Old Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread • Page 74 • Collecting General • The Acaeum

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Old Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread
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bclarkie
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 10:37 am

bbarsh wrote:
Come on, Brian. We liberated Kuwait from a murderous, raping, army out of Iraq and then placed sanctions on them. The consistently violated every single sanction placed on them. How is that related to anything in Africa?

Do you realize that this type of stuff happens pretty regularly in the African countries that I just named? i.e.:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... qi=g10&oq=

etc.

Which is exactly my point.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 10:46 am

That was a good quip by Steve Martin...but it also exactly makes my point.

"But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world."

bbarsh
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 11:24 am

bclarkie wrote:
Do you realize that this type of stuff happens pretty regularly in the African countries that I just named? i.e.:

Which is exactly my point.

Yes, I do. The civil wars and mass murder the regularly ravages many African countries. It really is a humanitarian nightmare.
I agree with you 100% here. How do you fix without major intervention? Bush sent more money to Africa (mostly for AIDS) than any other president in history, but what has that done to help the countries at large? I don't know.

Well, I have to cut the politcal talk down for me. Just got a call and I have to head back to Chicago early (another job just popped up. It is a good thing!) So long St. Louis, hello Chicago. Crap, I am never gonna get home...

And I could've bought these damn modules off the 1$ rack!!!

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Theleb
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:38 pm

bbarsh wrote:Also, the U.S. does not use its nukes to leverage piece of crap nations like Iran.

I'm sorry but it's poor taste at best to refer to a nation (especially one with such a rich culture and history like Iran/Persia) as crap. I think you meant the government, not the entire nation, or at least I hope so.

jasonw1239
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 12:50 pm

The US is known internationally for "dealing with the devil" if it makes them money.

Case in point - the 1983 handshake with Donald Rumsfeld.
Saddam was an ally until it was no longer convenient.

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Tharizdun
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:01 pm

The US is known internationally for "dealing with the devil" if it makes them money.

This pretty much applies to the majority of the human population :roll:

Saddam was an enemy of our enemy is why the "handshake"...
You guys made a deal with Hitler... you could go on and on about all the fucked up deals people have made till the beginning of history :wink:

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Tharizdun
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:08 pm

My bad Jason! You guys were independent since 1931... so Canada was part of all of Britains Imperial deals up until 1931 then

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Badmike
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:09 pm

bclarkie wrote:
So when are we planning to go into African nations such as the Sudan, the Congo and Somalia?

If you thought Afghanistan is a quagmire......

The sad truth is it will never be politically expedient to invade an African nation. Besides the inevitable racial issue, there are many of the same problems facing any military intervention (tribal alliances and grudges going back centuries, etc). Somalia was a FUBAR from the word go. If you study the history of Congo...I don't even know where we would start.

Sadly I feel many nations of the world have written off Africa. I dont know how much good the billions and billions of dollars pumped into the continent the last few decades has helped....I doubt military intervention would help much either, especially when there isn't a "side" worth choosing.

Mike B.

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Johnson
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:14 pm

Tharizdun wrote:My bad Jason! You guys were independent since 1931... so Canada was part of all of Britains Imperial deals up until 1931 then

Still do.

We share the same Queen - Canada is in the British Commonwealth, as is Australia.

Saw an interesting program on TV last week.

Apparently Britain wasn't all that fussed on the USA as a colony (at the time), but got all panicky about the prospect of losing the West Indies, where most of the worlds sugar came from, which is why we abandoned America when Jamaica was threatened (by those pesky French).

I spose at the time it was the right decision

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benjoshua
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:29 pm

Badmike wrote: If you study the history of Congo...I don't even know where we would start.
Mike B.

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. Wow! What an amazing read. If you thought Hitler was the leading mass murderer of European leaders, think again. Leopold gave him a run for his money and got away with it, as most people have no clue how bad it was. Simply amazing and very sad. :oops:

I lived there for three years when I was growing up.

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jasonw1239
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:29 pm

Tharizdun wrote:My bad Jason! You guys were independent since 1931... so Canada was part of all of Britains Imperial deals up until 1931 then

We did not even get our own official constitution until 1982.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Act,_1982

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bclarkie
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:32 pm

Badmike wrote:
If you thought Afghanistan is a quagmire......

The sad truth is it will never be politically expedient to invade an African nation. Besides the inevitable racial issue, there are many of the same problems facing any military intervention (tribal alliances and grudges going back centuries, etc). Somalia was a FUBAR from the word go. If you study the history of Congo...I don't even know where we would start.

Sadly I feel many nations of the world have written off Africa. I dont know how much good the billions and billions of dollars pumped into the continent the last few decades has helped....I doubt military intervention would help much either, especially when there isn't a "side" worth choosing.

Mike B.

I agree with most of this, and it goes to my point.

If Iraq was simply about ridding the world of evil & murderous torturous regimes, there are plenty of places to start trying to do so. Yet despite that, we seem to be very selective in where we choose to do so A lot of the very same things said about about several African nations could have also have been easily applied to the Iraqis.

In short, the ridding the world of an evil dictator while certainly was true, it was also used as a facade to cover up after the fact for many other more complex reasons as to why we did what we did. Simply, if we were only looking to rid the world evil regimes, the list is still long on that front, but afaik, the real desire to do so is short.

With that in mind, I'm also not entirely sure with all the political ire on several fronts with respect to governmental taxation(or lack thereof) & spending, how exactly it's proposed that we would pay for it.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

Last edited by bclarkie on Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:32 pm

jasonw1239 wrote:The US is known internationally for "dealing with the devil" if it makes them money.

Belleau Wood
Coral Sea
Buna
Gona
Savo Island
Guadalcanal
Tunisia
Anzio
Normandy
Leyte Gulf
Arnhem
Okinawa
Lend Lease
The Marshall Plan
NATO
Pusan
Inchon
Chosin
Kuwait City
73 Easting

The list could go on and on. Do I need to explain it?

"But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world."

Tharizdun
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:34 pm

The problem with "Evil Dictators" might be that once in awhile they're actually beneficial in the grand scheme of things... hence it's beneficial to have them in some places and not in other places.

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bclarkie
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:37 pm

Tharizdun wrote:The problem with "Evil Dictators" might be that once in awhile they're actually beneficial in the grand scheme of things... hence it's beneficial to have them in some places and not in other places.

Then it's not about them being evil dictators at all.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -Neitzche

Tharizdun
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:43 pm

It gets hairy cause in our little world on here we're more than likely to face a "Sauron" type of character gamewise, no? And if Sauron's defeated then all is right in the world again, no? Until another evil dragon or whatnot comes along... this type of idea is out there in the real world as well IMO, kill the evil manifested being or whatever and then all will be righted. To some extent I think that most people think this way, that if they solve the paramount problem in their lives they will be able to deal with all the other problems... to some extent. Flawed logic of course but maybe it works often enough to some degree that people still believe it.

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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:50 pm

Tharizdun wrote:The problem with "Evil Dictators" might be that once in awhile they're actually beneficial in the grand scheme of things... hence it's beneficial to have them in some places and not in other places.

The phrase you are groping for is, "...lesser of two..."

"But I have watched the dragons come, fire-eyed, across the world."

benjoshua
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:11 pm

Here's a story about a 5 year old girl named 'Savannah' ... saving her daddy's life. Savannah talked with a 911 dispatcher from Hancock County, Indiana after her father began to have chest pains.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=eD ... r_embedded

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