|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
|
 Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:21 am Post subject: |
 |
|
...
Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:09 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
neither did I.
Say hi to Igothisguitar. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 1:27 am Post subject: |
|
|
| On the other hand wrote: |
| Quote: |
Apics valid point- they are right about what Bathists , Khomeni lovers and Bin Laden followers are about.
|
Well, okay. But you said AIPAC's success at lobbying was due to their valid points. But somehow, I don't think that Congress needs AIPAC to tell them that Baathists, fundamentalist Shiites, and Al Qaeda are up to no good. |
Well there are quit a few some in congress who would try appease them.
To know the mideast conflict is to know the truth/ or at least the case against Israels' mortal enemies and what they are about.
by the way Sistani is a fundmentalist Shia so I think it is really hard to label that is why I call them Khomeni followers. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:07 am Post subject: |
|
|
| dogbert wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| dogbert wrote: |
| I think AIPAC has far too much pernicious influence in the U.S. I said the same about IRA influence. I am opposed to foreign factions (which is what AIPAC truly is) lobbying to affect U.S. domestic and foreign policies. Do you have an argument in favor of that, Joo? |
No , but I would add that a lot of the reasons for the success of APIC is that they have some valid points. If they didn't then they would not be as successful as they have. |
I disagree.
The primary reasons for AIPAC's success:
1) Lots of money to give
2) Substantial numbers of Jewish politicians in Washington
3) Distrust/hatred of Arabs/Muslims
4) White guilt
That's it.
By the way, the NRA also has an extremely successful lobby. |
That maybe so but not " that's it" part is wrong.
also
5 ) that many of Israel's actions are justified or understandable.
6 ) Israel is usually far more moral and tolerant that its enemies
7 ) Israel's mortal enemies are horrible
8 ) The US is often only voting its conscious at the UN- which is corrupt and selective.
9 ) Appeasing Al Qaeda , the Bathists or Khomeni won't make them be nice or peaceful.
w/o reasons 5-9 they would not be as successful as they have been. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:19 am Post subject: |
|
|
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
...your complete inability in tackling the idea behind my objection to the whole concept of communist containment...
I am no more far left than you are. |
Yet you chronically present the United States as the aggressor -- apparently for no other reason than you believe it is in its nature to dominate or perhaps bully those near it, anticommunist "pretexts" or not -- and you have clearly bought into the far left's economic imperialism theoretical model -- thus your attempt to trivialize something that was no trivial matter -- of U.S. foreign policy hook, line, and sinker. And you would probably condescendingly laugh off a model which might include elements of Wilsonian Idealism in its explanatory scope.
You also seem to buy into one of the far left's most annoying false delimmas: that if you do not accept the bitter criticisms of the United States and its foreign policy that people like you lob against it, then you are a mindless patriotic drone, defending the Great Satan. Ambassador Nathaniel Davis complained of this construct after testifying before a committee looking into the Horman matter. Davis claimed that he produced all that he new about the affair, yet certain senators would accept nothing less than full admission of extremely egregious govt conduct -- that is, that the U.S. govt maliciously had Horman killed and then cynically lied about it. Yet the most compelling evidence for this interpretation seems to come to us as "Track III" innuendo from a Hollywood film, and the persisting shrill and obstinate allegations of people like you.
It does not seem to occur to you that perhaps some other, locally-centered, series of events led to Horman's death (and the coup d'etat as well), so sure you are that you have the United States and indeed world affairs all figured out.
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| Does it necessarily refute the emotionally driven research? Do you really have an image of yourself as having once been blank slate and moulded into what you are now through years of objective and impartial research? Is it not this notion which is in fact the outdated concept? |
Emotionally-driven research is not acceptable unless you have been drowned in post-modernist theories for so long that you cannot think of any other way to deal with the world around you.
Regarding your second question, no, I do not.
Concerning your third question, who says striving for professional, dispassionate, and balanced -- which is not to suggest "objective" -- research and analysis is "outdated" besides post-modernist arrogance?
Reminds me of Nietzsche arrogantly declaring "God is dead." |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:07 am Post subject: |
|
|
...
Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Reminds me of Nietzsche arrogantly declaring "God is dead." |
As I understand it, what Nietzsche meant in saying that was not that there was once an objectively knowable entity called God who had somehow died. Rather, he meant that belief in God had ceased to be a motivating force in peoples' lives. Since Nietzsche accepted the frameworks of post-Kantian subjectivty, he belived that things existed only insofar as people believed in them. So, in a sense, he did believe in the previous existence of God, but not in the way that the word "existence" is used by traditional theists. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
Good point, OTOH. Referencing Nietszche as though he was being arrogant with this statement betrays an obvious misunderstanding of what was behind the statement. Using God as the mark of ethics and the milestone by which we measure the immanent morality residing behind our ambitions should be changed.
Actually, if anything, Gopher should be pleased with such a statement will all its references to being impassioned with a more objective language without the religious referents. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
After all, in regards Chile we have the US administrators on record as having never been worried about communism in that country. Nixon was worried that Allende could have conceptualized a poltico-economic paradigm that was independent of both America and the USSR. We have this on record.
