 Looking for info on explosives . . ., . . . yet afraid of being flagged. |
  |
 Aug 29 2006, 08:21 AM
Post
#226
|
|||||
|
Karma Police  Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505  |
Could it be because the western power is the attacker in all of the cases you refer too? Sure, most of these guerillas use very ugly terrorist methods and it's hard to justify their methods, but even if they didn't—even if they were the good old kind of guerilla, who only uses hit and run tactics to take out enemy soldiers—they would still hide among civilians. Saying they are responsible for civilian deaths, unless it is a situation were they very specificly put them up as shields and prevent them from leaving after being warned (and yes I know it happens), is sort of like saying they are at fault for trying to stay alive. |
||||
 |
 
|
||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 10:21 AM
Post
#227
|
|||||
|
Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
Maybe we can get the Drop Bear trillogy funded by the same people who fun Uwe Boll's films. |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 11:14 AM
Post
#228
|
|
|
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 934 Joined: 26-August 05 From: Earth - Europe - AGS - Norddeutscher Bund - Hannover Member No.: 7,624 |
Do not mention Uwe Boll. Did you know, that he has got a doctorate in literature?
|
|
|
|
|
Aug 29 2006, 11:34 AM
Post
#229
|
|||
|
Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
He should have gotten a doctorate in film. |
||
|
|
|
||
|
Aug 29 2006, 02:58 PM
Post
#230
|
|||||
|
Neophyte Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,026 Joined: 23-November 05 From: Seattle (Really!) Member No.: 7,996 |
He's saving Cracker Jack UPC's to send in for that one next :grinbig: |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 03:25 PM
Post
#231
|
|||||||
|
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
In some cases it is. NPR had some interviews yesterday and the day before with some people from a village in Southern Lebanon. They described being forced to stay in their homes and hezbollah militiamen putting rockets with timers in civilian neighborhoods then running away. There was almost a riot this weekend because some people wanted to put up posters of Nasrallah and the people that live in the village told them they couldn't.
So what you're saying is that either a) Israel is a Western power or b) Israel is the U.S.?
Wow. Just wow. If you hide amongst civilians you are using them as shields. That means you are at fault. Sugar coating it with "he wanted to stay alive" doesn't change the fact that you actions cause deaths. |
||||||
|
|
|
||||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 06:43 PM
Post
#232
|
|
|
Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
a) The term "western power" was the one used by the poster I was answering. I took it as refering to Israel in this instance, though that may not be technicly true.
b) Lets say you were hiding in your girlfriend's house even though you were hunted by mob hitmen. You would be knowingly putting her at risk, but if she was the only one who would cover for you, you might still have done it. It would have been more noble of you to try and make it on your own and run the risk of being spotted while you did your shoping, but if you and your girlfriend were both killed you would not have been held responsible. When terrorists blow up a coffee shop with suicide bombers, they are responsible. When terrorists force people to stay at sites that have been publicly announced as targets of a bomb raid, they are responsible. When civilians are killed in a bomb raid targeting an appartment building were a terrorist cell has a secret meeting hall in the basement, I would argue that it is in fact very hard to blame the deaths on the terrorist. |
|
|
|
|
Aug 29 2006, 06:48 PM
Post
#233
|
|||||
|
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
I disagree. Perhaps you're not legally responsible, but that doesn't mean a lot in the grand scheme of things. Obviously I can't convince you, but that's cool.
You wouldn't win that argument with me. But I think you already knew that. :) |
||||
|
|
|
||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 08:16 PM
Post
#234
|
|||||||||||
|
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 881 Joined: 31-July 06 From: Denmark Member No.: 8,995 |
I don't need to hear your opinion on the usefulness of being able kill everyone six times over. It happened, they actually built all those nukes, whether you think it was ridicolous or not. You're also apparently not aware of what happened in the Soviet. On one front, the cold war was about classic power, who controlled what countries, who had more guns etc. But what most westerners forget is that the Soviets had politics and ideology too. It is for some reason so popular to view the rest of the world as something that just reacts to the west, and that is of course wrong. The Soviets had their marxist ideology, claiming they would eventually defeat the capitalists. Most believed it would be in a some violent event, a combination of the western populations revolting and a large-scale military conflict. By the 80s, it was becoming apparent that this wasn't working out as intended. The US was overtaking the russians in the arms race. Their weapons were becoming much better. It became increasingly difficult for the Soviet hardliners to realistically claim that they would be able to defeat the capitalists - capitalism was getting stronger and spreading. They could no longer claim they were stronger, and also their ideology were being defeated. After the fall, several Party members have pointed at the Star Wars programme as the final nail in the coffin. This weakening of the hardliners was what let the reformists get to power and that eventually led to the fall of USSR.
