If I were going to rebel against the govt. (Hello NSA! just speculating here!!) I wouldn't go up against the military. I would studiously avoid them. I would go after the bozos running the government instead. Knock off a dozen or so politicians, and the rest might get the message.
Definitely, but for that you don't need a armed population.
Shoot a few dozen soldiers and the rest come after you with really big things that go boom in the night. Besides, After the revolution we're going to need to be on good terms with them to help us crush our enemies.:)
So just hope they do not support the government you are trying to rebel against.... But what if they do?
Now on the military splitting ala the union and confederates. It ain't gonna happen. If enough people start moving against the gov, the military will sit it out and simply say "Posse Comitatus. This is a civilian law enforcement issue. We'll just keep the foreign enemies out and protect the nukes. Call us when its over."
That is what they should and hopefully will do.
They do not want a repeat of history and have a blue/gray situation again. Unlike a lot of people, they learned from that painful lesson. I have no doubt there is some contingency plan on a shelf somewhere on what to do if this scenario should happen.
Maybe. We have however seen cases in the USA where the army has been used against civilians who did not agree with the government. If the army feels that it is better off listening to the government then that is what they will do. I strongly doubt that what is best for the civilians is what concerns them in those matters.
First of all, thanks for your serious reply, you bring up some good counter points.
This is not a particularly accurate analogy. First of all, the UN partition plan never involved the confiscation of land; it only involved the governance of that land.
That land had been part of the Ottoman empire untill it collapsed. Then it became a Brittish mandate, but when that happened, somewhere at the end of the first world war, there was a conference, where it was decided that among other things, states for Kurds, Jews and Palestinians were needed. This predates the UN by a few decades.
During their mandate, the Brits made a terrible mess in what is now Palestina, contributing substantially to todays problems by for example promising the same things to both sides and not being able to keep those promises.
The partitioning plan was an attempt to catch up with the reality that was developing on the ground, but it caught up with a reality from a few decades ago.
I realise that people accuse the Israeli forces of driving out the Arabs, but based on the evidence I have seen (the public statements by Arab leaders asking civilians to leave so that the Arab armies could move in, the large number of Arabs who didn't flee and still live in Israel today) I don't believe this happened on a large scale.[1]
There are a few issues here.
First of all, for what I understand, you are right, it was Arab leaders calling for people to leave their houses. The scale on which this happened is somewhat obvious from the scale of refugee camps inmediately afterwards.
Second, those who stayed have been treated as second class citizens, often being confronted with distrust, and having fewer rights. Quite a few of them left due to this.
Third, this in no way changes Israel's obligations under international law when looking at territories they are occupying.
The question you ask is an interesting one, should people be compensated for the loss of property when they listen to their own leaders and leave their property behind?
The counter question is: Can you confiscate the property of people who fled from what they knew to become a war zone?
The answer to the first is not entirely clear, as in, it is not clear to me to whom they can go for compensation. That they should be compensated for their losses however is beyond questioning for as far as I am concerned.
The answer to the second one however is contained in both the geneva conventions and the founding charter of the UN, to which Israel is a member, and it says that no, you cannot do that, EVER.
Or maybe it's only a few manifest failures full of their self importance despite being repeatedly proven wrong who think they're perfect and want me to only listen to them.
That is a problem in and of itself, and those people better learn they are not perfect themselves.
If you mean to apply this to many a European being critical of the USA and its foreign policies however, it would be a nice time to dig into how they deal with such situations. You may not be aware of this, but treating our own government in the same way is rather the norm here, and being critical of what our societies do? Well, in case of the society I am part of, we are indeed still dealing with the consequences of what we did during colonisation for example. We know we are not perfect, and we'd rather prefer learning from past mistakes.
The word "antisemitic" has a different definition. Why not look up the word I used? If you knew what it meant you would not have typed this. I actually argued as you do on this word at one time. Then I bothered to look up the word and found that I was, as you are now, wrong about the term: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/antisemitic . The article from your chosen source, wikipedia, is rather unequivocal: "While the term's semantics may imply that anti-Semitism is directed against all people of a Semite descent, it is in fact used exclusively to refer to hostility towards Jews..
I know how it is used, that does not mean that it is correct.
Since when is it not racist to criticize a "people"?
Since I was not claiming every jewish person to be evil or bad or whatever, rather, I was pointing at the fact that a group of people from jewish origin (hence jewish people, read again, I am not saying ALL or MOST jeweish people) were involved in a certain situation. Their jewish origin being relevant because of culture and religion.
It would be racist if I would criticize people because of them being jewish, but I don't. I do criticize those people because of certain actions they took or supported. As it happens, the people involved strongly indentified with jewish culture and religion, so that serves as an easy identification of that group, but that does not matter for if what they did is right or wrong, neither does it mean that everyone else who indentifies with said group is right or wrong. To make it a bit easier, shall I call them Israelites instead?
(see bold characters) It does not divert attention, but instead focuses on the root cause of it: Arab/Muslim intolerance for Jews.
Hmm yes.
'Leave the people of the book in peace' 'Follow me as you followed Abraham' 'All that believe in god and the day of judgement will surely get their reward'
Those are among the things Islam has to say about jewish people. Sadly enough often forgotten by muslims (eventho the second one is something many a muslim will be saying 35 (!) times a day) and non muslims alike.
