volco

and the Bilderberger Hotel

Yes I was replying to you, Jacob, in respect of the plan as being unrealistic, the rest of the post was for everyone to see. Also, since this is geopolitical problem, rather than a more abstract or reducible one, I'm not so much interested in convincing you as much as I am about thinking and hopefully exchanging information to understand this better. so, --------- I didn't say it was unlikely, I said it was unrealistic. It is also unlikely but ca va sans dire. The plan as outlined in post 83 would not work to a smooth outcome and it is unrealistic to think such a thing would work. Yes, destroying an enemy instead of helping one side while attacking the other is surely true now, back then and in the time of the cavemen. The problem however is that it's more complicated to define the enemy. I'm not defending Iran for pointing out their sneakiness in using proxies, as described in the hellish scenario by SkyTrooper, last post. More specifically there are some flaws in what you outlined, - you say a short term occupation would be possible. Why in itself. Why in the context of Iraq and Afghanistan. How can you imagine this to be possible, an American occupation from China to the Mediterranean that can be short lasted and then, what. - that moderate islam, such as muslims against sharia, can be propagated; and I assume that such a thing could be the equivalent of "denazification" The reality is that American strategists don't do things that way anymore, maybe with reason. Libya is a good example of how they evolved from the moral and financial bleeding of an actual invasion and prolonged occupation (Iraq), to a proxy war in which the locals are allowed to have their petty civil war to an outcome favorable to the West. My analogy of Rhodesia is doublefold. It resembles Israel's situation (already being boycotted by the almost muslim majority united nations and beginning to be abandoned by its sponsor) but it is also the symbol of the last of the British Empire collapsing, not because of lack of military strength, but because it could not be accommodated anymore. As Isabel Paterson would say, the flux of energy was reverting. I also earlier said that the Iranians weren't madmen. Well, what I'm trying to relay is that ultimately they are peons, or spearheads, of higher powers such as Russia and the Shanghai Group. The World power is re accommodating. My mention of issuing passports was as a preventive measure. If human life was actually valued by governments then individual citizens should be able to escape in time from a situation and conflict that might not be worth fighting. The number came by subtracting the many Israelis who already have access to a second residence via relatives in the New World, the arabs who might want to stay, and the fundamentalists jews who value more the soil than their children (not too many considering how much Judaism values life and how little it values totems and false idols). But of course no one will consider this seriously for a number of reasons that make perfect sense now and that in the worse of circumstances might fill the pages of a booklet of a new holocaust museum. Israel is the biggest concentration camp for jews that's ever existed. Now it would be a good time to leave it much like the white population of Rhodesia and South Africa benefited from emigrating before the storm than afterwards.

Those are nice thoughts but unrealistic. It is comparing apples and oranges. 1940s Japan and Germany with not even 2001 but 2010 Islam. If we restricted our case strictly to Iran, while I can see how the Islamic Republic could share some semblance to the aforementioned Nationalist countries, I still find this a wrong analogy. As everyone here knows Islam is, for political simplification, divided mainly into sunni and shia. sunni Islam is spread throughout a third of the World, from Africa to China to London and Detroit. Salafists, or something like that, are part of the sunni World and those are the ones who attacked America in 01 and Israel constantly. They rule Saudi Arabia, one of America's allies in need of protection from Iran. Shia Islam is conveniently concentrated in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Iraqi Shia triangle now occupied by the US, as well as many pockets around the World, the biggest one being in Syria and Lebanon (from where they extract poppy money from the Bekaa valley not Iran to fund Hezboallah). The plan outlined before might have a chance of working if applied to Lebanon, Syria and Iran, in the swift manner described. If America and Israel survive the World outcry and boycott that would ensue (the sort that killed bright nations like Rhodesia), then we'd still have to deal with sunni Islam, that is the bombers of New York, Madrid, London, Bombay, Bombay, Bombay. But fortunately for me the bombers of Buenos Aires would have been destroyed. Rather than going for a type of warfare that has been shunned since honorable Mac Arthur was pulled out of Korea, I'd say that what our European and American strategist have in mind would be to foster more orange, or arab or in this case, Persian revolutions of "democratization". Since the result of the last Arab spring has not been very clear, I'd doubt what measures are being planned on Iran. I certainly hope, and to a point bet, it wont escalate to a Nuclear Spring. The bottom line is that if we talk only about Iran and not Islam and terrorism at large, then we'll have to talk about the one American ally that is in actual danger from those Iranian weapons (since they don't have enough range to attack American or even Western European soil), Israel. Israel is in actual danger from this. The moral action for Western governments would be to immediately issue 6 million passports (maybe the US could privatize 0.5% of their Federal Wastelands to create a territory as big as Eretz Israel is today! and more sacred as "God Bless America...", but I'm sure Wisconsin will do just as well) But Europeans hate Jews and the American gov use the State of Israel as very convenient excuse for military presence, and to intertwine religion with politics with strategic resource protection for the benefit of media confusion. The moral action for Israel is however, to try self defense by all means necessary. Is it moral for America to try defense of its occupied territories in Iraq, however... I don't know. Even if moral, how long can it be kept up. Even if the destruction and demoralization plan worked, Once Iran is done with, along inevitably with Lebanon and Syria, and maybe North Yemen too, the same approach wont work with the other 30something countries that will see America as worse of a menace than before, and that, excuse me for being so cliche, could fertilize the ground for vengeance. Some countries where Muslims reside are in the EU which still clearly protects them sometimes surpassing the will of the integrating nations. this will be a fun new year!