Let's use that logic on Nazi Germany. The vast majority of Germans probably didn't want war. They didn't want to get bombed to bits and invaded. The majority probably just wanted to live normally and peacefully. Unfortunately, a minority chose to pose a threat to the world around them and so the majority got war and bombs. That's unfortunate, but it couldn't really happen any other way (well, the rest of Europe could've been free from arguments like yours, skipped the Appeasement policy, attacked Germany early and saved millions upon millions of lives). Our enemies (which doesn't include the average Muslim or the vast majority of Islam or whatever you call it, I'm talking about the leaders of rogue states, terrorist organisations etc.) get their very power from the conflict with the West. This makes diplomacy impossible, because we don't have anything to offer them that won't mean they lose their power. The Mujahedin are only of any use if there is an enemy to fight - making peace means they lose their power, their positions of leadership, their respect from the people. Hezbollah only exists to destroy Israel, if they make peace with Israel Nasrallah stops being the head of a powerful organisation - he gets to be a normal man, at best a regular member of Parliament (or whatever they have in Lebanon). Arafat held his position of power because of the conflict with Israel, a 2-state solution would mean he lost his power and influence, that he had had to establish a regular government where he wouldn't be the dictator and where he couldn't siphon billions to his personal accounts. On top of that, most of them probably really, truly hate our guts. I'm not really sure what you're saying about supporters and apologists - in my definition supporters are people who actively support terrorism, terrorist organisations, fundamentalists etc.. People trying to reach diplomatic solutions or who think that the war on terror is going to far are not supporters. They have different political opinions, and some of them are IMO indirectly causing a lot of harm, but there's a lot of difference between me thinking someone is wrong and someone actually doing wrong. You ask how the radicalisation can be proper for one party and not another - that is something you brought up, this idea that I have to define their actions as wrong to justify going against them, and because of that moral stand I can't choose to respond with the same actions. If someone tries to shoot me, I shoot back. I do it in the interest of self preservation - morality doesn't figure into it. |
||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
Aug 29 2006, 09:01 PM
Post
#235
|
|||
|
Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
That's more like it. If this is what you meant by "thwarting", I give you right. Though I think you should have mentioned the reformists from the beginning. What I don't understand is why you mentioned rooting out sympatizers and fostering a "us and them mentality" as a proper reaction to Sovjet's challange. I think that most of the communists that lost their jobs were just regular marxists with no real connection to Sovjet. And the reformists could never have brought about the fall of the union if relations with USA were not as good as they were in the end. I don't see how hatemongering helped what was ultimately a reconciliation (combined with an ideological and technological victory like you say). |
||
|
|
|
||
|
Aug 29 2006, 10:01 PM
Post
#236
|
|
|
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 881 Joined: 31-July 06 From: Denmark Member No.: 8,995 |
I live in a country where a lot of the politicians thought the Americans were the aggressors. They more or less supported the USSR - at best they viewed them as having the right idea but wrong implementation, at worst they actively cooperated with the Russians. Many of them had been on "educational" stays in USSR. They had the majority vote for the larger part of the cold war. Support for NATO was far from given, at several times the majority voted for policies that went counter to NATO, and they certainly didn't support any sort of military built up. Like today, anti-Americanism was widespread and America was considered the source of the cold war conflict.
If the US had not rooted communism from their society, they may have ended up with the same composition of political views as we have in Western Europe. That would have effectively meant that no effective counter would've been mounted against USSR. We all know how exceptionally brutal and imperialistic the USSR was, without the determined opposition from the US the world hadn't stood a chance. Most likely the communists would've gained control over the entire world except North America, Western Europe and perhaps Australia, and at that point it would only have been a question of whether the rest surrendered peacefully or it would mean WW3. The USSR military doctrine was downright scary - they certainly didn't believe in mutually assured destruction, and they didn't care what the losses would be as long as they ended up winning. |
|
|
|
|
Aug 29 2006, 10:34 PM
Post
#237
|
|
|
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
America: We're there to pull your ass out of the fire when you need us.
Even if sometimes we are the ones that put you there |
|
|
|
|
Aug 29 2006, 11:05 PM
Post
#238
|
|
|
ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333 |
James McMurray: He's there to put the annoying jingoism back into living in the United States.
:D |
|
|
|
|
Aug 30 2006, 01:34 AM
Post
#239
|
|
|
Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,430 Joined: 10-January 05 From: Fort Worth, Texas Member No.: 6,957 |
I gotta throw the fibbies off my track somehow. Acting like Stephen Colbert but serious might stop them from raiding my old lady sex sweat shops.
|
|
|
|
|
Aug 30 2006, 01:44 AM
Post
#240
|
|
|
ghostrider Group: Retired Admins Posts: 4,196 Joined: 16-May 04 Member No.: 6,333 |
Nice. :D
|
|
|
|
|
Aug 30 2006, 09:11 AM
Post
#241
|
|
|
Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
I realize that there needs to be hard-ass powerplayers with one track-minds stuck in the middle ages who keep the rich part of the world on the winning side. I don't think any different constalation of states would be any more fair if they were in our place. But I will use my vote to influence people in power in the free world to use our power with as much responsibility as possible.
I guess it's the job of people like Smokeskin to keep us from growing too soft. But I think that we are very far from it. <this post has been heavily edited> |
|
|
|
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 4th September 2025 - 04:04 AM |
Topps, Inc has sole ownership of the names, logo, artwork, marks, photographs, sounds, audio, video and/or any proprietary material used in connection with the game Shadowrun. Topps, Inc has granted permission to the Dumpshock Forums to use such names, logos, artwork, marks and/or any proprietary materials for promotional and informational purposes on its website but does not endorse, and is not affiliated with the Dumpshock Forums in any official capacity whatsoever.