U.S. aircraft carrier sails through strategic Strait of Hormuz

guerilla said:
All opposition to the state as a state is always evil. The state never tolerates anarchists or effective reformers.

Fascism is a specific system of political economy. It gets used to mean "bad government" but it is actually something well defined which does not necessarily have anything to do with theocracy in particular. Note, Hitler and Mussolini came to power as fascists via democracy. America has a very fascistic economy and it is a constitutional republic.

I think a theocracy, depending on the religion, and how strictly the religion is enforced, could be much better than secular democracy, which is essentially amoral.

In a secular democracy, there are no morals, except that the state is always right. In a theocracy, there is rule by moral right, which might be at times barbaric and backwards, but the laws are consistent with that moral ethic. Politicians are confined to acting within the moral rules, not the whims of the voters or the money of special interests. Right and wrong are defined absolutely.

As an aside, just as the Muslims have no right to impose Sharia law on you, you have no right to impose western secular ethics on them. If you insist your morals are superior, they can also make the same claim. These are value judgments, subjective and individual.

You gotta remember, when the Danes were burning women at the stake as witches, Muslims already had 900 years of women having a right to inheritance, initiate divorce and to conduct business as private property owners.

I am not defending Islam or attacking any other religious ideal. My ethics are such that all aggression is wrong, whether it is attacking Iran to prevent them from building a bomb (or really, to protect oil interests) or attacking them to overthrow their government and way of life (apparently nothing was learned from the Islamic Revolution against the Shah and western values).

Live and let live. The Persians by and large are quite charming people.
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Fascism is really ugly. I live in Italy and people tell me about the time when the country was under Mussolini. It was terrible, repressive and violent. Secular democracy does have its faults and should be in a process of constant reform, but it would appear to be the best model for securing peace and prosperity for the majority of people. That said, if people want to vote themselves into national socialism, for example, then they need to live with the consequences.

A theocracy would be awful on many grounds but the main issue is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are immoral in themselves because their gods do immoral acts and break their won moral code on a whim (e.g. compare the commandment 'do not kill' with the endless killings ordered by god in the old testament. Incidentally yahweh is complicit in slavery, infanticide, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape of female prisoners of war, human sacrifice and on it goes).

Your point about female Muslim property rights is moot on at least two counts: In Islam, women themselves are property; Islam itself does not appear to have developed since 900 years ago whilst Christianity has moved-on.

The bigger geo-political picture is probably about oil, in the end. However that doesn't stop me from wanting the Iranian weapons programme to end.
 


wezcountry said:
Not really. They just need to stand-down their nuclear weapons programme and they'll be welcomed back into the club.
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Other members of the club can have nukes, but they can't? And do you really know that they have a nuclear weapons program? The US has been wrong on their statements about weapons of mass destruction before.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb4etdm86Qg]Scott Horton On Iran's Nuclear Program - YouTube[/ame]
 
wezcountry said:
Not really. They just need to stand-down their nuclear weapons programme and they'll be welcomed back into the club.
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1. What club?

2. Why do they need to stand down when the Brits, Chinese, Americans, French and Israelis have nukes?

3. You are aware that there is ZERO proof of an Iranian weapons program?

It is a double standard. It's a double standard on nukes, on truth and on sovereignty.
 
tom29944 said:
Its not WWII idiot... Iranian will fire hundreds of those missiles from mountains and desserts to US ships...


Grow up
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I'm not sure about America's modern military weapons but we had the SCUD system back in Desert storm which shot down enemy rockets mid-air. I'm pretty sure nearly 20 years later we can still do that. More than likely we'd shoot them down over their airspace and dump the fallout on their citizens and land.

Irans missile systems are more than likely old de-classified cold-war era shit that they bought from the Russians.

Their airforce consists of Russian Migs and Amerian F-14's from the 80's. We can pretty much neutralize that by just not selling them parts to repair their planes.
 
wezcountry said:
A theocracy would be awful on many grounds but the main issue is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are immoral in themselves because their gods do immoral acts and break their won moral code on a whim (e.g. compare the commandment 'do not kill' with the endless killings ordered by god in the old testament. Incidentally yahweh is complicit in slavery, infanticide, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape of female prisoners of war, human sacrifice and on it goes).
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All non-voluntary government is contradictory (illogical). So that's sorta a wash.

On the above, I would simply say that moral rules are not for God. Universal morality doesn't apply to the creator, just as you don't expect your children to behave the same way you expect of your pets. The "rules" or moral laws are for man only.

wezcountry said:
Your point about female Muslim property rights is moot on at least two counts: In Islam, women themselves are property;
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Women are not property in Islam. To repeat, when women in the west were still chattel slavery into the 18th century, women in Islam had rights to property ownership and financial independence for almost 1000 years.

Islam is the only religion I know where the husband pays the wife a dowry at the time of marriage, and that gives her financial independence within the marriage. In the west, men had to be paid by the girl's family in order to marry.

