“Here she comes, Miss America...”

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Well, Proa's stupid arguments are likely to kill the thread if nothing else does...

FKT

 

[IStream]

I know exactly what it means and am well aware of its uses and exceptions. 

And yet, you used it incorrectly.

 

[Crash]

Godwin's law, end of thread.

"there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress."

So to be fair,  I made no comparison to Hitler, thereby not invoking Godwin's Law.  But it might have been better/more accurate to have said "One could posit that Hitler Germany lost his her chance to win WWII in the summer of 1940, when he she had no efficient way to transport his her Army to England and no effective way to land them on a contested beach...

 

[TwoLegged]

Again, Sweet Mary, Joseph and Jesus!  Really?  The U.S. or British, or NATO, or name your western alliance here, are certainly not perfect, nor without fault in the world.  But really?  You'd rather a world run by Putin and/or Xi Jinping?   Or the Taliban, or ISIS?  Really?  The world still has some really bad actors out there.  Can you imagine life in Afganistan, TwoLegged, if you lived there now under the Taliban?

Again, we are far from perfect and are certainly not without fault.  But have you really drunk the cool aid that completely?

On the contrary, @Crash, the Cool-Aid is being drunk by those like you who lap up the propaganda of the military-industrial complex, and by those like Ajax who crassly dismisses any dissent from war porn as a "troll" and who hilariously rants about "cancel culture" whilst periodically asking people to put me on ignore  'cos i dont share his worldview.  Nice guy about his boat, but mind locked shut about the war machine in which he appears to have made his career, firstly as a crew member on one of the blow-up-the-world terrorist submarines and now as some part of the military supply chain.

This is not complicated: get a world map, and look at it.  The USA is in the most geo-strategically secure position of any major power.   The USA's only major security hazard is internal: the (predominantly racist) white violence which has been endemic since before the USA was founded, and which has always been at least partially supported by public authorities.

All this stuff which the US labels as "defence" is actually attack.  It has a long history of threatening or attacking other countries (directly or by proxy), in order to ensure economic control and ideological hegemony.

Please don't make a fool of yourself by spouting the dominant nonsense about the US/NATO wars being some sort of counter to Taliban or ISIS or radical Islam in general.  Five minutes of basic research would show you that those groups are products of American-led wars.  The Taliban arose out of the US funding and arming of islamists to fight the Soviets, and ISIS arose out of the collapse of Iraq following an illegal and botched invasion.  Claiming that the American war machine is some sort of counter to that is like the mafia smashing up your home and workplace and then offering you "protection", with the crucial difference that the mafia kills several orders of magnitude fewer people.

And more broadly, the whole radical islamist movement in the middle east was sustained for decades by the USA funding islamists as opposition to democrats, especially socialists.  The US has repeatedly preferred despots to democrats, whether in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or any one of the many Latin American states where it installed and/or supported vicious dictators ... and that's before we get onto the right-wing terror groups which it armed and sustained across Western Europe during the Cold War, most notably Gladio.

Putin is a nasty bit of work, but if you look behind the rhetoric, his foreign policy is basically a combination of bellicose noise and defensive measures.

All this stuff is hidden from you in plain sight.

 

[ProaSailor]

All this stuff which the US labels as "defence" is actually attack.

You raise many excellent points that go straight to the heart of the matter but this statement is overly broad.  Mentioning Putin weakens your argument.

 

[Ajax]

Well, Proa's stupid arguments are likely to kill the thread if nothing else does...

FKT

Not if you put him on ignore.

 

[ProaSailor]

All this stuff which the US labels as "defence" is actually attack.

You raise many excellent points that go straight to the heart of the matter but this statement is overly broad.

P.S.  Perhaps I took that statement out of context, as it sounded at first like all defensive measures and weapons.  But if "All this stuff" refers to our long history of aggression then yes, I agree with you.  In particular, these remarks are well said:

It has a long history of threatening or attacking other countries (directly or by proxy), in order to ensure economic control and ideological hegemony.
[...]
Claiming that the American war machine is some sort of counter to that is like the mafia smashing up your home and workplace and then offering you "protection", with the crucial difference that the mafia kills several orders of magnitude fewer people.
[...]
The US has repeatedly preferred despots to democrats, whether in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or any one of the many Latin American states where it installed and/or supported vicious dictators ...

The title of this thread implies some awareness of the role played by the military industrial complex, but it cannot be overstated.

Hey @Ajax, fuck off.

 

[TwoLegged]

Well, Proa's stupid arguments are likely to kill the thread if nothing else does...

FKT

Not if you put him on ignore.

Here we go again.  The same Ajax who claimed to deplore "cancel culture" is yet again trying to cancel people with whom he disagrees.

 

[loneshark64]

 

[ProaSailor]

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
   Someone had blundered.
   Theirs not to make reply,
   Theirs not to reason why,
   Theirs but to do and die.
   Into the valley of Death
   Rode the six hundred.

The Charge of the Light Brigade
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

 

[Elegua]

@ProaSailor @TwoLegged Seeing as this is Cruising Anarchy in Sailing Anarchy and not Gunboat Diplomacy Anarchy.  Rather than engage in some theoretical exercise about boat design and se-up, why don't you share your current rides and how you have set them up today?

I'm sure there are a lot of innovative ideas that others like me can learn from and maybe, "borrow". 

