you just provided the factual representation of what i asserted: that the bush govt doesn't deal with cuba as a matter of policy, and will deal with it when it becomes more democratic
so thanks for the support, but i don't know why you providing links that support my assertions makes me look stupid
a little contracting of privacy rights here, a relaxing of it there. such as during world war ii. but to drift an inch towards fascism and hysterically misinterpret that as an unstoppable march a mile down the road towards fascism is different. it is in fact exactly the kind of fear based thinking that so many privacy fundamentalists point at as spurious when people worried about security pass laws that limit privacy
in other words, privacy rights are valid. so is security. and a rational discussion must be had. and plenty here have pointed at the fear based hysteria that launches people towards fascist destruction of our privacy rights
i got all of that. but here's soemthing more:
an equal amount of fear and hysteria crowds the other side of the aisle. and that, in the defense of privacy rights, people appeal to these "the sky is falling" approach towards any law that even remotely infringes upon privacy rights is not an effective defense of privacy rights at all. that there is false alarmism, and false complacency. and we are not marching towards fascism at an unstoppable clip. have a little more faith in your fellow man
lots of serious astronomy went on when mankind still hadn't figured out that the solar system was heliocentric. so you can still do science while you still have an anthropocentric bias to your research. however, we got over the idea the earth was the center of everything
although we are still getting over the idea of mankind being the center of the biological world. some of us (not on slashdot, i am speaking in a broader sense of all of mankind) still grapple with evolution as contentious
but even still in cosmology, anthropocentrism colors our percetions as mortal biological creatures: we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. and we imprint this in our abrahamic religions. and we imprint this in our cosmological awareness of the universe. but must the universe have a beginning, middle and end?
i am going to sound like a crackpot here to some people, but scientific convention has been overthrown before, and i am sure it will be again: the big bang smells bad to me. i am certain its evidence is being misinterpreted. much as misinterpreting the evidence of seeing the sun rise and set means the sun is going around the earth. you can say i am showing a bias of my own here. and yes, i am: anthropocentric ideas are wrong in describing how the universe actually is, that's my bias. and i hope that bit of intellectual honesty on my part will allow some of you to admit to the anthropocentric stink about the big bang theory
the universe is endless, in time and space. there, i said it. i of course have no proof of this. but i can conjecture that time dilation effects as we backtrack towards the big bang means that there never really is a beginning. or that the big bang, as huge is it, is still a local effect, not the sum total of the universe, that there is still something going on out there beyond the microwave background radiation, perhaps other big bangs. that we see all around us hubble's outward momentum, but it is still a local effect, that somewhere out there, beyond the cosmic backgorund radiation, some being is looking around him and worrying about a cosmic crunch. that his hubble constant is reversed. like waves on the ocean on a massive scale: wave tip here, trough there
to me, the big bang has the stink of abrahamic religious myth all over it. i think the big bang will be found to be merely another vestige of our trek from superstition to real science, like the phlogiston theory or lamarckian evolution. taken very seriously in their times, as silly as they seem now. so i think it will be with the big bang theory someday too, that it's obvious abrahamic influence will be more accutely seen in later generations
i may be pilloried and voted as a troll by the defenders of the status quo here for saying this, but i will still say it: the big bang will be disproven. the universe is endless in time and space
so if in a country a military coup ousts a communist government, exactly what democracy is being destroyed?
certainly, a country can vote for communism. this is akin to suicide: you're freely giving up your right to be free. which is whole other philosphical argument: do you have the freedom to destroy your own freedom? my answer would be no, as it imperils the freedom of others, but i digress
back on point, if a country winds up in a fight between communists and military forces, how is the usa solely responsible for this? oh certainly, the usa got involved in these fights in the cold war. as did the ussr. as did anyone vying for influence. but mostly, it was the internal forces of the country at work. the usa wasn't a deciding factor
and furthermore, if the usa then interacts with the military dictator, or theocrat, or royal monarch, or whomever, that world despises, how does "interaction" turn into "support" in your mind exactly?
