No one seriously wants this loon in the White House, do they? I’m having trouble parsing this:
On the eve of Saturday’s Nevada caucus, Ron Paul sits down with Piers Morgan for a revealing interview, during which the Republican from Texas shares his views on rape and abortion: "If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen."
The estrogen, I understand: it’ll prevent any potential pregnancy. But what is an “honest” rape? What is a “dishonest” rape, and what would he do with a woman who was dishonestly raped? He seems to be making weebly distinctions with no meaning at all.
It sounds like he’s saying if she was genuinely raped, then it’s ok to prevent a pregnancy with a shot of estrogen. (Isn’t that basically how Plan B works?) But if she was a dirty slut and is just *saying* she was raped, then she deserves to be punished with an unwanted pregnancy.
Because Republicans are all about the family values, don’t ‘cha know?
Madness. First that anyone should make such a stupid statement, second that anyone should discuss their opinion with Piers “Morgan” Moron.
Wait, so “morning-after” medication is okay now, but only if a physician determines the person who needs it was “really” raped… oy, this is going to be interesting. How many male relatives need to witness?
Oh, you know the way we women are always claiming to be raped when we weren’t. Romney had to make it very clear to us that hey, his advice about going to the emergency room afterwards wasn’t supposed to be for the liars. Otherwise, liars might take his advice and … and … then the people at the hospital might discover the lie?
Okay, that part is confusing. But he’s clearly not talking to the women who lie about how they were raped. That part is clear. I’m glad he cleared up the distinction between rape victims and “rape” “victims.”
I think he means that the woman was honest about it being a rape. ‘Cos, you know, women make things like that up all the time.
Perhaps there should be different degrees of rape, like there are for murder.
So first-degree rape is, like, an honest rape.
Second-degree, she was wearing slutty clothing.
Third degree, she said no but didn’t resist.
I am of course being bitterly sarcastic.
Does not compute!!!!!! Unless he meant that the rapist didn’t tell any lies while he abused and assaulted his victim. What kind of moron votes for this idiot to represent them?
Man’s a basket case. I live in one of the states where the R’s will caucus shortly; I had disenrolled at the previous election but am still on several loonies’ mailing lists. I’ve had 3 Ron Paul items in the last week alone. All went to the woodstove unopened.
a)This is /was an OBGYN
b) Can we just agree that the bullshit about being neither using nor being used by anyone in objectivism/libertarianism is just pure bullshit.
Certainly no one here is surprised by these remarks? Paul is an idiot who happens to hold a medical degree. His views on rape, and most other topics, are astonishingly backwards, primitive and ignorant. He seems to me to speak and act as if he doesn’t realize we live in the 21st Century and all the knowledge acquired and enlightenment gained over the last 500 years actually occurred.
So what, if she goes to the hospital a week or two after the rape (honest rape, of course), she’s not allowed to discontinue the pregnancy any more?
And when in the end he says that “It’s a tough one”. No, it’s not. It’s very easy, you and your cronies are just too busy making it difficult for women.
I think Paul is demonstrating why the “grab bag of repellent ideologies and a few attractive ideas” strategy is not going to work…
And when in the end he says that “It’s a tough one”. No, it’s not.
Yeah, it’s like he (and the interviewer) skipped right to the point where it’s any of his “libertarian” busineess what someone else chooses to do.
Demand “his turn,” probably.
Well to be fair it is highly doubtful that Piers Morgan would know the difference or even the dissonance of such puerility anyway.
Paul would be preaching to the converted there methinks.
Morgan…if possible…has even less smarts then Paul and far less integrity.
How he was ever considered for Larry King’s old job is a mystery unto itself.
Larry must be livid and shocked to the core that such underwhelming quality would be considered adequate replacement by anyone.
And as for the other sycophantic ‘interviews’ Morgan conducts, I would have to say very few folks alive can get there tongue so far up an orifice no matter how tight that orifice is…that is impressive.
As a Brit I can only apologize for the export of such toxic banality….he got kicked out of the editorship a national gutter paper because he preferred to promote a fucking load of seditious tripe as fact on the front page just to boost circulation…not because it had a point or an anchor in reality.
Probably got quite a few Brit troops dead and injured in Iraq due to that pompous amoral cretin.
If it had a brain he would be dangerous…but without one he is worse.
@anubisprime @15:
Seconded. Piers Moron is a contemptible, self-serving sack of shite.
An “honest rape”, eh? Going by that…standard, there aren’t any female victims who would qualify for that shot of estrogen.
And now that I’ve sufficiently released my anti-Moron bile, I’ll try to address the subject at hand.
Ron Paul is a self-serving, contemptible bag of shite. Humanity is better than this, in so many ways.
*still gritting my teeth*
I’m from Europe and i find reading that type of bullshit just U-N-B-E-A-R-A-B-L-E. I’m form country dominated by catholics, and i’m absolutely convinced that such opinion said out loud, would cause riots, and politician won’t have future in any field that requires social interaction. You called him “LOON”, i call him “FUCKIN MORON”.
@ Caine, Fleur du Mal
That depends. Does old Ronnie have any female relatives? I’m sure if any of them got raped he’d consider it to have been an “honest rape.”
Anyone else is SOL, though.
I immediately thought that he would probably not consider a man raping his wife as “an honest rape”. Heck, that’s just a man demanding that she perform her “wifely duties”, right?
I think that he might question date-rape, too. She agreed to go out with the guy, right?
This is the attitude in Texas, so I’m not at all surprised at this idiot espousing these ideas.
Ron Paul has made himself irrelevant yet again.
I used to think Ron Paul was a better choice than the two other fucked up parties, but when I saw a video where he said he believed in a creator, I was pissed at him too. Now there’s absolutely no one I would vote for.
I don’t feel I’m being represented by my government.
I think what he means is if she really was raped she should be allowed to terminate the pregnancy, but if she had consensual sex and got pregnant she should be denied the pregnancy termination. ‘Cuz, of course, having sex willingly should be punished by being forced to have an unwanted baby and the baby should be punished by being born unwanted. That’s justice in Ron Paul’s America.
It’s easy to make things complicated. It’s hard to keep
them simple. – J. Garcia
We can’t do shit to protect minorities or protect the economy…but we sure as hell can use state power to designate females as brood mares.
LIBERTARIANISM! Freedom for those who least need it!
So if someone was stabbed during an assault, you won’t treat them unless they were “honestly” assaulted?
If they were robbed, you won’t return their money to them unless they were “honestly” robbed?
This is why these assholes make no sense at all.
@Aquaria
But a baby is a life! We can only kill it if the woman was significantly pure.
…wait what.
Every time a pregnancy’s prevented, God destroys another hundred American job openings… or something.
Of course the burden of proof would be on the victim here. Just head to the emergency room, immediately, with enough evidence to show conclusively it was rape, and the humanitarian doctor will give you a shot and a pat on the head and fix everything.
And he thinks poor people should just load up the covered wagons, head west, and go homesteading. That’s my impression; he thinks there’s still a frontier to explore and conquer, and all anyone needs is a little gumption.
The man is utterly blind and clueless regarding his own privilege.
I’m surprised this thread hasn’t been overrun by ron paul kooks. Too early maybe.
His newsletters and possible connections to hate groups tell a different story.
It might be that he actually eager wishes for a time where the poor and black would be allowed to die like animals
Oh, that is simple PZ. Only good, god-fearin’ xian girls get honestly raped (doubtless such rapes could never be committed by virtuous fundies, only by awful non-xian men – probably muslims, godless baby-eaters like us and, given Paul’s confused blather on the topic, possibly gay men*) and so deserve Ron’s… unusual approach to abortion. These good, upstanding victims of base male lusts are, of course, under no circumstances to be confused with the wanton sluts that are clearly asking for it by being alive whilst shamefully non-xian.
Or by being kids. Even xian kids. Kids are always begging for it, just ask the catholics…
The scary part is that legions of Paul’s supporters would probably consider the above to be valid arguments once the sarcasm was excised and replaced with the usual insincere fundy pseudo-concern.
—————————————————————-
* You know, those awful gay men who are forever chasing after innocent xian women and trying to have their wicked way with them.
Wait, that’s not right…
Ing
LIBERTARIANISM! All the freedom you can afford!
I immediately thought that he would probably not consider a man raping his wife as “an honest rape”. Heck, that’s just a man demanding that she perform her “wifely duties”, right?
What’s sad about this is that the soap opera Guiding Light showed what a husband raping a wife could look like, and how ugly–in 1979:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV1Zu1wxhl8#t=2m01s
The actor in this scene, Michael Zaslow, pushed for the producers to make the rape scene look ugly and brutal. He had been in a previous rape scene that he believed the show had made look almost romantic. Zaslow wanted to make it absolutely clear that rape wasn’t romantic, and that it wasn’t any better if a husband did it to his wife.
So why did Michael Zaslow and Guiding Light get that in 1979, and Ron Paul and the rest of the christslime bigots can’t grasp the idea in 2012?
What’s next? Is Ron Paul going to say that only rapists should be allowed to buy condoms? He’s just another right-wing goon who dehumanizes women and children automatically and without thought. A woman isn’t a human being, she is an incubator. A child isn’t a human being, it is punishment for having sex when Paul doesn’t approve of it.
anubisprime @ 15;
As another Brit Pharyngulite, I second anubisprime’s apology for inflicting the toxic quantum singularity of integrity-free stupidity that is Piers Morgan on the US…
That said – no, you can’t give him back.
What I’m taking away from this is that he just agreed that life does not start at conception. After all, if it did, it wouldn’t matter how it happened. A child conceived by rape is still a child.
Given that a zygote is not a child, he has no excuse for not banning plan B, regardless of how slutty the woman was.
Seconded.
In case you live in a safe state, go ahead and vote for Donald Duck.
In case you live in a swing state, I ask you on behalf of pretty much the whole world to please vote for the lesser evil of the two with an actual chance.
O hai! I maded you this internet out of lavender cookies. And i did not eated it.
That would explain a lot. Thank you for giving me today’s lightbulb moment.
Yep. Come back by comment 100.
They won’t overrun the thread, though. There aren’t enough of them. They’ll only derail it.
Gregory, I notice you’ve completely left race out.
The best freedom money can buy.
Oh wai Iz got it
Honest==White
microraptor:
Oh, that’s different. All female relatives would be reincarnations of the virgin Mary, ya know. Just like those upright Christian pro-lifers who would sneak their daughters in the back door when I used to escort.
A3kr0n:
*snort!*
Thank goodness you’ve seen the light, as it were. Not only is Paul an anti-choice, rape redefinin’ sack of shit, it looks like he has personal ties to neonazis, too. http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2012/02/02/anonymous-ron-paul-has-ties-to-white-supremacists/
Hmmmm, I wonder how his ass licking sycophants will try to defend him now.
It’s pretty easy to see what he means.
The key word is immediately. Not to contradict the chiseled-in-stone dogma that personhood begins at conception, Ron Paul obviously means “the raped woman should receive her estrogen shot before a zygote can form.
Raped women, be very, very quick or go buy a baby bed.
note that even if Paul isn’t consorting with buddy buddies with the fascists
a) Fascists fucking support him
b) Racists, in fact the UBBER RACISTS that other racists think are too racists fucking love him
c) He knows this and sees no problem and no need to question what about him makes him so likeable to Skeletor and Cobra COmmander
Huh.. Answer is simple. “Honest” in his sense means, “I don’t believe that 90% of them are real.” Honest to normal people means, “There is a tiny number of cases, you occasionally hear about, especially among immature teens, where an accusation is made, purely out of spite.” Tiny being a) easily proven to be false, usually, and b) probably less than 1%.
Basically, this is denial. Denial on one side that anyone would make a false accusation, and denial on the other side that the vast majority of cases *are* actual rapes, and not false accusations.
And, I have to admit, the fact that such accusation can be easily made, and may not be easy to disprove in all cases, is one thing that seriously freaks me out about, for example, the people suggesting death penalty for rapists, on a prior post. Because, you know, the system will *always* have clear evidence, like a polygraph (yeah, being double sarcastic with that one) that its completely true. Women an human beings too, and humans can, and will, use everything they have to hurt others, in some circumstances, even claims of them doing the worst things you can imagine, and over spectacularly stupid things.
It’s probably also got something to do with the idea that a woman who was honestly raped would immediately run into the welcoming arms of those lovely nurses and doctors in the emergency, in tears, with her rapist’s DNA under her fingernails and a broken arm because she fought that hard for her virtue. If she waits a couple of days, it probably wasn’t that bad. Or she’s making it up just to get out of pregnancy. I’m a bit surprised he didn’t openly come out and say this – that the immediately is due to the wish to check that she was honestly raped, and not just faking it to get that estrogen shot.
I thought progesterone prevented ovulation, not estrogen.
Nimsudo,
Paul isn’t talking about preventing ovulation, but preventing implantation of the fertilized egg.
From the thread at Dispatches that Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart, liar and scoundrel linked to above, a commenter, Area Man, gave a most excellent poe of a Ron Paul supporter,
Nailed it.
If any women were to kick Ron Paul square in the testicles, would it be an “honest assault”?
Yeah, that was my take as well, Beatrice. Paul thinks any woman who was really raped would go to tha authorities immediately, and if they don’t they were probably just feeling guilty about having sex, or something like that. Because no woman ever worries about not being believed, or not being taken seriously because she in any way acted like she was interested in sex, and therefore was asking for it.
Sure, Ron, tell us another one.
Remember as a Libertarian and Christian Objectivist (close enough), Paul lives his whole life in a fantasy world where people are in bad situations entirely because they choose to be.
Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart@45,
I read through the hacked emails, available here, and much as I loathe the man, I’m not convinced there’s anything much new in them. We already know he accepted a $500 donation from a prominent Stormfronter in 2008 and refused to return it, but the claims he knowingly meets with A3P fascists or Nick Griffin seem to lack substantiation. There are claims that someone called Jeff Imbar is the link, and is Paul’s “#2 man in Illinois”, but googling “Jeff Imbar” “Ron Paul” only brings up pages quoting this same material. Certainly the fascists think Ron Paul rallies are promising places to recruit, and I’m sure they’re right, but he probably has enough political nous to keep them at arms’ length.