Shall we take a look now at how well christians treated jewish people for the last 1500 or so years? The muslim world has some catching up to do if it wants to come close.
Remember, there was a war and a "ceasefire" that included no-fly zones, economic sanctions, and 17 UN resolutions that were all violated.
You have a point there. but this does not actually constitute an attack on the USA, it does constitute an attack on allied (including USA) forces that were there, see below also.
Every year since the ceasefire Iraqi military forces attacked American military forces tasked with maintaining the peace.
Ceasefire is not the same as peace. It may be a step towards peace, but it is no more then stopping hostilities for the time being. Also, there were quite a few American military there, but they were definitely not alone. Where are all the others claiming that Iraq was attacking them?
Iraq also supported international terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Islamic Brotherhood.
The USA supported Saddam for a long time because of a few reasons, one being that they did not want the USSR to have too much influence over him, the other is that he has always been strongly opposed to Islamic extremism. There have been many rumors about him supporting the groups you mention, but those come from the expectation that your enemies would support eachother, and have very little if any basis in reality.
Iraq disregarded the economic sanctions and refused to honor it's disarmament agreements.
Yes, and around 1995 would have been a nice time to deal with that. Bringing it up over a decade later however is a bit silly.
It violated the ceasefire repeatedly, attacking not only American and other coalition forces, but it's own citizens repeatedly.
Just for the record, I come from a country that contributed to those coalition forces, and some of my friends have been there.
We knew that they were attacking their own civilians, we encouraged those civilians to stand up against Saddam and then left them hanging.
And it still had chemical weapons and had trained Al Qaeda operatives on the use of chemical weapons.
So where are those weapons? despite all the 'smoking gun evidence' presented, no actual chemical weapons were found after invasion other then remains of weapons that predate the first gulf war, and those remains were in a pretty much unusable state.
Second, training Al Qaeda operatives on the use of those weapons? Disregarding the strong dislike of islamic extremists, which would have made this extremely unlikely, how to train people on the use of weapons without having those weapons?
So.. lets see, there are actually multiple valid arguments one can make to justify the Iraq invasion, but those were not used at the moments where they were relevant. Sad because it would have made a big difference in the kind of support that the USA would have gotten.
Second, when you call every kind of critisism of jewish people or the state of Israel anti-semitic then fine, but it is just diverting attention away from any possible solutions.
I don't know about the UK, but in the Netherlands we happen to have a group of republicans who'd love to do away with the royal family and the monarchy. They do get coverage from the press, even from the 'government controlled' state radio and tv, and noone is being put in jail over this either.
See, my point is this. There are plenty of European countries that "enjoy" more "freedom" than we do here in the US. For example, anyone is free to walk up and down Main Street completely naked if they so desire.
Actually, you'll find that in most of Europe, you can't do that, alltho you can get permission for holding an event during which such a thing happens.
However, what about a parent's rights and freedom to be able to take their family out in public, and not have the children exposed to genitalia? The type of "freedom" they want the press to have is the same carte blanche "freedom" I just described.
As already pointed out, your assertion is wrong, and it is wrong exactly because of respecting the kind of people you are talking about.
That said, there are events when you may see such a thing happening. Don't like it? go somewhere else during the event.
Point of my post? You are way too quickly jumping to conclusions about absolute freedom in this case, and might also be in the case of freedom of press.
False stories should not be allowed to be circulated, because our dumbass populace will believe anything if its printed and looks acceptable. If circulating a false story results in high fines or prison, much of the problems with journalism will be resolved.
Good idea, but I see one small problem.. Who gets to decide what stories are 'false' ?
The guns aren't a risk, the guns are a right. Mostly to protect us from our own government.
That is the idea indeed. Maybe back in the early 1800s that would have worked even.
Now? against tanks, warplanes, choppers and missiles? hmmm.......
For that matter, even before the USA got independent, the French revolution already showed that you do not need an armed population to overthrow a government, and in more recent history, most of eastern Europe provides some interesting evidence that this is still the case.
And you check out the zionist movement predating those events you mention by more then half a century. If you anywhere believe that the founding of the state of Israel is a direct consequence of the second world war and what happened during it, you are seriously mistaken. What the second world war did however is create enough public support around the world to allow for the founding of Israel.
The atrocities and extermination attempts against the Jews in that area were going on long before the founding of Israel. Check into the Hebron pogram and the actual alliance between the pre-Israel Palestinian government and Nazi Germany.
The pre-Israel 'Palestinian' government was actually either run by the UK or by the Ottoman empire. It was a British mandate ever since the Ottoman empire collapsed at the end of the first world war. Before that it was under Ottoman rule, and there was no such thing as a Palestinian government.
In fact, if not for the interminable harsh treatment, the Jews might not have even felt it necessary to establish some sort of "reservation" (Israel) where Jews would be free from the routine atrocities.
Jewish music and literature has for about 2000 years mourned the loss of Jarusalem and called for the return of jewish people to the promised land.
There are a substantial number of orthodox jews who believe that Israel is their promised land, and that it should be taken back.
Last but not least, if you want a reservation where you can be free from routine atrocities, then the first thing to do is to create such a reservation in a way that does not cause lots of upset people, else you are just moving the problem around.
I am not saying they were right or wrong in trying to establish Israel, I am however saying that by refusing to deal with what that did to others, they did continue the exact thing they were trying to escape from.
