Middle East News
Mar 25, 2007, 15:11 GMT
Iran says all British detainees in good health (Roundup)
And Also
Similar articles
- Royal Navy resumes boarding operations in northern Gulf
- British defence secretary says "sorry" over sailors' debacle
- Captured British sailor's Iran diary banned by ministry: Times
- Blair says allowing sailors to speak to media was "not a good idea"
- Iran "to reveal truth about British captives in documentary" (Extra)
Latest Headlines in Middle East
- 1. One Palestinian killed, three wounded in Gaza explosion
- 2. Britain hopes for "swift" end to crisis over yacht crew (Roundup)
- 3. Five Britons captured on yacht by Iran's navy, London says
- 4. Iraqi general assassinated in disputed city of Kirkuk
- 5. Hezbollah chief says US role is diminishing in the region
Via BuzzFeed
Older Talkback
page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
“America sponsored the open and illegal violation of one nation's sovereignty of another,”
That is just wrong. “Sponsored”? Wrong.......
No, did we handle it as well as we might have? Should we not (Along with the French, Germans, British, Chinese, Russians and others) sold him weapons? Who knows, but we were not a sponsor of Saddams war on Iran. '
(Shrug) Fair enough; if you prefer ‘endorsed’, we can go with that word if you find it less threatening. Bottom line – his vices were amply acceptable at the time, rhetorical bluster aside.
“Of COURSE terrorism is illegal; as are unilateral 'pre-emptive' invasions outside U.N mandate.”
AAAh, the moral equivalence never ends…'
(lol) Apparently not. Civilian casualties in open warfare war inevitably dwarf those caused by terrorism. If only someone would come up with a way to make both illegal, and then enforce it, OBJECTIVELY...
“WW1 was about powerful…”
Man, you had a real Marxist for a history teacher, didn’t you...'
(-: Not Marxist...Machiavellian.
(There was heated & lengthy debate in the British Parliament as to which side of ww1 they would fight on; in the end, they went with France. America certainly took her time ‘springing into action’. Lol)
Whatever. It wasn’t an ideological war at all; only conflicting national self interests, really bad military alliances, and antiquated worldviews unable to adjust to the new military technology.
'The US sits on $50 trillion in debt obligations of which it only reports about $9 Trillion. '
Say it over and over you stupid monkey. There is a HUGE difference between PUBLIC debt and Private debt. Private debt (Home loans, business loans, student loans, ect) is a product of a dynamic economy. I owe about X00,000 on my co-op. Am I broke? Especially when the co-op is Worth X,000,000? When I took out my student loans was that enslaving myself to debt? No... They are paid.
To repeat: What this idiot is doing is trying t persuade other idiots that ALL debt in the USA is public. If my next door neighbor has a mortgage it doesn't mean I have to pay it. Again, home ownership is a sign of strength, not weakness.
This is so typical of you. when your argument gets squashed you just toss the same argument out.
So prove me right again and toss out the SAME EXACT ARGUMENT! Fool.
'The key concept you weenies cant get through your thick skulls is that it cant be repaid! '
That is simply incorrect. Again, you are forgetting the GDP numbers... Good lord, go back and READ what I wrote and UNDERSTAND it. That '30,000 bill isn't going to be handed to every American regardless of income. It is going to be handed to the Gates and the Buffets and the Waltons in much higher numbers. Not only them but the GE's and the Honeywell's and even the Toyota's. You are so completely ignorant of what is going on that you are an embarrassment to yourself.
'
The rest of the world recognizes this. '
You just love to speak on behalf of the rest of the world don't you? You boob. how many times do you need to be called a delusional megalomaniac? Reading these conspiracist websites you go to doesn't entitle you to speak for humanity.
'But, it's there! As oil prices rise, so does the dollar. '
TODAY:
-Oil prices rose Monday, with a barrel of light sweet crude up 63 cents to $62.91...
-NEW YORK (AP) - The dollar weakened against most major currencies Monday after a disappointing report on the sale of new homes...
You are just flat out wrong. You couldn't be any more wrong.