@KG
Addressed already.
Isn’t the fact that Paul is perfectly fine with being the idol for literal Nazis damning enough?
Wait! Wait! What about the Federal Reserve? What about the Gold Standard? Clearly, there must be a Federal Reserve on what rape IS? Right???? Is there a Gold Standard for rape or is it just, well, honest?
KG,
Ah, I haven’t had the time to actually read the emails for myself, but I’m totally with Ing on this. Even if Paul is not involved with the movement himself, any candidate that white supremacists support is WHOA not to be trusted with any political power whatsoever.
Silly people, you do not know what an honest rape is? It is very simple. It is when a man rapes a modestly dressed woman he does not know. Anything else shows just how a female leads on a man.
For example, if the woman is wearing a push up bra in order to show her cleavage and wearing an outfit to show off her body, even a male stranger is strongly tempted to help himself.
Why, we all know how thirteen year old girl just lead on adult men.
And it is impossible for a wife to be raped by her husband.
Remember, if any doubt can be cast upon the woman, it is not an “honest” rape. That is why rape is so rare.
I’m surprised at the resurgence of Libertarianism among young people. I assume that’s because they haven’t figured out the scam. I really don’t get Ron Paul’s appeal to them given his propensity for this kind of thing. If he’s not being abhorrent, he’s being stupid. He’s other big thing this week was defending he’s close friend Mitt Romney’s stupid gaff about the poor. VP nomination maybe?
“Piers Moron” — I like it. I assume Piers didn’t ask him what he meant by an “honest rape.” Slimy softball TV interviewer. Piers has his own problems what with all that messy phone hacking business while he was working for the Murdochs.
There’s more than enough reasons why Paul is not to be trusted with any political power even if white supremacists hated him, and as I noted, he’s already accepted and refused to return a donation from a Nazi – which would be quite enough to damn him on its own. But you made specific reference to the emails leaked by Anonymous, and as I have read them, the fact that as far as I can see, they don’t show what some stories have said they show, is relevant information.
Moreover, taken literally, your statement above is wrong. Imagine a future election in which a black right-wing Republican (and you know they exist) was up against a fine upstanding liberal who happened to be white. At least some white supremacists would support the latter – even if the candidate repudiated that support.
Regardless of the word “honest”, this once again demonstrates that the “pro-life” movement isn’t about saving “babies” but about punishing women: It’s clear that Paul doesn’t believe that zygotes are babies. If someone brought him a baby that was conceived by rape and asked if it should be strangled, I’m reasonably confident that he would say no, and possibly even be really upset at the thought. But a zygote he’s willing to off-but only if it’s the product of “honest” rape. Not if it’s the product of consensual sex or an ambiguous situation, because that would call for punishing the female participant.
@4
It is very dishonest of you to pretend that women don’t lie frequently about being raped, especially women from conservative environments.
That is way it is always wise to assume they are lying by default, especially if there is no evidence of physical violence.
Banhammer
Please tell me this is a joke.
If it’s not :
If someone tells you they were mugged, do you first assume they are lying? If not, why not?
Also, rape is rape only if there is evidence of physical violence? Coercion and threats are apparently unknown to you.
I would also like to know how you’ve come about that theory that women often lie about being raped.
datasolution,
What? Provide some citation for your assertion that “women lie frequently about being raped”.
KG,
Okay, I wasn’t clear. I really don’t give a good goddamn which candidate an individual neonazi supports, the issue is with the endorsement of a candidate from one of the groups. I have a hard time believing that a white supremacists organization would support any liberal.
Obivous troll is obvious people
This is probably someone we’ve seen before and who has been banned before knowing that it’s a trigger. Ignore them and join me in asking PZ for an IP check
datasolution
Trolling is frowned upon here.
I couldn’t tell for sure if datasolution was being sarcastic. I don’t think xe was.
‘Cos, you know, they’re fascists.
I have enough of a track record for the regulars to know I am using bitter sarcasm. And even without that, I would hope that my last sentence was my tell. What excuse does datasolution have?
I can dismiss Paul’s patron saint Ayn, except in this area: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTmac2fs5HQ
Oh yeah Ayn was so great on the rape topic
Databuttplug also sends up a troll alarm with the name. Having to list skepticism or data or shit like that in the name is a bad sign.
OK, this might be total paranoia, but a Nazi posted on a thread at B&W several weeks ago and had an avatar that looked like one of the WordPress ones, but was subtly different, which I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out. The little shapes on the side of datasolution’s, if put together, form a swastika. This could totally be chance, but since people were talking about Nazis and Scumfront above, that might have called one out of the muck.
Is there any way to tell if someone’s is just a regular WP avatar or a homemade one?
SC, I think that you are being paranoid. But one can be a spleen weasel with being in Storm Front.
(And I do wish that people get around to banning Persian Power 88.)
This is the thread I was talking about.
Salty Current, are you perchance a mariner, or is it just a name?
Even with out that gravitar, what P Smith said was enough to be labelled as a neo-Nazi. There was enough dog whistles there That gravitar just confirmed it.
There is not enough to tell what datasolution is after but I do fear that it was meant seriously.
I wish. No, not a mariner. Or…marinara. :)
***
Yes, that’s what I said there, but it was confirmation. What I hate is thinking that these people are using the gravatars to identify and signal to others like them, so that might lead to some false positives. I do suspect that Smith wasn’t the only one.
My MD friend was like, ‘WTF would estrogen do?’ then I pointed to the progesterone/estrogen shot, and he said, “The estrogen in that doesn’t do anything.”
So yeah, not only is it stupid, it’s medically gibberish.
SC,
P Smith’s gravatar was much more blatant than datasolution’s, so it could just be a coincidence.
But, whatever. DS’s post was incredibly shitty, regardless.
…so that might lead to some false positives.
Of which this is likely one – I just realized that my own has those shapes as well. :|
Ah. I thought I might have found a fellow seaman/woman with which to regale tales of rough ocean voyages and sea monsters. Oh well!
Sorry to disappoint. As consolation, here’s a tale of sea monsters and skepticism.
My MD friend was like, ‘WTF would estrogen do?’
Not only that (the treatment is a progestin, not estrogen), but a shot???
As to the “honest” rape, two things. First, the definition of an honest rape (via SD Sen. Bill Napoli):
BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Second, all the bills I’ve read that have a rape exception for abortion, or an opt-out of a forced U/S, have a provision that the woman has to either produce the police report of the rape, or she has to give a written statement that she was “raped” raped and didn’t yet file a police report because she fears her life is in danger, before she will be allowed access to proper medical care or allowed to opt-out of submitting to a nonmedical, intrusive intervention.
“weebly distinctions with no meaning at all” = Politics
Well duh. An ‘honest rape’ is totally different from a ‘lying rape’, which is essentially a ‘ravaging’.
For more information on a ravaging, when ‘no’ really means no but it feels great: see any description of a sexual act from a big fat Ayn Rand pamphlet.
Ugh…that Bill Napoli quote always makes me want to puke. Hey, dumbass, if you were robbed at gunpoint, but not shot, does that mean no crime was committed? After all, that wasn’t “as bad as you can possibly make it”. What if the mugger takes your wallet, but not your fancy watch? Since it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, it’s like it didn’t happen at all, right?
Fucking asshole.
You’re probably right: in countries where women are likely to be ostracized, punished, or even murdered for being raped and “dishonoring” their families or some such shit, they’re likely to cover it up, which may involve making false statements – IE, lying. But that doesn’t apply here, which is about women who have openly acknowledged being raped and…
…oh, not what you meant?
Go drink bleach you worthless sack of shit.
captainahags #85
I’m about the closest thing you’ll find to a seaman around here. I spent six years in the Navy and I do a fair bit of sailing.
narciblog @ # 1: Isn’t that basically how Plan B works?
Yabbut that newfangled stuff was developed after Ron Paul left med school, so it doesn’t count.
I’m sorry to say this, but if you’d all read the Ron Paul Newsletters when I told you to (back when he ran the first time), NONE of this would be surprising. Next time, do your homework, kids.
You’re not serious
I must have missed class that day. Also, I’ve never fucking heard of you.
You’ve never heard of Sheldon Helms? Is such ignorance possible?
Actually it is. I’ve never heard of him either.
The sad thing is, this raving lunatic is the only candidate that’s sane enough to want to avoid war with Iran.
sunsangnim,
with the exception of truly ignorant candidates like Rick Perry, even the other candidates will probably stay out of Iran too.
so… wasn’t it last week that Mittster noted that children resulting from rapes are “gifts from God”, in order to justify his complete anti-abortion stance?
and here were are, forced now to conclude, that Ron Paul is presenting the PROGRESSIVE side of the republican take on this issue, since he of course would exclude “honest rape”.
I gave up headdesking on this shit years ago.
is there something beyond the multiple headdesk?
If you want to know more about why women lie frequently about being raped you can go here for a long list of specific cases.
I’m sure if you go to the Stormfront website you’ll find a similarly long list of reasons why non-whites are a mortal danger to Western society. So what?
Reasons same as documented cases??
How many documented cases?
Reasons same as documented cases??
does it also document all the cases where women weren’t lying?
does it document the cases where someone lied about having their car stolen too?
oh, and what about all the cases where the car really was stolen?
you have no clue how useless your link is, do you?
poor sod.
…why not just make a sig in your posts that says:
MRA in da hizzy!
So what does it prove, other than in a large population, a lot of things happen somewhere with some “frequency?” How many rape cases did you have to pick through to compile the list? How many real rapes go unreported, vs. how many false accusations that go unreported? (Oh wait–I guess that wouldn’t happen by definition.)
This isn’t useful, dumbass, even from a statistical, applicable-to large-population, standpoint. Anecdotes with clearly built-in selection bias without context. In list form. Groovy. Shall we make all our social and political decisions that way?
Dumbass.
Let me save you some time:
FBI statistics show that about 8% of rape allegations are determined by the police to be “unfounded.” 8 out of 100 is not a majority, that’s grade school math, so you’re either the dumbest sack of shit on earth, or a garden-variety lying sack of shit for claiming that
. Additionally, a large fraction of that 8% are not actually false:
Source.
Emphasis mine. What the bolded portion implies is that a significant number of rapes are being labeled “unfounded” because the cops to whom they’re reported are, like you, scumbags who don’t think certain rapes “really” count as rape.
(And, yes, I’m aware that that admission is buried in about the most stupidly sympathetic to your side source my searches turned up. That’s pretty damning.)
Ing FTW! Yes, this is the essential point. If they (not just Paul, but all the anti-abortion people) truly believed that a zygote was a fully realized human being deserving of legal protections then there would never be an “exemption” in their cockamamie rules for rape or incest. Most realize what sort of backlash that such a policy will obtain and therefore they allow for exceptions.
@Dr. Audley Z. Darkheart
Estrogen won’t prevent implantation. The pill doesn’t prevent implantation. Emergency contraception is simply a large, single dose of birth control hormones. For example, Plan B OneStep uses levenogestrol, a synthetic progesterone. So would the estrogen trigger menstruation? Because that would be the killing of a fertilized embryo, which Ron Paul says he believes is a person. But normal EC prevents ovulation, not implantation, thus preventing pregnancy. We know this because if a woman has ovulated before taking the EC, she can still get pregnant. Thus the 5% failure rate of EC taken immediately after sex.
Not like we’ve never heard THAT argument before.
Rape Myth #1: “She’s Probably Lying”
Some cities reported fewer rapes than they do homicides. We know from rapists self-reporting that THOSE numbers don’t work. Apparently there’s a higher rate of police dismissing actual rape victims than there is of false rape reports.
And did you think it was only in cases of rape that Paul has reprehensible presumptions about women? Then you will love his stand on sexual harassment. In Freedom Under Siege he (or his ghostwriter Lewellyn Rockwell, who can tell?) states “Why don’t they [women] quit once the so-called harassment starts? Obviously the morals of the harasser cannot be defended, but how can the harassee escape some responsibility for the problem? Seeking protection under civil rights legislation is hardly acceptable. If force was clearly used, that is another story, but pressure and submission is hardly an example of a violation of one’s employment rights.”
I am stunned and astonished that any male Ron Paul supported gets any action at all. Wouldn’t the words “I support Paul for President” result in an automatic flinging of her drink in his face – sort of like the way you recoil after touching a hot iron?
Support
edSupporter. Damn typo.If force was clearly used, that is another story, but pressure and submission is hardly an example of a violation of one’s employment rights.
so, in RP’s world, discrimination does not exist, and nobody has ever suffered from coercion.
I wonder what it feels like to be so disconnected from reality?
Oy. In other words, the belief in false rape claims causes more harm than it prevents.
At least Paul agrees about some kind of emergency contraceptive ?
He’s still way out there in “bat-shit insane” land, but Santorum is all for forced pregnancy for rape victims.
Speaking of rape, has anyone else seen the Newt for Prez. ad that ends with a pic of him looking down on a crowd, holding his hand up in the air, palm out ? I couldn’t decide if it reminded me of Stalin, Hitler or the late Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il.
Pressure and submission most certainly IS a violation of one’s rights when it’s your employer trying to get into your pants.
So where are all these crazy women who file false rape reports? I bet there’s a dozen or so on the entire continent.
What are the odds on datasolution being a multiple rapist? Who else has such an obvious interest in women who report rape being assumed to be lying? After all, even most MRAs have a mother, sister or daughter they might care about.
Audley Z. Darkheart@68,
As it happens, A3P don’t actually endorse Ron Paul because they have their own Presidential candidate. Another piece of information I derived from reading the leaked emails. However I agree that they might do if he won the nomination – his election would certainly suit them – and would never endorse a liberal candidate.