i suppose you could say that you expect the usa to act virtuously. for example, i woudl suppose you would want the democratic usa to have no interaction whatsoever with an unelected authoritarian in a display of clean idealistic allegiance to democratic principles
ok
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BUSH POLICY IS TOWARDS CUBA WHICH EVERYONE HERE SAYS IS EVIL!
so you can't win. because the argument isn't really about what is the right thing for the usa to do, the argument is really "whatever the usa does is wrong and i'll stand against the usa in kneejerk fashion no matter what it does"
so ther eis no intelligence to anti-americanism
there is only intelligence to aligning yourself with a principle. and if you align your thinking with a principle, you will find, astonishingly, that the usa does things which helps your principle
ratio of anti-usa rants to anti-china rants or anti-russia rants: 99 to 1
if you spend 200 paragraphs ranting against the usa and then go "oh yeah, china and russia are bad to" then you are revealing your intellectual dishonesty
privacy is good idea. there are some times though, where you have to give privacy up. these times are limited to a prudent rational argument for why you should surrender your privacy in limited ways and for a limited time
i now await your screed announcing this attitude of mine is making way for fascist authoritarianism (rolls eyes)
so, inalienable human rights end at the rio grande?
above that line, huamn beings have equal value, below that line, human beings are lesser? is this what you are trying to say? are you trying as hard as you can to be an outright ethnocentric racist?
"If the people freely decided to be communist, then fine, no business of ours."
right, people FREELY decided (they did?) to give up their FREEDOM. got it. that's how you read cuban history. wtf!
what kind of mental gymnastics and purposeful avoiding of the plainly obvious does it take to think like you?
the usa is the great devil. the usa is a godly saint. it doesn't matter what you think of the usa and what the usa does to realize this about your thinking: when you begin to assert that cubans have freely chosen to have less freedoms than americans, you have completely and utterly swallowed some really stupid propaganda
but don't take my word for it. go tell a cuban in havana they deserve less freedoms than americans do. go ahead. let's see how they react to your way of thinking, shall we?
the cold war? defeating communism? not a reason in your mind for dealing with dictators?
no, in your mind dealing with dictators to defeat communism gets warped to become "we say we want democracy but we really want dictatorship because we're flagrant hypocrites like that"
and even better, DEALING with a dictator becomes "the usa purposely destroyed a democracy and put in a dictator, all by itself"
he's not 100% pure absolute hitler evil so he's acceptable
pffffffffft
castro and castro bro are not batista. but they still suck, no matter how they compare to batista, so we criticize them on that basis. not on the basis of "well, there's worse"
let us take your assertion at face value: batista was 100% the puppet of the usa
ok
based on that, when castro overthrew him, castro reasserted cuban independence, and has in fact been acting in opposition to the usa the best he could ever since
therefore, according to the implications of your own assertion, whatever the hell cuba does today, is cuba's responsibility and cuba responsibility's alone
right?
or is it that because the usa gave support to some dictator 50 years ago, that was overthrown, therefore the usa still bears responsibility for what cuba does?!
1. you don't attack the intent, you attack the poor policies. which is 100% correct of you. which also means you are not someone i am attacking, nor are you effectively understanding what i am really attacking. what my enemy is: those who actually believe the usa just does evil things. that's not what you are saying, so i have no argument with you on that point
2. the bad usa policy towards cuba does not make cuba. cuba makes the bad usa policy. castro did not turn his country into an authoritarian dictatorship because the usa doesn't want to trade with it, the usa doesn't want to trade with it because cuba is an authoritarian dictatorship
for the life of me, i can't fathom in a million years how otherwise intelligent people like yourself can get this cause and effect reversed!