I'm also saying that your view on the founding of Israel seems to be rather one-sided, and seems to tie in very well with the sad habbit of always depicting jews as the victims regardless of the real situation.
If you do want my opinion however, I believe they were right to try to establish a country for themselves, and I believe that deserved and still deserves support. I do also believe they were wrong in how they dealt with the people already living in the territory that they built their country in, and are still dealing with the consequences of that. They need to clean up their act, and don't deserve support in continuing ignoring the issue.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down with the finger pointing! I'm not American, and I'm guessing you're not either. Can we carry on a little more civilised?
Maybe slow down with your conclusions, I did respond to a very specific part of your post, and I am not the AC who posted those 'original' 10 points. Don't act as if I did, or as if I would agree with all of them please.
When you are criticising someone's country, especially their citizens (let's not forget point number 10), it helps to be a bit constructive with the criticisms. Rather than say "I hate the US because they blah, blah, blah...", say "I don't like the way the US handles this, and would rather them handle it this way".
Like.. if someone disagrees with you, I'd really prefer you considering that he might have some actual reason for disagreeing instead of assuming that he is out to destroy you?
I believe that was pretty much what I was doing in my post...
Anti-Americanism can often be hating America for hating Authority's sake. They export the culture, we get resentful of it and blame them for more than they deserve.
Speak for yourself and not for others please. I don't blame them for exporting their culture, I blame them for supporting a government that is failing to live up to their own standards, yet attacking anyone else who they can claim to not comply with those standards. And obviously I only blame those who actually do this, not every American out there.
So when you start to rant on about everything you hate about them, people shut it out.
If you take a closer look at my post (or many other posts I made about this subject) you might just see that that is not what I am doing.
They've heard it all before, and they know that as soon as they point out anything good about their country or something bad about your's (whatever that is), they've fed the troll and all they'll get is accusations of changing subject or ignoring problems.
Yes, and rightly so. When you mess up something, you need to address what you messed up, not point at entirely unrelated things you did well, or at others who mess up other things.
When we are discussing the good and bad sides of say the USA compared to other countries, then it would be a good idea to bring up such points of course, but that was not exactly the case in this discussion.
What exactly do you expect them to do? Rise into a revolution?
Vote in a more sane government maybe? No, it won't be perfect either, big deal.
You have one very important and valid point: being rude about this serves no purpose whatsoever, it is insulting and not going to convince anyone of anything. However, jumping to conclusions is about as bad as being rude, and that really does include jumping to the conclusion that everyone who disagrees is automatically an enemy.
They should be lucky to get even that after wholeheartedly engaging in a war of extermination against the Israelis.
You are confusing cause and effect here.
The order of events:
1. Israel is founded, at the expense of territory in Palestina. Substantial parts of the territory are bought, but an about as substantial part of the territory is confiscated. 2. Neighbors of Israel try to drive it into the sea.
Since 2 came after 1, it is pretty silly to argue that it is the cause of 1
Why should they pay war criminals for self inflicted losses? The largest "loss" was, when at the time of the founding, the allied Arab powers decided to launch a "final solution" to push Israel into the sea.
The largest loss within the official borders of Israel result from the founding of Israel. Sure, the war directly following on that helped quite a bit as well, but the problem was that when Israel was founded, they effectively controlled about 50% of their territory at best. The remainder was in Palestinian hands, and that needed a 'fix'.
Large numbers of Palestinians left their homes to clear the battlefield: thus participating in attempted genocide.
Yes, they should have stayed where they were and get killed, sounds like a better solution indeed.
Lets just try a bit of a thought experiment...
A couple hundred years ago, New York was actually Dutch territory. How about the Dutch buying half of the property there, and then declaring it independent from the USA, meanwhile confiscating th eother half of the property there? The rest of the USA would not accept this? Why the hell do people in the USA expect the palestinians to accept something similar?
What I find far more incredible that no one says "Hey, look at Israel economically helping a group of people that continue to launch attacks on its civilians. They collect taxes for the government and have even transferred money to it. I wonder why they would do that?" You might want to ponder that before you go and claim genocide.
1. Palestinians in occupied territory pay taxes as well, but have no representation in Israel. 2. Israel as occupying power has responsibilities under international law, if they don't like those, then stop the occupation 3. Israel refuses to compensate people for very substantial losses resulting from the founding of Israel. Don't be surprised about those people being upset about this.
No, I do not agree with palestinian suicide bombers and attacks on civilians within Israel. I do however agree that the palestinians have some very good reasons for fighting against Israel, and that Israel's army, and EVERY ISRAELI in occupied territories are legitimate targets there. (please note, according to international law, civilians placed in such occupied territories are not protected because they are an instrument of occupation and thereby a military target)
it's that you refuse to see anything good about the US. No-one is perfect.
I think that that is a response to how many an American deals with any form of critisism whatsoever. If you are not perfect, thats fine, thats just human, and no different from the rest of us. The issue is that the first thing you should do when you realize that you are not perfect is to start listening to others who do see the imperfactions.
As it is however, pointing out any imperfections of the USA gets you a combination of the following:
- being dismissed as anti-american.
This is really stupid, your enemies won't point out your mistakes, they will abuse them.
- screaming and raving about the imperfection not existing.
No chance on fixing anything when you refuse to see it
- pointing at others who make similar or at times even unrelated mistakes.
A strawman argument, someone elses mistakes don't justify your own mistakes.