 

[TwoLegged]

@ProaSailor @TwoLegged Seeing as this is Cruising Anarchy in Sailing Anarchy and not Gunboat Diplomacy Anarchy.  Rather than engage in some theoretical exercise about boat design and se-up, why don't you share your current rides and how you have set them up today?

I'm sure there are a lot of innovative ideas that others like me can learn from and maybe, "borrow". 

@Elegua, it is very odd that you address that comment only to people who have not been posting pictures of gunboats.

Why that odd selection?

 

[Elegua]

@Elegua, it is very odd that you address that comment only to people who have not been posting pictures of gunboats.

Posting a picture is not necessarily a political act.  Posting polemics is. 

So what do you have to share? 

 

[Jim in Halifax]

This thread has turned into a school yard brawl. What a bunch of spoiled children. Grow up. I'm outahere.

 

[TwoLegged]

Posting a picture is not necessarily a political act.  Posting polemics is. 

Posting military stuff invites reply on the military topic, and it got replies on the military topic.

I note your crude attempt at framing by describing the replies as "polemics".

 

[TwoLegged]

View attachment 469038

Yes, end the uncivil war .. by dismantling the weapons, and desisting from making new ones.

 

[Elegua]

Posting military stuff invites reply on the military topic, and it got replies on the military topic.

I note your crude attempt at framing by describing the replies as "polemics".

I think what you posted clearly fits that description.  I'd love to get into a discussion over why being post-bellum is a great idea as long as your competitors agree, which is why the EU has been so successful in preventing two genocides and one irredentist war on its very periphery, but that would be polemics.  

Now back to boats...at least for me.  I'm sure you'll have the last word.  

 

[TwoLegged]

I think what you posted clearly fits that description.  I'd love to get into a discussion over why being post-bellum is a great idea as long as your competitors agree, which is why the EU has been so successful in preventing two genocides and one irredentist war on its very periphery, but that would be polemics.  

If you want to use the term "polemic", it would be great if you spent a few minutes learning the distinction between discussion and polemic.

 

[fufkin]

On the contrary, @Crash, the Cool-Aid is being drunk by those like you who lap up the propaganda of the military-industrial complex, and by those like Ajax who crassly dismisses any dissent from war porn as a "troll" and who hilariously rants about "cancel culture" whilst periodically asking people to put me on ignore  'cos i dont share his worldview.  Nice guy about his boat, but mind locked shut about the war machine in which he appears to have made his career, firstly as a crew member on one of the blow-up-the-world terrorist submarines and now as some part of the military supply chain.

This is not complicated: get a world map, and look at it.  The USA is in the most geo-strategically secure position of any major power.   The USA's only major security hazard is internal: the (predominantly racist) white violence which has been endemic since before the USA was founded, and which has always been at least partially supported by public authorities.

All this stuff which the US labels as "defence" is actually attack.  It has a long history of threatening or attacking other countries (directly or by proxy), in order to ensure economic control and ideological hegemony.

Please don't make a fool of yourself by spouting the dominant nonsense about the US/NATO wars being some sort of counter to Taliban or ISIS or radical Islam in general.  Five minutes of basic research would show you that those groups are products of American-led wars.  The Taliban arose out of the US funding and arming of islamists to fight the Soviets, and ISIS arose out of the collapse of Iraq following an illegal and botched invasion.  Claiming that the American war machine is some sort of counter to that is like the mafia smashing up your home and workplace and then offering you "protection", with the crucial difference that the mafia kills several orders of magnitude fewer people.

And more broadly, the whole radical islamist movement in the middle east was sustained for decades by the USA funding islamists as opposition to democrats, especially socialists.  The US has repeatedly preferred despots to democrats, whether in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia or any one of the many Latin American states where it installed and/or supported vicious dictators ... and that's before we get onto the right-wing terror groups which it armed and sustained across Western Europe during the Cold War, most notably Gladio.

Putin is a nasty bit of work, but if you look behind the rhetoric, his foreign policy is basically a combination of bellicose noise and defensive measures.

All this stuff is hidden from you in plain sight.

Yep, I’ll quote that one, in it’s entirety,  even if I don’t agree with all of it.

For one, I’ll mention that the region of the ‘Stans’, and more specifically Afghanistan, has been a war torn cesspool of competing extra-governmental warlords and tribal infighting well before the Soviets or the US arrived, and will be long after.
 

Both superpowers have stayed for a period as guests in the region, and the fighting, poverty, inequality, strongman rule and basic human rights abuses have outlasted both of them.

It is, and has been ripe for exploitation since well before ‘US interests abroad’ became a by-line, and looks like it’s now the Taliban’s second go at throwing the region back into what will be a living hell, especially for women wanting to make their way in the world, or a Buddhist who merely wants to meditate.

Geez, are you guys so thin skinned that you can’t take a knock at ‘manifest destiny’ from an Irish sailing enthusiast whose not really interested in withholding a dissenting opinion.

I’d say the bigger threat to a spirited discussion is the, foreign to me, notion of blocking those whose opinions don’t align with your own.

Cue up the ‘take it to PA’ chorus.

 

[Ajax]

There is a very visible difference between people with a dissenting opinion and vitriolic internet trolls who stir up shit for their personal gratification.

Some participants here have gone far, far beyond a knock at Manifest Destiny into direct attacks on individuals.  It doesn't bother me a single jot if you think that I'm fragile because I've decided that I'm done rolling in the mud with such people.

And here I thought I was contributing to the civility of this discussion area by ceasing to engage in political shouting matches. It seems that there's no pleasing some people.