Yet another war, this time with Iran

[Loren Pechtel]

You sound like Hamas leadership.

More like Churchill or Roosevelt. My point is that we should not capitulate to the islamofascists just because oil prices went up some.

Capitulation would only be on the cards if they had attacked you. It was the other way around. America attacked, and Iran refused to capitulate. America then realised that she had no plan for that entirely predictable eventuality.

Iran is a cancer to which the left is playing don't look up. They have unquestionably killed millions through the various groups they support, it would not surprise me if the total was in the tens of millions. And the idiot did not understand why the world keeps kicking the can about it and went in totally stupid. That doesn't make Iran not a cancer.

The question is how to treat the cancer with the best chance of survival and good health of the host. No one here is arguing Iran is in the right, so there is no basis for these rants of yours.

The thing is capitulation amounts to declaring the cancer to be terminal.

Why are you babbling about capitulation?

A solution of status quo ante in effect says the world will not do anything about the increasing level of Iranian genocide.

And in the long run probably means Israel will take the confirm or deny option.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What are you smoking?!

By what means war was declared is purely an internal matter and says nothing about right or wrong.

Iran shot first. Period.

Do you realize you're choosing the path of genocide?

You really really really need to get a clue.

WE shot first.

An attack on an ally counts.

This aggression against Iran cannot be called a war because in the US, war can only be declared with the approval of Congress.

Bureaucrat answer.

I have no idea what ‘genocide’ you think is going on but obviously me thinking that the US is the aggressor is nothing remotely akin to genocide.

Did you pay no attention to the Sudan thread? Iran is funding genocidal forces across sub-Saharan Africa. Iran is behind the mess that is Yemen, the mess that is Syria. An awful lot of people died in both of those.

Millions have disappeared. Just because there's no coroner there to certify the person is dead and at Iranian hands doesn't make it go away.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Iran shot first. Period.

What are you smoking? Iran did not attack the US first.

Nice evasion.

Shooting at an ally constitutes shooting first.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Loren, I’m not a great student of history but Jim Crow was not ‘peaceful’ fior any person of color living under it. It wasn’t peaceful in states that were merely adjacent to it! There were lynchings, raped, murders, all manner of violence under Jim Crow.

And you think I don't know that?

I'm saying it outwardly looks like peace.

Only to ( some) white people.

Yeah, but you're being (some) white people about this.

 

[laughing dog]

Moreover, the Strait of Hormuz is Iranian and Omanian waters. While the UN International Convention on the Law of the Seas indicates ships of transit rights, Iran claims since it never ratified it, they can charge tolls. The USA has no such claim.

I don’t know if Iran is correct. Regardless, Politesse’s argument suggests there is a legal basis but does not suggest approval.

Iran has no power to charge tolls on ships in Omanian waters.

"Power" suggests ability. Do you mean international legal right? Iran's argument is that since it is not a signatory to that UN treaty, it is not bound by it. I don't know if that is accurate or not. Can you produce a link to a credible source that settles that question?

It doesn't matter if Iran is a signatory as the original route was through Omani waters, not through Iranian waters.

But Iran mined that path. A minefield in waters other than your own is an act of war.

I asked for a link to a credible source. Still waiting.

It's been discussed in this thread.

So no credible link.

And it doesn't even matter. Iran has no legal authority to deny ships passing through somebody else's waters other than if they are at war with that country. Oman is free to permit passage, even if the old route was through Iranian water it wouldn't matter.

Pay attention. Iran claims that since they are nit signatories to that treaty, they are not bound by it. Which it means they claim they can do it.

Your opinion is mot a credible source. I don’t know if their claim is true which is why I asked for a credible source.

Why are you bending over backwards to pretend they're in the right??

I’m not. In fact I admitted I don’t know. Why do you continually misrepresent others?

You pretend neutrality while what you accept vs challenge shows you are far from neutral.

Nope.

 

[laughing dog]

Iran shot first. Period.

What are you smoking? Iran did not attack the US first.

Nice evasion.

Shooting at an ally constitutes shooting first.

At the ally, yes. At us, no. We don’t have a mutual defense treaty.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unfortunately people living in Palestine wanted to keep living as they had. And why should they not? And unfortunately, all people are flawed and too often want to impose their beliefs on others or to blame others and are often driven by greed and lust for power and fear.

Except nobody would have been expelled from anywhere had the Palestinians not chosen the path of violence. The partition should have been peaceful--but Islam can't accept loss. We see a far bloodier version of the same thing with India/Pakistan, no Jews to blame for it so it gets ignored.

Source your claim that the Palestinians chose the path of violence.

