|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 13:12:01 GMT
Oh my goodness, ANOTHER nuclear enrichment plant was discovered in Iran just as the G-20 meeting was taking place! What are the chances of all of the secret services in the world and all of their spies only discovering this little item precisely at this moment? Do they really think that we are complete idiots? I really hate the way that crises are invented on a precise schedule just so that we will love our leaders for protecting us from evil meanies.  |
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 13:34:52 GMT
Sorry, I don't get your point. The Ghadafi's and Ahmedinejads of the world use such meetings as an opportunity to bring attention to themselves and ridicule the west. Why shouldn't the same opportunity be used to expose them for what they are - and what they are up to?
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 13:58:38 GMT
The point is that our leaders prefer to tell us fairy tales rather than the truth. They can control us much better if they can create a scarecrow out of Iran or another country rather than using peace and logic. Frankly, having grown up during the Cold War, when I see the leaders of various countries jump up and down and froth at the mouth, it neither scares me or impresses me. I know they are just playing to their home audience and have no intention of doing what they threaten.
I am just astonished at how many people still fall for it.
|
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Sept 28, 2009 14:31:38 GMT
Kerouac speaks truth.
In the US, we have only to look at the last administration to see how it "protected" or "saved" us from situations either invented or caused by that very administration.
|
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Sept 28, 2009 14:33:18 GMT
Think Ghadafi and Ahmedinejad etc are far more of a danger to their own peoples than to anyone else, and such "western denunciations" are exactly what they need to hold on to power. Don't think there is much of an organised opposition to Ghadafi, but there is a strong opposition in Iran.
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 14:54:43 GMT
Well, I have several problems with this line of thinking.
First is the notion of using peace an logic with madmen - this strikes me more as stuff of fairy tales than the sometimes exagerated (and sometimes justifiable so if that's what's need to get the attention of those of us who don't perceive these threats as real) claims of Western leaders.
Second, what is their "home audience"? Just the people who have neither the money nor the ambition to travel outside their countries or the ones that do in fact bring this hatred and violence to the west?
Third, I happen to care about "their own peoples" as well as those in the immediate vicinity (Israel for instance) to whom these nutcases pose a real and immediate danger.
Fourth, mob mentality rules in these states and if there is in fact a strong opposition to the current Iranian administration, it's the duty of the West to encourage and assist with that in any way possible - including public denouncements - in order to ensure that the mob of the opposition eventually outgrows the mob which supports the administration.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 17:14:57 GMT
The rules have changed. The video satellites of the world rain down information on at least the intelligentsia of the various countries. Even if what they see does not convince them, it at least allows them to question what they have learned.
Believe me, when I have seminars in my company, the majority of the people attending are from those scary countries -- Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, etc., and I have seen that there is absolutely no evil sentiment against me but instead major curiosity about why the leaders of our Western countries are always making threats when the people of these countries just want to live in peace. There have been a few times when I have been the one and only "Westerner" attending the meeting, so I do know what it is like to feel somewhat isolated.
It truly changes one's outlook on whether one is "hated" or not as so many people fear. "Why do they hate us? Why do they want to attack us?" No, they don't want to do any of that stuff -- what scares them is why we want to attack THEM.
It suits the leaders of both sides to keep us in fear, because if everybody realized that everybody just wants to live in peace, the economy based on defense and war would collapse.
|
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Sept 28, 2009 18:09:54 GMT
Once you've sold people on the idea that they should be afraid of _______, suddenly they become easily manipulated. This has not escaped the attention of politicians the world over and as fear is a strong and primal emotion that people are easily susceptible to, it tends to override reason and logic so that even the truth enunciated cooly and eloquently has little power to dispel the emotional power of fear. 9-11 thus presented the Bush administration a once in a lifetime opportunity to go forward with a broad agenda none of which would ever have passed a logical dispassionate scrutiny but was easily rushed through using the tapped reservoir of primal fear available at that moment. You can see the same in the US with the health care debate, once fear is successfully introduced among the target demographic it will completely override logic and reason and can even be used to manipulate people to support positions that are quite obviously to anyone not in thrall to the fear mongering to be against their own best interests.
How can any leader resist using this tool when it is proven to be so overwhelmingly effective against even the best and most logical counterargument?
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 19:02:26 GMT
So, what do you guys suggest? I'm pretty sure you're not suggesting we ignore Iran and other regimes harboring significant anti Western sentiment...
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 20:04:30 GMT
See -- that's the problem, thinking that the sentiment is "anti-Western". Generally, the sentiment is "hostile to people who disagree with the way we want to live" and that is completely different.
