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On November 29 2018 06:22 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2018 05:21 iamthedave wrote:On November 29 2018 05:01 Liquid`Drone wrote:On November 28 2018 09:04 xDaunt wrote:On November 28 2018 08:52 IgnE wrote:
It’s pretty easy to enforce the peace actually. Just threaten to withhold aid unless Israel immediately stops their settlements and makes other overtures towards peace. Pulling the money strings didn't work on the Palestinians. Why do you think it will work on the Israelis? EDIT: Hell, let's look at the other side of the coin. How many countries do we sanction for bad behavior? How effective have those sanctions been at changing that bad behavior? the most relevant example is south africa. international pressure worked. Did it? I thought Mu-WAHAHAHA-gabe was deposed by a military coup in the end? Are you talking about Mugabe of Zimbabwe fame? He’s referring to a different African country.
I am. Got my wires crossed.
So while my initial point was wrong, wrong, wrong as can be, that is a major example of a country where all the sanctions in the world didn't do anything. And Zimbabwe's never had an economy as strong as Israel's.
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On November 29 2018 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2018 14:57 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 13:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
What would the US interest be if instead of Pearl Harbor we come to terms on how the world gets divided between the US, Germany, and Japan along with commitments from Japan and Germany to fight the people we ended up fighting once the war was "over"?
Basically all WWII did for us was give us weaker allies against communism than we would have had in Nazi Germany and Japan, neither being any real threat to us dominating the western hemisphere.
I suppose some prefer a submissive/fragmented Europe, a helpless (as far as military aggression) Japan, and China and Russia being the other major powers and hostile. Instead of 2 peers in Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. You're missing the larger ideological conflict that was brewing in the interwar period. There were three ideological camps with conflicting and mutually exclusive ideologies: the liberal camp (headed by the US and UK), the fascist camp (headed by Nazi Germany), and the communist camp (headed by the USSR).Though these camps might have (and, at times, did) align for mutual short term games, they were always going to be at war with each other at some point. Aligning with the Nazis was simply never going to be an option for the US because the Nazis opposed so many critical and fundamental US policy goals. This is why there was never even a question as to whom the US would support when the war initially broke out in Europe. US arms, aid, and materiel went almost exclusively to the UK before Pearl Harbor, not to the Nazis. And you're really missing the point if you think that all the US got out of WW2 was weaker allies to fight against communism. The US inherited a global empire. Huge swaths of the world became de facto American colonies almost overnight. The wealth that this generated for the US while most of the rest of the industrial world was in ruins was unprecedented. The current world order that we have today -- at which the US continues to be at the center -- is a direct result of that post-WW2 inheritance.. I'm intrigued by what you perceive to be some of the key differences in USSR "communism" and Nazi "fascism" and their various policy goals that made aligning with the Nazis not an option but allying with Communists absolutely necessary? As to the second part I think we're saying the same thing with different inflection.
Umm, elimination of a mutual enemy, the Nazis, is the big reason why the US allied with the USSR. You have to remember the timeline of American involvement in the war. Hitler invaded the USSR in the summer of 1941. As soon as he declared war on the US in December 1941, the US and USSR were de facto allies in the conflict.
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On November 29 2018 14:44 Liquid`Drone wrote:Roosevelt and Churchill debated american intervention in ww2 prior to pearl harbor in a way that makes it seem like it was going to happen either way. Tbh I think part of the problem was that the proposed justification by Roosevelt was one which would end up providing the foundation for the dismantling of the british empire, which Churchill didn't want. xDaunt, it's not really about the raw numbers. It's that a country like Israel cannot afford to be without friends or allys. I'm not saying it can't survive by itself, but I'm quite certain Americans vocally stating that 'we cannot continue to support you or consider you our ally as long as you maintain this policy' would influence internal Israeli opinion on the matter. And it's not like the settlements have huge internal support in Israel: Israeli opinions on various questions related to the settlement processHere you can see that even though the general public believes that Trump will enable Israel to continue building settlements, the question 'Recently a number of Israeli politicians from the right have declared that with U.S. president Trump taking office, a new political era is beginning in our region as well, and Israel should exploit the opportunity to expand construction in considerable parts of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank. In your opinion, should Israel indeed expand construction at this time?' gets a slightly negative response even from the Jewish Israeli population: Israeli Jews I'm sure it should 20.5% I think it should 24.8% I think it should not 25.4% I'm sure it should not 24.6% Don't know 4.7% (so, basically, 45% supportive of expanding settlements, 50% negative) And that is polling a group of people where 70% of the respondents answered that they are either sure or think they will be able to continue building them under the Trump administration. The question "If a referendum were to be held in Israel today on whether, in principle, it is desirable to remain, as at present, in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria or to leave it, how would you vote?", 41.3% of the general public voted 'In favor of leaving the West Bank/Judea and Samaria', 11.1% answered don't know, declined to answer. Internal Israeli opinion is not staunchly in favor of the settlement policies, and it seems silly to me to think that Israel's one major ally could not sway Israeli opinion in a way that makes the settlements even less popular. The entire international support for Palestine in this question hinges on the Israeli settlements. If Israel offered peace and 1967 borders, Palestine's international sympathy would vanish in a second if they refused.