Oh yeah, that’s to say nothing of the fact that only (maybe up to) 30% of actual rapes are even reported anyway, with 42% of rape survivors telling absolutely no-one, let alone police . And only 16% of cases reported actually result in a prison sentence (with leaves 95% of rapists unpunished). Alternatively, this site has stats from 10 years ago, saying that 16% of rapes are reported at all, with a conviction rate of about 40%, but also notes that “21% of convicted rapists are never sentenced to jail or prison time, and 24% receive time in local jail which means that they spend an average of less than 11 months behind bars.” (Which still leaves 95% of rapists basically unpunished).
But yeah, there are just soooo many women clamoring to put men in jail, and so many innocent men suffering due to those evil litigious women. The men accused of rape are the real victims here. And yet these men are also the only “victims” that MRAs tend not to play the “Blame the Victim” game with. Funny, in a projectile vomiting kind of way.
Tis:
David Marjanović @ 42;
Good point. What is the betting that, in Ron Paul’s diseased libertarian worldview, ‘honesty’ is distinctly pale of hue?
It does seem likely that ‘honestly’ raped women must be both Xian and white in Paul’s eyes – miss out on either criterion, and no cigar.
Not that he is a *gasp* racist, you understand. Why, I hear some of his best friends are black. He even lets them use his bathroom…
Right. Because they only work that job for fun anyway. It’s not like they’re dependent on that paycheck, or anything. It’s not as if they need the money to pay rent or feed their children. *
And besides, getting a new job is, like, totally easy. There’s hardly any unemployment, right?
Why is it that the more I learn about this guy, the more he looks like a scumbag? Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.
* Interesting sidenote: Ron Paul wants women to be forced to have children and then be forced to quit their jobs. Is there an agenda at work here?
FossilFishy #123
I’m impressed. I’ve just spent five minutes with a bit of line trying unsuccessfully to tie a bowline onehanded. What’s the trick to it?
I’m surprised that this thread has only had one rape apologist and no libertarians show up. They must all be getting ready to watch the Stuporbowl.
Paul claims to be a libertarian — y’know, get the government off of people’s backs so they can behave honestly, right? So why the hell are US libertarians so fucking concerned with what women do?
That is a feature, not a bug.
Except that he is not irrelevant. The attitudes espoused by Ron Paul are an integral part of the rape culture in the united States. And when he, and others, keep spouting this garbage without being challenged, it reinforces the misogynistic attitudes of a shitload of men.
US style libertarianism — justice for the wealthy. No surprises there.
Well, only if the rapist wasn’t white. If a white woman is raped by a white man then it isn’t an honest rape because libertarianism!
Citation, please, as you appear to be a rape-denialist.
And how many of those are cases in which the victim was pressured into changing her report by friends or relatives in order to protect the offender? Or is that not even a possibility in your sick world?
Which, for a certain type of person, is a feature, not a bug.
No, he doesn’t. He approves of it only for cases in which he would approve of use.
So that a deserving white male can take the job.
I think so. I think that Ron Paul has the attitude that, for most jobs, the position should only be held by a white male.
Although, as a libertarian, RP won’t like it: the state provides a mechanism for determining “honest rape”. All the victim needs to do is immediately report to the ER as soon as the rapist is convicted and all potential appeals have been waived or have upheld the conviction.
Babysitting will be provided at the ER, of course.
On Ron Paul’s “estrogen” comment, here’s the Wiki article on the Yuzpe regimen:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yuzpe_regimen&mobileaction=view_normal_site
Are we surprised that a) he’s wrong about current emergency contraception and b) he’s wrong about past emergency contraception?
(Hopefully my link works. If not, search “Yazpe regimen” in Wikipedia and it should pop.)
@64. datasolution – 4th February 2012 at 4:40 pm :
Well at first I assumed you must have been being horribly, unfunnnily sracastic in that comment.
That you forgot your “/sarc” tag and would respond with a mortified : “Yikes! Y’all thought I was being serious!!11!” when you were called out for that.
But no-oo0o, you had to go and post your comment #101
5th February 2012 at 12:01 am and further lower my views of Humanity in general and make what’s already a bad news day even worse.
Ron Paul indeed is a slimeball, scumbag whackjob.
I expected more of datasolution.
What a let-down.
Paul bases his politics on Ayn Rand’s writing and named a son after her, even though she was a staunch atheist, Yet, he follows the Christian superstitions much of the time- why doesn’t his head asplode?
@ sunsangnim- 4 February 2012 at 9:49 pm :
Hmm .. that’s a very different topic again.
Thing is :
1) Avoiding war with Iran means *Iran* needs to want avoiding war with us. It doesn’t. Iran is brutal pyschopathic theocracy with a leadership that is just plain nuts and does want to exterminate other nations in the region and destroy the “Great Satan.” Meaning us. Appeasement doesn’t work. Iran wants us dead and gone or converted to their Jihadist Shiite shit ideology and enslaved to their wishes and demands. You want to do that or would prefer to fight?
2) Too late. We’re already in a war with Iran. We just haven’t fully woken up to that sad reality yet. War with Iran coming out into the open anyday now – bound to happen, probably sooner than we ‘re expecting.
3) Iran is actually doing what Iraq was attacked for doing -trying to develop nuclear WMDs which it will use to try and get its way. Everyone needs to ask the BIG question :
Are Iran’s dictators, Ayatollahs and mullahs really teh sort of people we can trust to have A-bombs?
If not – as I think is clearly the case – we have to take action and stop them getting those A-bombs. Because the Iranians are just crazy enough to use them justifying their intended mass genocide of innocent people by their deluded Jihadist death cult which they already use to justify being the globe’s largest and worst sponsor of international terrorism right now. Time is running out. The sooner we act the better.
So, I know its going to be unpopular here but when you really think and understand the situation I think the reality is it is NOT fighting Iran that’s the insane course of action and fighting Iran – doing everything we can to prevent Iran getting nukes including war – is the only sane & reasonable course.
Sometimes pre-emptive war really is necessary self defence.
Don’t make me use examples you know a huge & obvious one exists.
Of course, looking at the potential POTUSes, there are some who might say that Iran isn’t the only country that can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons.
StevoR,
take your Islamophobic, war-mongering paranoia elsewhere. It’s people like you who make a war against Iran more likely…
Thank you
says always the attacker regardless (of anything, really).
says always the rationalizer, after saying the previous thing.
What about examples of preemptive war that didn’t quite “work out”?
Ron Paul was born in the mid-1930s and has not changed his mind about anything since 1945. Basically he is right about Iraq and wrong about just about everything else. It is not surprising, given his age and background, that he thinks there are ‘honest’ and, I assume, ‘dishonest’ rapes. This is probably the last time we’ll see him but at least he has a son to carry on the lunacy.
StevoR:
The only way that Iran can do any real damage to the United States is by sucking us into an actual shooting war. Take your anti-Islam bigotry, your fearmongering, your jingoistic simplicity, and one dead porcupine (dipped in Tabasco sauce), and shove it up your arse.
No, I don’t want Iran to have the bomb, because more nuclear weapons means more chances for accidents. But the idea that once they get one they’ll promptly nuke Tel Aviv or give it to terrorists to blow up Dubuque is bullshit. Iran wants the bomb for the same reason everyone else does, to show they’re a member of the Big Boy’s Club. And members of the Big Boy’s Club don’t throw nukes around willy nilly. Especially the little guys, because doing so just gives someone an excuse to nuke you. The theocrats who run Iran are like any other dictators, they want to live as long and in as much comfort as possible, to enjoy their power.
Ah yes SteveR’s argument. We have to commit genocide because it would be horrible if someone willing to commit genocide could get their hands on powerful weapons.
Steve, did you ever think that maybe the casual disregard America has for Iranian lives is WHY they’d want nukes?
When you can have a candidate for president gloriously proclaiming his support of the slaughter of their people, unironically to song? yeah…they want a deterrent.
Did you ever think of how they might view us? Turd fucking Christ bots who hate Muslims because they’re too dumb to tell the difference between Saudis and Persians who think the idea of killing whole bunches of them is funny?
Datasolution needs to be banned. He’s either a troll or a Nazi (did everyone else miss where he defended Stormfront?)
Just look at this thread for more of his idiocy (exhibiting a “them or us” mentality that would make W proud).
Anyhoo, I’d also like to reiterate one of my posts from that thread:
Ing, point me to where he defended Stormfront again, please?
(sorry, I was mostly ignoring datasolution, when I used the word “idiocy”, I was referring to StevoR. Not to mix them all up here)
The solution is obvious. America needs to set up moral courts in each hospital. There each woman who claims a rape has occurred may expeditiously present appropriate evidence, or if necessary, be forced to present such. Then, after due consideration, the moral judges will decide whether the female is found to be honest and worthy of a dispensation of
graceestrogen.And thereby we fulfill the laws of a libertarian universe.
Ing, I read that as referring to his list of why women lie, but who knows, he certainly wasn’t concerned at all about possibly being associated with Stormfront…
StevoR @ 134;
I think you are conflating rhetoric with policy here. the Iranian government talks tough mostly for domestic consumption – in order to prop up the highly oppressive Islamic Republic and cement the grip on power of the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council by means of seeking to frighten their citizenry with tales of how evil the rest of the world is. America (like Israel and the UK) simply makes for a really easy target, mostly because of its own policies. The recent activities of the Western powers most certainly do look like the course of dealings of an expansionist, neo-colonial powerbloc. The fact that all the recent targets have been majority muslim societies plays very neatly into the ‘war on islam’ construct favoured by extremists of both Sunni and Shia extraction as a recruitment tool, and central to the propaganda message of the Iranian regime.
Even as people like you worry about Iran plotting the destruction of the US and the demolition of your way of life – a fear nurtured and encouraged by rightwing ideologues and warmongers in the US and elsewhere who would greatly benefit from a war with Iran finacially due to control of its oil reserves and the strategically important Strait of Hormuz – the Iranian regime expends great effort ensuring that its people (and broader islamic and Middle Eastern public opinion) are caught up in the fear that the West is reverting to its bad old colonial tendencies and intends to destroy their culture and effectively enslave their people to puppet regimes and corporate interests.
Roll up, roll up everybody! Get your New and improved structured and induced mass fear rught here – the means of political and social control that is both more effective than the Roman bread and circuses technique with the added bonus of being cheaper. Comes with a free sample of authoritarinaism and war mongering. Buy this essential accessory for the well dressed tyrant today…
So, we have a system of mutual fear, with both sides reacting more to a grotesque, boogeyman version of their opponents than to the political reality. In some respects it is reminiscent of the Cold War. Hopefully, we can avoid repeating the mistakes of that era.
A modern version of ‘Great Game’ power politics, the sponsorship of terrorism and proxy conflicts are not the same thing as direct warfare. Who do you think, on recent track record, is more likely to start a shooting war? Iran, or the US? Are you sure that these other ‘threats’ aren’t simply a convenient premise for a war that is to be fought for far less noble reasons than the notional ‘defence of freedom’?
Technically, Iran is still only accused of such activity. Perhaps we should be leery of absolute certitude – remember when it was an ‘open secret’ that Iraq was stockpiling WMDs? Remember a certain copper-bottomed, iron-clad (and allegedly rather ‘sexed up’ – and not in the lingerie wearing, come-hither-eyes sense) dossier? Remember a war fought in recent history to prevent “the worst weapons falling into the hands of the worst regimes”?
Strange, I am still waiting on the discovery of Saddam’s oddly unused doomsday arsenal. Maybe he has it stashed in a Bond villain-seque volcano base? That is pretty much as credible as the version of events put forward by the Bush and Blair administrations, afterall…
By the same token, are rapture-ready, armageddon-obsessed religious fundamentalists convinced that the end of the world is nigh and happy to denounce all those not of their narrow xian sect as hell bound abominations really the sort of people we can trust to have not only the second largest H-bomb arsenal on the planet (and with it the power to exterminate all human civilisation several dozen times over), but also the most technologically advanced military/industrial complex in human history? Afterall, that is the situation we have faced in the past and will probably all too soon face again in the US. You don’t trust the mullahs? Well, neither do I, but I also don’t trust the xian fundies in government with access to WMDs. Indeed, I think that there isn’t all that much to choose between them.
Then there is the fact, demonstrated repeatedly by recent history, that talking about initiating thermonuclear armageddon is one thing, doing it is another. The same arguments of the imminent destruction of humanity were deployed in relation to North Korea. If they got the Bomb, an apocalyptic nuclear war would surely follow…
Only it hasn’t, and there is no reason to suppose that it will.
When Pakistan became a nuclear armed state, Indian nationalists belived that nuclear war was imminent – such a militant society so riven with islamist extremism could never be trusted with such power. The next time tensions rose over the Kashmiri region, the world would look on in horror at mushroom clouds over Delhi…
Only it didn’t.
One could look further back, and see the exact same arguments applied to the Chinese nuclear programme and that of the former USSR back in the ’50s – and yet we are still here.
Are you seeeing a pattern yet?
The ‘we must stop the crazy people getting the Bomb’ excuse for sabre rattling and warmongering has been done to death. Other than ‘they are all brown and scary’ is there any reason to suppose that Iran would start a nuclear war? If nothing else, Ahmadinejad has shown himself to be a savvy political operator; I doubt that he, or the other figures in the secular arm of the Iranian government, would see much benefit in a war that would inevitably reduce Iran itself (along with vast tracts of the planet) to an irradiated wasteland. They will see no more benfit in nuclear war than the Soviets did or the modern Russian and Chinese governments do.
Assuming that the claims that Iran is pursuing a bomb are true (a likely scenario, I grant you) then yes, they will come onto the global stage as a nuclear power with much fanfare.
Yes, they will likely throw their weight around and make all manner of unreasonable demands.
Yes, they will sabre-rattle and engage in all the stupid brinksmanship that seems to come with the possession of really powerful weapons – but that is all they will do.