Yes, I am not happy with the Iranian regime, but I am pretty sure that the majority of the Iranian population supports it. That's democracy, even if the latest elections were skewed, but don't forget that all of the other candidates were in favor of the same lifestyle. They don't want to live like Canadians or French people (except for a small minority), even if we think they are weird for that.
They just don't want to feel fear of the West for wanting to live a different way. As for myself (and I know that this is a minority opinion in every single country of the West), I have nothing against the Iranian nuclear program. As long as we think it is totally normal for our own countries to have nuclear power, I really do not think that we have any right to say that it is wrong for other countries.
Even though we might think that some of the leaders have bizarre ideas, I don't think that a single one of them is crazy enough to think that there is any possibility of successfully using nuclear weapons. How can anybody really believe that Iran will ever bomb Israel? They know that they would be wiped off the face of the earth, just as Qadafi in Libya knew that. They might be "crazy" but they are not crazy enough to want to die and to have the whole country die with them.
Do you really doubt this, imec?
|
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Sept 28, 2009 20:21:30 GMT
How many unambiguously anti-Western regimes remain in the world. And of those how many's peoples share their xenophobia?
Bellicosity towards Iran from the West probably just empowers and legitimizes the illiberal and anti-democratic hard liners there, much as the US' inconsistent hard line and trade embargo against Cuba has no doubt served Castro's political ends.
Frankly I doubt there is much that can effectively be done from without Iran to effect a change there. It is clear that Amadinijhad and the mullahs don't enjoy a majority support among the people in Iran and they are clinging to power as regimes have in Iran in recent history- by terrorizing their own people. The West's best "weapons" against the regime in Iran are probably soft cultural influences- movies, music, television, the arts- the same sort of erosive liberal secular humanism that terrifies our own "mullahs" and "virtue police" hard liners.
|
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Sept 28, 2009 20:31:54 GMT
As for myself (and I know that this is a minority opinion in every single country of the West), I have nothing against the Iranian nuclear program. As long as we think it is totally normal for our own countries to have nuclear power, I really do not think that we have any right to say that it is wrong for other countries. Even though we might think that some of the leaders have bizarre ideas, I don't think that a single one of them is crazy enough to think that there is any possibility of successfully using nuclear weapons. How can anybody really believe that Iran will ever bomb Israel? They know that they would be wiped off the face of the earth, just as Qadafi in Libya knew that. They might be "crazy" but they are not crazy enough to want to die and to have the whole country die with them. Do you really doubt this, imec? While I doubt the Iranian regime enjoys a majority support, I agree here: we countries that possess nuclear weapons have no moral standing to criticize other countries for seeking what we ourselves unconditionally embrace. It is equal parts hubris and hypocrisy. Perhaps Israel would even have to reconsider their intransigent foreign policies if they were under the same threat of annihilation they've held their foes under for decades. |
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 20:32:40 GMT
Do you really doubt this, imec? Yes, I do doubt a lot of this. I really don't believe that the majority of Iranians "support" the regime - I believe a few do, but most just either don't realize or more practically, don't believe, they have a choice. And I really don't see how we can determine that most of them are "happy" with the lifestyle imposed by the current or alternate regimes when they don't really have much opportunity to express their free will. And even if you're right, and that most of them are comfortable with the lifestyle - what about the rights of the minority who are not? As for believing "that Iran will ever bomb Israel"? Who would have ever believed that Saddam Hussein would have been crazy enough to invade Kuwait? And "not crazy enough to want to die and to have the whole country die with them"? Not a week goes by that a suicide bomber doesn't invalidate this premise. They have an entirely different value system than we do - to the brainwashed, our death is far more important than their life. |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 20:51:40 GMT
Suicide bombers do not reach leadership levels in any country. They are crazy, and the other people in the government recognize this quite easily.
China has not changed at all since the revolution, except that once the rest of the world accepted commerce with it, it was happy to have commerce with the rest of the world. Yet I well remember when we were told that it was a horrible evil power. Need I point out that it has nuclear weapons and probably a lot of other nasty stuff? And it still does lots of awful things like selling the organs of prisoners to the highest bidder. But all of a sudden we are not worried about it. Why is that?
Libya got taken off the terrorist list the same way, even though totally insane Qadafi still runs the country, and we are not scared of him anymore because nobody is telling us to be scared of him. The Americans bombed Libya to try to kill him and did not succeed but now all of a sudden relations have been normalized. Did Qadafi change? I don't think so.