now you are correct that authoritarian governments use aggression towards them as the rationale to tighten their authoritarian controls. but that doesn't matter: if the usa was extremely hostile towards the cuba, cuba is still 100% responsible for their authoritarian policies. if the usa relaxed its hostility, cuba would probably relax their authoritarianism as well. i completelty and utterly understand this connection
but that still doesn't mean the usa is RESPONSIBLE for what cuba does, merely that it has influence on cuba like every country in the world has influence on each other. if russia masses troops towards its border with china, and china in response jails all of its dissidents, russia's actions might have influenced china's actions, but russia is in no way responsible for china jailing its dissidents. china is, 100%!
my problem is with the kind of thinking, utterly beyond my grasp, of saying because the usa is hostile towards castro, or iran, and iran or cuba tightens their grip, THAT THEREFORE THE USA IS REPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THOSE GOVERNMENTS DO
this is the bill of goods you are trying to sell me. and i absolutely reject it, as completely out of touch with an intellectually honest definition of how accountability and responsibilty works in this world
here's an alternative view: the notion of the usa being responsible for everything that happens in the western hemisphere is something that died last century. in today's world, latin americans are responsible what happens in their own countries. but rather than waking up and realizing the world is changing, some people's minds are locked in the past, and therefore their way of thinking actually stands in the way of progress
say the usa deserves blame for something bad that happens in latin america. ok, fine. now: at what point in time do you say "ok, blame is up, now latin americans are responsible". and what if you had a bunch of minds who never get to that point. who stay stuck on blaming the usa, with no sell by date or expiration date on that mode of thinking? then aren't such people part of the problem rather than the solution?
in other words: yes, learn from history. but don't stay trapped it in. history should inform progress. not stand in the way of progress
america tinkers a lot. nevermind any other tinkering by any other country. never mind how long ago the tinkering took place. nevermind tinkering by latin americans in their own damn countries
so we can never ever find actual latin americans responsible for anything bad that happens in latin america. we must always creatively extend and embrace the idea that the usa is repsonsible for all the bad in the world, forever
you know, the concept of accountability and responsibility: it only falls on the usa. it never falls on latin americans. latin americans can never be held accountable and repsonsible for what happens in their own damn countries, right?
don't you find that patronizing and condescending to latin americans?
1. more people than the usa are involved in what happens in cuba 2. some of those people are from other countries, but even more importantly, MOST OF THOSE DECIDING WHAT CUBA DOES ARE CUBAN
so, in my strange weird exotic universe, when cuba does something bad, i blame cubans
what a crackpot i am. what a neocon propangadist i am
i'm clearly an imperialist neocolonial warmongerer for saying that: cubans are responsible for what cubans do. what a weird strange little man i am: blame cuba for what cubans do? what a crazy person! we all know that the usa did something bad in cuba 50 years ago, so the usa should get the blame for every single thing that cuba does bad now. obviously!
now you'll excuse me, i'll be slapping my forehead
russia tinkers in british affairs. china tinkers in american affairs. cuba tinkers in angolan affairs
etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum
most every country that exists and has ever existed and will ever exist has tinkered in the affairs of other countries
and you want to do two things:
1. conveniently forget all tinkering by any country except american tinkering 2. leverage that american tinkering into direct accountability by the usa for whatever bullshit someone else does
example: britian, france, russia, china, and the usa all had arms deals with iraq. but we'll forget all of that and just think about the usa. next, saddam hussein gassed kurds. so obviously, the usa is responsible for that
for example: if i sell you a gun, i am not responsible for how you use that gun
meanwhile, the "complex understanding of our modern, interconnected world" that you are defending is this: "all the bad things that happen in the world is fault of washington dc, somehow"
yeah, i see your vast intellectual and moral complexities in that persepctive
why aren't you excoriating moscow for selling arms to war torn africa?
why aren't you lambasting beijing for endorsing myanmar?
based on your understanding of how accountability and responsibility works, no one in this world is responsible for anything except washington dc
don't you find that your lines of "logic" for finding blame and responsibility gee, i dunno, just a little creative and unreasonable?
this way of thinking is entirely in line with your way of thinking: "saddam hussein talked on the phone to osama bin laden once. therefore the usa is entirely right to invade iraq in 2003 after 9/11"
what i just wrote above is 100% pure horseshit
but it is EXACTLY the kind of horseshit you are trying to sell me when you want to blame the usa for what pakistan and saudi arabia does
"I put it to you that the Cuban government is no worse than the United States government, under similar circumstances."