I am supremely unconvinced that even the infamously ranty Ayatollah really buys in to his own martyrdom schtick. If he did, he has had any number of opportunities to die ‘gloriously’ throughout his life. Why, then, has he lived to become an old man, when he supposedly believes that ‘paradise’ is but one suicidal charge onto enemy guns or a simple detonator button-press away? Send foolish and brainwashed young people to their deaths – sure. But kill himself? I don’t think so. Don’t make the mistake of buying into this chap’s own hype; think of him as the Pope Benny of the Shia muslim world.
That is a blank cheque for any government to justify a war based on an ephemeral ‘threat’. You speak of examples of ‘necessary’ pre-emtive wars – isn’t there a rather glaring example of an unnecessary one in Iraq? Thousands of Allied troops and (current figures indicate) hundreds of thousands of civilians killed all in the name of a pre-emptive strike aimed at eliminating a threat that didn’t actually exist. What of their lives? What of the radicalising effect of a manifestly unjust war that will help form the next generation of muslim extremists and continue the legacy of tit-for-tat bloodshed for decades to come?
That is the cost of pre-emptive war. You risk killing for no better cause than to shadow-box against your own paranoia and in the process create more enemies for yourself.
War is (or at least should be) the option of last resort. ‘What if’ just isn’t a good enough reason to unleash such horror on anyone.
It’s not like
GermansJapsGooksArabsPersians count as real losses though.We Are Ing @ 150;
I know what you are talking about here – dehumanisation is always step one when a society starts trying to convince itself that a given war is ‘necessary’, ‘unavoidable’ and even ‘moral’.
“It’s a shame about our boys(1), but we sure gave the *insert crudely demonised opposition* hell! I love the smell of
burning civiliansnapalm in the morning!”—————————————————————–
(1) ‘Boys’ because the women who are killed in such conflicts, nturally, don’t count in the eyes of privileged patriarchal jerks.
Well, I stood ready to whip my stats out at one in the AM in hopes that the rape apologist would get quashed quickly, so that SIWOTI wouldn’t make ME late for the game. *cough*
While I watch in my crowded sports bar, though, I’m going to take notes of the sexist commercials, keep an eye on the people around me, and turn my back if Tebow’s abortion spot runs. Somebody should.
I find it demeaning to argue about practicalities with scumbags like StevoR, as if there could be circumstances where a war of aggression certain to kill at least hundreds of thousands of innocent people was a morally acceptable option, but I will note that he provides zero evidence for his claim that the Iranian theocrats would use nukes – thus ensuring their own deaths and the destruction of their country – if they had them.
I also note he has not actually provided any examples where pre-emptive war was necessary. I imagine he may be thinking of Nazi Germany, but if so, he’s simply showing his ignorance. There were at least two occasions when Hitler could almost certainly have been stopped without launching a pre-emptive war. In 1935, he sent troops into the Rhineland, which was an act of war – an unambiguous violation of the Versailles Treaty. He admitted afterwards that if France had sent in troops to oppose this move, he would have had to withdraw as the Wehrmacht was not ready to fight; it is most unlikely his regime could have survived such a humiliation. The second occasion was Munich. If Britain and France had been prepared to make a military alliance with Stalin (which was on offer), tell Poland it would be abandoned to its fate unless it agreed to the passage of Soviet troops, and make use of the excellent Czechoslovak armed forces and defences, Hitler would have had the choice of backing down – again, likely to prove fatal to his regime – or starting a war on multiple fronts for which he was not prepared.
Finally, think of the lesson that an attack on an Iran that does not yet have nukes would provide for other powers that fear they might be the target of aggression by the US and its allies – which, given the bunch of wackos and psychopaths currently contesting the Republican nomination, means just about anyone. It would not be: “Don’t try to get nukes”. It would be: “Get nukes – or perhaps biological weapons – without being detected, then announce that you have them, and will use them against any attacker.”
humans have a fantastic ability to compartmentalize.
inevitably, the effort required to do so in cases like RP’s will lead to irrational displacement behavior, projection, and denial.
same thing we see with evangelical religiots of all stripes.
@ LyleX and Private Ogvorbis, OM
Rather than inflict more direct quotes from Ron Paul on innocent bystanders, I will paraphrase the remaining bit about sexual harassment (the context actually makes the above quote worse):
A woman who is actually good at her job can, of course, quit then get another job right away. The [inspirational background music] Free Market [/music] will take care of sexual harassment by punishing the companies that drive away the better workers, making the company less competitive. This means that in Paul-World the women who do not quit are incompetent or bad workers who put out in order to have a job at all. Thus, the magnificent Free Market Forces will drive out of business those workplaces that have predatory males and those hussies who displace the better, competent workers. See? It’s a win all around!
My favorite response to Pauloid idiocy comes from a more-or-less high functioning libertarian named Richard Epstein (Law Professor) who remarked that the “other” libertarians, “… [are] brain dead to the underlying realities of how this world actually works.”
It would be: “Get nukes – or perhaps biological weapons – without being detected, then announce that you have them, and will use them against any attacker.”
seems to me the situation already IS that, and has been since the Korean war.
KG,
the Rhineland occupation was a great success for the Nazi government, also regarding remilitarisation in general. Together with the repatriation of Austria in the spring of 1938, I don’t think the Nazi regime would have collapse had it been thwarted at Munich. The problem was that Hitler wanted war. A dictator more concerned about self-preservation might have stopped in 1938.
But you see: before Hitler committed suicide he deemed the German people not worthy of survival and issued the “Nero order”, to leave scorched earth to the Slavs “to whom belongs the future”. But no-one really obeyed, not even Albert Speer, who had been tasked with carrying out the order.. Self-preservation was so strong that it drove many stalwarts of the regime to disobedience.
Again, the atomic bomb was most likely to be used as long as there was only one country (or more broadly one side in a conflict) in possession of it. So it was important for the US to beat the Nazis in developing it, but it was also important that the Soviet Union got it. One of the paradoxes of the Cold War…
I thought the son’s name was Randall and that ‘Rand’ was an Ayn Rand inspired nickname? (Please correct me if I am (as frequently am) wrong.)
Then again, it might not.
When I took economics (required (though I did learn some useful shit)), our professor pointed out that, once a company reaches a certain size, very few things can drive them out of business. And many companies, because what they sell or do is wanted, could be run by (and I quote), “left-handed masturbatory orangutans drinking gin-and-tonics and spending their entire day looking at National Geographic centerfolds.” His theory was that, barring a major shakeup or outright theft on the part of management, most companies will survive in spite of themselves. Which made the well-run companies stand out like a gold plated orangutan. No, he really didn’t think much of the management of most US companies.
So the Randian fantasy of a self-correcting marketplace for sexual harrassment would be about as likely as the aforementioned gold plated orangutan.
Too big to fail
Not so much ‘too big to fail,’ as a comment on the superfluosity of middle and upper level management in the success or failure as a company. Randians seem to think that a companies success or failure really does depend on the the steering minds rather than being in the right place at the right time with something that sounds good to somebody.
My econ professor was a real cynic.
and yet…
if anything, the last 10 years MUST have taught everyone that NO COMPANY IS TOO BIG TO FAIL.
and, as the bigger they are the harder they fall, they did indeed leave a rather large shockwave when they hit the ground.
such a large shockwave, in fact, that now everyone is doing their utmost to prop up the falling giants to keep them from hitting the ground.
Even if they are a stinking, rotting, corpse.
Sorry. I have not been writing clearly. My professor was saying (and I agree!) that, once a company reaches a certain size, short of outright criminality and/or massive market changes, there is little a manager does that will actually affect the performance of a company. I was not arguing that companies should be, or are, too big to fail. I was merely trying (incompetently) to point out yet another example of how Randian economic theory is totally at odds with the reality of the marketplace. I was not trying to go anywhere with the ‘too big to fail’ argument. I apologize profusely for my shitty writing.
Possibly it would not in the short term; but a successful example of the western powers forcing Hitler to back down would have greatly encouraged all those powers threatened by him to make a defensive alliance. Hitler wanted war, but he was concerned to pick off his enemies one by one. The German economy was also in a highly unstable condition (see Adam Tooze The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, chapter 8: “Into the Danger Zone”). A defensive alliance against Hitler including the Soviet Union – which was quite clearly on offer, and did not materialise because Chamberlain could not bring himself to ally with Bolsheviks – would have left him with the choice of launching a war he was bound to lose, and not launching one at all.
Now I think of it, there was a third possible opportunity. If Britain and France had armed the elected Spanish government against Franco, a defeat could have been inflicted on the fascist powers backing him – again, greatly encouraging a defensive alliance and agian, no need for a pre-emptive war.
Hmm, my partner and I were just debating the future of large companies.
Our conclusion is that the future will resemble McDonald’s business model, but with MORE bottom-up influence on local franchises:
Centralized top-down template model, selling franchises to local owners, with local owners relying on local input to modify the template to fit best with the local economy and interests.
so, you have the advantages of large chain store economics, plus the adaptability of local ownership and bottom-up adjustment to better compete at the local level.
the day of the Mom and Pop shops are done, as is the day of the giant central megacompany/bank.
seems obvious, but I’m curious if anyone sees a different future?
I was not arguing that companies should be, or are, too big to fail.
ah. Well, I might have been projecting the economic teachings that I was given as a high school student, where they did indeed talk about companies like GM being too large to fail, simply because of massive diversity of investment, if nothing else.
I do not argue that some think that, once companies get big enough, they should not be allowed to fail. I am not trying (here) to argue for or against that. I was using a college experience to point out yet another example of the failure of Randian economic theory to connect in any way with reality.
Damn. Lemme try one more time to make a tiny bit of sense.
Upthread, sudunlap made the assertion that, in the Randian utopia, laws against sexual harrassment would be unnecessary. The argument advanced is that, if a woman is harrassed, she can leave and, if she is good, she can get another job. The company that allows harrassers to remain on the payroll with thus lose people with talent who leave to work elsewhere. I tried (with no success (due to my poor writing)) to point out that, in companies with more than just a handful of employees, the ability of management has little to do with the success or failure of the company (barring massive illegalities or market change).
Again, I am sorry. I did not mean to, through my poor writing, to take us down this path. I was not trying to start up the ‘too big to fail’ argument. Honest.
KG,
a regime not bent on war might have pursued a different economic policy.
Also, Stalin wasn’t really the most trustworthy ally either, and IIRC didn’t western strategist even hope for a showdown between Nazis and Bolsheviks? In 1938, it would have been inconceivable to enter into an alliance with Stalin.
I’m not so sure how important Spain would have been. Franco stayed out of the WW2 despite the support he had gotten in 1937, frustrating the Nazis (see Gibraltar).
I do think the problem lies with the Treaty of Versailles. Some of the provisions were seen as overly retributive even by some western powers, and this situation probably led to to a greater degree of leniency towards aggressive Nazi moves (like “they’re just taking back what they are due”).
I notice some people here are wondering where are all the Paul supporters. To make up for their absence, I will now do this following self righteous, hypocritical rant:
You Obama supporters are such sheeple. Hope and change? Yeah right, the economy is still bad. You were such idiots to fall for his bullshit. Democrats, Republicans, those bastards are all the same. You pathetic fools get so caught up in the left/right paradigm that you have been distracted from the REAL issues all this time. To put so much faith in a politician shows what naive simpletons you truly are.
Which is why we need Ron Paul to be president. He will make everything alright! No more wars, no more big government and I can get high whenever I want! It will be amazing. I truly believe he will bring HOPE and CHANGE to the white house! The free market will solve everything and America will be a peaceful utopia where wars, racism, sexism, political corruption and environmental destruction will be no more! How, I’m not sure but the free market will take care of it somehow! You want America to become a communazi dictatorship then vote Republican or Democrat. You want FREEDOM and a magical land with flying unicorns for every child and rivers of chocolate, vote RON PAUL!
RON PAUL 2012!!!!!!11!!!1
END THE FED!!!11
Nope, well within the range of WordPress avatars.
Oh for crying out loud.
This is used in in-vitro fertilization: first you’re put into the hormonal state of pregnancy by being given the pill, then the embryo is implanted.
Lab mice on birth control are called “pseudopregnant”, and they’ve usually been given birth control for this very reason.
…but those are obviously on the other side of the madonna/whore dichotomy, you see.
Except if we’re talking about a sluttily-dressing sister or possibly daughter. Then she gets acid in her face in rural Turkey and fatwā envy in Fundie America.
I want Comic Sans… *whine*
Nooooooooooooooooooo…
Look!!! There’s a rhinoceros flying up there!!!
Ha. That’s what they say. Learn to look past their propaganda!
Appeasement is so 1930s. Containing them with sanctions is working quite well.
Look, what would happen if Iran really decided to get its navy together and attack the USA?
lolwut?
Themselves, you mean?
That’s the message the Iraq war already sent loud and clear. It’s exactly why North Korea and Iran wanted nukes.
“re”?
Day saved.
David,
there is no word “patriation” in English. The “re-” part in my view reflects well the “heim” part of “heim ins Reich”. Don’t forget that after WWI, many Austrians also saw themselves as Germans, including the SPÖ, IIRC.
That’s the thing. The self-regulating free market model is correct, but only in very limited circumstances. Back in the real world, where real people have to make real choices that radically affect their lives, the laissez fair model is largely bullshit.
Even if such a major business is driven to bankruptcy by poor management, it won’t happen overnight and it doesn’t actually help the people who have to pay rent at the end of the month.
The simple fact is that markets don’t respond rationally, the best people are not always hired, poorly run corporations do not necessarily go out of business and there’s a lot more to business success than selling the best product at the lowest price.
(BTW, someone else willing to join in on the Hungary thread. Thanks)
w00dview:
So Obama destroyed the economy a year before he took office? And the GOP hasn’t been consciously trying to destroy the economy for the last three years?