The problem is you feeling attacked instead of taking note and trying to improve.
Yes, everyone in the US is absolutely rich, and we have streets of gold and pay people to wipe our arses for us. Would that were true - the reality is, the US is not the cheapest place in the world to live. However, the per-capita card never seems to take that into account.
According to many, cost of living in the USA is cheaper then say most of north-west Europe. This is also my experience from having lived in both the USA and the EU. Despite that, per-capita spending on support for developing nations in the EU is higher then in the USA. Conclusion can only be that while your argument makes sense at first glance, reality shows it wrong.
11. "I heard this story about an American who visited once and was rude and didn't differ to our local customs. We don't pretend to like their local customs in America, but they should pretend to like ours."
I have lived in the USA, and did not like the local customs. I do however respect them and make sure that I do not insult people over them. Your country, your rules.
What GP was asking for is respect, not agreement.
12. "Someone told me there are poor Americans. They didn't tell me that even poor Americans live relatively well compared to the worldwide average or the US historical average."
Go read the CIA world fact book, it will tell you that you are in fact wrong.
13. "I get my info from watching bad TV shows. Americans are exactly like those people on TV."
If you export your culture (ie, TV, movies etc), don't be surprised that others judge your culture by what you export. Are they wrong in believing it represents US society? Definitely. It would help to stop giving such an absurd picture of yourself if you don't like this however.
14. "America defends itself when attacked"
When and where did Iraq attack the USA?
15. "I read too many left-wing web-sites like Slashdot and I actually believe all the anti-corporate BS from 17-year-old complainers who post there."
It is a better idea to start watching, listening to, and reading fox news, because they are simply the best and completely without bias.
When you want to know why people respond as they do, you should start with what effect your actions have on those people.
Most of your 'points' have been answered by others, I'll just pick numbers 8 to 10 to show how silly your post is..
8. The US supports freer countries, such as Israel, which are free enough to produce wealth and actually offer value for trade, as opposed to dictatorships like the Palestinian authority, which demand unconditional obedience at gunpoint from their own people, and produce nothing.
Israel produces wealth? Lets see how long their economy survives without help from the USA, shall we? At the very least they do not create enough wealth to keep their own country running.
Also, you may not like the outcome, but the Palestinians had elections which are generally considered to have been open and fair. If you have proof that they were not you have some reason to claim what you did, but so far such proof is non existant.
Last but not least, 'forced at gunpoint'.. if you really believe that then I'd say.. pot, meet kettle. (and no, it is not forced at gunpoint in the USA, it is forced by threat of infinite detention without right on due process').
9. The US defends itself when attacked, sometimes even against regimes that use their own people as human shields, such as by putting a biological weapons lab in a hospital, or a weapons cache in a school.
Which attack were you talking about? When did Iraq actually attack the USA?
10. The US people support the US, and the ideas -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- that make it possible. (However, they do support it more or less on an emotional level, whereas American intellectuals actively oppose it.)
First of all, you are forgetting one of the most important 'ideas'.. equality of all people for as far as the law and state are concerned.
But lets see about the rest...
Life: Obviously the idea of 'life' depends on nationality, non citizens definitely have less of a right on it... Liberty: You mean like infinite detention without right to due process? Pursuit of happiness: see previous two points.
Acting to support those things would be a lot more helpfull in getting your point across, but for now it is words with actions opposing what you are claiming. Don't be surprised when others don't believe you.
You also seem to have a major issue with 'intellectuals', but then, you respond emotionally, and it has been known for a long time that a very succesfull way of controlling the people is to "make them feel so they don't think". If you weren't arguing that you hate actual thinking, then maybe you need to revise your opinion on intellectuals, they are usually the people who think about stuff, and they obviously do a much better job at it then you. But then, I assume you also don't believe in this idea of defending someone's right on free speech even when disagreeing with that person eh?
IBM is a company interested in making proffit. they are neither good or evil. The existance of Linux is highly proffitable for them, so they encourage it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with them believing in open source as such.
When you account for cost of living, the United States has the highest standard of living in the world. Maybe not who you would root for, but that's the way it is.
I find this interesting, considering that approx 10% of the US population is living below the poverty line (according to the CIA world factbook). This despite the cost of living there..
Also, your post implies that in Norway civil liberties are substantially less then in the USA, which is rather debatable at least since the 9/11 attacks and changes in policy that became possible after that.
Then, standard of living depends first of all on what people have and can afford. This automatically compensates for the cost of living, so your entire post is actually bunk.
So, much like other wonderful socialist programs, there's no opt out, there's just mother government telling what's good for you. Silly Europeans.
A few notes..
1. Germany is part of Europe, but whatever they decide still only applies to their own country, not the rest of Europe. 2. The USA has public tv and radio as well, and guess what, those are being payed for from taxes. Now, for all I know, there does not exist such a 'tv licence' or such in the USA, which means that everyone pays for this, even those who do not have a tv or radio or such at all, so you have even less of a choice there.
This means that what you are saying is complete nonsense.
And no, I don't think this licence is a good idea at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Argh!! please don't try to post such sane things here, you kill the flamewar^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hdiscussion
If I were going to rebel against the govt. (Hello NSA! just speculating here!!) I wouldn't go up against the military. I would studiously avoid them. I would go after the bozos running the government instead. Knock off a dozen or so politicians, and the rest might get the message.
:)
Definitely, but for that you don't need a armed population.