"This is not to condone the Cuban dictatorship (and I am calling it such directly seeing as you seem to have missed me calling it so indirectly in my original post...) - it is merely to explain its actions and its nature."
"In the same way that sharing an environment with dangerous predators has made Hippos extremely aggressive animals, sharing the Western Hemisphere with the U.S. made revolutionary movements there extremely aggressive."
tell me where i am wrong in my understanding of your words: you are saying that the cuban government behaves the way it does because of the usa
W.T.F!?
this utterly blows my mind!
here is my bizarre, neocon, libertarian (is that what you called me?! how did you base that weird judgment!?), imperialist, neocolonial, mercenary capitalist, zionist, orphan children raping opinion:
1. criticize cuba for cuba doing bad things
2. don't criticize the usa for cuba doing bad things
that's it. that's the beginning of my thought. that's the end of my thought. that's my strange, exotic way of thinking
please forgive me if this such an alien concept to you!
make a list of the usa's cold war and colonial era crimes, and you have a list which is pretty much no better or worse than any other major country that has ever existed
such that you aren't really commenting intelligently on the reality you find yourself in today, right now
if you wish to grouse about history, go in a corner and do that
but if you wish to make comments that are relevant to what is happening in the world right now, look at who is doing bad things in the world right now
not that this gets the usa off the hook. you can give me another nice list of current american crimes
but that's ok, do that. and also give me a list of what other players are doing that is criminal
then you can begin to be relevant, intelligent, and you can begin to actually matter on the subject matter you are commenting on
the cuban government is clearly more authoritarian than the us government, on most every measure, according to most any observer (try the great neocon fortresses of human rights watch and amnesty international), by a large order of magnitude
but then you have some people such as yourself, due to hating the usa's tactics in fighting cuba, or in thinking the idea to defeat cuba is not to fight it, or with a laundry list of cold war and colonial era grievances... that it all somehow means that the point here is to prosecute the usa, rather than the clearly worse government: cuba
how does this convoluted kind of thinking present itself? on the subject matter of the evils cuba does, we should... drum roll please... prosecute the usa. the clear enemy of cuba!
(smacks forehead)
how does this work in some people's minds? that the usa gets prosecuted for what its bitter enemies do?
various internet ideologues: fine. you win. the usa sucks. fuck the usa. rah rah rah! the usa is evil! blah blah blah. whatever! i don't care: be my guest, hate the usa, you go on with your bad selves
but in your effort to hate and prosecute the usa, how do you get anywhere in that passion of yours by forgiving regimes which, right now, in the PRESENT TIME, are doing clearly worse than the usa, ON THE SUBJECT MATTER YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT, such as freedom of expression?
i can never understand this kind of thinking
again, someone please explain to me: how on the subject matter of the bad things the usa's bitter enemies do, does the usa gets all the hate?