Tell you what, you libertarian asshole:
You drive to work in a car which is infinitely safer than the ones fifty years ago because of government regulations. You drive on streets paid for by all of us. You work in an office in which you know that the devices you use are relatively safe because of government regulations. You work with or employ (or both) people educated in the public schools, paid for by us. Those with college degrees? Chances are very good they, or their school, got state and federal aid. Your food is safe. Your products are safe.
And how would this work in your randian distopia?
I am not trying (here) to argue for or against that.
no, I understood. I was just trying to explain why I reacted to your initial argument as I did.
Tell you what, you libertarian asshole:
uh, I think his post was meant as satire?
look at the first sentence:
I will now do this following self righteous, hypocritical rant:
*shrug*
Ya. I see that now. Apparently my reading is as bad as my writing.
G’bye.
The self-regulating free market model is correct, but only in
very limited circumstancesmodels.fixed.
Private Ogvorbis, OM @174:
Pretty sure woodview was just pulling a poe, there.
The phrases “How, I’m not sure but the free market will take care of it somehow!” and “You want FREEDOM and a magical land with flying unicorns for every child and rivers of chocolate, vote RON PAUL!” are giveaways.
A true Liberthug would never admit they weren’t SURE how the free market would save things, and everyone knows unicorns are commie hippies, so anyway!
Private Og
Yours was still a good comment.
Perhaps you should preface your future comments with:
“If I thought you actually meant that, I’d say the following:”
@Ogvorbis #167:
FWIW, sadunlap in #155 was paraphrasing Ron Paul’s argument, not agreeing with them.
Yeah, Ichthytic and Stardrake are correct there. I was just pointing out that R
@ Private Ogvorbis, OM
Yeah, Ichthytic and Stardrake are correct there. I’m mostly a lurker so I don’t blame you if you thought I was an actual Paulbot. I was just pointing out that Ron Paul supporters accuse all their detractors of being naive Obama voting sheeple whilst kissing the very ground that Ron walks on and never questioning any of his more batshit ideas.
Your rant directed at me was pretty spot on regarding the flaws of libertarianism. It is the philosophy of spoiled two year olds who have not been introduced to the concept of sharing and Ron Paul is a bigoted, randian shitehawk of the highest order.
Yikes, what happened to my comment at 182? Must have submitted too early without realising it.
Ron Paul, the Alan Greenspan of rape.
pelamun,
(Incidentally, I got the year of the Rhineland remilitarisation wrong earlier – it was 1936, not 1935.)
Can you point me to a clear case of Stalin proving an untrustworthy ally? He was a brutal tyrant, but in international relations, I can’t think of such a case: he stuck by his agreement with Hitler until Hitler broke it, and he stuck by his alliance with the western Allies. Yes, some fools wanted a war between the Nazis and Bolsheviks – the outcome of which, whoever won, would have been a single totalitarian power dominating Eurasia. It was most certainly not inconceivable to enter an alliance with Stalin in 1938, since both France and the Soviet Union had promised Czechoslovakia their full support prior to Chamberlain’s idiocy at Munich – against which Churchill protested strongly, urging alliance with Stalin. Chamberlain’s surrender caused the French to withdraw their guarantee, and this in turn persuaded Stalin that he should cease trying to build an anti-Nazi alliance and come to terms with Hitler.
It would have been a defeat – the first – for the fascist powers, and would have given the Allies a secure hold on the western Meditteranean. Moreover Franco as a friendly neutral was probably more use to Hitler than Franco as a belligerent.
The only provisions of Versailles that were overly retributive were the reparations, and those had long been abandoned by 1936. The really big mistake was to insist on making peace with a civilian, republican government, not with military-dominated Imperial Germany, allowing the German right to propagate the “stab in the back” lie. As for the rest, the problem was that the provisions intended to contain Germany – demilitarisation of the Rhineland, restrictions on armaments, the ban on union with Austria – were not enforced. It is bizarre to claim Versailles was too retributive:
(1) If you compare it with Brest-Litovsk, by which a victorious Imperial Germany deprived Russia of a third of its people and productive land.
(2) If you consider that within little more than 20 years, Germany was able to overrun much of western and central Europe and dominate most of the rest.
WWII was an outcome of the great slump of the 1930s which brought Hitler to power, of German militarism and revanchism, which reached far beyond the Nazi Party, and of the failure to form the defensive alliance with Stalin against Hitler which was clearly available to Britain and France. It was not the consequence of Versailles, except insofar as that treaty left Germany bordered by states too weak to stand up to it once it recovered, as it was bound to do; and that problem could have been contained if the western powers had had the will to do it – and without launching a pre-emptive war.
KG,
you’re right that Stalin probably was not an unreliable ally in reality, but the Soviet Union had been demonised in the West for decades until that point, so that’s why in 1938 it was inconceivable.
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not blaming the Treaty for the War, I’m talking about the psychology here which also led to appeasement. The Treaty was perceived as extreme, and together with the Dolchstoßlegende provided the Nazis excellent material to win votes.
– Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: well, it’s not like the German Empire annexed 1/3 of the area, many of the areas Russia lost were areas with ethnic groups other than Russians (Finns, Poles, Ukrainians), where a case could be made that they should get their own country (back).
– you list all these things that weren’t enforced. My hypothesis was they weren’t enforced precisely because the western powers felt that they had overreached. I mean the Austrian Anschluss occurred in 1938, the Treaty went into effect in 1919.
The feeling in Germany at the time was that the war had been fought by all sides, and only because they had been backstabbed by the workers and the mutineers had they been assigned the entire blame. And many western politicians, outside of France, shared at least some of the sentiments.
After Bismarck’s balance of power fell apart, a strong Germany surrounded by weak neighbours was always a problem, it was only possible to solve this issue by creating the European Union. The only pity is that it took two world wars to get there, instead of just one.
I must admit I’ve been looking forward to writing the following sentence almost since I started following Pharyngula:
Thank you Naked Bunny with a Whip. (Love your screen name).
KG, just one slight correction.
Even if the Allies did not insist on dictating peace terms to a civilian German government, it was going to happen. By autumn of 1918, Ludendorff knew that the war was lost. He gave up the Duo’s reign after the Kaiser abdicated just so the successor government would get the blame for the peace talks and the lost war.
And he who one of the biggest proponents of the “stabbed in the back” nonsense even though he knew the truth. He wanted to be able to face off against a disgraced government after the war so that he could get back in power. Hence, his part in the Beer Hall Putsch.
Well, there was a total blockquote fail.
#172 LykeX
Except it’s supposed to b a free market not a laissez fair market. (Laissez fair being interpreted as a wild west, anything goes economy.)
In pure economic theory, a free market requires 4 conditions: land, labor & capital are free to move their optimal uses and the information on which you base the decision is free. Of course, the the real world all these things have personal and financial costs, so we cannot always make the optimal choices.
It is like physics. In pure theory, a hammer and a feather fall at the same rate. In reality, they don’t because we don’t live in an airless vacuum.
A free market is built on principles (which laws and regulations should try to maintain). Laissez fair says principles don’t matter – just do whatever works for you.
In a labor economics class I took, the prof was talking about how workers can just quit if the pay rate was too low (this is how wages get driven up).
Me: How can people just quit when they need to eat?
Prof: Well, we assume they don’t need to work to live, so they have the freedom to quit.
Me: So, why the hell are they working if they don’t need to?
This was an example of the theoretical freedom of labor to move (they don’t need to work) VS the reality of the world.
Too many people walk out of their half semesters of micro & macro economics, taught only the bare bones theory and never learn how, um, theoretical it all is.
Hmm. Actually, looks pretty much like what I predicted in an earlier post. Haven’t read the rest yet, so not sure of we have seen the, “They wouldn’t even lie.”, side announce itself yet.
But, yeah, its not common. Its pretty hard, unless you really seriously have a mental issue, and a major vendetta against someone, to profit from such an accusation. Thus, its not impossible, but you are far more likely to find someone either a) claiming they got pregnant, truthfully or not, to get out of their parents house (my brother fell for this one), or b) if they do claim rape, its *probably* going to be someplace where being forced to marry is more likely than jail time (and thus, more likely among idio… uh, I mean “conservatives”, and where the law is lax on the matter). In general, there isn’t a lot to gain from it, and, unless you get a real serious bunch of morons involved (sadly, you can find such in everything from, cops to juries, so its still feasible), the story simply won’t hold up.
And, that is one bloody good reason why the “a lot lie” is just BS. Its next to impossible for someone to be consistent when making such a lie *ever*. At best, they will embellish it, to the point where it looks like it was written by someone trying to make money off the next “spooky ghost house” novel, at worst, even the people prone to believing it will find too many inconsistencies to consider it plausible, at some point. But, if there are dumb people willing to fall for it, there is bound to be someone dumb enough to attempt to falsely claim one too.
Would tend to agree. Mind, doesn’t mean they can’t/won’t have a real nut take power, but.. Any small country that decides to actually use the damn thing is going to be a smoking hole the next week. The only question is whether the smoking hole is radioactive too or not. Someone is going to hit back at them, and the only hope they have is that who ever it is, only plans to kill the leaders, not everyone. A lot of rumor was floating around for years that Iran saw what happened with Afghanistan and prior history, and concluded that they could just pull an Osama. Disappear, until the dust settled, and everyone left, then come back in again, thumbing their noses at everyone. Only.. That turned out not to work so well for Osama… Assuming the rumored thinking was true, any one sane would have to be *rethinking*, at this point.
Yep. You might not be able to move, there might not be equal/better jobs available, the people with the jobs might have unknown biases against you, etc. And, that doesn’t even cover the other side, like nepotism, bigotry, etc., which may *lend* itself to firing/forcing out the better workers, while the bad, harassing, etc., ones end up staying, and just happen to be good enough at the ‘business’ part of the whole thing that their other problems have near zero impact on a) customer awareness of the problem, efficiency of the business, profits, or anything else that matters to the company (none of which needs be, or necessary is, how big an asshole its employees are, whether it is the best for society over all, instead of a niche, or any other issue). Such things only become relevant *if* the public somehow finds out that the problems are institutional, or, somehow, the original customer base changes, such that its no longer able to survive in its particular niche. Like say… some company that, under some of these idiots rules, decides only to serve white people, only to have half the population change over in 10 years, such that the majority are no longer white. The attitudes, and reasons, for the original choice where almost certainly not merely the provision of such a product, but personal biases, and those are not going to go away. If its a large company, it may supply jobs to a large segment of the local populous, which may not have understood the bias existed, until all of the sudden they find they are being laid off, because the company can’t find enough of its “niche” to sell to any more. Jobs which are not necessarily replaceable in the same numbers, or in a decent span of time.
Randian economics isn’t about reality, its about theory, and as such, has as much in common with reality as Cain’s 999 plan did. I.e., you might find both in a game of “The Sims”, but not in the real world.
An “honest” rape is when there’s multiple witnesses who can confirm that the modestly-attired, virginal victim was attacked by a total stranger who jumped out of the bushes, grabbed her, ran off, and forced himself upon her while she never let up screaming and fighting, not even when he pulled a gun or knife on her. You know, the kind of rape that almost never actually happens in real life.
I’ve always thought Ron Paul is kind of like Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly is a woman and an activist who fundamentally thinks women should have fewer rights than men and be fundamentally subservient to men. So she’s a woman with a voice, saying that women shouldn’t have a voice. Paul, is a man who thinks government should have no power running for a position with a great deal of government power. Oh right, nm, the military should exist.
I’m not sure this entirely works, but I like it anyway. Mainly cause I hate Schlafly. And her son, creator of the intellectual abortion known as Conservapedia. Because you know reality has a liberal bias.
Mmmmmm, seems that Schlafly also thinks that husbands can’t rape their wives. That seems appropriate to this discussion.
On my first read of that paragraph I took it to mean than Ron Paul wanted the individual who *committed* the rape to get a shot of estrogen. That seemed like a weird form of punishment.
What does Ron Paul want to happen to women who rape men? Yes, it does happen, just considerably less often.
janine@190,
That’s true – but still, on this point, the Allies and Associated Powers should have done the exact opposite of what they actually did – try to make those who had been conducting the war take responsibility for ending it, and for accepting the treaty.
pelamun,
But it was conceived. It was in fact argued for in both Britain and France, and as I said, there were both French and Soviet guarantees to Czechoslovakia – hence the basis of an explicit alliance – until Munich. You can’t reasonably argue that something that was widely discussed and recommended was “inconceivable”.
All these areas were intended to be satellite states, under effective German control – there was German intervention in the Finnish and Ukrainian civil wars, and also in the Caucasus, while the Crimea was annexed. If you think the leadership of Imperial Germany intended that any of the areas separated from Russia should be genuinely independent (any more than France and Britain intended this for their new League of Nations mandates post-Versailles), you are remarkably naive.
Provisions of the Versailles Treaty were not enforced because there was dread of a new war in France (particularly if it could not count on British support), which would have had to take the lead, and in Britain, not because their publics felt Germany had been badly treated. The French public believed – rightly – that Versailles had left Germany too strong, not too weak.
I agree with your point about Bismarck, but the outcome of WWI made things worse by creating a tier of new, weak states sandwiched between Germany and Russia; though on reflection, it’s not clear the Versailles peacemakers could have prevented this, as it resulted from the successive defeats of Russia by Germany, and Germany by the western powers. “Collective security” was intended to deal with this and other problems, but that swiftly collapsed after the US Senate refused to ratify Versailles and join the League of Nations. Alarmingly, it’s a situation that could easily recur, if the Eurozone crisis leads to a break-up of the EU, as seems possible.
hypatiasdaughter:
Yeah. There’s a distinction I like to make: liberty is the sum of rights guaranteed by the state. Freedom is the practical ability to exercise those rights. In the real world, there’s a huge fuckin’ gap between those, governed primarily by wealth. The richer you are, the narrower the gap. The poor in the US have very little freedom compared to the rich, though they have the same liberties.