Show, not tell.

Because what you tell is usually bullshit.

Once again, the absence is the evidence. Where's the evidence of anything bad happening to the Muslims who didn't leave? It's all about the supposed evictions which mostly did not happen.

Fundamentally, you are asking me to prove a negative.

No fundamentally you are being asked to actually read current news events. I absolutely believe in the right of Israel to exist. But what Israel has been doing re: Gaza can only be called genocide.

Bibi convinced Trump to attack Iran. WE are the aggressors towards Iran! It is the US who is entirely in the wrong in the current conflict.

I read current news events. I understand what happened in Gaza and it is not remotely a genocide. And most of the bad stuff was engineered by Hamas. They put awful stuff on camera, you respond by bashing Israel to make it go away--but you are actually rewarding them for doing horrific things and thus there will be more of it.

 

[laughing dog]

You sound like Hamas leadership.

More like Churchill or Roosevelt. My point is that we should not capitulate to the islamofascists just because oil prices went up some.

Capitulation would only be on the cards if they had attacked you. It was the other way around. America attacked, and Iran refused to capitulate. America then realised that she had no plan for that entirely predictable eventuality.

Iran is a cancer to which the left is playing don't look up. They have unquestionably killed millions through the various groups they support, it would not surprise me if the total was in the tens of millions. And the idiot did not understand why the world keeps kicking the can about it and went in totally stupid. That doesn't make Iran not a cancer.

The question is how to treat the cancer with the best chance of survival and good health of the host. No one here is arguing Iran is in the right, so there is no basis for these rants of yours.

The thing is capitulation amounts to declaring the cancer to be terminal.

Why are you babbling about capitulation?

A solution of status quo ante in effect says the world will not do anything about the increasing level of Iranian genocide.

And in the long run probably means Israel will take the confirm or deny option.

No one is advocating for a status quo solution. You are responding to straw men.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

No fundamentally you are being asked to actually read current news events. I absolutely believe in the right of Israel to exist. But what Israel has been doing re: Gaza can only be called genocide.

Bibi convinced Trump to attack Iran. WE are the aggressors towards Iran! It is the US who is entirely in the wrong in the current conflict.

I read current news events. I understand what happened in Gaza and it is not remotely a genocide. And most of the bad stuff was engineered by Hamas. They put awful stuff on camera, you respond by bashing Israel to make it go away--but you are actually rewarding them for doing horrific things and thus there will be more of it.

It wasn't "Genocide". However, after a while, it wasn't "moral" either.

You keep defending the defense, but ignoring the offense. Every bomb was justified according to you. Had Israel kept bombing, it'd been fine. The Western World looked the other way after October 7th, so Israel could respond. They sent Hamas back a while, but years from now, will any of the bombs have helped? And people like you and Derec will say 'Only if Israel dropped two more bombs...'

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The real risk is how much damage is done in the attempt to force it.

That's a different event. Compare christo-fascist takeover attempt to islamo-fascist takeover attempt. Severity x probability. The christo-fascists already are trying and damaging. Probability = 100%?

You think that because I oppose Iran I support the fascists??? No way!

The left bleats for terror, the right bleats for fascism. Neither realize what they are doing.

Look at Israel: the chance that Hamas can conquer Israel is effectively zero. But 10/7 was proportionately much worse than 9/11 was for us.

You got to spell this out more like a table.

Look at the dead as a % of the population.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1948 was the Jews providing a heavily fortified battered women's shelter.

A shelter for battered European Jews.

One that was built on land that had been ethnically cleansed via battering by batterers you're claiming did it to create a shelter despite the first of the batterers to arrive in the area saying they were doing it because they wanted the land and bringing in rifles so they could batter the locals.

Except the ethnic cleansing was by the Palestinians, not by the Jews. Jewish areas were not cleansed, Muslims were cleansed of all Jews.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

If there is to be a right of return it should be mutual. But this is a complete non-starter. It's just another way to victimize the Jews.

There is an internationally recognized Right of Return and it is universal. All refugees have the Right to Return to their former homes, former communities, and places of origin. It's not an exclusive Right for any particular group, it's one that everyone has.

Jews are not victimized when human rights are respected.

So you expect several million people to meekly accept a death sentence?

Are you seriously arguing that Jews aren't human? That upholding human rights means killing them?

No, you are.

You are expecting Israel to accept being genocided. Your fantasy of coexistence isn't going to magically happen.

The refugees have lives elsewhere, they're not being killed.

And what about the Jewish refugees? There were approximately as many of them as of Palestinians--but we don't hear about them because Israel made a home for them rather than weaponizing them.