it just blows my mind how that is possible in someone's mind. you present them with evidence of usa's enemies doing truly vile things, and their reply is to hate the usa
Slashdot Mirror
you just provided the factual representation of what i asserted: that the bush govt doesn't deal with cuba as a matter of policy, and will deal with it when it becomes more democratic
so thanks for the support, but i don't know why you providing links that support my assertions makes me look stupid
a little contracting of privacy rights here, a relaxing of it there. such as during world war ii. but to drift an inch towards fascism and hysterically misinterpret that as an unstoppable march a mile down the road towards fascism is different. it is in fact exactly the kind of fear based thinking that so many privacy fundamentalists point at as spurious when people worried about security pass laws that limit privacy
in other words, privacy rights are valid. so is security. and a rational discussion must be had. and plenty here have pointed at the fear based hysteria that launches people towards fascist destruction of our privacy rights
i got all of that. but here's soemthing more:
an equal amount of fear and hysteria crowds the other side of the aisle. and that, in the defense of privacy rights, people appeal to these "the sky is falling" approach towards any law that even remotely infringes upon privacy rights is not an effective defense of privacy rights at all. that there is false alarmism, and false complacency. and we are not marching towards fascism at an unstoppable clip. have a little more faith in your fellow man
lots of serious astronomy went on when mankind still hadn't figured out that the solar system was heliocentric. so you can still do science while you still have an anthropocentric bias to your research. however, we got over the idea the earth was the center of everything
although we are still getting over the idea of mankind being the center of the biological world. some of us (not on slashdot, i am speaking in a broader sense of all of mankind) still grapple with evolution as contentious
but even still in cosmology, anthropocentrism colors our percetions as mortal biological creatures: we have a beginning, a middle, and an end. and we imprint this in our abrahamic religions. and we imprint this in our cosmological awareness of the universe. but must the universe have a beginning, middle and end?
i am going to sound like a crackpot here to some people, but scientific convention has been overthrown before, and i am sure it will be again: the big bang smells bad to me. i am certain its evidence is being misinterpreted. much as misinterpreting the evidence of seeing the sun rise and set means the sun is going around the earth. you can say i am showing a bias of my own here. and yes, i am: anthropocentric ideas are wrong in describing how the universe actually is, that's my bias. and i hope that bit of intellectual honesty on my part will allow some of you to admit to the anthropocentric stink about the big bang theory
the universe is endless, in time and space. there, i said it. i of course have no proof of this. but i can conjecture that time dilation effects as we backtrack towards the big bang means that there never really is a beginning. or that the big bang, as huge is it, is still a local effect, not the sum total of the universe, that there is still something going on out there beyond the microwave background radiation, perhaps other big bangs. that we see all around us hubble's outward momentum, but it is still a local effect, that somewhere out there, beyond the cosmic backgorund radiation, some being is looking around him and worrying about a cosmic crunch. that his hubble constant is reversed. like waves on the ocean on a massive scale: wave tip here, trough there
to me, the big bang has the stink of abrahamic religious myth all over it. i think the big bang will be found to be merely another vestige of our trek from superstition to real science, like the phlogiston theory or lamarckian evolution. taken very seriously in their times, as silly as they seem now. so i think it will be with the big bang theory someday too, that it's obvious abrahamic influence will be more accutely seen in later generations
i may be pilloried and voted as a troll by the defenders of the status quo here for saying this, but i will still say it: the big bang will be disproven. the universe is endless in time and space
so if in a country a military coup ousts a communist government, exactly what democracy is being destroyed?
certainly, a country can vote for communism. this is akin to suicide: you're freely giving up your right to be free. which is whole other philosphical argument: do you have the freedom to destroy your own freedom? my answer would be no, as it imperils the freedom of others, but i digress
back on point, if a country winds up in a fight between communists and military forces, how is the usa solely responsible for this? oh certainly, the usa got involved in these fights in the cold war. as did the ussr. as did anyone vying for influence. but mostly, it was the internal forces of the country at work. the usa wasn't a deciding factor
and furthermore, if the usa then interacts with the military dictator, or theocrat, or royal monarch, or whomever, that world despises, how does "interaction" turn into "support" in your mind exactly?
i suppose you could say that you expect the usa to act virtuously. for example, i woudl suppose you would want the democratic usa to have no interaction whatsoever with an unelected authoritarian in a display of clean idealistic allegiance to democratic principles
ok
BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT THE BUSH POLICY IS TOWARDS CUBA WHICH EVERYONE HERE SAYS IS EVIL!