Islam defines the roles of men and women differently, and thus not equal, but it's not particularly punishing towards women from what I know. It is a very hard and absolute religion in some ways, but not always in practice.

wezcountry said:
Islam itself does not appear to have developed since 900 years ago whilst Christianity has moved-on.
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I am unaware of any update to the Christian Bible in the last 300 years.

Perhaps you mean culturally? If so then I think you have to give Muslims credit for having a lot of cultural heterogeneity. Singapore is much different than Pakistan, which is much different culturally than Egypt and Turkey.

The danger of painting people with a broad brush is that it is easy to end up outside the lines of fact.
 
tom29944 said:
Its not WWII idiot... Iranian will fire hundreds of those missiles from mountains and desserts to US ships...Grow up
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And of course, even if that's the scenario, the US Navy will go deep into the strait without letting the Air Force destroy every single one of these targets first........
 
guerilla said:
1. What club?

2. Why do they need to stand down when the Brits, Chinese, Americans, French and Israelis have nukes?

3. You are aware that there is ZERO proof of an Iranian weapons program?

It is a double standard. It's a double standard on nukes, on truth and on sovereignty.
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If Iran had a nuclear arsenal do you think the world would be a safer place or a less safe place?
 
guerilla said:
All non-voluntary government is contradictory (illogical). So that's sorta a wash.

On the above, I would simply say that moral rules are not for God. Universal morality doesn't apply to the creator, just as you don't expect your children to behave the same way you expect of your pets. The "rules" or moral laws are for man only.


Women are not property in Islam. To repeat, when women in the west were still chattel slavery into the 18th century, women in Islam had rights to property ownership and financial independence for almost 1000 years.

Islam is the only religion I know where the husband pays the wife a dowry at the time of marriage, and that gives her financial independence within the marriage. In the west, men had to be paid by the girl's family in order to marry.

Islam defines the roles of men and women differently, and thus not equal, but it's not particularly punishing towards women from what I know. It is a very hard and absolute religion in some ways, but not always in practice.



I am unaware of any update to the Christian Bible in the last 300 years.

Perhaps you mean culturally? If so then I think you have to give Muslims credit for having a lot of cultural heterogeneity. Singapore is much different than Pakistan, which is much different culturally than Egypt and Turkey.

The danger of painting people with a broad brush is that it is easy to end up outside the lines of fact.
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There is a lot that could be said in response to the above but it's quite difficult to keep a good flow in the discussion when other issues are dropping in and out. It's an emotive issue. Besides which I am trying to get my head round the UBot4 interface - haven't opened UBot for months and now have a long list of urls to process.
 
wezcountry said:
If Iran had a nuclear arsenal do you think the world would be a safer place or a less safe place?
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Safer. By far.

If you can't understand why then you're simply basing your thoughts on irrational fear.

Try asking yourself why the following statement is true:

Every country that has gotten a Nuke hasn't been invaded since.

If it still doesn't become clear to you, then look at the military history of India and Pakistan.
 
wezcountry said:
If Iran had a nuclear arsenal do you think the world would be a safer place or a less safe place?
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More nukes in general makes us all less safe, but if Iran got a nuke, it would reduce the potential for war in the middle east.
 
A lot of people in this thread should brush up on the non-proliferation treaty and related stuff. Iran is a signatory to the treaty, which among other things says that all states are allowed the pursuit of peaceful atomic energy. Which is what the Iranians have been working toward for a long time. And there is zero conclusive proof that Iran is pursuing atomic weapons. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they are. Or have bought or been given them.

The second a state contrary to the new world order crowd wants to build atomic energy infrastructure - a potential ticket to lasting first world status and a threat to their hegemony - their efforts are spun as aggressive and the sheep end up believing they're trying to make bombs.

Read up on cobalt 60 for a scary piece of the atomic weapons discussion.
 
cheshire said:
I'm not sure about America's modern military weapons but we had the SCUD system back in Desert storm which shot down enemy rockets mid-air. I'm pretty sure nearly 20 years later we can still do that. More than likely we'd shoot them down over their airspace and dump the fallout on their citizens and land.

Irans missile systems are more than likely old de-classified cold-war era shit that they bought from the Russians.

Their airforce consists of Russian Migs and Amerian F-14's from the 80's. We can pretty much neutralize that by just not selling them parts to repair their planes.
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Naw dog, the Iraq dudes had the SCUDS, Americans had the PATRIOT missle. MERICA FCUK YEAH.
 
guerilla said:
More nukes in general makes us all less safe, but if Iran got a nuke, it would reduce the potential for war in the middle east.
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1 nuke isn't going to be much of a deterrent. They'd have to actually be able to deliver it effectively on target for it to be a threat. That means it has to travel by air, most likely getting shot down before it ever got to where it was going, or it would have to be carried or driven, also not easy. It would give Israel even more incentive to preemptively strike at any place they thought the nuke might be.
 
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