You could be right that some US-led international pressure brought to bear on Israel might lead to some changes, but it still isn't in the American interest to do so. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, the rest of the world doesn't really care enough about the Palestinians to make it an issue, anyway.
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On November 30 2018 00:47 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2018 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 29 2018 14:57 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 13:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
What would the US interest be if instead of Pearl Harbor we come to terms on how the world gets divided between the US, Germany, and Japan along with commitments from Japan and Germany to fight the people we ended up fighting once the war was "over"?
Basically all WWII did for us was give us weaker allies against communism than we would have had in Nazi Germany and Japan, neither being any real threat to us dominating the western hemisphere.
I suppose some prefer a submissive/fragmented Europe, a helpless (as far as military aggression) Japan, and China and Russia being the other major powers and hostile. Instead of 2 peers in Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. You're missing the larger ideological conflict that was brewing in the interwar period. There were three ideological camps with conflicting and mutually exclusive ideologies: the liberal camp (headed by the US and UK), the fascist camp (headed by Nazi Germany), and the communist camp (headed by the USSR).Though these camps might have (and, at times, did) align for mutual short term games, they were always going to be at war with each other at some point. Aligning with the Nazis was simply never going to be an option for the US because the Nazis opposed so many critical and fundamental US policy goals. This is why there was never even a question as to whom the US would support when the war initially broke out in Europe. US arms, aid, and materiel went almost exclusively to the UK before Pearl Harbor, not to the Nazis. And you're really missing the point if you think that all the US got out of WW2 was weaker allies to fight against communism. The US inherited a global empire. Huge swaths of the world became de facto American colonies almost overnight. The wealth that this generated for the US while most of the rest of the industrial world was in ruins was unprecedented. The current world order that we have today -- at which the US continues to be at the center -- is a direct result of that post-WW2 inheritance.. I'm intrigued by what you perceive to be some of the key differences in USSR "communism" and Nazi "fascism" and their various policy goals that made aligning with the Nazis not an option but allying with Communists absolutely necessary? As to the second part I think we're saying the same thing with different inflection. Umm, elimination of a mutual enemy, the Nazis, is the big reason why the US allied with the USSR. You have to remember the timeline of American involvement in the war. Hitler invaded the USSR in the summer of 1941. As soon as he declared war on the US in December 1941, the US and USSR were de facto allies in the conflict.
I might be getting my history screwy, but didn't he only declare war on the US because Japan did?
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On November 30 2018 00:51 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 00:47 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 29 2018 14:57 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 13:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
What would the US interest be if instead of Pearl Harbor we come to terms on how the world gets divided between the US, Germany, and Japan along with commitments from Japan and Germany to fight the people we ended up fighting once the war was "over"?
Basically all WWII did for us was give us weaker allies against communism than we would have had in Nazi Germany and Japan, neither being any real threat to us dominating the western hemisphere.