so you can't win. because the argument isn't really about what is the right thing for the usa to do, the argument is really "whatever the usa does is wrong and i'll stand against the usa in kneejerk fashion no matter what it does"
so ther eis no intelligence to anti-americanism
there is only intelligence to aligning yourself with a principle. and if you align your thinking with a principle, you will find, astonishingly, that the usa does things which helps your principle
really
imagine that crazy concept huh?
pfffffffft
ratio of anti-usa rants to anti-china rants or anti-russia rants: 99 to 1
if you spend 200 paragraphs ranting against the usa and then go "oh yeah, china and russia are bad to" then you are revealing your intellectual dishonesty
privacy is good idea. there are some times though, where you have to give privacy up. these times are limited to a prudent rational argument for why you should surrender your privacy in limited ways and for a limited time
i now await your screed announcing this attitude of mine is making way for fascist authoritarianism (rolls eyes)
so, inalienable human rights end at the rio grande?
above that line, huamn beings have equal value, below that line, human beings are lesser? is this what you are trying to say? are you trying as hard as you can to be an outright ethnocentric racist?
"If the people freely decided to be communist, then fine, no business of ours."
right, people FREELY decided (they did?) to give up their FREEDOM. got it. that's how you read cuban history. wtf!
what kind of mental gymnastics and purposeful avoiding of the plainly obvious does it take to think like you?
the usa is the great devil. the usa is a godly saint. it doesn't matter what you think of the usa and what the usa does to realize this about your thinking: when you begin to assert that cubans have freely chosen to have less freedoms than americans, you have completely and utterly swallowed some really stupid propaganda
but don't take my word for it. go tell a cuban in havana they deserve less freedoms than americans do. go ahead. let's see how they react to your way of thinking, shall we?
that other countries besides the usa tinker in the affairs of other countries?
do you want me to prove to you the sky is blue too?
the cold war? defeating communism? not a reason in your mind for dealing with dictators?
no, in your mind dealing with dictators to defeat communism gets warped to become "we say we want democracy but we really want dictatorship because we're flagrant hypocrites like that"
and even better, DEALING with a dictator becomes "the usa purposely destroyed a democracy and put in a dictator, all by itself"
amazing the idiocy
he's not 100% pure absolute hitler evil so he's acceptable
pffffffffft
castro and castro bro are not batista. but they still suck, no matter how they compare to batista, so we criticize them on that basis. not on the basis of "well, there's worse"
for the sake of rhetoric
let us take your assertion at face value: batista was 100% the puppet of the usa
ok
based on that, when castro overthrew him, castro reasserted cuban independence, and has in fact been acting in opposition to the usa the best he could ever since
therefore, according to the implications of your own assertion, whatever the hell cuba does today, is cuba's responsibility and cuba responsibility's alone
right?
or is it that because the usa gave support to some dictator 50 years ago, that was overthrown, therefore the usa still bears responsibility for what cuba does?!
(smacks forehead)
that's no ring...
1. you don't attack the intent, you attack the poor policies. which is 100% correct of you. which also means you are not someone i am attacking, nor are you effectively understanding what i am really attacking. what my enemy is: those who actually believe the usa just does evil things. that's not what you are saying, so i have no argument with you on that point
2. the bad usa policy towards cuba does not make cuba. cuba makes the bad usa policy. castro did not turn his country into an authoritarian dictatorship because the usa doesn't want to trade with it, the usa doesn't want to trade with it because cuba is an authoritarian dictatorship
for the life of me, i can't fathom in a million years how otherwise intelligent people like yourself can get this cause and effect reversed!
now you are correct that authoritarian governments use aggression towards them as the rationale to tighten their authoritarian controls. but that doesn't matter: if the usa was extremely hostile towards the cuba, cuba is still 100% responsible for their authoritarian policies. if the usa relaxed its hostility, cuba would probably relax their authoritarianism as well. i completelty and utterly understand this connection
but that still doesn't mean the usa is RESPONSIBLE for what cuba does, merely that it has influence on cuba like every country in the world has influence on each other. if russia masses troops towards its border with china, and china in response jails all of its dissidents, russia's actions might have influenced china's actions, but russia is in no way responsible for china jailing its dissidents. china is, 100%!
