My point is that they hide behind the religion to justify shit they accuse the western world of doing. Kind of ironic.

I don't think the issue is about creating a province as such. The issue is that Iraq is a barely functioning state. How are they going to be protected? Troops on the ground again?

The Iraqi govt is dealing with an existential threat. Protection of minority rights is unfortunately not their most pressing issue.

Its just totally messed up. Again, I don't disagree with your concerns. The reality of the situation is the problem.

They being the Arab nations like Saudi Arabia? Or the people from those nations that live here now?

Who is "they"?

People use religion or nationalism or ideology the world over to justify shady crap. And they criticise those that criticise them. Of course they are hypocritical.

But you should note that most of these hypocritical regimes themselves are totally reliant on the US for military aid etc.

The denunciations of the west are generally for domestic consumption, so they don't look too sycophantic.

The reality is that the problems of the middle east and Africa were set in motion by colonialism. Please note - I am not absolving the current rulers from responsibility. But to understand the violence and instability of the region, you need to understand how artificial the borders are, and how artificial the political structure is.

Iraq should naturally be 3 countries - broken up into Kurdish, Sunni & Shia entities. However, the oil fields are predominantly in the Kurdish sector, so the british wanted a single political entity covering the oil fields to the gulf for shipping.

They generally put a puppet government consisting of an ethnic minority - this serve 2 purposes. It creates a small elite whom they can use to govern the country on their behalf. This govt will be less likely to stage an uprising against the british because they are not the same ethnic grouping as the population. AND the govt, being a minority, sees that they are better off aligning with the british.

So no one spends time nation-building, they just help the british extract resources and getting fat on the wealth.

This was all well and good until the british withdrew from the middle east. This created power vacuums into which strongmen military rulers step into.

That is why you have strongmen running these countries. When the strongmen get killed off you have total chaos reigning. So many of these strongmen get propped up by the west. They may be bad guys, but they are stable. Hence why the US was buddies with Saddam throughout the 1980s when Iran was deemed a bigger threat.

If you want to talk hypocrisy, there is hypocrisy all round.

I am not demonising the british or the Americans - every empire from the Romans onward have used 'divide and conquer' tactics, and I am not excusing the current rulers.

And it is often only with hindsight that we realise the consequences of actions.

I am just trying to create some context as to how and why the middle east is so messed up, and that there is little chance of it changing for a long time.

As an aside, the old "things are worse over there, so why criticise things over here" statement is a fantastic way to identify the intellectually vacuous

A lot of what you say is true but the rot set in well before colonialism. It certainly didn't help that's for sure but really the whole area is a basket case that hasn't progressed socially or scientifically in a 1000 years.

The reformation and the renaissance passed the whole joint by.

Religion, like it or not, is a major reason the Arab world has stagnated for centuries.

How naive do you have to be to believe that the Middle-East can be fixed :lol:

With all the sectarian violence, factional warfare and ethnic groups there is no way that this will ever be resolved. It'd be much better to have a dictator running the show - atleast there was a semblance of order.



Surely you don't mean the West when you say colonialism? The Ottomans presided over the Syria for centuries.

No, it is not colonialism that caused this mess - that's a cop-out. It's backwards religions who haven't caught up to the 21st century as Christianity has.

Nice strawman bro.

Surely you and I don't agree on something?

Christianity has caught up to the 21st century?

Besides some aspects of the Catholic church Christianity is doing a bang up job compared to the Islamic world.

Undoubtedly. Is it any coincidence that most advanced countries that facilitated scientific advancement are Christian?

I know it's all well and popular to hate on Christianity, but when you compare it to other major religions in the world as Munrubenmuz said its doing an amazing job for progress. Just look at Ireland - a staunchly religious country just passed a gay marriage referendum only a few decades after it was illegal to be gay. The new pope is offering very progressive messages, and most of the countries that are for LGBT rights are you guessed it - Christian.



Preposterous :lol:

Edited by 433: 10/9/2015 09:15:16 PM

Get back to me when you actually understand what a strawman is, kid

How dare you question the credentials of the brick with eyes.

lol @ rusty trying to say the LNP haven't had a fair go with the Senate when the LNP have consistently gone against election promises (cuts to ABC/SBS to name a few) and yet wonders why the cross bench don't want to deal with them :lol:

-PB

Hopefully they'll be able to protect themselves, they've set up a fair few military organisations since the IS offensive in August. The largest being the Nineveh Plains Protection Units which is Independant of the KRG, howver they're apparently being held back by the KRG to retake their lands. I'm a strong supporter of the west at least arming them.

He never once said that "we shouldn't criticise things here", all he did was highlight the double standards at play - Western countries are apparently the most evil, intolerant places in the world when the truth is precisely the opposite.

Piss off with your pseudo-intellectual snobbery.

I don't think people are giving Nobel peace prize winner President Obama enough credit here. He came in and brought the dream of democracy to the middle east. So what if countless lives were lost. So what if vital infrastructure and commerce were destroyed. So what if his actions allowed malicious warlords to rule the roost. So what if countries were destroyed and millions of peoples lives have been scattered into the winds. Atleast Israel is now safer and American/Jewish relations have never been stronger.

Blue text yadda yadda.

the right cant deal with a black man in the white house
we get it

Are you satire of the left or something? :lol:

Obama is one of the most warmongering and civilian killing presidents in history.

The only pseudo-intellectual here is the one throwing around terms he doesn't fully understand.

You do know what an aside is, right? Maybe even that is asking too much of you.

Imagine Gillard. She's the trifecta:
- unmarried
- female
- atheist

I see your Gillies, raise you a Penny Wong;

-female
-lesbian
-Asian

-PB

[youtube]mF2-0Chhz1E[/youtube]

Fucking eons apart Di Natale and Abbott.

I don't agree with some of Greens policies, but fark this guy isn't bad.

inb4 Righty tighties.

-PB

A hell of a lot of both. Exceptions to the rule exist of course. Maybe it's just a vocal minority but still, tis rather amusing.

Di Natale is easily the most likeable Greens leader they've ever had. He's very calm. He also likes to talk about policies and not slagging off others. I don't agree with some of their policies, particularly on mining and exploration, but as a person/politician i probably respect him the most.

Bolt is a bit of a dick.

Not at all, we have problems over here too, but for people in countries with atrocious records of tolerance of anything other than Islam, their criticism of our 'tolerance' is laughable.

Are we intolerant? In some respects I would say yes. In many respect I guess we fear what we don't understand. Islam is probably one of them. Islam is difficult to understand for those outside the religion.

I will admit that the 'tribal' situation in Iraq is confusing and messed up and I do not understand it.

However, doesn't it seem like they're not so much a country as a collection of hostile tribes and organisations? What would arming any of them do? Haven't the west armed a faction before only for it to bite us in the ass?

wow......Di Natali has fence paling up his arse from sitting on the fence, needs to grow some kahunas and man up.....
and a few bad apples in the union movement, what a laugh...... it is no wonder that the ALP is screaming about the royal commission they are shit scared of the truth coming out, and people who accept the "consultant fees" or the unions helping with WHS negotiations or similar are just delusional, been there done it seen it and smelt it, basically they are demands by the union against the employer and you do as your told or you suffer the ramifications.... all for the unions defending peoples rights and conditions but to say they are not corrupt or intimidating is just crazy

:lol: good old batty