, I point them out because thy are regarded as allies, like saddam was until he became a little too much of a prick regarding us oil interests. He wasn't fucked in either war to liberate anyone. If liberating people was why the us attacks countries he woulve never come into power.
The main point here is that no, there is no nice justification to invading and killing people in Irak, or nuking japan when it was already defeated just to test the new gizmo. There might be good reasons, but it shouldn't be justified in any way: ujjustified murder is what it is, why try to find ways to feel better about it instead of realizing mistakes so that you don't go fuck it up again.
Gee... aint you full of love today.
Well... it is insightfull:
It is full of In-Sight.
Really? The japs?
What a way to liberate, vaporizing a cuple of important population centers of a country that was about to surrender anyhow.
I agree though that the japaneese are generally very fond of america (hell, Im not an american and I AM VERY fond of its culture and country -although not with the Bushes). But put yourself in their shoes: after decades of invasion and basically the us surgically removing their balls, how else are they gonna think?
About the SKs, well, yeah. Thats a whole other ballgame. Ill give you that one.
On the other hand, how did it go with the cambodians and the vietnameese? Wonderful, ey?
And still, how is that blissfull american influence going for Myanmar? How about the wonderful state of things in "allies" like the nice government of singapur?
And hey!, lets not forget the democratic republic of Saudi Arabia, where people are beheaded for crimes against humanity... like being gay! On the other hand, there is the evil, soon to be "liberated" Iran, who has say.... such different tactics in their justice system!
Shall I go on?
Get a grip... better yet.... get a book and please, READ IT
Oh jesus christ almighty!
Is that you, George?
I certaintly agree with all of your statement sir.
Well... some terrorism is certaintly like that. Narc-Colombian terrorism srpings to mind. Palestinian intra-israeli terrorism and al-quaeda terrorism elsewere is obviously that way.
But there are plenty of examples where guerrilla tactics (hitting an oil line, destroying an embassy, bombing a military cargo ship, blowing up a military vessel), are regarded by the US as "terrorism".
So... whos to say that there is actually an acurate definition of terrorism if governments seem to put that label to whatever organization threatens them?
And then again, its hard to swallow the "evil terrorist" label after seeing what an antipersonal cluster bomb does when launched, and them many years after...
Ah, thats not terrorism! you see, WE launched it.
Whats the fucking diff?
I salute your analysis. By today standards, the founders of most democracies would be regarded as terrorists.
Back then, they were heretics and rebels and "deserved" to be killed according to this or that empire.