my problem is with the kind of thinking, utterly beyond my grasp, of saying because the usa is hostile towards castro, or iran, and iran or cuba tightens their grip, THAT THEREFORE THE USA IS REPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THOSE GOVERNMENTS DO
this is the bill of goods you are trying to sell me. and i absolutely reject it, as completely out of touch with an intellectually honest definition of how accountability and responsibilty works in this world
here's an alternative view: the notion of the usa being responsible for everything that happens in the western hemisphere is something that died last century. in today's world, latin americans are responsible what happens in their own countries. but rather than waking up and realizing the world is changing, some people's minds are locked in the past, and therefore their way of thinking actually stands in the way of progress
say the usa deserves blame for something bad that happens in latin america. ok, fine. now: at what point in time do you say "ok, blame is up, now latin americans are responsible". and what if you had a bunch of minds who never get to that point. who stay stuck on blaming the usa, with no sell by date or expiration date on that mode of thinking? then aren't such people part of the problem rather than the solution?
in other words: yes, learn from history. but don't stay trapped it in. history should inform progress. not stand in the way of progress
america tinkers a lot. nevermind any other tinkering by any other country. never mind how long ago the tinkering took place. nevermind tinkering by latin americans in their own damn countries
so we can never ever find actual latin americans responsible for anything bad that happens in latin america. we must always creatively extend and embrace the idea that the usa is repsonsible for all the bad in the world, forever
you know, the concept of accountability and responsibility: it only falls on the usa. it never falls on latin americans. latin americans can never be held accountable and repsonsible for what happens in their own damn countries, right?
don't you find that patronizing and condescending to latin americans?
then i want you to think about a few things:
1. more people than the usa are involved in what happens in cuba
2. some of those people are from other countries, but even more importantly, MOST OF THOSE DECIDING WHAT CUBA DOES ARE CUBAN
so, in my strange weird exotic universe, when cuba does something bad, i blame cubans
what a crackpot i am. what a neocon propangadist i am
i'm clearly an imperialist neocolonial warmongerer for saying that: cubans are responsible for what cubans do. what a weird strange little man i am: blame cuba for what cubans do? what a crazy person! we all know that the usa did something bad in cuba 50 years ago, so the usa should get the blame for every single thing that cuba does bad now. obviously!
now you'll excuse me, i'll be slapping my forehead
russia tinkers in british affairs. china tinkers in american affairs. cuba tinkers in angolan affairs
etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum
most every country that exists and has ever existed and will ever exist has tinkered in the affairs of other countries
and you want to do two things:
1. conveniently forget all tinkering by any country except american tinkering
2. leverage that american tinkering into direct accountability by the usa for whatever bullshit someone else does
example: britian, france, russia, china, and the usa all had arms deals with iraq. but we'll forget all of that and just think about the usa. next, saddam hussein gassed kurds. so obviously, the usa is responsible for that
this is your superior understanding of the world?
this is the essence of accountability:
you are responsible for what you decide to do
for example: if i sell you a gun, i am not responsible for how you use that gun
meanwhile, the "complex understanding of our modern, interconnected world" that you are defending is this: "all the bad things that happen in the world is fault of washington dc, somehow"
yeah, i see your vast intellectual and moral complexities in that persepctive
why aren't you excoriating moscow for selling arms to war torn africa?
why aren't you lambasting beijing for endorsing myanmar?
based on your understanding of how accountability and responsibility works, no one in this world is responsible for anything except washington dc
don't you find that your lines of "logic" for finding blame and responsibility gee, i dunno, just a little creative and unreasonable?
this way of thinking is entirely in line with your way of thinking: "saddam hussein talked on the phone to osama bin laden once. therefore the usa is entirely right to invade iraq in 2003 after 9/11"
what i just wrote above is 100% pure horseshit
but it is EXACTLY the kind of horseshit you are trying to sell me when you want to blame the usa for what pakistan and saudi arabia does
"I put it to you that the Cuban government is no worse than the United States government, under similar circumstances."