Very good synthesis. only that house A is Israel and we know for a fact that with or without Iran (house B ) Muslims of both inclinations who comprise 1/3 of the alphabet will continue to try to burn down house A. It is reasonable enough to think that Iran will use its newly gained leverage to ask for more concessions to Israel and to assert itself regionally which, let's hope, wont clash directly with the US presence in the area. After all Iran would not have this program without Russian support. They are not madmen, they just act like that as the spearhead or scapegoat of the non Western World.

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.php?showtopic=22638

Who is We, the one in bold?

' thanks, that's basically the spirit of what bothers me about this "approach"

who is us? you mean to say if I were in power? I'd issue short of 6 million passports and send them to the American Embassy in Tel Aviv and/or If only it worked! And end the threat? There's threat everywhere, it's not concentrated in a defined place nowadays. As I said before, if this approach worked, Iran will be the first and last country to experience it.

You made me come back, I was just digesting the nuclear wasteland thoughts. As new member Michele points out, killing civilians is not ok, it can be morally acceptable only in some circumstances; and it disturbs me to talk about it so lightly, even revel on it. There are two things in play in what you ask me. Iran which is the topic of the thread is about to achieve nuclear capacity. We've known this for five years now and we've seen American and Israeli politicians do almost nothing about it. When Iraq was in the doubt of having WMD the reaction was much different, but in the case of Iran we know it in advance. I hope I'm right in my guess that they want a nuclear program for energy and deterrent purposes. I lament that part of those deterrent purposes might enable more terrorism. I was pointing out also that Iran's proxies, namely Hezbollah, is almost independent now and that they could have, and still can, acquire either WMD or other weapons secretly, not donated from the highly publicized Irani program. I do agree that once Iran has its nuclear shield their proxy's operations could escalate, but in the context of Islamic terrorism, or even Worldwide terrorism of different sorts, it seems like just a hair to the dog. Or it could be the stick that breaks the camel's back. As you can see I am thinking openly here, I am in doubt. As for terrorism, I do believe it's as unstoppable as war was in older times (or in Africa now). I consider it the price to pay for enjoying a system of distributed power and personal freedom. In a reign of private individuals, some private individuals will do harm. In a reign of state and country, the state will do the harm and can be held responsible. Part of the price to pay for interconnection, globalization, and particularly liberalization. That doesn't mean security should not be of top concern! The problem with Iran is that it plays it both ways. Even if Iran were obliterated for the dubious crime of developing their military and energy sectors, what other places would have to be destroyed to do away with the many private individuals that receive now or in the past help and sponsorship from Iran. Destroy Lebanon too, and most of Europe as well?. How many terrorist per civilians in a given area render that area apt for obliteration? I can't answer what I'd do (unless in a game), this deserves a lot more consideration and thankfully I'm not a Pentagon strategist. I'm willing to continue reading and learning more. This is not a clear cut situation. I'm not interest in speculative scenarios either my point was that there are wars that are better not to be fought. "Chose your battles". Specifically I am aware of the irony that while America failed to protect Capitalism in Vietnam, decades later it turned out not to matter, Capitalism is flourishing there anyway. not just in shoe "sweat shops", and now Vietnam is the opposite of a nation that could do us harm. cool, let's do that then. what an undertaking though!

wow, and you even laugh about it. This has been an interest exchange of ideas, after vomiting I'll follow the rest of the "debate" silently.

what if America had won that war? Would we now be getting a better deal in our shoe making contracts? Would communism have been thwarted before it fell under its own weight? But islamism also uses British and German infrastructure, should that be dismantled too? Maybe we haven't seen a 1940s uncompromising attack on "? " because the enemy, much unlike Japan and Germany, is NOT clearly defined. at all. Iran might be the last state to so openly sponsor terrorism, but as pointed out by everyone they use proxies who could have obtained a nuke in a more secretive way than a years old publicized campaign - if they needed a nuke to inflict terror, which they don't.

