LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!!!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I vote he be pulled out of Cain's thread and shoved into his own.
You can take my comments with them.

If you feel like it :shrug:

As soon as Cain requests the janitors, they will be along to clean up the thread.

[Cain]

Hmm, did something happen in this thread?  Let me flick back.

[Cain]

]Don't believe western propaganda that much, they have propaganda, and so have we.

Well, duh.  This is my field, propaganda is a given.  I'd be disappointed if I didn't see some propaganda.  It's always nice to know what I'm meant to think.

The US is not as strong as they like us to believe, their œconomy certainly isn't.

The US sucks at occupation, but is brilliant at knocking small nations apart.  International norms constrain it on the latter far more than anything else.  And yes, their economy sucks, but so does everyone elses.  Unless someone recovers much faster than the USA, this makes no difference.

NK is also not on the verge of collapse

Without Chinese food shipments, the military would be starving.  Villagers in North Korea are already stripping trees to eat their bark.  They have almost no fuel, no cash, and no real natural resources, apart from a million men under arms.  Clinton managed to buy North Korea off with what should be basic foodstuffs and equipment in 1994, so they obviously needed them back then pretty bad.  And Bush has slapped on more sanctions since then.

and Kim is actually quite a capable leader that's pretty realistic and most of all is a master of obfuscation, all his 'family portraits' have completely different people on it and all people know he's trying to confuse but it's working, he gives each UN delegate a completely different impression of him, from self-hating to obsessed with grandeur to complete psychopathy to calculating realism, they all come back and say different things about the man.

Well yes.  You don't get to be a third world dictator for long by being stupid.  He's not crazy, but I don't recall ever saying he was.

No one knows what he is, and where he is, estimates on NK's army size go from the fourth largest standing army to just under the US. (US is actually 7th or 8th)

There have been several high-ranking defectors in recent years, whose estimates are generally considered accurate, mainly because no-one cares enough about the DPRK to lie.  Yet.

We're talking about highly disciplined men each and every one ready to give their lifes for the great leader. I wouldn't be surprised if he purposely let that test fail by damaging some critical part of it but in reality testing some other things and already had the critical part operational, estimates on how soon he'll have nukes are like a 'file transfer time remaining'-bar in Windows.

They got their missiles from Pakistan, who stole them from several American, European and Chinese designs.  Also, the plans for those missiles that the Pakistani military gave them are widely known.  The missiles are dangerously ill-designed and in some cases, do not even have the basic security measures needed for nuclear weapons, making theft a very real possibility, either from a stationed missile, or one that crashes somewhere else (worse case scenario: a Japanese city).

NK is out to confuse the world, the world knows it, but there's nothing they can do. They're all in the dark about Kim and his state but they know it's a thing to take seriously.

No, Kim is using bluster to prove he cannot be bullied, so other nations will treat him with more respect, and more importantly, consider him somewhat unbalanced and so capitulate to his demands.  Acting crazy to leverage your position is really old, as a tactic.  Plus there are internal factors to consider, since the succession is not entirely clear, which may impact on how he is acting (weakness in the face of hostile nations could be cause for a military coup).

As for Iran, also don't believe western propaganda here, it 's not some borderline mediæval desert state

I never said it was.  You really must think I am a moron or something.

and Iran has the advantage of being pro-scientific research, a thing the Bush administration was against in a lot of cases. Iran supports stem cell research and all those things.

So the Iranians are smarter than Bush.  So are things that live in my pond.  That's hardly bragging rights.

That's Tehran, it's not some barbarian state Iran also lies on one of the fossil fuel storages on earth.

You really do think I am an idiot, don't you. 

If I recall correctly only Russia has more oil and gas than Iran, America is dependent on Iran for its energy consumption and Iran unlike about every western country has a positive and not a negative state reserve.

Iran has massive consumption issues with its oil. I'd be more worried about the Iranian Navy blockading the Straits of Hormuz than who they are selling to. 

You realize the whole point of wanting to invade all those middle-eastern nations is because the US is dependent on them for fossil fuels and they really enjoy keeping the price high and all those things.

No it's not.  That is a reason and oil plays a role, but there are larger geostrategic aims here.  Central Asia, namely, and domination thereof.  This is the Great Game, if it wasn't oil, there would still be reasons to gain a foothold in the region (ignoring for the moment that the United States cannot establish a foothold in Central Asia forever, because Russia or China will ultimately dominate Eurasia).  Stop thinking so small, the real stakes here are hegemony and continued world domination, the profits are merely a perk.