"This is not to condone the Cuban dictatorship (and I am calling it such directly seeing as you seem to have missed me calling it so indirectly in my original post...) - it is merely to explain its actions and its nature."
"In the same way that sharing an environment with dangerous predators has made Hippos extremely aggressive animals, sharing the Western Hemisphere with the U.S. made revolutionary movements there extremely aggressive."
tell me where i am wrong in my understanding of your words: you are saying that the cuban government behaves the way it does because of the usa
W.T.F!?
this utterly blows my mind!
here is my bizarre, neocon, libertarian (is that what you called me?! how did you base that weird judgment!?), imperialist, neocolonial, mercenary capitalist, zionist, orphan children raping opinion:
1. criticize cuba for cuba doing bad things
2. don't criticize the usa for cuba doing bad things
that's it. that's the beginning of my thought. that's the end of my thought. that's my strange, exotic way of thinking
please forgive me if this such an alien concept to you!
(smacks forehead)
criticize pakistan for pakistani crimes
criticize the usa for american crimes
criticize cuba for cuban crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for cuban crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for saudi crimes
DON'T criticize the usa for pakistani crimes
that's the kind of weirdo i am
i'm sorry if this kind of thinking is so strange and exotic to people!
american japanese internment camps excuses cuba's present day limits on freedom of expression?
this is where you lose: "the usa did something bad once, so we can't criticize what cuba is doing bad now"
this is an incredibly useless way of thinking about the world you live in
exactly, it's been awhile
make a list of the usa's cold war and colonial era crimes, and you have a list which is pretty much no better or worse than any other major country that has ever existed
such that you aren't really commenting intelligently on the reality you find yourself in today, right now
if you wish to grouse about history, go in a corner and do that
but if you wish to make comments that are relevant to what is happening in the world right now, look at who is doing bad things in the world right now
not that this gets the usa off the hook. you can give me another nice list of current american crimes
but that's ok, do that. and also give me a list of what other players are doing that is criminal
then you can begin to be relevant, intelligent, and you can begin to actually matter on the subject matter you are commenting on
the cuban government is clearly more authoritarian than the us government, on most every measure, according to most any observer (try the great neocon fortresses of human rights watch and amnesty international), by a large order of magnitude
but then you have some people such as yourself, due to hating the usa's tactics in fighting cuba, or in thinking the idea to defeat cuba is not to fight it, or with a laundry list of cold war and colonial era grievances... that it all somehow means that the point here is to prosecute the usa, rather than the clearly worse government: cuba
how does this convoluted kind of thinking present itself? on the subject matter of the evils cuba does, we should... drum roll please... prosecute the usa. the clear enemy of cuba!
(smacks forehead)
how does this work in some people's minds? that the usa gets prosecuted for what its bitter enemies do?
various internet ideologues: fine. you win. the usa sucks. fuck the usa. rah rah rah! the usa is evil! blah blah blah. whatever! i don't care: be my guest, hate the usa, you go on with your bad selves
but in your effort to hate and prosecute the usa, how do you get anywhere in that passion of yours by forgiving regimes which, right now, in the PRESENT TIME, are doing clearly worse than the usa, ON THE SUBJECT MATTER YOU SAY IS IMPORTANT, such as freedom of expression?
i can never understand this kind of thinking
again, someone please explain to me: how on the subject matter of the bad things the usa's bitter enemies do, does the usa gets all the hate?
it just blows my mind how that is possible in someone's mind. you present them with evidence of usa's enemies doing truly vile things, and their reply is to hate the usa
it blows my mind how this kind of thinking works
i highlighted "When Should We Ditch Our Platform?" but IntelliSense doesn't have any suggestions