Bagdad Falling

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
541

[quote]jjackkrash wrote:

Ok. I think I got it. If I shoot a video of my sister and brother goofing off on my iphone and sell it and make money, I’m not a capitalist. I’m just a guy with an iphone making money.

But if I hand my iphone to my brother and pay him $10 to film my sister goofing off, and pay her $10 to goof off, and then sell that video, now I’m a capitalist and they are wage slaves, although now the slaves have $10 more than they did when I was just a dude with an iphone and not a capitalist.

Makes sense.

[/quote]

Indeed: You are only evil inasmuch as your enrichment also entails the enrichment of others.

542

[quote]GreySkull wrote:

Becuase the camera is not producing something in this situation, in this situation it is not an actual sngle commodity operation, it is selling a video, so in this case the means of production is not the same as it is in a factory.

[/quote]

What the fuck are talking about? The camera is the tool used to produce the product. It’s the means of production. Stop talking gibberish.

Your sentence started with “so” - this is an incomplete sentence. What are you trying to say?

Again, what the fuck? If you produce a commodity and sell it at a profit you’re creating surplus value. Whether or not you employ anyone is neither here nor there. And even if you don’t make a profit that the change the fact that the tool used to make the product is the means of production.

No one said it was a “worker/capitalist scenario.”

Producing something and selling it is a business model.

The owner/producer is accruing value.

They’re means of production even when value is not being accrued. What makes them means of production is their potential to be used to manufacture a commodity.

543

[quote]GreySkull wrote:
I hate the whole “why should our soldiers die fighting for their freedom if they are unwilling to fight for it”

Your soldiers are not fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people, they are fighting for private interests who pushed a false war and killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and thousands of US infantry grunts died and were maimed for life in horrible ways so a few hyper wealthy capitalists and corporations could make trillions bombing and then rebuilding.

The reason the Iraqi people will not fight insurgents is because they support them over the Americans. I remember watching a great documentary talking to an Iraqi immigrant who fled to another country. He said that when the Americans came him and everyone he knew hated the Dictatorship of Sadam and pointed out how ridiculous it was that a nation that armed Sadam and whose intelligence services colluded in rounding up Iraqi dissidents overseas were now invading their nation to defend them from sadam.

I am very much a libertarian with very open liberal views but make no mistake if a newly strong Germany invaded my country and overthrew the government they ahd been allies with and said they were giving us freedom while laying waste to my community, killing and turning our children into vegetables and lowering living standards way lower than they were under (sadam in iraq) my previous government, I would join practically any resistnce I could to remove a foreign body from my homeland and protect my community.

The Iraqi people are not mostly extremists, or fanatics, they are simply supporting or joining the only viable resistance to American Imperialism, which has killed around 10 million people directly since 1945.

People who think this was supposed to make America safer and just went wrong are falling into the idea that this had good intentions. It was never meant to help people, George Bush is not incompetent, he is just serving the interests of him and his class.[/quote]

  1. I think the Iraqi people support the people with the most guns.

  2. Why does everyone think we were allied with Saddam? Look up the Stark incident. The Russians were Saddam’s allies, just as they were allied with Qaddafi all through the 80’s. We may have supported Iraq in their war against Iran, but Iraq had a Stalinist form of government, and generally, in the 80’s, countries with Stalinist governments were allies of Russia.

544

[quote]GreySkull wrote:

Why do Americans have a made up class called the middle class? There is the worker who works for a wae while producing surplus value and the capitalist who starts buisness and owns the productive infrastructure and then hires workers to produce commodities with those means of production and makes surplus value off their labour, hence capitalism.

There is no middle class. This is a term that has no basis in reality, It does not matter if you earn 15 million a year or 5 thousand a year, if you generate surplus value you are working class.

I love Americanisms and American culture but this whole middle class thing is really absurd. Ive even started hearing a few people use it here too, but they can not show me any material basis for a third class.[/quote]

How can you deny there’s a middle class? What would you call someone who’s so rich he doesn’t work? How about someone who’s so poor he doesn’t work?

545

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]SexMachine wrote:

Yes, Smedley Butler certainly did have a wild imagination. Banksters, banksters everywhere!

[/quote]

I’m pretty sure he didn’t imagine all of his campaigns, and one does not attain the rank of Major General without gaining a keen understanding of who is buttering your bread.[/quote]

He was a radical isolationist who opposed US entry into WWII.

“The political leaders of this country are for another conflict to cover up their blunders.”

and gave speeches at Communist Party USA meetings.

“They told me I’d find a nest of communists here. I told them ‘What the hell of it!’”

[/quote]

There was a time in this country, believe it or not, when people were less afraid of communists than they were of fascists.[/quote]

true, but the opposite is also true.

546

[quote]GreySkull wrote:

Again America joined ww2 (late) for profit, the same as England did, Germany did and all the other big players did.
[/quote]

for profit? What colonies did America have? The Philippines? They had no stake in Europe but to stop the Fascists from taking over. Explain how America gained profit from defeating Nazi Germany and Italy.

547

[quote]GreySkull wrote:

It is almost like the American revolution wasnt really against tyranny.
[/quote]

How do you know it wasn’t. It was for profit.

548

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I can’t remember his name but it is the same line for leftist bullshit, followed up with “I’m a libertarian” anarchist college student.

He was the dude that brought up that single city that “lived in anarchy” for a couple years during civil war as proof it would work across the globe.[/quote]

You can’t possibly mean…[/quote]

The pic is familiar. The name escapes me.

549

[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Oh wait.