You are trying to read the lack of news as lack of events--but when you read the articles from the time it's clear they do not consider it extraordinary. A report that considers something ordinary implies that it is ordinary even though we have few data points to measure.

Source your claims, Loren.

You are still expecting me to prove a negative.

What we have are news accounts of the time whose tone regards pogroms as normal. The event was not unusual. The only way that makes sense if if pogroms were normal. History is extremely poorly documented, in general all we can do is a best approximation.

 

[Toni]

Loren, I’m not a great student of history but Jim Crow was not ‘peaceful’ fior any person of color living under it. It wasn’t peaceful in states that were merely adjacent to it! There were lynchings, raped, murders, all manner of violence under Jim Crow.

And you think I don't know that?

I'm saying it outwardly looks like peace.

Only to ( some) white people.

Yeah, but you're being (some) white people about this.

I am?

Oh, sure for my family who dud not live in the south so not exactly Jim Crow, things were relatively peachy. They survived the Great Depression with parents who endured WWI abd then saw their siblings go off to WWII. They were dirt poor but my parrot ts ge station was able to cash in on the post War boom Abd make it to middle class. Barely, but indoor plumbing Abd kids going to college on scholarships. Plus they got to feel better about themselves because the echoes of Jim Crow definitely did not stop at the Mason Dixon and my parents’ generation abd their parents’ generation were able to very conveniently blame blacks further not ‘making it’ economically although to a man, not one would have hired a black man or his wife. Because they were black. And so the Civil Rights Movement t with the disruption, upheaval and violence were all because of the blacks, although they were not called that. Make no mistake: The Klan was active in my county—my mother’s stepfather was a member. Black families were kept out of our community by cross burning's—a precursor to violence for anyone who tried to tough it out. My parents kept us really close to home so while I heard the rumors, I did not believe they were actually true. They were. My friends who went further away to college and got to know black kids found out our town was listed in the GreenBook as a place not to stop under any circumstances. Is it not violence when you dare not try to buy a home fir fear of your life? If you know you’d better not pull into a town for gas and a sandwich at risk of your life?

I’m both grateful and ashamed of how much of this I was unaware of as a kid. Including that my grandfather was a Klan member. I knew he was horribly racist but not the Klan part. I would have had a much harder time having a relationship with him than I did. Which would have had ugly ripples throughout the family—not in my favor. My naivite allowed me to have a relationship with someone I knew was a complicated mixture of kindness and generosity—and ugly stone cold racism.


I was protected by my white skin. My family made it out of poverty because of their white skin—and hard work and some luck. But they resented black people for wanting the same. And there was always a threat of violence for anyone who dared attempt a toenail over the line.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's been discussed in this thread.

So no credible link.

It's not my job to prove what someone else posted, especially as it doesn't matter.

And it doesn't even matter. Iran has no legal authority to deny ships passing through somebody else's waters other than if they are at war with that country. Oman is free to permit passage, even if the old route was through Iranian water it wouldn't matter.

Pay attention. Iran claims that since they are nit signatories to that treaty, they are not bound by it. Which it means they claim they can do it.

Your opinion is mot a credible source. I don’t know if their claim is true which is why I asked for a credible source.

This makes no sense.

Why should Iran have any say about ships not going through Iranian waters??

Not being a signatory to the treaty means they can deny passage through Iranian waters if they want, it doesn't mean they can deny it through somebody else's waters.

Why are you bending over backwards to pretend they're in the right??

I’m not. In fact I admitted I don’t know. Why do you continually misrepresent others?

You pretend neutrality while what you accept vs challenge shows you are far from neutral.

Nope.

You are accepting crazy contortions from Iran as reasonable.

 

[bilby]

Why should Iran have any say about ships not going through Iranian waters??

Not being a signatory to the treaty means they can deny passage through Iranian waters if they want, it doesn't mean they can deny it through somebody else's waters.

Indeed. By denying passage through the strait, they committed an act of war against Oman.

Had the Omanis requested US military assistance, the US would, perhaps, have been justified in bombing Iran. Had the Omanis requested assistance from the UN in defending her soverignty against Iran's illegal actions, the US would have been justified in joining, even in leading, a UN force to attack Iran with the goal of forcing them to re-open the TSS lanes, which lie entirely in Omani waters.

But the Omanis did not make any such requests; And the US didn't even attempt to get such a request out of them, to put a fig-leaf on their illegal military action.

To be clear, by bombing Iran the USA broke international law, and the Trump administration probably broke US law in not even notifying, much less obtaining permission from, Congress. Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, Trump must obtain such Congressional approval by May 1st - this Friday - or he must withdraw US forces.