'Now, Iran is starting a trend of not selling oil in dollars'
Should I cut and paste thre post popping that bubble as well? You just don't care what 'truth' is... This is all about sewing propaganda with you.
GET THIS PEOPLE, HE IS AN IMBECILE. WILLFULLY IGNORANT AND DELIBERATELY MISLEADING.
'As for Iran, so far, they're holding their ground. You've got to take your hat off to them for having the balls to do it!'
Gee, criminally kidnapping people and threatening to put them on trial. Its like saying you have to doff your hat to a rapist because he has the balls to rape.
'No matter, your children will clean my beach front property, since you're too old! '
Like you will be allowed in to the USA to buy it. Tell you what, properties on the Arabian gulf will be going cheap soon, go nuts. Only don't borrow any money in order to do it or, according to your logic, you will destroy Iran...
And that's our job. :-D
“No one nation ever gets to control the international environment for long,”
Just ask the UK… The previous superpower… The one that left a mess in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, ect, for the new superpower to clean up.
Precisely! So you see what I’m getting at. (-:
“Just because many Iraqis hated Saddam is no guarantee that they necessarily embrace every facet of America's version of democracy, or the many economic & political strings attached to it.”
No, but considering they voted in higher percentages then the UK has ever seen I would say that many of them DO want self determination and freedom from theocratic thugs.
Quite probably. But being presented with candidates largely chosen by a foreign occupying power, while multiple local & regional factions competing for support entirely outside the process threaten to kill you constantly, I’d hardly call it a democratic environment. Very little can be discerned about the details of the popular Iraqi will until several steps down the road, so it’s a distortion at this point to claim to know what they want, other than immediate survival.
“I merely point up the hypocracy in the methods of certain powers to remake the world in their own image, by force”
No… You merely rise to the defense of whomever is doing you the dirtiest with lame moral equivalence arguments in order to demonstrate that you are morally superior to we Neanderthals that still see some things as “wrong”. We certainly are not making a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq. (undoubtedly what you were referring to, despite this being about the Iranians taking British hostages) Perhaps if we had insisted on that there would have been less trouble. “
I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t defend any of the vices of either camp; I simply refuse to get on the moralizing bandwagon which really only masks the same old cynical pragmatism; the same old ethnocentric, demonizing propaganda; the same old double-standards & rationalizations which fly around in every war…And the same old partisan mudslinging which always greets the dissenting opinion...
“The project is doomed to fail, for the same reason Britain's power monopoly declined.”
The analogy is not comparable. The UK had colonies that existed to funnel wealth back to the mother country. The USA has charity cases that serve to draw wealth away. Want to see what happens if we cut them off? “
Same can be said of all major powers; Rome and even the early Islamic invasions (in their heyday) thought they were justified in the ‘forced’ enlightenment of lesser military powers, couched in ideological rhetoric, to say nothing of the glib sanctimony of the great & brutal Christian theocracies of the middle ages.
The point is, superior technology and finite resources are the only things which sustain any superpower, for as long as they last, and they never do. Anyone can build a factory, or develop technology, or mine a mineral, and secrets rarely stay secret for long. Attempts to maintain a national superiority always fail in the long run.
Besides, even the Iraq war is proving difficult for America to sustain economically…Imagine if they had to fight a ‘real war’, like the last two…Yikes. All that technology comes at a cost that guerrilla armies, fighting at home, don’t have to even try to match.
“Iran's current government is most undesireable. There are a great many Iranians who dislike it, at home & abroad. ”
Well maybe it is time they got together and spelled that out to the Iranian government. “
That would be nice! (-:
But then, Iranian militants are as unlikely to listen or reason with moderates any more than American militants are willing to do so with American moderates. These things take time.
Tell ya one thing, though – the current political climate makes it a lot easier for militants to get ahead in Iran than moderate...
”“it would have been much more convenient if the militant right wing movement had not swept to popularity in Iran...'
What isn’t our fault in your eyes?”
(Shrug) That which you stay out of, naturally.
“Where was I? Oh yes...Get used to it.”
Constantly blaming the USA for other peoples bad decisions? We ARE used to it.
lol No, no, silly – “Get used to” mounting resistance in the smaller countries who’s futures you would attempt to dictate by force.
