[“None of us had arms and we were not able to resist the attack.” One under-armed villager lamented: “I tried to take my spear to protect my family, but they threatened me with a gun, so I stopped. The six Arabs then raped my daughter in front of me, my wife and my other children.”]
Name:
Xel2006-08-23 10:27
"No, the nations effected do. If a company is 'mistreating' a nation, the nation needs to handle this problem, not us." So you encourage companies to hurt civilians in other countries (often with less stable governments), while your economy indirectly gains dividens through immoral businesses. If all or most Americans think like that, you need to get hurt.
"I don't drink Coke or Pepsi. I usually drink Jones soda." Still a point, it just doesn't apply to you.
"Fail. If I buy a baseball bat, knife, axe, or other object that might be used as a weapon, then kill someone with it, who is responsible, the person who sold me the bat?" Non-comporting and juvenile analogy, the type usually delivered by people with crew-cuts or mullets.
"To some extent I agree here. However, I fail to see why you think the arms industry should be responsible for actions committed by people who abuse their products in other countries. Furthermore, I don't think freedom fighters should be disarmed, even if they commit an occasional abuse, since the overall effect of their actions in fighting human rights abusing tyrants is likely good." You can not prove that any freedom fighters in the world produce a net good throught their movement, whether said movement utilizes rape or not. You can not argument that a movement that directly terrorizes civilians could benefit or gain tactically from this and you still haven't offered any examples. Also, checking on gun consumers to see if they have records or bouts of mental health before purchase is applicable to libertarian philosophy (if you harm a person's liberties through exercise of your own, then you are not capable of handling them and relevant liberties must be taken from you for the sake of further victims). This principle should be exercised when you are selling something that is designed to offer a charge of lethal and/or crippling charge, i.e. kills easily (I predicted someone would say "Then we have to ban anything because you can kill someone with anything fucking commie bitch without penis!"). This is not exercised by the black market, and if America allows its economy to partially build on businessmen who spread suffering by not examining the background of their clients, then America is making money of that suffering. If you can't handle your gun, no more boom for you. If you rape, chemical castration. If you can't make business without harming innocents, then no deal.
"You are talking about us arming the Taliban? We didn't pay the price for that. We armed them against the Soviets if I remember right. I have no issue with this. The Soviets were mass murdering maniacs, and I fail to see what is wrong with supporting a resistance movement fighting Soviet oppression. Even if the Taliban was an immoral organization, they were fighting an even more immoral foe (the Soviet Union), so again I don't see what was wrong with the decision to arm them." You gave them armaments and gods know what else, and then you didn't care to see what they did once they were finished. That probably bit you in the ass on IX XI (allegedly the talibans did it), and I will not feel sympathy with you if it happens again.
"No they aren't. I guess you fail to see my point. The arms industry is not committing any crimes. The people who use their products in immoral ways are. If I buy a baseball bat from my local supermarket, and then smash someone's face in with it, is it the fault of the person who sold me the bat, or mine? Punishing the arms industry would be like punishing the supermarket in that situation." Guns are very very very easy to hurt someone with, hence check-ups on clients are important. If a person uses his liberty to hurt others, that freedom must be questioned for this individual and possibly stripped for the sake of those who can handle their liberties. If you have the capability to prevent immoral businesses, do so, or you are not taking responsibility.
"Tyrannical governments trying to pull people together so they can oppress them both personally and economically, and strengthen the control their corrupt leadership has over their starving people. I fail to see what is wrong with arming rebels against such governments." hack in the vinyl.
"I'm from Michigan. This depends on whether I knew he had a record of mental instability or not, and what sort of mental instability he had, whether or not it has been under control for a long enough time to be considered stable once again, etc. It is dependent upon many things. This is not to say I am responsible to not sell him the armament, or that I should be responsible if he does misuse it, but just because I am not responsible, doesn't mean I am going to sell it to him if I know there is a good chance he is going to use it in ways I won't approve of. I'm not a heartless bastard." So that is basically settled then. Now ponder that you are not allowed to do business with certain people because people with experience and knowledge of who is unstable tells you that "They are unstable, they will use those guns to harm civilians.". Do you still do it, and should your government allow you to do so?
"Because if they are fighting governments who commit the same, or worse atrocities, it might be justified in the end if it brings an end to the government that commits said atrocities." Example of such a movement and a conceivable tactical use of encouraged rape among the ranks would be just super-duper.
"No idea. You seemed to imply that this was an attack on the Cuban government somehow, though." You were the one that said that America shouldn't be criticized when it was fighting undemocratic governments. I was wondering how bioterrorist tactics on oppressed civilians could harm the oppressor, and why one would resort to such tactics.
"Could you explain this?" I meant; you can refrain from fucking it up for people.
"No apparent resistance does not mean there is no discontent." If you have to get a dictatorship dethroned there are less despicable tactics than using poison against civilians.