KG,
don’t mistake my argument “from psychology” for an agreement with the contention that the Treaty was too retributive etc. I understand that recent assessments of historians are different, and I find their arguments persuasive. However, this doesn’t matter because the German right was able to exploit the Treaty for their means, and it worked. You’re right that some of this predicament could have been avoided had the western powers insisted on negotiating with the military instead of the civilians.
AFAIK, these implicit Soviet guarantees were used as bargaining chips against Hitler, but not necessarily intended as such. I may be wrong about that, and “inconceivable” might have been too strong a word.
Where did I say that anything about the intention of the leadership? Again, I was talking about psychology here. Losing territory inhabited by mostly other groups is psychologically different.
??? Please explain what you mean…
Ignoring the obvious troll who links to an MRA site….
Aquaria, #37:
On the bright side, I don’t know how many people in 1979 outside of the feminist movement got that idea, whereas it’s much more widely held these days. Lots of things that infuriate us and many other people on the internet were not even on most people’s radar.
Robro, #61: “I’m surprised at the resurgence of Libertarianism among young people.” I’m not. We now have a few generations of young adults who grew up hearing government demonized. Most grew up in suburbs, small towns, or rural areas with the same cultural antipathy to government (with its racist component), notwithstanding how much governmental largesse those areas may have accepted.
Ing, #75: “Databuttplug” sounds like something that certain of my Star Wars fan friends would buy. For realz.
Sunsangnim, #98: No, he’s not “sane enough.” He doesn’t want to avoid war with Iran because avoiding such war is the right thing to do. He wants to avoid war with Iran because he’s a total isolationist.
StevoR, #134: Gawd. Fuck off.
@ nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks
My favorite encapsulation of why libertarians remain forever without a clue comes from Anatoly France:
“The law, in its majestic wisdom, punishes the rich and the poor equally for the crime of sleeping under a bridge.”
If you can understand that, you’re probably not a libertarian.
@171. pelamun :
Pretty sure that Hitler himself was actually born an Austrian rather than a native German.
@203. Ms. Daisy Cutter, Feral Fembeast :
Well that’s a great rebuttal of what I wrote – NOT.
I’ll take that insult as confirmation you’ve lost that argument and merely wish those offering opinions you disagree with be silent instead of expressing themselves.
@201. nigelTheBold, Abbot of the Hoppist Monks :
Good clear explanation of that point – thanks.
@135. Ariaflame, BSc, BF, PhD says:
Sure there are other nations I wouldn’t trust with nukes – Syria, Libya, Sudan and Burma spring to mind as examples – but that’s not an argument saying that Iran *should* be allowed to develop them.
I grew up in the Cold War era with the constant nightmare of Nuclear Armageddon perhaps occurring anyday.
I don’t want *any* nation to have A-bombs or H-bombs except Western powers like the States, Britain and maybe, at a pinch, France too. Naturally. I’m a Westerner believing in Western civilistion and Western values. (Freedom, justice, equality and the opportunity for all to pursue happiness) Aren’t you? Don’t you?
As for America it has a good track record in that it has used its WMDs responsibly – at least post Nagasaki. Which let’s not forget ended WWII along with Hiroshima and thereby saved hundreds of thousands even millions of lives that would have been lost invading Japan – and they didn’t know at the time what we know now.
I do not believe that any truly crazy Christian fundamentalist will ever be elected into power although Rick “Stinkyfroth” Santorum is already uncomfortably close if only theoretically. But I don’t honestly think he or Gingrich or Romney or Obama *would* use nukes except as a last resort or in response to a nuclear attack on the US.
What’s that? Bush II? Note that he did NOT use nuclear WMDs even when he arguably *could have* on Sept. 12th. Or on Baghdad and Fallujah to name a couple of possible, arguably legitimate targets. There is a logical case, horrid as you may think it, that this might’ve been a mistake and having the ruthlessness to use such weapons could’ve ended the Iraq War more decisively, earlier and with better results for the rest of the planet than NOT using them has turned out to be.
@ 136. pelamun :
Er, no worries?
Islamophobia – there’s no such thing. A ‘phobia’ is by definition an irrational fear and concern over Jihadist terrorism is entirley rational.
War with Iran is inevitable – if it happens sooner on our terms not theirs then that’s the better alternative to them starting it later on theirs. As I noted, covertly, the war is already happening at an “unofficial” level whether you and I like this reality or not.
@139.Private Ogvorbis, OM :
Your lack of imagination is not an argument. Iran wants to bring on the end of the world as part of their apocalpytioc mythology. They will use nukes to attack isrealand spark World War II if they get them. Don’t want this tohappen? Then they have to be stopped. Militarily because diplomacy with them is impossible.
I’m going to decline that offer.
@141. We Are Ing :
When it really *does* come down to either them or us of course I’d rather them than us. You wouldn’t?
Sometimes self-defence is legitimate. If someone is about to shoot and kill *you* then you have to shoot first and kill them – or get killed.
When everything is boiled down to its essence that’s the situation with Iran versus the West. Now *if* Iran were to drop its gun – ie. end its hostility to us and stop building nukes and sponsoring terrorism then things’d be different. But much as we may wish they were different, they ain’t.
They’ve hated us since the Ayataollah took over in the 1970’s. Their hatred is their religion and vice versa. IF only thatweren’t so -but it is. They view the West as the Great Satan and its hard to argue rationally with them when they think like that.
They want to wipe Israel off the map – to convert all their enemies to radioactive dust. To bring on their Hidden Imam idea of the Muslim Rapture.
Oddly enough I don’t want to do that to them – I’d be happy to leave ’em be if they’d reciprocate that attitude – but when its them or us, I’d rather it be them.
We know what they think of us. They’ve said it themselves. We’r eSatans tothem. Us and our whole way of life. Tothem we’re as evil as women are slaves.
Please do read some of what they say about us – and then you may want to reconsider whether these are people you should be supporting.
pelamun,
Of course. I think to some extent we’ve been arguing past each other, because I’ve been concerned with whether Versailles was actually too harsh, and why its provisions were not enforced, not about German psychology, except where I noted that German militarism and revanchism existed far beyond the Nazi Party.
Implicitly, in arguing (apparently) that Brest-Litovsk was not, as I said it was, a far harsher treaty than Versailles, as it deprived Russia of a third of its productive land and population. As far as Poland and Finland were concerned, you have a point, and Lenin was prepared to let them go – although he apparently (and naively for once) did not expect the Germans to send in troops; but as for Ukraine, Belorussia (which the Germans occupied despite the treaty), and the Crimea were concerned, they were certainly not regarded by him or most Russians as “inhabited by mostly other groups”: they had been part of Russia for centuries and their cultures and languages were very close to Russian. Ukraine, moreover, was essential if Russia was to be self-sufficient in food. The Baltic states were intermediate: they had large Russian minorities (as they still do) and were regarded as strategically vital due to their closeness to Petrograd.
I’m not sure which bit you mean. The Eurozone crisis could certainly lead to the break-up of the EU, as a collapse of the Euro would cause economic and political turmoil throughout Europe. Such a break-up would leave a highly unstable group of weak states, with numerous quarrels between them, sandwiched between a strong Germany and a reviving Russia. Russia already has a powerful far right, as has Austria; and under such circumstances, can a revival of the German far right, aiming to incorporate Austria and recover territory lost to Poland and Russia, be ruled out?
@143. pelamun :
Realism pelamun – not idiocy, realism.
Not necessarily. Although its certainly over for the people, city, army or other target hit by it. It depends how many are used in what way and with what retaliation capability from your opponents.
USA vs USSR – yes, a nuclear exchange would be civilisation ending for both nations.
If the USA dropped a nuke on Tehran today – the rest of the world may rant and rave but they’re not going to nuke us back.
Of course daisy-cutters would be better ecologically speaking w/o the radiation. Targeting and decapitating the regime itself would be best if it could be managed without giving Iran’s military a change to strike back.
Iran is a dangerous exception to that. Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs are mad enough to deliberatly provoke a nuclear war even knowing they’ll be obliterated in it. Their religion *does* make them that crazy.
.. Yet. Pakistan is a particular worry given its potential to fall into Jihadist hands anytime plus its sheltering bin Laden. Like Iran they may well need to be taken out one day. If Pakistan does take a turn for the worst I hope we act quickly and ruthlessly enough before its too late. That may well happen during the Iran war along with taking out other terrorist hotspots. (eg. Gaza, Sthn Lebanon, Al Shabab territory in Ethiopia.)
2)Which is why Iran would have to give them to them – duh!
1) So far, thankfully, probably.
You think so? I don’t. I hope you are right and fear I am.
The Earth won’t end until our Sun goes red giant but our civilisation is another story entirely.
Oh yes it is! Even Obama is leaving that option on the table.
The US is probably no longer capable of pulling an Iraq again.
Israel – the Western nation most threatened and motivated is probably going to be the one to do the chore of taking Iran out – at least at first. I expect a joint Israel-Western allies group to engage Iran and its terrorist allies (eg.Hamas *& Hezbollah) decisively at some stage and do what has to be done for the West and Israel especially to be saved from the existential threat Iran poses everybody on the planet. It won’t be pleasant or clean but it will just have to happen – unless the Iranian regime is brought down from inside first.
Great, no nukes. Sounds good to me. Oh, fuck, you’re not done yet…
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Don’t forget capitalism or imperialism.
Too late, and in any case, I don’t trust your definition of “crazy” or your ability to predict the future.
Though this probably means nothing to an ignorant fucking bigot like yourself, Islam is not jihadist terrorism. If anyone were to ever claim you have Jihadistterroriphobia, you should easily be able to puke out this response again, because it would then be relevant.
You’d rather commit genocide than die? You’re a coward, and if that weren’t itself a moral failure, you’re advocating preemptive war, not to mention one against a much weaker country which doesn’t pose a serious threat to us. Not only that, but I suspect you’re not even convinced by your own bullshit arguments, just using them as a flimsy excuse to go on being an ignorant, war-mongering bigot.
A bad attitude doesn’t justify killing people. In fact, there are not many things at all which justify killing people.
Mine doesn’t make me that crazy, because I don’t have a religion. Starting a war is crazy, with or without nukes, so we shouldn’t start a war.
Genocidal scumbag SteveoR repeats his diatribe of hate yet again. Boring as well as sickening. I’m not part of any “us” with the likes of him. All Iranians are “they” to him: not human beings with lives they want to lead, but a unified mass of insane religious fervour – including those who have tried to overthrow the theocrats, and the 15 million or more children under 16. Presumably he thinks Iranians can’t read either: when they see filth like his, even those who hate the theocracy are likely to think: “The mullahs are right, the west is full of hatred for all of us; we need nukes a.s.a.p.”.
I’d rather it was genocidal scum like you than innocent Iranians, that’s for certain. But no, if you insist, I am not prepared to become a mass murderer under any circumstances. Even allowing for the fact that you are a psychopath, you might at least pause to consider what the longer-term implications of yet another western war of aggression in the middle east would be.
It’s not self-defence you’re advocating, you lying filth. It’s mass murder. No-one has a gun pointed at you – FFS you’re in Australia IIRC; you’re just intoxicated with the lust to kill.
No, it is not, liar. We’re still trading with them, FFS – which is how we can put economic pressure on them. They don’t have nukes, there is in fact no proof they even intend to build any, and even if they did, their arsenal would be massively outnumbered by that of Israel, let alone that of the USA. Nor have I seen any evidence that they are supporting terrorism outside their support for Hezbollah and Hamas in the middle east; and they in turn have certainly been victims of it – although I don’t suppose that counts as far as scum like you are concerned.
No, that would be Christianity, you moron. And World War II already happened. Because of people like you in power.
You keep saying (well, writing) this, and similar versions of the same idea, and never actually come up with any evidence. Not that I actually expect you to as you are batshit crazy.
PS. Please don’t confuse what I’m saying I think *will* or *has* to happen with what I’d actually *like* to see happen.
I don’t *want* to see war and the inevitable carnage of it – but because of the Jihadists attitudes to the Westernworld & esp. Israel I think we will and its better it happen on or terms than theirs.
I’d *like* the Muslim world to stop being terrorists, stop hating us and behave reasonably but I don’t realistically think that will happen. :-(
D’oh! That’s :
I don’t *want* to see war and the inevitable carnage of it – but because of the Jihadists attitudes to the Western world & esp. Israel I think we will and its better it happen on our terms than theirs.
Typical ignorant and stoopid thinking expected by a xenophobic and irrational asshat. You have nothing cogent to say, but keep saying it anyway. Typical of nuts. All you can do is express your irrational paranoia, which I don’t and won’t share.
I wish that were so. Not the finest human specimen if you ask me.
———
Get a fucking clue: “the Muslim world” is not the same as “terrorists.” If you could only get a grip on reality for one minute….
Another thing I resent, besides the deceitful war-mongering, is this “I’d be happy the leave ’em be” bullshit, like they’re your property or something so you can do whatever you want with them. It’s fucking disgusting how you can’t even manage to lie about not wanting to kill them without dehumanizing them at the same time. It’s not like we needed any more clues that deep down you really are a hateful asshole, not just some ignorant clown who’s been fed a bunch of garbage. So it looks like you may as well fuck off.
@211. consciousness razor says:
Nothing. Why what’s your problem?
What is an any way unreasonable about what I noted that given somebody’s gotta have nukes I’d rather our leading Western nations had them than others with values that aren’t so good.
If you insist. (eyeroll) Niether capitalism nor imperialism is unique to Western society mind you.
I never said I could predict the future. I’mm making realistic extrapolations taht, yes, could turn out to be mistaken. I hope they are.
As for it being too late for “.. any truly crazy Christian fundamentalist will ever be elected into power” clearly your in error because tehre hasn’t been one yet – also are you implying that applies to Obama since he’s the one curently in power? I guess Jeremiah Wright was crazy but I don’t think Obama’s quite that bad.
Please tell that to Al Quaida, Hamas, Hizbollah, the Taliban, Iran, Jemaah Islamiyya, Laskaer-e-Toiba, the Chechens, Islamic Jihad, Al Shabab, Abu Sayyaf, the list goes on.
