Barack Obama is secretly pro-Gadaffi - or he's a *****.

[Kidlicious]

Hmmm y do u deny being a blasphemer? Is it bad?

[DaShi]

You asked me a question, and I answered (I'm still waiting on an answer to my question). You'd rather I lie?

[Kidlicious]

You asked me a question, and I answered (I'm still waiting on an answer to my question). You'd rather I lie?

Only God knows the answer, but if it be blasphemy you have a debt for it.

[DaShi]

It's not blasphemy unless it's willful. And since there is no free will, there is no blasphemy.

[Kidlicious]

It's not blasphemy unless it's willful. And since there is no free will, there is no blasphemy.

What are you talking about, no free will? Maybe you should start a thread and present your case. Are you capable?

[DaShi]

I've presented my case. Are you capable of understanding it?

[DinoDoc]

Because it's in the administration's interest, not necessarily the US's?

IIRC the wag the dog events you refer to were at least cloaked in the veneer of dealing with a security threat, ie aspirin factory in the Sudan going boom.

[Kidlicious]

I've presented my case. Are you capable of understanding it?

Ok Fez. Don't forget to say I should be thrown from a helocopter.

[DaShi]

You should, but that's unrelated to the discussion at hand.

[Zevico]

there are genuine concerns about political and press freedoms in turkey, but to call it a police state is ridiculous.

First, there is reason to to think that it is being turned into one.
Second, Rubin says it's being turned into one, not that it is one. He does not call it a police state. He says--I'll quote it again:

that [AKP, Erdogan-led] regime being a pro-Iran Islamist government that is turning Turkey into a police state

And the reason it is being turned into an islamist state?

there are genuine concerns about political and press freedoms in turkey

Exactly. What is their cause? These genuine concerns have arisen because AKP-appointed prosecutors, AKP-supported police and AKP-appointed judges are persecuting the secular opposition. As the Nazis had the burning of the reichstag, the AKP has Ergenekon--a a concocted conspiracy, used by the AKP to paint its foes as simultaneously being far right, far left, fundamentalists and everything in between.

Their purpose in so doing is to stamp out opposition to their rule. Why else would you arrest journalists for publishing a book that accuses the regime of islamism--a book, mind you, whose contents are freely available online? Why ban people from even so much as possessing that book and make it a crime?

The fact that Turkey had an election does not make it democratic. The fact that it's government won an election does not make it democratic. When people are being arrested for expressing their views, the country where they are being arrested and held for years on end, is no longer democratic. The AKP has abrogated the rule of law in Turkey. It blames all of its problems on the West, Israel and Jews. It no longer charges people with crimes, but with 'intefering with government work.'

Its leader has plainly stated that the Sudanese genocide is a lie because "Muslims cannot commit genocide." Is that the statement of a social conservative, or an Islamist who believes that no "proper Muslim do wrong"?

See http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.p...hir-2009-11-08

Its leader has even defended Hezballah against the charge of murdering the former Lebanese PM Hariri. Now note how he does so:

“Hizbullah says that it is the spirit of resistance in Lebanon and even goes as far as to use the term ‘martyr al-Hariri,”

source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...991289,00.html (free Israeli daily newspaper)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/153135.html (Iranian state-owned propaganda news organisation confirms this report)

This man is an Islamist. He celebrates Islamists.

These are the strategies of a regime that is trying, and succeeding, in whipping up the public in favour of Islamism and against democracy and the West.
--

You speak of American religious conservatives with an unfounded and unwarranted contempt. This is a "social conservative" to whom you dare compare American right wingers to? Do Christians deny the Inquisition, and simultaneously call for its reintroduction? Do Christians concoct blood libels, herd people into ghettos, expel them, massacre them for the mere fact of their ethnicity? Do they call for the abrogation of free speech or the rule of law? Of course not. They are democrats. The comparison is fatuous. It is frankly sickening.

The people engaging in mass slaughter in Sudan today are Islamists. Erdogan has no problem with that--anyone who opposes an Islamist isn't a human being anyway. That is the basic logic of Erdogan and Islamism. And that is the consequence of his beliefs.

[Zevico]

Are you saying this with a straight face, or missing the direct statement that the Nazi policy of expansionism is not only compatible with what you propose, but directly expounded by your stated philosophy.

First of all, I don't know what "directly expounded by your stated philosophy" means. Philosophies are not physical beings. They cannot expound on anything.

I take it that you mean that expansionism is a consequence (or permits) this political doctrine.

Plainly stated, there is no reason why territorial expansionism (when it means war) is always and necessarily in the interests of a nation, and, when conducted merely for its own sake, is both unwise and wrong. So much should be obvious.

[Kidlicious]

You still sound like a Nazi. A lot.

[Zevico]

You still sound like a Nazi. A lot.

Either I am a Nazi or I'm not. "Sound like a Nazi" is an expression you have used to attack someone without actually offering anything to back it up. Nazism is an ideology consisting of a set of defined principles, none of which I agree with. So if you think I "sound like a Nazi", it's probably because you're making a number of assumptions about my beliefs which simply aren't true.

[Kidlicious]

Either I am a Nazi or I'm not. "Sound like a Nazi" is an expression you have used to attack someone without actually offering anything to back it up. Nazism is an ideology consisting of a set of defined principles, none of which I agree with. So if you think I "sound like a Nazi", it's probably because you're making a number of assumptions about my beliefs which simply aren't true.

If I would have said you ARE a Nazi, then you would have said, "no because If don't advocate genocide," so you are a Nazi only to a certain degree as you talk the nation as though it were a person who should not function with any or much moral constraint.

[Zevico]

If I would have said you ARE a Nazi, then you would have said, "no because If don't advocate genocide," so you are a Nazi only to a certain degree as you talk the nation as though it were a person who should not function with any or much moral constraint.

Okay. So your argument is that my beliefs are consistent with those of Nazism in one respect: you say that I "talk [as if] the nation...were a person who should not function with any or much moral constraint."

Response: not really.
War is justified--
(1) in self defence (pre-emptive or reactive);
(2) where it is clear that the opponent seeks war against you, though the opponent lacks the capacity to go to war as yet, and is seeking that capacity;
(3) where your opponent undertakes hostile acts against you not amounting to outright acts of war, such as proxy war;
(4) where your allies stand in position (1), (2) or (3).

That doesn't make a given war wise (invading Iran would not be wise, for example, even though it falls within (2), (3) and (4)).
War is not justified by reference to any supposed economic reward that might follow from it.
If you have some objection to that list I'd be happy to consider it but I doubt that I would agree with you. In any case, as I have a pretty clear moral delineation of when war is justified I think the comparison to "Nazism", which posits the unlimited expansion of state power and territory for pure selfish gain, unwarranted.