Maybe in the case of Israel vs Iran some of those wars among nations could apply (ony that Iran always uses proxy groups by now probably independent from their source) But it certainly wont help, as you admitted, to curb terrorism or "post modern warfare". Both Pakistan and the UK would have to be destroyed to be saved.

You seem to be confusing State and their subjects. Who is going to be much too dead? the state that sponsors terrorism? Terrorism is carried out increasingly by private individuals who can move, reside and be citizens of different and multiple countries. That's what I meant by the complete opposite situation as in WWII.

I am familiar with that content, both the essays you refer to and the books, and in fact it does not provide evidence of a real world scenario where it actually happened, it always falls back to World War II and the obliteration of Japan and the will of the Jap Purist zealots. The Germans Fascists and the Japanese were logistically the opposite of a distributed guerrilla-like warfare like modern day terrorism is. By the 1960 warfare had changed and Vietnam was not won by destroying the country as you described but by withdrawing and making them manufacture our shoes 30 years later. By 2010 conventional warfare as you described does not promise to curb terrorism, at least no evidence of it. Ireland and Spain resolved terrorism in other ways. India tries to squash the Maoist and Tamil terrorist through many measures (like distributed attacks, typical counter insurgence attacks) not by obliterating, say, the state of Orissa.

The attacks on America back in 2001 were, as far as we can know, carried out using Saudi sponsorhip, some Sudanese, Pakistani, I believe some other countries, and actually German infrastructure. That's a lot of turf to cover.

If only that worked. Do you actually have any evidence of any country resolving terrorism that way? Ireland, Spain, India, any evidence whatsoever to back up your claims, not that it would be moral (Peikoff already did that) but that it would actually work?

I was the one who was asking the question following question. I see yours is no. And Eric is also no. interesting. Also interesting EC's absolute evasion of 1) my proposal that oil is finite and essential for at least a window of time, and a disproportionate part of it is in Iran, and Iran's neighbours. 2) I repeatedly acknowledged Iran's threat as a sponsor of terrorism. - and therefore more complicated as Israel already has nuclear capability and has not preemptively struck Iran yet as it did with Iraq before. Israel seems more preoccupied with the distributed character of "post-modern" warfare (terrorism) which clearly can't be eradicated by occupying countries ad infinitum.

Oil is a finite resource (you'll be able to find proof of it) and a large proportion of it is split between the American-allied-Gulf States and Iran. In fact a disproportionate percentage of World reserves lies in this anti-Western, pro China and Russia, country. Our civilization ultimately needs this resource to keep the wheels of life moving until the infrastructure is re built to work on another fuel (just as it's happened a couple of times since the beginning of the industrial revolution) . Even if we don't want to repeat threads about the Iraqi invasion of 2003, it is still WELL within reasonable doubt that oil has a lot to do with this. Just consider that the Iranians think of protecting their oil as one of their reasons to develop a nuclear shield (the other being that two/three(paki) out of the six countries it borders by land has already been occupied by their foe).

Just incidentally, unlike American, Argentine soil has been attacked twice during the 90s by Iranian funded terrorists.

True, we are talking about Iran, but it's impossible to drop the geopolitical context. By your own admission (and even drudgereport's) Iran's main threat is through Hezbollah, the "foreign operations" outgrowth of the Revolutionary Guard. It's valid to note that they act mostly (if not only) in the pockets of shia islam outside Iran, like Lebanon and parts of Iraq (in the case of iraq, for longer and before American occupation). In the case of Lebanon it mixes with Israel, which in fact makes it a Middle East subject. On the other hand, I can not see how oil is not playing a big part in this. The gulf has been enduring a "cold war" between Iran and other American allies, specifically UAE, Qatar, Bahrein, Kwait and Saudi Arabia. The real threat to American (and to a point Worldwide) security is Iran sabotaging or occupying extensive oil fields, which would cause violence and maybe collapse back at home among compatriots. So I fully acknowledge the threat but the moral cost of intervention can not be so easily shaken off as directly as, say, intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan in retaliation of 9/11 (and why not, the Saudi Kingdom of the two scimitars). Even if Iran gives us a show of craziness, (much like the Soviets did for years with their religious confidence in flawed economical practices), it is still a country of millions of somewhat civilized people that have other priorities than bringing about catastrophe. Even the religious mullahs have other 6 or so pillars of faith besides jihad. They really seem to be trying to show defensive force to avoid being "intervened" by the United States. Why can't you assume that the fear is reciprocal, that preemptive attacks are also thought by both parties, and that in the end that would lead to just another MAD policy? Do you really think that the Pentagon would not be taking the necessary preemptive measures if there was an actual threat to American soil through such ridiculously conventional warfare in an age of anonymous, at least a-national terrorism? @NZ issue. That's why I took care to say the country you are a citizen of, instead of your country. I'm not American either and I never agree with the decisions the government I'm a subject of. not of importance.