I suppose some prefer a submissive/fragmented Europe, a helpless (as far as military aggression) Japan, and China and Russia being the other major powers and hostile. Instead of 2 peers in Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. You're missing the larger ideological conflict that was brewing in the interwar period. There were three ideological camps with conflicting and mutually exclusive ideologies: the liberal camp (headed by the US and UK), the fascist camp (headed by Nazi Germany), and the communist camp (headed by the USSR).Though these camps might have (and, at times, did) align for mutual short term games, they were always going to be at war with each other at some point. Aligning with the Nazis was simply never going to be an option for the US because the Nazis opposed so many critical and fundamental US policy goals. This is why there was never even a question as to whom the US would support when the war initially broke out in Europe. US arms, aid, and materiel went almost exclusively to the UK before Pearl Harbor, not to the Nazis. And you're really missing the point if you think that all the US got out of WW2 was weaker allies to fight against communism. The US inherited a global empire. Huge swaths of the world became de facto American colonies almost overnight. The wealth that this generated for the US while most of the rest of the industrial world was in ruins was unprecedented. The current world order that we have today -- at which the US continues to be at the center -- is a direct result of that post-WW2 inheritance.. I'm intrigued by what you perceive to be some of the key differences in USSR "communism" and Nazi "fascism" and their various policy goals that made aligning with the Nazis not an option but allying with Communists absolutely necessary? As to the second part I think we're saying the same thing with different inflection. Umm, elimination of a mutual enemy, the Nazis, is the big reason why the US allied with the USSR. You have to remember the timeline of American involvement in the war. Hitler invaded the USSR in the summer of 1941. As soon as he declared war on the US in December 1941, the US and USSR were de facto allies in the conflict. I might be getting my history screwy, but didn't he only declare war on the US because Japan did?
That's a complicated question. The US only declared war on Japan immediately after Pearl Harbor. Hitler didn't declare war on the US until several days afterwards, at which point the US finally declared war on the US. Some historians think that Hitler was acting haphazardly when he declared war on the US.
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On November 30 2018 00:50 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2018 14:44 Liquid`Drone wrote:Roosevelt and Churchill debated american intervention in ww2 prior to pearl harbor in a way that makes it seem like it was going to happen either way. Tbh I think part of the problem was that the proposed justification by Roosevelt was one which would end up providing the foundation for the dismantling of the british empire, which Churchill didn't want. xDaunt, it's not really about the raw numbers. It's that a country like Israel cannot afford to be without friends or allys. I'm not saying it can't survive by itself, but I'm quite certain Americans vocally stating that 'we cannot continue to support you or consider you our ally as long as you maintain this policy' would influence internal Israeli opinion on the matter. And it's not like the settlements have huge internal support in Israel: Israeli opinions on various questions related to the settlement processHere you can see that even though the general public believes that Trump will enable Israel to continue building settlements, the question 'Recently a number of Israeli politicians from the right have declared that with U.S. president Trump taking office, a new political era is beginning in our region as well, and Israel should exploit the opportunity to expand construction in considerable parts of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank. In your opinion, should Israel indeed expand construction at this time?' gets a slightly negative response even from the Jewish Israeli population: Israeli Jews I'm sure it should 20.5% I think it should 24.8% I think it should not 25.4% I'm sure it should not 24.6% Don't know 4.7% (so, basically, 45% supportive of expanding settlements, 50% negative) And that is polling a group of people where 70% of the respondents answered that they are either sure or think they will be able to continue building them under the Trump administration. The question "If a referendum were to be held in Israel today on whether, in principle, it is desirable to remain, as at present, in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria or to leave it, how would you vote?", 41.3% of the general public voted 'In favor of leaving the West Bank/Judea and Samaria', 11.1% answered don't know, declined to answer. Internal Israeli opinion is not staunchly in favor of the settlement policies, and it seems silly to me to think that Israel's one major ally could not sway Israeli opinion in a way that makes the settlements even less popular. The entire international support for Palestine in this question hinges on the Israeli settlements. If Israel offered peace and 1967 borders, Palestine's international sympathy would vanish in a second if they refused. You could be right that some US-led international pressure brought to bear on Israel might lead to some changes, but it still isn't in the American interest to do so. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, the rest of the world doesn't really care enough about the Palestinians to make it an issue, anyway.
How does supporting Israel benefit the US? Mostly it just seems to piss off Muslims in the region.
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Trump has this to say about his and Michael Cohen's discussions of a Trump Tower project in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Nothing to see here, folks.
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Trump in fact admitted to Mueller in writing that he was involved in these negotiations even as he won the nomination. This is as he was publicly asking Russia to illegally obtain Hillarys emails. And of course, he lied to the country about this until now. What a clown.
If Obama had done that, the right would be calling it unpatriotic and would be raising hell. To claim otherwise is just dishonest.
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We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger.