“coupled with her aggressive and fully unilateralist military posture, makes her position hypocritical.”
So to be “fair” everyone should have an atomic bomb? Pretty brain dead… I hope you are good looking with logic skills like that....'
Apparently I AM good-looking. Thanks for bringing it up! (-:
I didn’t say that it was ‘fair’ to let everyone have nuclear weapon...Only that it was hypocritical to say condemn them for trying, when you have so many...
’Fair’ has nothing to do with it.
“….I live in New York city. An atomic bomb blast the equivalent of Nagasaki here would kill about 6 million people. Now imagine what the retaliation would look like. (And the frantic protests from your “international community”.) This is what you are tacitly endorsing, be it here or London, or Tel Aviv.”
I endorse nothing of the kind. It would be nice if Iran proves unable or unwilling to use nuclear weapons (or conventional ones, for that matter). It would be nice if no one were able or willing to. As for the western retaliation to that attack; America (via your own assertion) simply wants to exact that retaliation in advance. (lol)
Tell ya what – how about Israel simply glasses the entire middle east – ('Just in case')- in the interest of regional stability...
“Yes, indeed - they have yet to reach superpower status - That requires nuclear weapons.”
Look at the partial list of Iranian terrorism I posted. Can you imagine what they would do with an atomic bomb?'
(Shrug) Nothing that America didn’t do to the wooden cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, or that Germany didn’t do to Coventry, or that Britain didn’t do to Dresden.
That’s modern war. If you’re saying modern war is a bad thing, to be avoided or minimized, I can only agree with you. (-:
“Again, ideology and regional popular priorities are subjective.”
Please… When your mind is so “open” everything falls out.'
Nice redirection. What’s it mean?
“Hizbollah has a regional agenda which has little or nothing to do with America per se”
So that makes it OK? How do you explain the Argentina bombings then?
No it doesn’t make it Ok. But effectively fighting it requires that we understand it for what it is.
Al Qaeda’s Wahhibist agenda actually REQUIRES the participation of the west in a theoretical holy war which will destroy their regional secular, monarchic or democratic enemies & rivals for power, enabling them to finally take power and institute their truly theocratic paradigm throughout the Arabic world….After which, they can make further plans for expansion (you know, the same sort of apocalyptic nonsense that the Christian right is so enamoured with).They don’t like music, they don’t like fun, they don’t like razors, etc etc, just like the Taliban. They want a full-on, universal caliphate with all the theocratic trimmings. That’s what the Pan Islamic Agenda is all about.
The Shia are a completely different sect, who’s basic agenda is furthering the interests of other Shia who have a history of repression by the Sunni elite in much of the Arab world (as distinct from Iran, which is in fact not an arab country, ethnically, culturally or linguistically).
The current Iranian president is (like Saddam) perfectly willing to use religious rhetoric to justify his management style, or incite the public, or generally consolidate his power, but he is really just another brutal & dictator. His clerics support Hizbollah as ‘brother Shias’, but in the end the establishment of a true Theocratic Caliphate would be a threat to his personal power.
Hizbollah is all about Palestine & Israel, and Shia interests in Iraq.
Their interest in international terrorism pretty much ends where foreign intervention ends.
“They hate us because we are dirty kauffer. They hate us because our success underlines their failure and they need a scapegoat for that. They hate us because they can channel hate into power and power into money and vice versa. They hate us because they hate.”
Yes, and No.
They hate you because of the volume of global influences you control, and because of your level of practical interference in regional affairs. But don’t feel bad; it’s only because you are ‘the world’s only remaining superpower’. For previous generations, it was everyone from the Huns to the Mughals to the British and French and the Turks. They also hate your equivalents in other partner countries, commensurate with involvement in similar enterprises.
You are quite right that this hatred is an extremely useful political currency, which they use as shamelessly as their enemies, and that they aren’t fond of infidels in general.
“but are essentially pursuing different goals.”
An Islamic caliphate… Same goal, slightly different flags'.