I just stated the fact that one Third World muslim country already has nukes. Incidentally the Western part of that country borders with both Afghanistan and Iran and is governed by several chiefdoms where the government dares not enter. Those chiefdoms are/were aligned with Taliban and people who have already attacked America in the past - unlike Iran where at least there is some order. Even more apparently it is Saudi Arabia the financier of the groups that have killed American citizens by the thousands. And British, Indian and Spanish. The groups financed by Saudi Arabia apparently train in Afghanistan and the aforementioned border region of a country that has had nuclear missiles for decades. Iran has funded groups that have killed some Americans in occupied Iraq (even if rightly so, it's a war or extended military engagement), and in Israel/Lebanon. In the case of Israel, I believe I heard Ayn Rand saying that the moral thing to do is to help the Israelis in any financial and moral way we can. I could not agree more. That was a bit tongue in cheek, it struck me that you'd be so belligerent (or defensively/preemptively belligerent) when 1) the country you are a citizen of is in the situation you described and 2) your government kicked an American nuclear vessel out of your disproportionately large territorial waters weakening ANZUS. Because oil is a vital geostrategic resource and we (all players on Earth) need time. Isn't it evasive not to think this?

It is the same category in Freudian terms (you don't wanna know which), but even in the same terms, someone careful with spelling, grammar and punctuation can be indeed just as healthy as a painter "obsessed" with form, light and shade. The key is how well that "need to be in control" works. I've met OCDs who are not functional and therefore rather frustrated and giving the image of the opposite of cleanliness. --- latest reply. We don't know for sure about chemical imbalances. I bet if I deprive you of sunlight for 2 days or more you'll begin feeling the evidence of a very particular chemical imbalance, low levels of serotonin. How can we know that this doesn't happen naturally (i.e. genetically) from birth to some individuals? The fact that we don't know as much as the human brain as we know about the human lungs, doesn't mean we don't know anything and are hopeless to learn. It doesn't automatically mean that someone in a white coat knows best either. This ratonal skepticism towards psychiatry I believe is healthy. It consists of acknowledging the scientific advances, but at the same time not trusting someone just for his or her accreditation (ex. I'm doctor bonkers I'll use you as a lab rat but I'm going to phrase that some other way). It requires personal judgement, which paradoxically, can be a conundrum if the person is having judgement problems that could arise from in fact chemical imbalances.

uta bin tarbo, if you already see that, what do you think/predict/believe/guess after oblivion? The USD is in fact the World's strongest currency in large enough circulation. But don't you think that money is the epitome of abstraction, that a new system can be forged, almost inmmediatly? What about the Continental, the Silver Dollar, then the Gold Dollar, now the paper dollar. Could we be heading to an electronic dollar as the epitome of fiat currencies? does it really matter? why ?

fact, Pakistan has nuclear weapons and they haven't been hijacked by the fundamentalists that run half that country. at least yet qyestions, Isn't it quiet possible, in fact more likely, that just as the mullahs chose a stirring figurehead, the same system chooses to have a stirring weapon that can provide the illusion of a shield to the population against what they clearly see as *amurican imperialism*? Since Iran doesn't represent a risk directly to the United States of America, or New Zealand for that matter, wouldn't Ayn Rand's stance be of arming and helping the State of Israel instead of actually sacrificing American (or kiwi) blood? And more importantly. Does anyone here consider that the middle east conflict might be a zero sum game for protection of hydrocarbons veiled by religion and politics? Just consider what just "happened" in Libya.

it could be answered that way, but it would only demonstrate inability to understand what the friend was actually asking. Or... it would be like kidding him. He could reply, then what happens after the sun explodes, and if he doesn't need to care because he wont be around by the time, then doesn't that mean that in fact that way of thinking is a psychological manoeuvre to evade the subject of actual uncertainty?