Shoot a few dozen soldiers and the rest come after you with really big things that go boom in the night. Besides, After the revolution we're going to need to be on good terms with them to help us crush our enemies.
So just hope they do not support the government you are trying to rebel against.... But what if they do?
Now on the military splitting ala the union and confederates. It ain't gonna happen. If enough people start moving against the gov, the military will sit it out and simply say "Posse Comitatus. This is a civilian law enforcement issue. We'll just keep the foreign enemies out and protect the nukes. Call us when its over."
That is what they should and hopefully will do.
They do not want a repeat of history and have a blue/gray situation again. Unlike a lot of people, they learned from that painful lesson. I have no doubt there is some contingency plan on a shelf somewhere on what to do if this scenario should happen.
Maybe. We have however seen cases in the USA where the army has been used against civilians who did not agree with the government. If the army feels that it is better off listening to the government then that is what they will do. I strongly doubt that what is best for the civilians is what concerns them in those matters.
First of all, thanks for your serious reply, you bring up some good counter points.
This is not a particularly accurate analogy. First of all, the UN partition plan never involved the confiscation of land; it only involved the governance of that land.
That land had been part of the Ottoman empire untill it collapsed. Then it became a Brittish mandate, but when that happened, somewhere at the end of the first world war, there was a conference, where it was decided that among other things, states for Kurds, Jews and Palestinians were needed. This predates the UN by a few decades.
During their mandate, the Brits made a terrible mess in what is now Palestina, contributing substantially to todays problems by for example promising the same things to both sides and not being able to keep those promises.
The partitioning plan was an attempt to catch up with the reality that was developing on the ground, but it caught up with a reality from a few decades ago.
I realise that people accuse the Israeli forces of driving out the Arabs, but based on the evidence I have seen (the public statements by Arab leaders asking civilians to leave so that the Arab armies could move in, the large number of Arabs who didn't flee and still live in Israel today) I don't believe this happened on a large scale.[1]
There are a few issues here.
First of all, for what I understand, you are right, it was Arab leaders calling for people to leave their houses. The scale on which this happened is somewhat obvious from the scale of refugee camps inmediately afterwards.
Second, those who stayed have been treated as second class citizens, often being confronted with distrust, and having fewer rights. Quite a few of them left due to this.
Third, this in no way changes Israel's obligations under international law when looking at territories they are occupying.
The question you ask is an interesting one, should people be compensated for the loss of property when they listen to their own leaders and leave their property behind?
The counter question is: Can you confiscate the property of people who fled from what they knew to become a war zone?
The answer to the first is not entirely clear, as in, it is not clear to me to whom they can go for compensation. That they should be compensated for their losses however is beyond questioning for as far as I am concerned.
The answer to the second one however is contained in both the geneva conventions and the founding charter of the UN, to which Israel is a member, and it says that no, you cannot do that, EVER.
Or maybe it's only a few manifest failures full of their self importance despite being repeatedly proven wrong who think they're perfect and want me to only listen to them.
That is a problem in and of itself, and those people better learn they are not perfect themselves.
If you mean to apply this to many a European being critical of the USA and its foreign policies however, it would be a nice time to dig into how they deal with such situations. You may not be aware of this, but treating our own government in the same way is rather the norm here, and being critical of what our societies do? Well, in case of the society I am part of, we are indeed still dealing with the consequences of what we did during colonisation for example. We know we are not perfect, and we'd rather prefer learning from past mistakes.
The word "antisemitic" has a different definition. Why not look up the word I used? If you knew what it meant you would not have typed this. I actually argued as you do on this word at one time. Then I bothered to look up the word and found that I was, as you are now, wrong about the term: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/antisemitic . The article from your chosen source, wikipedia, is rather unequivocal: "While the term's semantics may imply that anti-Semitism is directed against all people of a Semite descent, it is in fact used exclusively to refer to hostility towards Jews..
I know how it is used, that does not mean that it is correct.
Since when is it not racist to criticize a "people"?
Since I was not claiming every jewish person to be evil or bad or whatever, rather, I was pointing at the fact that a group of people from jewish origin (hence jewish people, read again, I am not saying ALL or MOST jeweish people) were involved in a certain situation. Their jewish origin being relevant because of culture and religion.
It would be racist if I would criticize people because of them being jewish, but I don't. I do criticize those people because of certain actions they took or supported. As it happens, the people involved strongly indentified with jewish culture and religion, so that serves as an easy identification of that group, but that does not matter for if what they did is right or wrong, neither does it mean that everyone else who indentifies with said group is right or wrong. To make it a bit easier, shall I call them Israelites instead?
(see bold characters) It does not divert attention, but instead focuses on the root cause of it: Arab/Muslim intolerance for Jews.
Hmm yes.
'Leave the people of the book in peace'
'Follow me as you followed Abraham'
'All that believe in god and the day of judgement will surely get their reward'
Those are among the things Islam has to say about jewish people. Sadly enough often forgotten by muslims (eventho the second one is something many a muslim will be saying 35 (!) times a day) and non muslims alike.
Shall we take a look now at how well christians treated jewish people for the last 1500 or so years? The muslim world has some catching up to do if it wants to come close.
Remember, there was a war and a "ceasefire" that included no-fly zones, economic sanctions, and 17 UN resolutions that were all violated.