Yet Nixon and his henchman, just as you run around with all your labels of leftism and post-modern drivel, persisted in labelling him a communist because it was advantageous for them not because it was the truth. |
"Persisting in labelling him a Communist?" Are you denying that Salvador Allende was a lifelong committed Marxist-Leninist, a charter member of the Socialist Party, which was much further to the left than the Communist Party, and, from at least as early as 1958 in receipt of substantial Soviet and later Cuban coaching and assistance (not just financial), a hundred million dollar arms deal meant to break the U.S.-Chilean military relationship/dependency and replace it with a Soviet-Chilean one, not to mention an entire GOSPLAN mission in summer 1973? You cite what "we have on record," In_Seoul, but I am not convinced that you have looked at the record apart from what you might find to establish U.S. complicity. (This is the overarching problem in the historiography on U.S. foreign policy, by the way, within the U.S. itself and abroad.)
I have no real problem accepting Nixon's irrationality towards the Allende regime.
I do, however, have a problem with your wholesale dismissal of Allende's actual Marxist-Leninist agenda and his attempts to establish a Soviet dependency in Chile. Where do you think the friction between Chile's historically anticommunist/antipolitical professional officer corps and Allende and Altamirano came from? From "U.S. meddling?" From Nixon's insantity? Is that really all that you see here?
I do not think it is. Rather, I see you disengenously promoting and forwarding Socialist myth, entirely ignoring ground conditions in Chile, and sticking to your U.S.-centric model of world history.
Allende was much more than an honest, simple-minded, humble leader of a poor country that merely wanted to go its own way. And he was not Willy Brandt anymore than he was Stalin. He was at least as antagonistic towards Washington as Washington was towards him. It does indeed take two to tango.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:57 am; edited 3 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:30 am Post subject: |
|
|
In Seoul 1933 & Igothisguitar have the same objectives.
Anyway " The Wall Behind You " falls. That is the way it ought to be.
Last edited by Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee on Fri Aug 25, 2006 2:50 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:02 am Post subject: |
|
|
In_Seoul: It feels like we are merely talking past each other, and I see you have attempted to undermine my position based on the Nietszche point, which was merely an afterthought (and I never asserted he was a post-moderninist, by the way, which I will thank you for having the grace to credit me with at least that.  ).
I cannot recall your modifying your views or cedeing ground on any point of substance that I have raised on the Arab-Israeli Conflict, the Chilean affair, or the nature of U.S. foreign policy. Debates such as these should lead to reevaluation of our assumptions and a broadening of our perspectives. But this one, pretty much like the earlier one on Chile, is going nowhere. You have not provided any facts or analysis that I have not seen before on these problems. (While you are more sophisticated than Juan Arevalo, you are nevertheless Juan Arevalo -- or Zepezauer at ThirdWorldTraveler.com -- in newer, more presentable garb.) You seem to feel that you have all of the answers. I think you are at least as entrenched in your views as you allege that I am. If we were nation-states, then, I guess we might close our embassies and start shooting at each other now that diplomacy and negotiation has failed to establish common ground.
In any case, I am going to take my leave of this thread now. I tried to exit gracefully last time, but it seems better simply to admit that I feel we might be wasting time that would be more profitably spent elsewhere at this point. As On the Other Hand and I have sort of broached via pms, as of today I am back into an 800-page per week reading load and would not have been able to continue this discussion much longer anyway. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 8:44 am Post subject: |
|
|
| On the other hand wrote: |
TUM wrote:
| Quote: |
| Why give most countries a free pass when it comes to dispossesing indigneous people but the same doesn't go for Israel? Why suggest that Israel should have not been created, but ignore the creation of numberous other, many under FAR less democractic procedures than Israel was? |
Okay. Consider the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Now consider 9/11.
Now, consider the following two statements...
1. I really wish the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre hadn't happened.
2. I really wish 9/11 hadn't happened.
(1) Do both these statements carry equal weight in your mind? To sweeten the pot, imagine that Bin Laden had gotten support from Vladimir Putin in carrying out 9/11, and that Putin was in the habit of referring to OBL as "a great democrat". Now, try to imagine how you would think about 9/11 if that were the context in which it had occured.
| Quote: |
| As I pointed out Israel is America's ally. You support your allies because that is what is expected. |
(2) Yes, but WHY is Israel America's ally? That's the key question here. And one of the answers routinely given to that question is "well, because they're both democracies". Okay, maybe you don't say that, but then I'd be curious to know exactly why you think America should have Israel as an ally. |
1. Come now, if that had happened we'd be in WWIII and the earth would be a smoking cinder. Given what actually happened I'd have to say both carry the same weight. Murder is murder regardless of the numbers.
2. For strategic reasons maybe? To have an ally in a place which is VITAL to Western interests (oil) who can keep an eye on things and be used as a proxy to hit terrorists groups (Hizbollah, Hamas) would seem to be a VERY good thing, wouldn't you agree? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
For strategic reasons maybe? To have an ally in a place which is VITAL to Western interests (oil) who can keep an eye on things and be used as a proxy to hit terrorists groups (Hizbollah, Hamas) would seem to be a VERY good thing, wouldn't you agree?
|
So, Israel is useful to the west, because it can be used to hit terrorist groups whose entire rasion d'etre is to attack Israel.
You really didn't think this one through, did you? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 9:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
...
Last edited by in_seoul_2003 on Mon Oct 08, 2007 8:13 am; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 25, 2006 12:21 pm Post subject: |
|
|
8 pages, Wow! 
I try to be open minded and neutral to many ideas. Though Iran and Syria just took 5 sound bites to pretty much lay bare many arguments here.
Though could someone pm me when we reach 3 pages so i don't need to read 8 to feel we are arguing points that have been argued before  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