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On November 30 2018 01:14 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 00:50 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 14:44 Liquid`Drone wrote:Roosevelt and Churchill debated american intervention in ww2 prior to pearl harbor in a way that makes it seem like it was going to happen either way. Tbh I think part of the problem was that the proposed justification by Roosevelt was one which would end up providing the foundation for the dismantling of the british empire, which Churchill didn't want. xDaunt, it's not really about the raw numbers. It's that a country like Israel cannot afford to be without friends or allys. I'm not saying it can't survive by itself, but I'm quite certain Americans vocally stating that 'we cannot continue to support you or consider you our ally as long as you maintain this policy' would influence internal Israeli opinion on the matter. And it's not like the settlements have huge internal support in Israel: Israeli opinions on various questions related to the settlement processHere you can see that even though the general public believes that Trump will enable Israel to continue building settlements, the question 'Recently a number of Israeli politicians from the right have declared that with U.S. president Trump taking office, a new political era is beginning in our region as well, and Israel should exploit the opportunity to expand construction in considerable parts of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank. In your opinion, should Israel indeed expand construction at this time?' gets a slightly negative response even from the Jewish Israeli population: Israeli Jews I'm sure it should 20.5% I think it should 24.8% I think it should not 25.4% I'm sure it should not 24.6% Don't know 4.7% (so, basically, 45% supportive of expanding settlements, 50% negative) And that is polling a group of people where 70% of the respondents answered that they are either sure or think they will be able to continue building them under the Trump administration. The question "If a referendum were to be held in Israel today on whether, in principle, it is desirable to remain, as at present, in the West Bank/Judea and Samaria or to leave it, how would you vote?", 41.3% of the general public voted 'In favor of leaving the West Bank/Judea and Samaria', 11.1% answered don't know, declined to answer. Internal Israeli opinion is not staunchly in favor of the settlement policies, and it seems silly to me to think that Israel's one major ally could not sway Israeli opinion in a way that makes the settlements even less popular. The entire international support for Palestine in this question hinges on the Israeli settlements. If Israel offered peace and 1967 borders, Palestine's international sympathy would vanish in a second if they refused. You could be right that some US-led international pressure brought to bear on Israel might lead to some changes, but it still isn't in the American interest to do so. And if we want to be honest with ourselves, the rest of the world doesn't really care enough about the Palestinians to make it an issue, anyway. How does supporting Israel benefit the US? Mostly it just seems to piss off Muslims in the region.
Israel is an American military and intelligence proxy in the region. That’s hugely valuable.
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On November 30 2018 00:47 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 29 2018 15:12 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 29 2018 14:57 xDaunt wrote:On November 29 2018 13:32 GreenHorizons wrote:
What would the US interest be if instead of Pearl Harbor we come to terms on how the world gets divided between the US, Germany, and Japan along with commitments from Japan and Germany to fight the people we ended up fighting once the war was "over"?
Basically all WWII did for us was give us weaker allies against communism than we would have had in Nazi Germany and Japan, neither being any real threat to us dominating the western hemisphere.
I suppose some prefer a submissive/fragmented Europe, a helpless (as far as military aggression) Japan, and China and Russia being the other major powers and hostile. Instead of 2 peers in Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. You're missing the larger ideological conflict that was brewing in the interwar period. There were three ideological camps with conflicting and mutually exclusive ideologies: the liberal camp (headed by the US and UK), the fascist camp (headed by Nazi Germany), and the communist camp (headed by the USSR).Though these camps might have (and, at times, did) align for mutual short term games, they were always going to be at war with each other at some point. Aligning with the Nazis was simply never going to be an option for the US because the Nazis opposed so many critical and fundamental US policy goals. This is why there was never even a question as to whom the US would support when the war initially broke out in Europe. US arms, aid, and materiel went almost exclusively to the UK before Pearl Harbor, not to the Nazis. And you're really missing the point if you think that all the US got out of WW2 was weaker allies to fight against communism. The US inherited a global empire. Huge swaths of the world became de facto American colonies almost overnight. The wealth that this generated for the US while most of the rest of the industrial world was in ruins was unprecedented. The current world order that we have today -- at which the US continues to be at the center -- is a direct result of that post-WW2 inheritance.. I'm intrigued by what you perceive to be some of the key differences in USSR "communism" and Nazi "fascism" and their various policy goals that made aligning with the Nazis not an option but allying with Communists absolutely necessary? As to the second part I think we're saying the same thing with different inflection. Umm, elimination of a mutual enemy, the Nazis, is the big reason why the US allied with the USSR. You have to remember the timeline of American involvement in the war. Hitler invaded the USSR in the summer of 1941. As soon as he declared war on the US in December 1941, the US and USSR were de facto allies in the conflict.