Is Iran any different? We are just being told to fear and loathe Iran, and it is a lot less scary than Libya ever was.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2009 21:06:41 GMT
This is interesting but I am not sure what to think. When you don't live in a big country, you don't worry about these things as much. I agree that fear is the main way that we are controlled. Fear of the others, fear of poverty, fear of disease, fear that <they> will take what we have.
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 21:24:42 GMT
Suicide bombers do not reach leadership levels in any country. They are crazy, and the other people in the government recognize this quite easily. The point is, people do things every day that "we" wouldn't dream of doing - at every level of power or leadership. China has not changed at all since the revolution, except that once the rest of the world accepted commerce with it, it was happy to have commerce with the rest of the world. Yet I well remember when we were told that it was a horrible evil power. Need I point out that it has nuclear weapons and probably a lot of other nasty stuff? And it still does lots of awful things like selling the organs of prisoners to the highest bidder. But all of a sudden we are not worried about it. Why is that? Not worried about it? That would be foolish indeed. We're fortunate that they don't seem to have designs on other nations (as Iraq did on Kuwait and as Iran does on Israel) or other cultures (as many Musilm based terrorist groups have on Western culture). If they did, we'd be in big trouble as They're now big and powerful enough that there's likely not much we could do about it - precisely the reason we don't take them to task on other issues such as human rights. Still a prick, but at least he's been more well behaved than he once was. Would that be the case if we had left him alone? We ignore all these regimes at our peril. And as long as there are a large number of intelligent people that don't see the obvious danger they pose, I'm glad our leaders use every tool at their disposal to discredit and expose them. |
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Sept 28, 2009 21:43:18 GMT
Why didn't they discredit and expose Bush? He was the president of the most powerful country of the world, obviously not operating with a full deck, and has a hell of a lot more blood on his hands than the worst terrorist or Third-World despot (not that I have any love or sympathy for the latter either).
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 28, 2009 22:07:50 GMT
Why didn't they discredit and expose Bush? He was the president of the most powerful country of the world, obviously not operating with a full deck, and has a hell of a lot more blood on his hands than the worst terrorist or Third-World despot (not that I have any love or sympathy for the latter either). He was elected in a fair democratic process. He's no longer the leader. |
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Sept 29, 2009 2:30:24 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 29, 2009 2:31:14 GMT
People didn't vote?
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2009 4:36:03 GMT
Don't you remember the Supreme Court designating him president after the massive election fraud in Florida in 2000?
Not to mention that he lost the popular vote by 500,000 anyway due to the skewed electoral system.
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 29, 2009 12:33:40 GMT
"Massive election fraud"? No, I don't remember. Who was prosecuted? Or is this a fairy tale?
As for the popular vote... First of all, that's far less than 1% of voters - not statistically significant. Second, not at all significant according to the people's process.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2009 12:58:44 GMT
There is obviously no prosecution when all of the key posts are occupied by political cronies. It is 0.5% of the voters, but it means that 50,999,897 voters were defrauded.
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 29, 2009 12:59:27 GMT
Sour grapes.
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 29, 2009 13:01:42 GMT
I haven't voted in that country since 1972, but I don't vote in Iran either.
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Sept 29, 2009 13:02:59 GMT
"Ultimately, the Media Consortium hired the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago[46] to examine 175,010 ballots that were discounted; these ballots contained under-votes (votes with no choice made for president) and over-votes (votes made with more than one choice marked). Their goal was not to deduce who actually won the election, but to determine the reliability and accuracy of the systems used for the voting process.
The first independent recount was conducted by The Miami Herald and USA Today. The Commission found that under most recount scenarios, Bush would have won the election, but Gore would have won using the most generous standards.[47]"
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2009 16:50:10 GMT
But the other problem was the poorly designed ballots, especially in the county where the Libertarian candidate (or something like that) got most of the votes that were meant for Gore because the holes were not lined up properly.
Accident or design?
|
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2009 1:00:29 GMT
Having worked the last five years for the board of elections here as a Poll Commissioner (not to be confused with a Pole Commissioner  )I can safely say that anything is possible at these polling places.  |
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2009 9:08:09 GMT
Anyway, after all of the ridiculous saber rattling with Iran, now the U.S. and France are stumbling over each other in their eagerness to see who can provide enriched uranium to Iran first. "We don't want you making it yourself, but we'd love to sell you some."
|
|
|
|
Post by imec on Oct 2, 2009 12:56:03 GMT
Good idea - but it will nowhere near cover the cost of keeping an eye on them.
|
|
)I can safely say that anything is possible at these polling places. 