NOW I know who you’re talking about.[/quote]

I got into the conversation late. Just read like 4 pages…

Can we talk about Iraq again?

Start a new marxist thread if ya want!

(not talking about you Varq)

550

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Bush could not foresee the Syrian civil war. It happened under Obama’s watch. It was his administration which aided both the rebels in Libya and Syria. Qaddafi has been overthrown and Libya is a more dangerous place. A general is currently battling Islamists there. Syria is also a more dangerous place and the fighting spilled over into Iraq. So, who’s to blame Obama? The Saudis? Other oil rich gulf nations?

For the first time in my life I think Putin was right about something. Perhaps we should have backed Assad. [/quote]

It’s funny, because all the same people that the warmongers responsible for the Iraq War demanded we aid in Syria are the exact same people the warmongers are now demanding we bomb into the Stone Age in Iraq now.[/quote]

It’s funny if you forget all of the dying people and suffering. The buffoonery of our elected officials is always reaching new levels. Logical people throughout the world predicted this would happen. Logical people knew that supporting jihadists in Syria was not a good idea, even considering Assad is an evil man.

Let’s not forget democrats and republicans are both warmongering parties. It took public outrage at the thought of another middle east war with the goal of regime change to stop our government from aiding the jihadists in Syria.

551

This thread blew up since the last time I checked it out. I didn’t read it all because it looks like a lot of it was not about Iraq, so forgive me if I’m rehashing old points.

To me it looks like the situation is getting clearer. Almost everyone is against ISIS except portions of marginalized Iraqi Sunnis. Even Saudi Arabia (and the other gulf arab states) and Turkey are against ISIS, realizing their expansion is not good for anyone. This could be the first time in history the USA, Gulf Arabs, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran all work together to solve a serious problem. It would be unprecedented. By “working together” I don’t mean joint military action, I just mean dialogue and sharing information.

The biggest hurdle in my opinion is for the USA to figure out how to settle this while gaining support from Iraqi Sunnis. That probably means getting rid of Maliki so that the Iraqi Sunnis have reason to fully abandon ISIS support. Replacing Maliki will probably require some top secret dialogue between Iran and the USA, but it seems doable.

My opinion is a partitioning of the country into three separate states is not feasible. I highly doubt the Sunnis will peacefully take the land in the West while the Kurds and Shias enjoy vast natural resources in the North and East. Or maybe the Sunni lands join Jordan. I think the best outcome is for unity from the USA and the major regional players to agree that ISIS is bad (already done) and to agree on a new government structure. The best may be for the three ethnic groups in Iraq to have their own semi-autonomous governments with a centralized government that would dole out revenue sharing from natural resource wealth. That could work.

552

BP:

I always like your analysis…so I don’t disagree…

But what in the world does one do with 1,400 plus years of Ethnic hatred and mistrust between the Shia and Sunni? Is it even possible for them to come to the conclusion that they DO have some shared interest and a LOT to lose if they don’t cooperate with each other?

Mufasa

553

[quote]Gkhan wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]countingbeans wrote:
I can’t remember his name but it is the same line for leftist bullshit, followed up with “I’m a libertarian” anarchist college student.

He was the dude that brought up that single city that “lived in anarchy” for a couple years during civil war as proof it would work across the globe.[/quote]

You can’t possibly mean…[/quote]

The pic is familiar. The name escapes me.
[/quote]

The gorilla avatar is LIFTICVSMAXIMUS. The Hooters chicks avatar is Kareem Sayeed something or other.

554

[quote]BPCorso wrote:

The biggest hurdle in my opinion is for the USA to figure out how to settle this while gaining support from Iraqi Sunnis. [/quote]

Maybe they can do it the same way they did with the Awakening Movement. Find and support Sunnis who do not want this radicalized group controlling their country. I mean, if that’s possible. But you are right, it’s a tight rope walk between supporting the Shia without alienating the Sunni. But right now Al-Sadr’s militia’s taking an anti-US stance, so we’re between a rock and a hard place.

Only other thing I can see is if the Saudis or Turkey Sunnis move against Isis…it might encourage some Iraqi Sunnis to turn against Isis.

Sad that the Maliki government left the Awakening Sunnis out to dry. They were not rewarded for standing up to Al-Qaeda during the war and blackmailed into siding with Isis. At least that’s what I’ve read.

557

[quote]Chushin wrote:

[quote]Varqanir wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
I’ve never met a service member that joined to pad Halliburton bottom line regardless of what their civilian commanders wanted. However, almost every service member I’ve eve met joined to protect freedom or whatever freedom means to them. So to say, “Your soldiers are not fighting for the freedom of the Iraqi people, they are fighting for private interests,” to me, is not true and a vast generalization. You nor I know whether that statement is true or not, however, I’m confident the Marines that fought at Belleau Woods and the Marines that fought in Fallujah did it for the same reasons and those reason have nothing to do with “private interests” like Halliburton. [/quote]

No, the individual serviceman has only a very vague notion of why he is going out to fight. The reasons he thinks he’s fighting vary a bit from decade to decade (“glory”, “duty”, “honor”, “democracy”, “freedom”, “poontang” etc.), but the real reasons haven’t changed much in the last several thousand years.

Here’s what Smedley Butler, Major General, United States Marine Corps, had to say on the matter.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National city Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

“'Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”[/quote]

So then, why did you join?[/quote]

I wanted to kill Commies.

560

[quote]Chushin wrote:

So then, why did you join?

I wanted to kill Commies.

I don’t think you’re old enough for that reason to work…[/quote]

If he were any younger, he’d have said terrorists.