Regardless, the only nation states that have any say in who uses the strait according to international law are Iran, and Oman. These nations can, if they feel their sovereignty has been infringed, request assistance from allies and/or the UN. To date I am unaware of any such request on the part of either country.

Sure, Iran broke international law, just because they had the military capability to do so. So did the USA. Goose sauce is gander sauce, two wrongs don't make a right.

If America can flout international law and bomb Iran, then in so doing they lose any moral justification in complaining when Iran flouts international law and mines Omani territorial waters.

 

[laughing dog]

It's not my job to prove what someone else posted, especially as it doesn't matter.

You claim it is true, but are unable to back it with a source. Why should anyone take your responses seriously?

And it doesn't even matter. Iran has no legal authority to deny ships passing through somebody else's waters other than if they are at war with that country. Oman is free to permit passage, even if the old route was through Iranian water it wouldn't matter.

Pay attention. Iran claims that since they are nit signatories to that treaty, they are not bound by it. Which it means they claim they can do it.

Your opinion is mot a credible source. I don’t know if their claim is true which is why I asked for a credible source.

This makes no sense.

Why should Iran have any say about ships not going through Iranian waters??

Not being a signatory to the treaty means they can deny passage through Iranian waters if they want, it doesn't mean they can deny it through somebody else's waters.

Pay attention .Iran is saying since they didn’t agree to the rules, they don’t have to follow those rules.
You keep claiming they do without providing evidence to support your view .

You may be correct or you may be mistaken. But without a link to actual evidence, why should anyone take your word as gospel on this matter?

You are accepting crazy contortions from Iran as reasonable.

No, I am rejecting unsupported assertions of fact. As bilby shows above, it is you accepting crazy contortions.

 

[Arctish]

1948 was the Jews providing a heavily fortified battered women's shelter.

A shelter for battered European Jews.

One that was built on land that had been ethnically cleansed via battering by batterers you're claiming did it to create a shelter despite the first of the batterers to arrive in the area saying they were doing it because they wanted the land and bringing in rifles so they could batter the locals.

Except the ethnic cleansing was by the Palestinians, not by the Jews. Jewish areas were not cleansed, Muslims were cleansed of all Jews.

If you're going to dispute the accounts written by Morris, Pappe, and other historians, show us the accounts you think are accurate.

Show, don't tell.

I agree with compensation, resettlement, and a Right-of-Return for refugees.

If there is to be a right of return it should be mutual. But this is a complete non-starter. It's just another way to victimize the Jews.

There is an internationally recognized Right of Return and it is universal. All refugees have the Right to Return to their former homes, former communities, and places of origin. It's not an exclusive Right for any particular group, it's one that everyone has.

Jews are not victimized when human rights are respected.

So you expect several million people to meekly accept a death sentence?

Are you seriously arguing that Jews aren't human? That upholding human rights means killing them?

No, you are.

You are expecting Israel to accept being genocided.

The respecting of human rights and killing of Jews are mutually exclusive.

Your fantasy of coexistence isn't going to magically happen.

Of course not.

It's going to happen when people put in the work. It's going to happen when people who wish to uphold human rights wrest control from the racists and bigots who violate them.

There's nothing easy about human rights campaigns except paying lip service. It takes hard work to make them successful.

The refugees have lives elsewhere, they're not being killed.

And what about the Jewish refugees? There were approximately as many of them as of Palestinians--but we don't hear about them because Israel made a home for them rather than weaponizing them.

You and I have had this discussion before.

You know that the rights of refugees isn't a numbers game, where equivalent numbers of refugees means a just and fair outcome has been achieved. You know that people who were wronged by State A aren't owed compensation by State B. You know that people terrorized and driven out by Cossacks aren't therefore allowed to terrorize and drive out Bedouins. You know the victims of purges in Europe don't get a free pass to purge people elsewhere.

Your argument here is vacuous.

You are trying to read the lack of news as lack of events--but when you read the articles from the time it's clear they do not consider it extraordinary. A report that considers something ordinary implies that it is ordinary even though we have few data points to measure.

Source your claims, Loren.

You are still expecting me to prove a negative.

I am hoping you will show us where you get your information.

I am hoping you will provide evidence that supports your arguments.

But I am not expecting you will do either. When it comes to Israel you have a long history of posting bullshit instead of engaging in an honest examination of the facts that are available. Frankly, I don't expect better of you.

What we have are news accounts of the time whose tone regards pogroms as normal. The event was not unusual. The only way that makes sense if if pogroms were normal.

Link to those news accounts.

When and where did the pogroms occur?