They both had a policy of elimination of a mutual enemy.
you said:
Aligning with the Nazis was simply never going to be an option for the US because the Nazis opposed so many critical and fundamental US policy goals.
I wanted to know what critical policy goals you were talking about? How they differed from the Communists?
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I really hope Deutsche Bank's whole leadership ends up in prison, unlikely, but they make Trump and crew look like boy scouts. Funny the entire global network of "law" and "justice" couldn't do anything but some rando using an outdated exploit exposed more in one night than the global network had in decades. Almost like the world powers didn't want to uncover the massive scamming in the first place.
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On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger.
While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD.
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On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD.
Politically it basically is NBD. What Republican is getting reelected wanting to oust Trump? Don't think even a check from Trump to Putin with "help in the 2016 election" on the memo line would change that. The only value I get out all this is just how helpless our system is at holding powerful people accountable even when they are trying.
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On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD.
No, it is not a big deal to build in Russia or even to give the leader of the country a gift to grease the wheels for the project.
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On November 30 2018 10:55 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD. No, it is not a big deal to build in Russia or even to give the leader of the country a gift to grease the wheels for the project.
Were you ever critical of Obama for not being willing to be tougher on Russia? For not preventing Putin's Crimea move? You can't actually believe it's not a big deal for a presidential candidate to do that during the campaign. Are you patriotic? Russia is our enemy.
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On November 30 2018 10:55 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD. No, it is not a big deal to build in Russia or even to give the leader of the country a gift to grease the wheels for the project.
I wasn't around the politics thread at the time. Were you somebody who thought the Obama hot mic thing with Putin was a huge deal? Because this seems way bigger than that to me.
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On November 30 2018 10:59 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD. No, it is not a big deal to build in Russia or even to give the leader of the country a gift to grease the wheels for the project. Were you ever critical of Obama for not being willing to be tougher on Russia? For not preventing Putin's Crimea move? You can't actually believe it's not a big deal for a presidential candidate to do that during the campaign. Are you patriotic? Russia is our enemy.
First of all, read this just so that you understand how retarded the narrative is that Trump has been soft on Russia.
Second, there is nothing inherently unpatriotic about doing a business deal with Russia or the Russian government. There are tons of Americans and American companies that do just that. And it is fine unless the Americans are selling out America when doing the deal. I have a very hard time seeing how a construction project in Russia would sell America out.
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On November 30 2018 11:02 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 30 2018 10:55 xDaunt wrote:On November 30 2018 10:22 Doodsmack wrote:On November 30 2018 09:57 xDaunt wrote:
We will see what is in the testimony that Cohen has given, but so far, the stuff that’s leaked is a big nothingburger. While it's a disingenuous stretch to say that pursuit of a business deal with a foreign enemy as he secures the nomination is NBD, its definitely beyond a stretch to say that offering Putin a $50 mil penthouse is NBD. No, it is not a big deal to build in Russia or even to give the leader of the country a gift to grease the wheels for the project. I wasn't around the politics thread at the time. Were you somebody who thought the Obama hot mic thing with Putin was a huge deal? Because this seems way bigger than that to me.
The hot mic is absolutely a bigger deal because it suggests that Obama, as President of the United Statses, was doing something behind the scenes with Russia that the American people would not appreciate. Frankly, I wouldn’t have picked you as a poster who would miss that point.
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I hope you plan on coming back to the "critical and fundamental US policy goals" we shared with communists and not fascists. Whatever you think they are is actually pretty important imo.
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On November 30 2018 11:22 GreenHorizons wrote:
I hope you plan on coming back to the "critical and fundamental US policy goals" we shared with communists and not fascists. Whatever you think they are is actually pretty important imo.
Frankly, I’m annoyed that you are even asking the question, because it asks me to lay out all of the ways that fascism and liberalism are fundamentally opposed. It should be obvious to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of history. I simply don’t have time for it.
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