Nope. One is regional and political (couched in religious rhetoric), the other ideological and universalist.
“What was the topic of discussion again?”
How I squandered half a days work… Something about sailors and madmen...
Lol
Good one! (-:
“You appear to have an rather more emotional investment in this issue than I do.”
Broken leg.. Trapped with nothing to do but work and vent. Going out soon for a hobble.
“As to picking and choosing; yep, pretty much. (-:”
So I guess I get no slew… :-(
“only that Americas’ tacit and practical condemnation of such acts of territorial aggression is flexible according to national interest, rather than ‘ideologically inviolate’.”
As it should be, however it is as ideologically congruent in so much is practicable.
“Yup! That’s the one.”
Yet we are the ones that get whined at.
“I don’t insist on that you defer to the international community.”
Uhhh OK… Stick with me, soon you will be arguing my points I guess.
“Only that it’s hypocritical to condemn certain countries for not doing so, when America sees no need to.”
Again, we are back to “it’s only fair for everyone to have a doomsday device…. “ Hypocrisy or no, it’s a very bad idea.
“U.N. Mandate – You know, the process intended in theory to introduce some level of democratic recourse over the morass of self-interested & pragmatic national post-war tribes that inhabit the earth?”
Wait a minute… Didn’t someone say recently that: “I don’t insist on that you defer to the international community.”
You are giving me whiplash.
“(like my nationality –which isn’t British, btw – has anything to do with the validity of my arguments”
AAAAH HA! A CANADIAN! I KNEW IT! J'Accuse! From Toronto ill bet. Weaned on a diet of CBC “Those Bastards” diatribes and the Toronto Star… Yet mad as hell at the new border restrictions that might keep you from visiting the Great Satan. Stop me at any time.
“ Sure he did; and so did America in not preventing his invasion of Iraq. lol“
Yeah…Saddam shouldn’t have invaded Iraq… America should have prevented his mother from getting knocked up…
“The point is, America (like most other superpowers) only enforces the laws or curtails the infractions when it’s in the national interest”
Not always true, but regardless. Does that mean it is OK for Iran to take hostages whenever it feels like doing so? That seems to be your argument here. America has done some bad things so everyone should be allowed to do whatever humanity threatening thing they want to do. Especially the nutballs who think it is going to get them to paradise.
“America endorsed Saddam Hussein at one time, then condemned him when it suited them,”
Backwards; America endorsed Saddam Hussein when it suited them, then condemned him when he became too much of a bastard to ignore.
“As with Bin Laden, it’s not his tactics or brutality that they object to, but the fact that they are applied to America rather than her enemies.”
Not true and not fair.
“Unilateral invasions by (any) individual aggressors, or cartels of aggressors, are something else.”
SO the:
United States, United Kingdom, South Korea, Poland, Australia, Romania, Denmark, Georgia, El Salvador, Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Latvia, Mongolia, Albania, Lithuania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Macedonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova. Netherlands, Bulgaria, Slovakia. Slovenia, Italy, Ukraine, Spain, Japan, Thailand, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Hungary, Nicaragua, Singapore, Norway, Portugal, New Zealand, Philippines, Tonga and Iceland…
Is a “Cartel of Aggressors”?
“So (hopefully I won’t have to repeat this again), decide on the rules and live by them. If it was illegal to invade Kuwait without a U.N mandate, it was illegal to invade Iran (and Iraq) without one.”
One doesn’t mean the other…Hopefully I won’t have to repeat that again. (You are going to make me go get my laptop, aren’t you? )
“Bottom line – his vices were amply acceptable at the time, rhetorical bluster aside.”
He was on the lower end of the son of a bitch arc at that time. (As I have said)
“Civilian casualties in open warfare war inevitably dwarf those caused by terrorism.”
Most of the civilian casualties in Iraq have been from terrorism, not the invasion.
“If only someone would come up with a way to make both illegal, and then enforce it, OBJECTIVELY...”
Would be nice…
“Machiavellian.”
No… Trust me…
“Whatever.”
So much for WW1 then…
(Shrugs) Lots of quips & evasions - very little actual arguments, though.
Your Talkback on this Story