All terrorist groups motivated by and explicitly Islamic. You sure you want to be defending these people and that religion?
Okay, not all Islamic people are terrorists. Too many of them
are however and the association of Islam and terrorism is undeniable.
No, I’d rather NOT see the culture and society and world I believe in destroyed by a bunch of ugly Jihadists that want us all dead – you as much as me. Unless your a muslim we’re all just kaffirs to them.
Did you fail to grasp that it was a *metaphor* I was using that the self-defence is of all Westerners not just myself personally??
It isn’t genocide I’m advocating – just self-defence against those wishing to exterminate us. All of us. Meaning all of us non-Muslims.
If Iran didn’t pose a serious threat to us I wouldn’t be worried by it. I think it does. If not yet then by the time it gets nukes – which as I’ve noted *it* is crazy enough to use in anger.
War and self-defence are two of those things.
No – but when a war is started we need to finish it. Iran wants war not me. They give up nukes, recognise Israel and live in peace with the rest of the world, fine. They sponsor terrorism, think of us as the “Great Satan” that has to be destroyed for their Hidden Imam to appear, hope toexterminate the Jewish state wiping it off the map and “pushing the Jews into the sea” et cetera then yeah, we have a problem and we have to do something about it. A nation thatsponsors terrorism against the West is de facto in a state of war against the West.
But Iran is not an existential threat to the United States and you are pissing-in-your-pants frightened of this bogeyman you have created.
Iran’s military is a joke. Their decade-long war with Iraq destroyed not only much of the nation’s military hardware, but it also destroyed tens of thousands of young officers who would, had the war not happened, or been prosecuted differently, would now be the leaders of Iran’s military. Their large standing army is ill-armed and exists primarily as a federal police force to keep unrest from spreading. The air force has some pretty good airplanes, even some F-15s. Few of which can fly because of lack of spare parts. And pilots get almost no training because of the lack of spare parts and useful mechanics.
Iran does have Silkworm missles, purchased from China. These suface-to-surface anti-shipping missles are quite effective. And they are effective at doing exactly one thing — closing the Straits of Hormuz. And the only reason for doing that would be to cut off the West’s oil supply. But, and this is a big but, such an action would invite massive retaliation (remember, B-52s can operate off of the airfields in Diego Garcia) which would mean an end to all those expensive silkworms and an end to Iran’s claims that they are victims.
Far more likely than Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz is using those same missles to drive up the price of crude oil by engaging in mutual sabre-rattling with the gullible United States. Iran’s economy is in really bad condition. The war with Iraq, the purchase of expensive missles (the Silkworm and others), the nuclear programme, have all sucked up massive amounts of money (One reason the Iranian military has so many footsoldiers is that it keeps them from being a bunch of unemployed angry young men). The only thing keeping Iran afloat is the high price of crude oil. Have you noticed that everytime the price of crude starts to drop, Iran does or says something which sets the US off and the price of crude goes up?
No, as stated above, Iran wants the threat of war to keep investors unsure about the supply of crude oil. This drives up the price and helps hold together the Iranian economy.
They will not give up their nuclear programme as long as that programme costs less than the extra revenue brought in by higher crude prices. They will not recognize Israel as, having spent the last 30-odd years demonizing Israel, the masses of Iran would notice the change and the Mullahs are extremely aware of what an angry population can do (see Shah Reza Pahlazi for a good example). They do want to live in peace with the rest of the world as long as they can keep the price of crude up, secure their borders against unstable states (Iraq and Afghanistan (notice that those are two countries the US has been in for a decade or so — if the Soviet Union, back in the 1980s, was in Canada and Mexico, you don’t think the US would have been worried?)), and keep internal revolts among both the general population and minorities under control.
Why? Terrorism will always be a problem as long as there is nationalism, religion, and a world of haves and have-nots. Terrorism is best dealt with through intelligence agencies and law enforcement. Militarizing the problem (Iraq and Afghanistan) does not solve the problem. And if Iran is stupid enough to start a war with Israel, keep in mind that Israel has nuclear weapons and can deliver them accurately, which, even if Iran has nuclear weapons, they do not have an accurate delivery system — they might be able to hit a city, but that’s about it.
And, vice versa, a state that sponsors terrorism against an Islamic country, such as Iran, is at war with that nation. Considering the US’s activities attempting to destabilize Iraq, Iran, and other countries, why wouldn’t the leaders of Iran be looking for ways to protect themselves agains US and Israeli aggression? Pre-emptive military action is aggression.
And yes, I know that it is fine for the US to destabilize other nations, or fund terrorists, but not okay for a country like Iran. Doesn’t matter. Look at it from the point of view of the other country.
Oh, wait. That would require empathy.
I do insist. You were defending Western civilization, not me. And I suppose this means some of your favorite things are not unique to Western civilization after all, much like “freedom, justice, equality and the opportunity for all to pursue happiness,” to the extent that is even true in Western countries.
You are delusional if you think that’s the case. Read that again. There haven’t been any crazy Christian fundamentalists in power? How crazy and which sect of fundamentalism does it need to be to get the StevoR mark of Truly Crazy™? And how much power are we talking about?
Then stop lying about them, not just to us but to yourself. Every time you formulate a thought about terrorists, do not replace it with the word “Muslim.” Seriously try to do that, and think about non-terrorist Muslims. They are the vast majority of Muslims, so to the extent you think about Muslims at all, non-terrorists are the ones you should spend the most time thinking about. You might ask yourself how a war would affect them, rather than treating them as non-entities or casually brushing them aside as less valuable than people in “the West” (which sure sounds like code for “white people”).
If you don’t consider it genocide to conduct a nuclear war, or a conventional war directed at “Muslims,” or see the obvious consequences of “the West” having all the military power on the planet, then you either don’t know what genocide is or you’re too fucking stupid to realize what you’re advocating.
Maybe so, but you definitely are, which is why I predict no one will give you any nuclear weapons next Christmas.
Circular reasoning is circular. War is not a justification for killing people, because it is killing people.
“Why should we go to war? Because we go to war.” See how stupid you sound?
Equating the whole Muslim world – hundreds of millions of men, women and children with a huge variety of beliefs – with “jihadists” and “terrorists”, and advocating war against them? That’s a pretty damned good example of Islamophobia. As is your stupid fearmongering about Iran, your pretence that “Western values” (whatever that means) are magically superior, and your nationalistic division of the world into “us” and “them”.
Western wars of aggression in the Middle East have not worked out well, thus far. In fact, they’ve consistently made things worse. Trying the same thing again seems very close to the definition of insanity.
And this shouldn’t need saying, but there is never a circumstance in which it would be morally acceptable to use nuclear weapons, because millions of civilians, including children, would be killed for no reason other than being in the wrong country at the wrong time. That could never be excusable. Not to mention the catastrophic environmental damage for future generations.
@ 212. KG says:
So you’re saying you aren’t human then, KG, you apologist for genocidal pyschopathic Jihadist terrorism and fan of Holocaust denying anti-Semitic, homophobic whackjob Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
You make a dreadful mind-reader, KG you filthy apologist for Jihadi terrorism and anti-Semitism.
No, I don’t think that at all. That’s a massive reading comprehension fail and casting aspersions fallacy on your part, you anti-Western sack of crap.
Presumably their reading comprehension is better than yours.
Assuming this blog is translated into Farsi a.k.a. Persian or alternatively translated into Arabic which as far as I know isn’t exactly likely.
Guess we should all say nothing true that might upset them just on the off-chance just as we shouldn’t mention Tibet in case this gets translated into Chinese or say anything too harsh about Kim Jong-Il in case a North Korean sees it. Eh fuckwit KG the Jihadist sympathiser and bin Laden mourner?
So you’d let the whole world die rather than tarnish your moral pride? Well, chaarr-mming – and also suicidal.
Do your loved ones know your principles mean more to you than their lives?
Firstly it’d be war of self-defence NOT aggression.
Secondly, No, I’m no pyschopath, just someone with half a brain – obviously more than you have.
Thirdly, yes I have thought about the implications long term of taking Iran out – it makes for a far better world. Jihadists keep causing trouble -take ’em out decisively and the world is a better place. Ahmadinejad is a terrorist sponsoring, holocaust-denying, homohobic, repressive evil dictator who wishes to destroy our world. Getting rid of him – would be a good thing. Making sure Iran doesn’t get nukes and has to accept defeat and change – good thing for the region and rest of the globe. You really want me to continue? The more you think about it, the better it sounds!
I’m not the one to blame for your lack of reading comprhension and lack of sense KG. You need to stop for a while. Take a few deep breaths, calm yourself down. Re-read what I’ve written a few times and really think about it carefully – thenonce youve done that you need to apologise to me, you Jihad loving Iran-supporting brain-dead scumbag.
LOL. Sanctions dude. International – not just USA’s. They’ve been in place for years and no, there haven’t been (official state-to-state anyhow) diplomatic relations with Iran since the Iran hostage crisis back in Reagun’s era.
Oh come on! Get real. Those underground secret nuclear reactors and stuff, plus its Iran we’re talking about – worlds leading terrorist sponser and oil power that’s after nuclear – why? It needs it for energy? Yeah rii-ight! I know you are an Iran-loving, West hating Jihadist supporting moron but are you really thinking that lines going to fly? You really *that* stupid?
You got any idea how big Israel is and how many nukes it’d take to destory it? No, I did’nt so. Israel is tiny – in area – and Iran is huge. How many nukes do you think Iran need to suceed in its goal of committing genocide against another five million Jews?
Damn straight Israel needs more nukes -and damn straight its not about to let Iran again even one.
Guess you forgot or never heard about that arms shipment they sent to Arafat back whentehIntifada was on – or the fingerprints and evidence they supported the insurgents in Iraq.
Are you really that ignorant KG the Osama worhipping sack of shit or just lying as usual?
Yawn, still more irrational paranoia from SteeoR. Death penalty advocate, steal from the poor of a moon base advocate, now make war advocate. All irrational ideas. Rational ideas start with empathy for humankind. Which means the ability to know how others feel. Evidently STevoR has no feelings for his follow humankind.
I think StevoR is an asshole, and my only intent is to mock him. Others have serious arguments.
Are you capable of seeing the difference between killing someone who is actively threatening to kill you, and killing someone who just bought a beer and sat down to watch telly, but you think he might some day decide to kill you because you are a hairdresser and you heard that his neighbor hates hairdressers? (Although, he is a bit pissed off at you because your dog keeps shitting in his front yard, so you now always carry a gun while you walk the dog besides his front yard and let it shit there.)
He is? I cannot seem to recall all of these odes to Obama over the last four years. I wonder what he worshiped before 2007.
Oh, it is just CupcakoR.
If somebody actually takes the time to think, it would be improbable for Iran to actually launch a nuclear attack on Isreal. The third most holy site of Islam is in Jerusalem. Any nuclear attack on Isreal would contaminate that site. Then all of Islam would hate the mullahs something fierce. Any attack on Isreal would also harm the Palestinians. Hard to convince them you are an ally as they die from radiation sickness.
A typical ploy by unpopular leaders, and the mullahs are unpopular, is saber rattling, to make people scared of change. No surprise that paranoid states, or paranoid person like StevoR, engages in such idiocy.
StevoR,
you demonstrate again, why people like you are the bigger threat to peace, with your racism (if you don’t like the word Islamophobia, let’s just call you a racist, it’s more adequate anyway) and your ignorance of Iran or Islam.
What do you think would happen if the US dropped a nuke on Tehran? The economic repercussions notwithstanding (do you think Russia or China would ignore this), this would GUARANTEE that the atomic bomb would fall into the hand of terrorists, as a matter of revenge. Once one side starts dropping A-bombs, all bets are off.
You demonstrate your utter ignorance of nuclear doctrine as well. What do you think would China do if the US dropped a nuclear bomb on a non-nuclear nation preemptively? What do you think would happen to the Chinese nuclear weapons arsenal?
Instead of your same old same old racist crap, why don’t you give us some evidence? (And don’t tell us Ahmadinejad said “Israel must be wiped off the map”, this is a Western mistranslation from the Farsi, look it up here)
You live in a delusional world. Waging war costs trillions of dollars. The War Cost Project has estimated that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan have cost the US 3-4 TRILLION so far. How long do you think will the US have the capability to pull this off, especially when China decides to pull its purse strings?
Anyone in the game knows that giving nuclear bombs to terrorist cells will invite retaliatory attacks on your own soil.
campaign rhetoric.
Israel does not have the capacity to effectively strike Iran in a way that guarantees Iran loses its nuclear capability (for instance lack of carriers, Iran is barely in range of its fighter jets, i.e. they’d need refueling). Israel would absolutely need American assistance.
There will be economic repercussions as outlined by others.
I also notice that you assume that everyone on this blog is a Westerner and you project an attitude of Western supremacy. Again, no surprise here.
KG,
Sorry, but this sounds like Tory propaganda.
1. there are scenarios under which Greece leaves the Euro without the Eurozone collapsing, let alone the EU
2. while I am critical of the dismal efforts so far of the EU leaders to create the ESM, it will probably be done at the last minute to stabilise the other countries (Greece right now is hanging in the air), even China is interested in helping out its customer base.
3. did you actually notice that Germany itself is doing fine (also part of the problem of the European crisis), and was also among the first economies to recover after the financial crisis? The German economy has adapted to a changing economic landscape and carved out its niche in the global economy. It wouldn’t be unaffected by a Euro crisis, but it’s quite overblown to predict a collapse of its economy should the Euro go down.
4. you do not seem to appreciate societal change in Germany after WWII ended (“1968 movement”). Even in the economically most depressed states, the neo-Nazis have only had a fringe existence. Your talk about a Nazi revival is preposterous.
to clarify:
the Ahmadinejad quote debate notwithstanding, it’s of course true that Iranian leaders have said outrageous things in opposing Israel and have financed anti-Israel terrorist groups, but I’d want some evidence that they would actually drop an atomic bomb on Israel.