The US really can't just do what it wants, with US mentality that'd significantly change the world.

Didn't stop it from 1990-2008.

The US œconomy to function is dependent on both China and the Middle East, both of which they have a mild cold war with. Both of which are less dependent on the US than the reverse.

You are an idiot.  The US has more military alliances in the Middle East than anywhere else in the world, bar Europe.  And how do you know they are less dependent on the USA?  China relies on constant economic growth for political legitimacy, without it, revolution is on the cards.  Unless you can replicate the entire US-Chinese economic interaction, you cannot know who is more dependent on whom, and any claims otherwise are pure conjecture.

By the way, did you get that pm back I sent at your pm? I'm not sure it actually got sent namely.

I ignored it, firstly because I wasn't around and secondly because you weren't following my advice, and so I lost interest.  I've got better things to do with my time than to hold the hands of people who have the potential to bring something to this forum but decide to piss it all away for reasons of ego gratification.

[Cain]

Because Cain's not superhuman I assume?

You'd be wrong.  I'm not only superhuman, I'm super-awesome.

The very fact that you ask this is a strong indication you do too and are ignorant of it. I do too, but I'm not ignorant about it, propaganda shapes our lives and colours our very being. There's a reason every single person thinks in terms like 'enemy' and 'ally' and thinks that the values of their own culture are the best.

No, our culture sucks, and so does everyone elses.  And people who are only capable of thinking in friend-enemy distinctions are morons.  Or readers of Carl Schmitt (no difference).

That a lot of people in the west seem to think that North Koreans live in poverty and the nation is on the verge of collapse

Yes, because it is.  Its funny, how people all seem to agree on things that are true.

Turks, Maroccans and Iranians have nothing related except their 'faith' and they even disagree and openly hate each other because they practice different schools of Islam. It's like saying Peru and British culture is related because it's both dominantly Christian.

Well that was wonderfully patronizing.  Inaccurate too, but I expect that, since you're trying to defend an undefendable point with a strawman no-one has made.  Turks, Morrocans and Iranians have shared history, a linguistic and literary tradition, and probably many other things I can't be bothered to remember because I'm not a North Africa/Middle East regional specialist, though I could email several if you wanted.

Iran really isn't any thing less technologically sophisticated as the west because scientific knowledge is open source for one.

It's also protected by copyright and international law, not to mention barriers to entry on cost.

Conversely, in Iran they only get told the worst parts about the west and only hear the best parts of their own country. That some suspects of terrorism (propaganda talk for 'freedom fighter') get tortured is the tip of the iceberg.

Terrorists are freedom fighters?  You seriously say that in a thread condemning other people for buying into propaganda?     Terrorists are people who kill other people for political reasons, to make a point to a third party.  "Awe and Wonder" was terrorism, and so is slaughtering civilians to ethnically cleanse a part of a country.

Sure you hear all the time about 'OMG, ANOTHER IRANIAN WAS PUT TO DEATH FOR BEING RAPED' but that's a seldom occasion there. And in the US people are put into jail for yawning in court as observers because the judge found it 'indecent conduct', it's an exception, but that's what they hear in Iran.

No, Iranian news is more concerned with the Jundullah terrorists our governments support.  How do I know this?  Because I read Iranian news, instead of assuming their interests for the purpose of internet arguments.

Propaganda is omnipræsent, patriotism is propaganda talk for propaganda. There is no way a human being without a mind so resilient that it fails to absorb any moral and cultural norms and thus be classed as sociopathic can not significantly be influenced by it. The very fact that about all people would rather not live in a completely different culture, no matter in what culture they grew up, and that this trend continues if they were adopted from another culture should say enough. Children are simply brainwashed to love their own culture, not on purpose, and this is what keeps a culture from collapsing in the end.

Your crude determinism is tedious.  You cannot accept agency that is seperate from culture at all, which is, of course, the obvious failing of crude determinism.

[Cain]

I was hoping for more on the second page 

[fomenter]

I was hoping for moron the second page 

and you got it 

[Cain]

Anyway, the point I was trying to make was if Iran and North Korea were that threatening, they'd be able to deter the USA far more effectively.  Iran wasn't able to stop the invasion of two neighbouring countries by the USA, nor successfully cease the increasingly paranoid Israeli pronouncements about its nuclear program.  The only reason it has any real influence now is because the USA went off and took out two of their main regional opponents.  North Korea is basically reduced to acting crazy and obtaining nuclear weapons to achieve its goals, a sign of relative weakness (since they must rely on breaking the biggest international taboo to be taken seriously).