You have a point there. but this does not actually constitute an attack on the USA, it does constitute an attack on allied (including USA) forces that were there, see below also.
Every year since the ceasefire Iraqi military forces attacked American military forces tasked with maintaining the peace.
Ceasefire is not the same as peace. It may be a step towards peace, but it is no more then stopping hostilities for the time being. Also, there were quite a few American military there, but they were definitely not alone. Where are all the others claiming that Iraq was attacking them?
Iraq also supported international terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Islamic Brotherhood.
The USA supported Saddam for a long time because of a few reasons, one being that they did not want the USSR to have too much influence over him, the other is that he has always been strongly opposed to Islamic extremism. There have been many rumors about him supporting the groups you mention, but those come from the expectation that your enemies would support eachother, and have very little if any basis in reality.
Iraq disregarded the economic sanctions and refused to honor it's disarmament agreements.
Yes, and around 1995 would have been a nice time to deal with that. Bringing it up over a decade later however is a bit silly.
It violated the ceasefire repeatedly, attacking not only American and other coalition forces, but it's own citizens repeatedly.
Just for the record, I come from a country that contributed to those coalition forces, and some of my friends have been there.
We knew that they were attacking their own civilians, we encouraged those civilians to stand up against Saddam and then left them hanging.
And it still had chemical weapons and had trained Al Qaeda operatives on the use of chemical weapons.
So where are those weapons? despite all the 'smoking gun evidence' presented, no actual chemical weapons were found after invasion other then remains of weapons that predate the first gulf war, and those remains were in a pretty much unusable state.
Second, training Al Qaeda operatives on the use of those weapons? Disregarding the strong dislike of islamic extremists, which would have made this extremely unlikely, how to train people on the use of weapons without having those weapons?
So.. lets see, there are actually multiple valid arguments one can make to justify the Iraq invasion, but those were not used at the moments where they were relevant. Sad because it would have made a big difference in the kind of support that the USA would have gotten.
Here's a perfect example of this taking of land. And guess what? This was 1929
So that was some half a century after the founding of a jewish organisation that had the stated goal of re-establishing Israel.
before you could use the existence of Israel as a flimsly cloak to hide your antisemitism behind.
First of all Arabs, Palestinians, Jews, all of them are semites, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic and don't abuse the word.
Second, when you call every kind of critisism of jewish people or the state of Israel anti-semitic then fine, but it is just diverting attention away from any possible solutions.
Ah yes, truth is in the eye of the beholder..
Pretty hard to do when the main reason you have "upset people" is that you dare to be Jewish and dare to insist on living.
Right, so lets take someone elses land and then be all surprised when they don't like it.
I don't know about the UK, but in the Netherlands we happen to have a group of republicans who'd love to do away with the royal family and the monarchy. They do get coverage from the press, even from the 'government controlled' state radio and tv, and noone is being put in jail over this either.
See, my point is this. There are plenty of European countries that "enjoy" more "freedom" than we do here in the US. For example, anyone is free to walk up and down Main Street completely naked if they so desire.
Actually, you'll find that in most of Europe, you can't do that, alltho you can get permission for holding an event during which such a thing happens.
However, what about a parent's rights and freedom to be able to take their family out in public, and not have the children exposed to genitalia? The type of "freedom" they want the press to have is the same carte blanche "freedom" I just described.
As already pointed out, your assertion is wrong, and it is wrong exactly because of respecting the kind of people you are talking about.
That said, there are events when you may see such a thing happening. Don't like it? go somewhere else during the event.
Point of my post? You are way too quickly jumping to conclusions about absolute freedom in this case, and might also be in the case of freedom of press.
False stories should not be allowed to be circulated, because our dumbass populace will believe anything if its printed and looks acceptable. If circulating a false story results in high fines or prison, much of the problems with journalism will be resolved.
Good idea, but I see one small problem.. Who gets to decide what stories are 'false' ?
The guns aren't a risk, the guns are a right. Mostly to protect us from our own government.
That is the idea indeed. Maybe back in the early 1800s that would have worked even.
Now? against tanks, warplanes, choppers and missiles? hmmm.......
For that matter, even before the USA got independent, the French revolution already showed that you do not need an armed population to overthrow a government, and in more recent history, most of eastern Europe provides some interesting evidence that this is still the case.
And you check out the zionist movement predating those events you mention by more then half a century. If you anywhere believe that the founding of the state of Israel is a direct consequence of the second world war and what happened during it, you are seriously mistaken. What the second world war did however is create enough public support around the world to allow for the founding of Israel.
The atrocities and extermination attempts against the Jews in that area were going on long before the founding of Israel. Check into the Hebron pogram and the actual alliance between the pre-Israel Palestinian government and Nazi Germany.
The pre-Israel 'Palestinian' government was actually either run by the UK or by the Ottoman empire. It was a British mandate ever since the Ottoman empire collapsed at the end of the first world war. Before that it was under Ottoman rule, and there was no such thing as a Palestinian government.
In fact, if not for the interminable harsh treatment, the Jews might not have even felt it necessary to establish some sort of "reservation" (Israel) where Jews would be free from the routine atrocities.
Jewish music and literature has for about 2000 years mourned the loss of Jarusalem and called for the return of jewish people to the promised land.
There are a substantial number of orthodox jews who believe that Israel is their promised land, and that it should be taken back.