"I don't know what you are talking about." "El Presidente" of Meh-hi-ko, although on second thought Obrador is the one who got his office stolen via fraud while the current dictator; *Calderon*, is the undemocratic leader who the White House is not criticizing in the least. Double standard of highest order. Sorry about that.
"The Soviet's had a good ideal vision of the world. From my perspective, I like the -idea-, but you see, the Soviets, like many Socialists and liberals, have/had good intentions, but the problem is that they are willing to do ANYTHING to reach their objectives, and they are not above using force to ram their agenda down the throats of those who disagree. Just because the Soviets had a better ideal vision doesn't mean they are in any way better. Think about this phrase:
'The end justifies the means.'
It applies to this. I might not necessarilly disagree with their end - a happy society of people living and working together, in which nobody is poor, everyone has enough to eat, everyone contributes, and everything is shared equally..
But I strongly disagree with the things they do to REACH these goals, which are nothing short of the most frightening and disturbing human rights abuses I've ever seen. They are so overcome by their ideology and their ideal vision for the world, that to them, any means to reach their end is justified. As a result of this, we have all the gulags, the secret police, statism, government oppression, dictatorship, torture, jesus you name it.." And the ideal world according to the talibans is better how? Also, do you honestly think that said talibans do not agree that 'the end justifies the means'? Also, isn't this why you support "freedom fighters" who allow their recruits/CONSCRIPTS (liberty!!) to do whatever, because 'their end justifies the means', even though you have no idea of the darkness of their end and the horror of their means? Not to mention that the current alternative to the democrats are neo-conservatives, who has used every practice between here and hell to get what they want?
Wow.
"You are saying that the U.N. does some things that are libertarian in nature, and thus it is wrong to take all funding from them? If that's what you were thinking, I'd LOVE to hear it. Then, we can compare all the anti-liberty activities they do, and we'll see whether or not the U.N. should really be funded, and if it is in the interests of liberty." The idea was that if it is immoral to force American taxpayers to fund what they think is "gay" or "anti-libertarian", since the UN is far from perfect, then I can say I'm not gonna pay taxes because the crusade on drugs is immoral. That was the parallell.
"Just go look at their damn website. They blame everything on guns, and seem to want to make people think that if only private citizens had no guns, everything would be peachy. They are 'anti-gun', and anti-freedom. They don't want to fix anything, they just hate guns, gun owners, and our freedoms." I'm 17, I live in Sweden and I've heard enough American, rural paranoia to last me from here to the day the libertarians are in charge.
"Not sure what you're talking about. Why should we have to fund their anti-gun studies? Why should we have our right to property eroded even more, to fund studies that we don't believe in or want to happen?" Objective studies are objective studies. I don't take for granted that IANSA are objective or unbiased, I was pointing out how incredibly destructive it is to find it moral to repress information, data and *facts* just because of your own convictions.
"I dislike their targetting of civilians, but since the governments will commit the same abuses if left in power, I don't see the issue with arming those who commit abuses to destabilize said governments, thus preventing a future of continual abuses if nobody resists..." A few poorly-written paragraphs ago the entire left sucked cunt because it beleives that the end justifies the means. Shall we make up our mind, maybe?
"You asked a question, I gave you a legitimate answer. What more do you want?" You think that the intention and accountability of a fighting force doesn't make a difference, and I say that it does.
"I'll go look for some in the near future, and make a post about it if I remember to. I remember there was some kindof scandal recently about how the dems had been registering people to vote/voting under the names of people who are dead, and voting under their names or something a while ago. This is by no means substantiated, and I have vague memories of it at best, but again, if I remember, I'll search around and see what I can find on the dems." Do that, and I'll concur if I can verify.
"I don't see how it doesn't address your concern. Our soldiers (not as a whole, or generally, but your occasional group of individuals) commits war crimes like rape, murder of civilians, etc, just like said rebels. I don't think it is on the agenda of the rebels to 'hey lets go out rape a bunch of civilians, lol'. I don't think it is any more a part of their organized group than it is a part of our organized military to go out and kill or rape civilians in Iraq, but it still happens on an individual basis... our military can't always stop crimes from happening within its ranks, and this isn't what they had in mind when they invaded Iraq to begin with, just like it probly wasn't what was generally in the mind of the foreign rebels." It's about culture and pervasive attitudes. The rape of Abeer was not spontaneous, while the rapes African 'freedom fighters' employ are of a very systematic nature, with an intended effect of mollifying and subordinating the populace. In Iraq, we are dealing with individuals of the lowest possible sort who aren't going to get their desserts because apparently they are under a bit of stress and boys will be boys. In Africa, young armed men -whose suppliers do business with mindless people America is completely ignoring in some kind of Randian wet dreamland- are taught it is for the greater good to inflict misery on villages for tactical benefits. Difference.
I shall remind people that I am far from convinced of my position and that facts are the only things that shape and solidify my view of the world - and my stance in it.