Show, don't tell, Loren.

History is extremely poorly documented, in general all we can do is a best approximation.

You can't do a best approximation of history when you ignore whatever facts are available and start making shit up instead.

 

[Tigers!]

I absolutely understand that European Jews very much wanted a ‘homeland,’ a place they could live as a majority, and have a Jewish state. It made sense that this Jewish state would be centered on places of historic importance to Judaism. Much of the world wanted that for them, too. The trauma of WWII was, well, world wide.

Of course that’s a fairly shallow understanding of events but it’s also largely true. Another shallow way of looking at things is that there are multiple Islamic states. There are multiple Christian based states. Why could there not exist a single Jewish state?

More it was a case of saying never again. They wanted a place they wouldn't be subjected to periodic pogroms. Historically, there is no meaningful country where they have not had times where they feared for their safety.

And we see the pattern continue, except this time it's nations behind the pogroms.

Unfortunately people living in Palestine wanted to keep living as they had. And why should they not? And unfortunately, all people are flawed and too often want to impose their beliefs on others or to blame others and are often driven by greed and lust for power and fear.

Except nobody would have been expelled from anywhere had the Palestinians not chosen the path of violence. The partition should have been peaceful--but Islam can't accept loss. We see a far bloodier version of the same thing with India/Pakistan, no Jews to blame for it so it gets ignored.

Of course it is telling that no other nation has welcomed Palestinians with open arms as brothers.

Jordan was the only country to welcome the Palestinians after 1948. And we saw the result in September 1970. Other country's were more aware than Jordan and did not provide an open welcome.

You really have no idea how utterly racist ^this^ is, do you?

Let's try this: no other country wanted to accept Jews when the Russians and the Germans were kicking them out. The British let a lot of them enter Palestine, and look how that turned out. Things sure would have been a lot more peaceful if the Jews were kept out. Those guys are nothing but trouble. No wonder the Europeans didn't want them around.

Do you see the problem now, or should I continue?

I can certainly see a problem But it is most probably not the problem you see.
The problem is the way we (humanity in general) treat the Jews. For far too much of their long history the Jews have suffer discrimination, attacks, persecutions, exiles, attempted genocide etc. They have suffered far more that any other group of people.
All they wish to have a place to be able to live in peace with their neighbours, raise their children, make a life for themselves. Incidentally that is exactly what you and I wish for too.
Yet that is not afforded to them. Constantly living on edge, forced or exiled from too many places. Attacked, harassed. Non-Jews (including myself) would have no idea what living as a Jew is like.
If we were to treat the Jews properly then a lot of trouble would disappear. The Jews did not ask for all of this. It was given to them.

How much of that is due to the Palestinians and how much it is due to having a convenient mutual eneamy in Israel.

Yes to both. By not really looking after the refugees they had a convenient stick to use again Israel.
Lebanon allowed in some and we can still see the results today.

Why shouldn't the Palestinian refugees have been allowed to return to their former places of residence in Palestine?

Can you think of any reason other than racism or religious bigotry?

Fear of the past events reappearing?
I wish there will an easy solution but there is not. There is so much fear and hatred in the ME that is unlikely to ever end.

 

[aupmanyav]

And it still has the same problem: the fundamentalist Islamist leaders funding the violence

Yeah, the clerics do that. It is a fringe here in India and we manage it. Overwhelming majority of Muslims continue to live peacefully. They enjoy all the rights of being citizens of India and are not discriminated in government policies. Israel has not managed the conflict well by continually usurping the Arab land in the name of security. Golan heights, Palestine and Gaza then and South Lebanon now. So, the conflict will continue. Different intentions.

 

[barbos]

Let's try this: no other country wanted to accept Jews when the Russians and the Germans were kicking them out.

What?!?!?!

 

[Arctish]

Let's try this: no other country wanted to accept Jews when the Russians and the Germans were kicking them out.

What?!?!?!

Antisemitism in the Russian Empire

In 1891, all Jews were systematically expelled from Moscow. These repressions convinced many Jews that Russia could no longer be their home. The Tsar's minister Konstantin Pobedonostsev stated the aim of the government with regard to the Jews was that "One third will die out, one third will leave the country and one third will be completely dissolved in the surrounding population". The pogroms and the repressive legislation resulted in the mass emigration of Jews to western Europe and the Americas. Between 1881 and the outbreak of the First World War, an estimated 2.5 million Jews left Russia—one of the largest group migrations in recorded history.

After the Pesach pogrom of 1903, pogroms became the official policy of the Russian Empire, and the antisemitic terror reached its peak in October 1905.

More information in the link and the referenced articles.