Yeah, any more than people will stop using it in politics, or against abortion doctors, or against different religious groups, or other similar situations, any place else on the planet. For example, suggesting to some other nation that, “If you don’t stop your own terrorism, we will commit terrorism against you, to prove to the world that we will do what ever it takes to make nations like yours stop.” Yep, I would love to see that sort of thing stop happening.
Oddly… I start having some problems working out how that comes about in your version of reality.
Israel does not have the capacity to effectively strike Iran in a way that guarantees Iran loses its nuclear capability
not completely accurate.
currently, taking out Iran’s nuclear plant and uranium processing facility (there’s only one), would effectively derail any hope they have of fielding nuclear weapons of their own manufacture, at least. whether they can purchase one from outside the country certainly cannot be prevented, if, in fact, any are available for purchase. I suspect there likely are, but the panic that would ensue if everyone knew that nukes were actually available on the black market would likely stymie any media coverage of that.
even without nukes, Israel has sufficient airforce to accomplish that goal.
but they also have nukes.
just a minor point.
Ichthyic,
I refer you to this lengthy article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/magazine/will-israel-attack-iran.html?pagewanted=all
While the author comes to a conclusion that flies in the face of the facts he provides, the facts he does provide are nonetheless quite telling.
Meir Dagan for instance thinks that an Israeli attack at their current capabilities would slow Iran down by a mere three months.
While the author comes to a conclusion that flies in the face of the facts he provides, the facts he does provide are nonetheless quite telling.
actually, my take on the article is that Israel has ALREADY slowed down the development of Iran’s nuclear capability by years.
the only thing stopping them from taking direct military action on the nuclear facilities themselves would be political pressure from outside of Israel.
so, no. I don’t think that article supports the idea that Israel “needs” international support to severely hinder Iran’s nuclear capability.
In fact, what it suggests is that Israel already HAS hindered Iran’s nuclear capability.
…but I would say that your article DOES support the idea that direct military action would only delay the inevitable at this point in time, since now their processing facilities are in bunkers hundreds of feet underground.
that’s new information to me.
pelamun and Ichthyic:
I suspect, but cannot be sure, that the assassinations of various Iranian nuclear engineers and scientists over the past 8 months or so are a Mossad operation (no way could it be the CIA — we would have blown up a hot dog stand in Moscow by mistake, plus, we are enamoured with remote control assassinations using RPVs (and we are obsessed with using initials for everything))). Which promises more in the way of setting back the Iranian programme than a military operation would. But it brings up the question I alluded to earlier: if Iran is responding to what it sees as terrorist attacks, and terroristic threats, by the US and by Israel, is their ‘self-defence’ understandable?
Did you read the article? His conclusion is that there will be an Israeli attack this year, after having listed several reasons why an Israeli attack would be useless.
I also didn’t take away from it that Israel already slowed them down for years. Developing nuclear bombs takes years and is expensive, there are numerous setbacks etc. Israel might or might not be behind the murder of nuclear scientists, which could indeed have slowed them down, but we were mainly talking about the effectiveness of a military attack here.
Even a more aggressive voice cited in the article, defence minister Barak, estimates that Israel has nine months left to severely damage the program, while the US has a window of 15 months.
Israel could probably pull it off by itself but due to its limited military capability regarding an enemy 1000 miles away from its territory, this would add a lot of further constraints on the mission. With all the other factors considered it looks extremely unlikely that a military strike would be successful in shutting the program down for good. Which is the only scenario in which I could see the Obama administration supporting an Israeli air strike.
PFC O,
I agree I think the assassination of scientists is a more effective method as long as they haven’t reached the “immunity point” after which killing staff will become meaningless.
I’ve never met an Iranian person who was in favour of the regime (there’s a reason why they leave). But if the US should invade Iran, that would the most sure-fire way to reunite the populace against an external aggressor. An isolated air strike might be different, but if the Iranians choose to up the ante by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, then they might yet succeed in playing the nationalist card. (StevoR is so utterly ignorant about modern Iran that he doesn’t know that there is a large urban segment in Iran, that is not particularly religious. But they could probably be moved to rally behind the national flag, not the flag of Islam, if there was enough military action)
Ichthyic,
yes, dictatorships learn from each other, especially the mistakes that proved to be fatal. Which is why North Korea saw to it that it got nuclear bombs fast (and China would not stand back if the West had bombed the facilities). Iran learned from Syria that you need to scatter your facilities, and build them underground (hello, satellite pictures).
Did you read the article?
obviously I did.
His conclusion is that there will be an Israeli attack this year, after having listed several reasons why an Israeli attack would be useless.
which is irrelevant to the underlying argument of whether they needed external agency involvement to effectively hinder Iran’s nuclear ambitions to begin with.
also didn’t take away from it that Israel already slowed them down for years.
then you yourself didn’t read it very carefully.
hint: search on the word “Mossad” in the article, and scan the surrounding sentences again.
(you’ve seen this ad, right? Interesting, I didn’t know that Mossad was Israeli slang for “madhouse”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfug_ncuP9o )
(In reality though the Mossad has not been able to get its agents into Iran. It’s said that it mainly uses Iranian businesspeople who often leave Iran on trips.)
Ichthyic,
quote-mine much? I did address the Mossad operations directly after what you quote of what I said. While I do think that they slowed them down, I don’t think it was for years, and we won’t have confirmation either way, so this discussion is moot. However I resent your quote-mining.
Sorry, got a little bit sidetracked about issues that are ultimately not too important.
the bottom line is: if a regime is determined enough and the socio-economic situation of the country it is ruling allows it, they will get to the atomic bomb, unless there is a full-scale invasion. Assassinations and air strikes can buy time, but will ultimately not shut the program down.
As PFC O said, let’s look at the world from Iran’s perspective:
– prior to the revolution, the West meddled (even with lethal means) in the internal affairs of the country, supporting a corrupt monarchy.
– after the Islamic Republic is established, the West supports an Iraqi invasion, leading to a devastating war from 1980-1988 (also called the “First Gulf War”)
– after 9/11, it is made part of the Axis of Evil. One of those three countries is invaded, another nuclear weapons to protect itself. So of course the Iranian regime will see nuclear weapons as a means of protecting itself against an invasion.
Feel free to add anything to this.
“another obtains nuclear weapons to protect itself”
To robro
I might vote for Ron Paul, if given the option. I am a young, atheist, “liberal”. I think that the founding notions of libertarianism are retarded, and factually and demonstrably false.
Why would I vote for such a person? Because I think he’s the only one who cares about fundamental civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, right of habeas corpus, right to a trial by a jury of your peers, and so on. The Republican side is not. Obama is not. I could maybe consider Obama, ignoring his failure to stop the PATRIOT ACT et. al., and all of the other excesses, but he nominated Kagan, a very active person in the censorship movement. The only time I wrote to any representative ever was when she was being nominated. A better to every senator, and the president, asking them to not nominate someone to SCOTUS who so clearly and evidently disagrees with the most important right of all.
But yeah, I wish there were better options for my vote.
Lying fuckwitted psychopath StevoR,
I’m saying you’re not, you revolting pile of stinking filth.
You really are so fucking stupid you think there are no Iranians who read English, aren’t you, moron?
It’s not me who’s proposing to start a war that could set the whole region aflame, as well as reigniting the likelihood of a full-scale nuclear war with Russia andor China, shit-for-brains.
My loved ones, like me, are ethical human beings, not psychopaths itching to commit mass murder like you, you filthy scum.
Liar.
Says the moron who takes Newt Gingrich’s ludicrous lies about a moon base seriously.
Look at that language: “taking Iran out”. You talk of murdering millions of innocent people like that, and try to pretend you’re not a psychopath?
If you knew anything at all about Iran, dolt, you would know that Ahmedinejad is not in charge. That’s Khamenei. Even if you propose to murder every last inhabitant of Iran, as you presumably do, do you really think you can commit genocide on that scale and not invite retribution? Are you going to be able to kill every last Shiite? Every last Muslim? Every last non-westerner? I know you wouldn’t see any moral difficulty there, but think of the practical problems.
Look you ignorant piece of shit, Europe currently imports about 1.2 million barrels of Iranian crude per day, and almost all countries have diplomatic relations with Iran. Why don’t you make just a token effort to learn something? Pride in the completeness of your ignorance, I suppose.
Here’s what Leon Panetta said recently:
The judgement of the US government, which I share, is that they are trying to put themselves in a position where they could develop nuclear weapons, but are not currently intending to take that step. But of course fuckwit StevoR, too ignorant to know that Ahmedinejad does not run Iranian foreign policy, or that many Iranians read English, thinks he knows better.
And condemn themselves to death and their country to destruction? The Iranian theocrats are vile scum, and not particularly bright, but they are by no means as stupid as you.
Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of the Intifada, and of resistance to the invasion of Iraq – in both cases, there was terrorism involved on both sides – here’s me thinking you were an English speaker, but you clearly don’t understand the difference between the past and present tense.
You might at least try to make your accusations make some kind of sense, shit-for-brains.
If there was any doubt whatever about the justice of my calling StevoR a psychopath and a genocidal scumbag, he has here definitively removed it. Of course, he only advocates genocide in the name of “Western values”.
pelamun,
Sure there are. There are also scenarios in which the Eurozone does collapse – not necessarily as a result of a Greek default – and it was the possible results of this I was considering.
Merkel’s policies are suicidal for the Eurozone, pushing it into a deepening recession, and no-one seems able to stand up to her. I hope Francois Hollande will be elected and will do so. China has refused to lend the vast amounts that would be required to make any difference.
I didn’t: I said there would be political and economic turmoil throughout Europe. But the German economy is heavily dependent on trade with and investment in the Eurozone .
I said “far right” rather than Nazi: a far right revival would not take the form of Nazism. As I pointed out, Austria already has a strong far right. There is widespread prejudice in Germany against Turkish immigrants and increasing resentment against “lazy foreigners” blamed for the Eurozone crisis; it seems the security services have failed to act against far right terrorists – and some elements may even have colluded with them; and there have been recent very disturbing xenophobic statements from prominent political and business leaders. I certainly don’t see the prospect as imminent, and my concern is more with the geostrategic situation that would arise if the EU disintegrated, which could encourage such a development.
I missed this fine piece of ignorance. Al Shabab operates in Somalia, not Ethiopia. Iran probably wouldn’t have to worry too much if StevoR was in charge of US foreign policy – he’d probably order an attack on the wrong country.
From the article pelamun linked to, allegedly quoting Ehud Barak:
Oh, rrright. Like possession of nukes prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union back in 1991.
Uh.. Forgive me for saying so, but a Corporate controlled government, where you have freedom to do anything you like, as long as it doesn’t upset someone’s business plans, even more people are too poor to take advantage of that freedom, etc… Isn’t my idea of freedom. What, for example, was his stance on things like SOPA, or the “still running, and global” ACTA thing that fewer people are noticing, but which has similarly vague, and overreaching wording, and, more to the point, funded by the same companies/organizations, and being conducted *in secret*?
The problem I have with deal old Ron is that he doesn’t recognize that companies are functionally governments, but outside the control of the people, and that the real choice here is whether we have a) one central, if albeit screwed up, government, which doesn’t recognize rights, or b) thousands of mini governments, such that whether or not you have freedom depends on which fiefdom you happen to be standing on at the time, and who are trying to extend the US fucked up version of IP, copyright, patent, and other things, to the rest of the world. He is pro-corporate, which is worse than being pro-stupid in government, precisely because once the government stops telling corporations, “No!”, all those people with “freedom” lose **all** say as to what those freedoms are, or any means to change the result.
That is what makes his form of “liberty” more insane. Now, if Libertarian meant “personal freedom” only, and wasn’t chained, hand and foot, to his precious “invisible hand”, then yeah, I would be willing to support those ideas. But, it is. And I would rather be a slave with a right to protest, or at least the pretense of that right, than a slave that thinks he is free, and no right to complain about what those in power are doing *at all*.
Kagehi, I agree with all of your points. I disagree with your overall analysis that him being elected would be worse compared to Obama, potentially. It’s unclear to me. I’m still really ticked at Obama for nominating Kagan, and everyone else for confirming her.
Ron Paul actually was and is against PATRIOT act and various bullshit. I don’t know of his position on the copyright issues. I would be curious.
KG,
2. I agree that Merkel’s policies are disastrous. My only hope is that the two state elections this year where huge defeats are expected for her junior coalition partner (a neo-liberal party) will cause her coalition to collapse at the federal level and lead to early elections, though regular elections are due in 2013)
3. But since your concerns seemed to be predicated on a far right revival in Germany, it would strike me as a necessary prerequisite that the German economy would be plunged into chaos as well. As I said, it did come out of the last one as one of the quickest in Europe, and as a matter of fact, its exports to countries outside of the Eurozone+3 and also outside the EU like China, have been growing, a trend apparent over the last two decades.
4. All the points you make are valid, but it *is* an important difference to other European nations that Germany hasn’t had a far-right party in national parliament since the 60s. My view is that while xenophobia and racism are certainly alive and kicking in Germany, they are at comparable levels to other West European countries (I don’t want to take this as an excuse along the lines of “50 steps laughing at 100 steps”, German civil society does need to do more about this.)
The right-extreme terror cell you cite is indeed an embarrassing failure on part of the security apparatus. But at this point it looks like an isolated cell, and I’d wait until we know more. The problem with far-right violence is that until this terrorist cell came up, it was mostly incidents by Nazi groups which are in the purview of local police forces, with no centralised coordination of countermeasures. I hope that one of the consequences of this terror cell incident will indeed be a rethinking of this (though I don’t have much faith in the German youth minister who keeps babbling about the severity of “Germanophobia”).
Of course, one can envision several geopolitical scenarios, and one of the worst case ones would be a dissolution of the EU and a return to old nationalist-driven policies all around. But I think with all that has been invested into the project that is called EU, a break-up is still far from likely.