Staggering numbers on Syria..

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Am I missing something about Francia? His wiki makes him sound like he started out a great leader but then turned into a complete monster who held Paraguay in a reign of fear.

A star of the Historical Filth I wrote about Paraguay.

[kentonio]

yes i can point to the HDI, and you know why? because it is a measure of human progress and thus a very good metric for quality of life. it certainly tells us a lot more than homespun metaphors.

'Homespun metaphors' like the Libyan people rising up to overthrow him you mean?

[C0ckney]

i'm not sure why i wrote metaphors there. i meant to say wisdom and i was referring to your final setence.

[kentonio]

A star of the Historical Filth I wrote about Paraguay.

I've never seen those threads before, really interesting reading.

[kentonio]

i'm not sure why i wrote metaphors there. i meant to say wisdom and i was referring to your final setence.

Are we talking about an alternate reality where the people of Libya didn't rise up against Gaddafi? I'm confused.

[C0ckney]

what does that have to do with the points i have made?

gaddafi fell because of western intervention. my argument is that without that intervention gaddafi would have put down that rebellion and things would be better today in libya. it's the same argument that i have made this entire thread, and indeed in previous threads on the subject.

[kentonio]

what does that have to do with the points i have made?

gaddafi fell because of western intervention. my argument is that without that intervention gaddafi would have put down that rebellion and things would be better today in libya. it's the same argument that i have made this entire thread, and indeed in previous threads on the subject.

Your entire position sickens me quite frankly. Given your normally fairly compassionate views, I have absolutely no idea how you can bring yourself to voice support for dictators. It's bad enough that you're offering that support in the first place, but the fact that you're completely ignoring the masses of recent historical evidence showing that maintaining dictators pretty much inevitably just leads to repeated revolutions anyway just beggars belief.

As for your dismissal of the frankly horrific crimes of Assad, I just don't have the words really..

[C0ckney]

it's a question of choices. given the choice between gaddafi's rule and the situation today, i would choose the former, as i suspect would you if it came down to it. i'm hardly alone in my judgement, 1/3 of libya's population have found the situation so intolerable that they have fled.

i have not dismissed nor denied assad's crimes. i have merely said that he is probably preferable to the opposition (except the kurdish groups of course - i'd love to see a rojava style revolution in all of syria and the wider middle east - but they are not serious competitors outside their areas).

[kentonio]

You're not willing to accept temporary chaos to achieve genuine stability and peace. Instead you're ok with continuing oppression, complete lack of self determination and even mass murder. That's what I don't understand.

[C0ckney]

because i simply disagree that your b will be a consequence of your a. i see no reason to believe that the events you presage will come to pass, given the the present situation and the history of the region.

[kentonio]

Which part of the history? The part where attempts at democratic governance were destroyed by western intervention to impose dictators we could control?

[C0ckney]

which attempts at democratic governance in libya did you have in mind?

[kentonio]

Why constrain it to Libya? You said 'the region' which I took as north Africa and the middle east in general.

[C0ckney]

because we were talking about libya?

in any case what i meant by the history of the region is that strongman dictators have been most effective at keeping violent islamists at bay. however, religious organisations become the organs through which popular descent is expressed and dictators cannot suppress them entirely as this would cause uproar. islamists thus become the popular voice. a side effect of this is that even islamists who get involved in the democratic process and win elections, in algeria and eygpt for example, find themselves unable to take power or are soon removed from it (i remember having an argument with aeson about eygpt at the time - he of course supported the coup). what that means in the context of the future of libya is that the most likely figure to emerge and impose 'stability' is another dictator.

[kentonio]

Do you not see the point that you're basically just recommending a continuation of an extremely long and painful cycle?