Last but not least, if you want a reservation where you can be free from routine atrocities, then the first thing to do is to create such a reservation in a way that does not cause lots of upset people, else you are just moving the problem around.
I am not saying they were right or wrong in trying to establish Israel, I am however saying that by refusing to deal with what that did to others, they did continue the exact thing they were trying to escape from.
I'm also saying that your view on the founding of Israel seems to be rather one-sided, and seems to tie in very well with the sad habbit of always depicting jews as the victims regardless of the real situation.
If you do want my opinion however, I believe they were right to try to establish a country for themselves, and I believe that deserved and still deserves support. I do also believe they were wrong in how they dealt with the people already living in the territory that they built their country in, and are still dealing with the consequences of that. They need to clean up their act, and don't deserve support in continuing ignoring the issue.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Slow down with the finger pointing! I'm not American, and I'm guessing you're not either. Can we carry on a little more civilised?
Maybe slow down with your conclusions, I did respond to a very specific part of your post, and I am not the AC who posted those 'original' 10 points. Don't act as if I did, or as if I would agree with all of them please.
When you are criticising someone's country, especially their citizens (let's not forget point number 10), it helps to be a bit constructive with the criticisms. Rather than say "I hate the US because they blah, blah, blah...", say "I don't like the way the US handles this, and would rather them handle it this way".
Like.. if someone disagrees with you, I'd really prefer you considering that he might have some actual reason for disagreeing instead of assuming that he is out to destroy you?
I believe that was pretty much what I was doing in my post...
Anti-Americanism can often be hating America for hating Authority's sake. They export the culture, we get resentful of it and blame them for more than they deserve.
Speak for yourself and not for others please. I don't blame them for exporting their culture, I blame them for supporting a government that is failing to live up to their own standards, yet attacking anyone else who they can claim to not comply with those standards. And obviously I only blame those who actually do this, not every American out there.
So when you start to rant on about everything you hate about them, people shut it out.
If you take a closer look at my post (or many other posts I made about this subject) you might just see that that is not what I am doing.
They've heard it all before, and they know that as soon as they point out anything good about their country or something bad about your's (whatever that is), they've fed the troll and all they'll get is accusations of changing subject or ignoring problems.
Yes, and rightly so. When you mess up something, you need to address what you messed up, not point at entirely unrelated things you did well, or at others who mess up other things.
When we are discussing the good and bad sides of say the USA compared to other countries, then it would be a good idea to bring up such points of course, but that was not exactly the case in this discussion.
What exactly do you expect them to do? Rise into a revolution?
Vote in a more sane government maybe? No, it won't be perfect either, big deal.
You have one very important and valid point: being rude about this serves no purpose whatsoever, it is insulting and not going to convince anyone of anything. However, jumping to conclusions is about as bad as being rude, and that really does include jumping to the conclusion that everyone who disagrees is automatically an enemy.
They should be lucky to get even that after wholeheartedly engaging in a war of extermination against the Israelis.
You are confusing cause and effect here.
The order of events:
1. Israel is founded, at the expense of territory in Palestina. Substantial parts of the territory are bought, but an about as substantial part of the territory is confiscated.
2. Neighbors of Israel try to drive it into the sea.
Since 2 came after 1, it is pretty silly to argue that it is the cause of 1
Why should they pay war criminals for self inflicted losses? The largest "loss" was, when at the time of the founding, the allied Arab powers decided to launch a "final solution" to push Israel into the sea.
The largest loss within the official borders of Israel result from the founding of Israel. Sure, the war directly following on that helped quite a bit as well, but the problem was that when Israel was founded, they effectively controlled about 50% of their territory at best. The remainder was in Palestinian hands, and that needed a 'fix'.
Large numbers of Palestinians left their homes to clear the battlefield: thus participating in attempted genocide.
Yes, they should have stayed where they were and get killed, sounds like a better solution indeed.
Lets just try a bit of a thought experiment...
A couple hundred years ago, New York was actually Dutch territory. How about the Dutch buying half of the property there, and then declaring it independent from the USA, meanwhile confiscating th eother half of the property there? The rest of the USA would not accept this? Why the hell do people in the USA expect the palestinians to accept something similar?
What I find far more incredible that no one says "Hey, look at Israel economically helping a group of people that continue to launch attacks on its civilians. They collect taxes for the government and have even transferred money to it. I wonder why they would do that?" You might want to ponder that before you go and claim genocide.
1. Palestinians in occupied territory pay taxes as well, but have no representation in Israel.
2. Israel as occupying power has responsibilities under international law, if they don't like those, then stop the occupation
3. Israel refuses to compensate people for very substantial losses resulting from the founding of Israel. Don't be surprised about those people being upset about this.
No, I do not agree with palestinian suicide bombers and attacks on civilians within Israel. I do however agree that the palestinians have some very good reasons for fighting against Israel, and that Israel's army, and EVERY ISRAELI in occupied territories are legitimate targets there. (please note, according to international law, civilians placed in such occupied territories are not protected because they are an instrument of occupation and thereby a military target)
it's that you refuse to see anything good about the US. No-one is perfect.
I think that that is a response to how many an American deals with any form of critisism whatsoever. If you are not perfect, thats fine, thats just human, and no different from the rest of us. The issue is that the first thing you should do when you realize that you are not perfect is to start listening to others who do see the imperfactions.
As it is however, pointing out any imperfections of the USA gets you a combination of the following:
- being dismissed as anti-american.
This is really stupid, your enemies won't point out your mistakes, they will abuse them.
- screaming and raving about the imperfection not existing.
No chance on fixing anything when you refuse to see it
- pointing at others who make similar or at times even unrelated mistakes.
A strawman argument, someone elses mistakes don't justify your own mistakes.
The problem is you feeling attacked instead of taking note and trying to improve.
Yes, everyone in the US is absolutely rich, and we have streets of gold and pay people to wipe our arses for us. Would that were true - the reality is, the US is not the cheapest place in the world to live. However, the per-capita card never seems to take that into account.
According to many, cost of living in the USA is cheaper then say most of north-west Europe. This is also my experience from having lived in both the USA and the EU. Despite that, per-capita spending on support for developing nations in the EU is higher then in the USA. Conclusion can only be that while your argument makes sense at first glance, reality shows it wrong.
11. "I heard this story about an American who visited once and was rude and didn't differ to our local customs. We don't pretend to like their local customs in America, but they should pretend to like ours."
I have lived in the USA, and did not like the local customs. I do however respect them and make sure that I do not insult people over them. Your country, your rules.
What GP was asking for is respect, not agreement.
12. "Someone told me there are poor Americans. They didn't tell me that even poor Americans live relatively well compared to the worldwide average or the US historical average."
Go read the CIA world fact book, it will tell you that you are in fact wrong.
13. "I get my info from watching bad TV shows. Americans are exactly like those people on TV."
If you export your culture (ie, TV, movies etc), don't be surprised that others judge your culture by what you export. Are they wrong in believing it represents US society? Definitely. It would help to stop giving such an absurd picture of yourself if you don't like this however.
14. "America defends itself when attacked"
When and where did Iraq attack the USA?
15. "I read too many left-wing web-sites like Slashdot and I actually believe all the anti-corporate BS from 17-year-old complainers who post there."
It is a better idea to start watching, listening to, and reading fox news, because they are simply the best and completely without bias.
When you want to know why people respond as they do, you should start with what effect your actions have on those people.
Most of your 'points' have been answered by others, I'll just pick numbers 8 to 10 to show how silly your post is..
8. The US supports freer countries, such as Israel, which are free enough to produce wealth and actually offer value for trade, as opposed to dictatorships like the Palestinian authority, which demand unconditional obedience at gunpoint from their own people, and produce nothing.
Israel produces wealth? Lets see how long their economy survives without help from the USA, shall we? At the very least they do not create enough wealth to keep their own country running.
Also, you may not like the outcome, but the Palestinians had elections which are generally considered to have been open and fair. If you have proof that they were not you have some reason to claim what you did, but so far such proof is non existant.
Last but not least, 'forced at gunpoint'.. if you really believe that then I'd say.. pot, meet kettle. (and no, it is not forced at gunpoint in the USA, it is forced by threat of infinite detention without right on due process').
9. The US defends itself when attacked, sometimes even against regimes that use their own people as human shields, such as by putting a biological weapons lab in a hospital, or a weapons cache in a school.
Which attack were you talking about? When did Iraq actually attack the USA?
10. The US people support the US, and the ideas -- life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness -- that make it possible. (However, they do support it more or less on an emotional level, whereas American intellectuals actively oppose it.)
First of all, you are forgetting one of the most important 'ideas'.. equality of all people for as far as the law and state are concerned.
But lets see about the rest...
Life: Obviously the idea of 'life' depends on nationality, non citizens definitely have less of a right on it...
Liberty: You mean like infinite detention without right to due process?
Pursuit of happiness: see previous two points.
Acting to support those things would be a lot more helpfull in getting your point across, but for now it is words with actions opposing what you are claiming. Don't be surprised when others don't believe you.
You also seem to have a major issue with 'intellectuals', but then, you respond emotionally, and it has been known for a long time that a very succesfull way of controlling the people is to "make them feel so they don't think". If you weren't arguing that you hate actual thinking, then maybe you need to revise your opinion on intellectuals, they are usually the people who think about stuff, and they obviously do a much better job at it then you. But then, I assume you also don't believe in this idea of defending someone's right on free speech even when disagreeing with that person eh?
IBM is a company interested in making proffit. they are neither good or evil. The existance of Linux is highly proffitable for them, so they encourage it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with them believing in open source as such.
When you account for cost of living, the United States has the highest standard of living in the world. Maybe not who you would root for, but that's the way it is.
I find this interesting, considering that approx 10% of the US population is living below the poverty line (according to the CIA world factbook). This despite the cost of living there..
Also, your post implies that in Norway civil liberties are substantially less then in the USA, which is rather debatable at least since the 9/11 attacks and changes in policy that became possible after that.
Then, standard of living depends first of all on what people have and can afford. This automatically compensates for the cost of living, so your entire post is actually bunk.
So, much like other wonderful socialist programs, there's no opt out, there's just mother government telling what's good for you. Silly Europeans.
A few notes..
1. Germany is part of Europe, but whatever they decide still only applies to their own country, not the rest of Europe.
2. The USA has public tv and radio as well, and guess what, those are being payed for from taxes. Now, for all I know, there does not exist such a 'tv licence' or such in the USA, which means that everyone pays for this, even those who do not have a tv or radio or such at all, so you have even less of a choice there.
This means that what you are saying is complete nonsense.
And no, I don't think this licence is a good idea at all.