Discussion and Debate Community Thread

[swabian]

Not even a joke: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...les-of-liberty

Never mind that the intellectual disconnect is strong with the guy.


Oh you're not with me? Oh that must mean you hate America!

~20 military veterans suiciding each day? Debt spiraling out of control, inequality in my country reaching new records year after year? The hilariously dysfunctional state of the oligarchic political system, healthcare, our inability to even hold proper elections?
That's what I call success of my country!
Utterly destroyed once functioning countries becoming havens for Islamists after our invasion/meddling?
That's the success of my country's mission!
Slave markets in Libya? Life, Liberty and Property, baby! America, yeah! I'm an American "patriot". I want my country to be the very best, by bombing the rest of the world to

I thought you were at least 12 and exceptionally gifted?! What a shame...

[Lord Thesaurian]

Not sure what hunter gatherer societies (or European feudalism for that matter) being gradually phased out by the modern world has to do with anything, nor the disingenuous moralization of petty dictators deemed a lesser evil than world communism at the height of the Cold War. But you know, contrarian, reductive tankie cope always warms the nostalgic cockles of my capitalist pig heart.

Far be it from me to part our morally superior European friends with their desire to have their LNG supply cornered by the sort of despotic de facto dictator whose regime they might otherwise scorn the US for supporting/toppling. The LNG market is interesting though, as it appears recent price surges may provide an opening for US suppliers normally plagued by market oversupply.

Europe failed to act as the gas-buyer of last resort for the first time this summer, said James Huckstepp, a gas analyst at Platts. With storage facilities filling up because of the drop in demand, buyers canceled dozens of cargoes and prices sank to levels at which exports to Europe were lossmaking.
Shipments from the U.S. stalled. That, in turn, added to the domestic surplus of gas and helped push benchmark prices in Louisiana to 25-year lows.

A combination of factors has since spurred gas prices in Europe. Demand from factories, which burn gas for heat, has revived along with the region’s economy. Maintenance work at French nuclear-power stations has required more electricity to be generated by gas-fired utilities. Rising prices for carbon credits have encouraged power plants to burn gas instead of coal and lignite.

Longer term, prices could get another boost if Nord Stream 2, the pipeline being built to funnel Russian gas into Germany, is delayed or abandoned. Germany has signaled it is prepared to reconsider the project, which is close to completion, in light of the poisoning of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. U.S. sanctions have already halted construction of the pipeline in its last stretch.

“There is a large probability it will at least be postponed for at least two years or probably indefinitely,” said Christoph Merkel, managing director of German consulting firm Merkel Energy. “It has implications for the gas market but it will not move the market immediately.”

Meanwhile, American exports to both Europe and Asia are expected to rise when colder temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere lift gas demand. The seasonal increase in demand for liquefied-natural gas will be the biggest on record, analysts at Bank of America Global Research forecast.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-gas...es-11600251662

The market moves however she may. Unfortunately, it appears there will be a fairly permanent niche in the European market for US suppliers for the foreseeable future.

[Cookiegod]

contrarian, reductive tankie cope always warms the nostalgic cockles of my capitalist pig heart.

oh never mind then, I thought I had a case but *poof* you proved us wrong.

No wonder you see communism everywhere given that your definition apparently is "anyone who disagrees with my nationalist superiority complex".

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

@Legio: Your math is simply wrong.

You need energy to make US natural gas liquid to transport it via tanker to Europe, then you must convert it to be non liquid again.

More energy means more costs, means a more expensive product.

Russian natural gas is cheaper.

Germany bought russian natural gas since Breshnew without Soviets trying to blackmail Germany to pander to soviet wishes.

And to your so called morally superior US in comparison to evil UdSSR:

Most estimates of German deaths in these camps range from 3,000 to 6,000. Many of these died from starvation, dehydration and exposure to the weather elements because no structures were built inside the prison compounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager


The Chenogne massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chenogne_massacre

According to an article in Der Spiegel by Klaus Wiegrefe, many personal memoirs of Allied soldiers have been wilfully ignored by historians until now because they were at odds with the "greatest generation" mythology surrounding World War II. However, this has recently started to change, with books such as The Day of Battle, by Rick Atkinson, in which he describes Allied war crimes in Italy, and D-Day: The Battle for Normandy, by Antony Beevor.^[57] Beevor's latest work suggests that Allied war crimes in Normandy were much more extensive "than was previously realized".^[58]
Historian Peter Lieb has found that many U.S. and Canadian units were ordered not to take enemy prisoners during the D-Day landings in Normandy. If this view is correct, it may explain the fate of 64 German prisoners (out of the 130 captured) who did not make it to the POW collecting point on Omaha Beach on the day of the landings.^[57]
Near the French village of Audouville-la-Hubert, 30 Wehrmacht prisoners were massacred by U.S. paratroopers.^[58]
In the aftermath of the 1944 Malmedy massacre, in which 80 American POWs were murdered by their German captors, a written order from the headquarters of the 328th U.S. Army Infantry Regiment, dated 21 December 1944, stated: "No SS troops or paratroopers will be taken prisoner but [rather they] will be shot on sight."^[59] Major-General Raymond Hufft (U.S. Army) gave instructions to his troops not to take prisoners when they crossed the Rhine in 1945. "After the war, when he reflected on the war crimes he authorized, he admitted, 'if the Germans had won, I would have been on trial at Nuremberg instead of them.'"^[60] Stephen Ambrose related: "I've interviewed well over 1000 combat veterans. Only one of them said he shot a prisoner ... Perhaps as many as one-third of the veterans...however, related incidents in which they saw other GIs shooting unarmed German prisoners who had their hands up."^[61]



"Operation Teardrop" involved eight surviving captured crewmen from the sunken German submarine U-546 being tortured by U.S. military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written that the beating and torture of U-546's survivors was a singular atrocity motivated by the interrogators' need to quickly get information on what the U.S. believed were potential missile attacks on the continental U.S. by German submarines.^[62]



Among American WWII veterans who admitted to having committed war crimes was former Mafia hitman Frank Sheeran. In interviews with his biographer Charles Brandt, Sheeran recalled his war service with the Thunderbird Division as the time when he first developed a callousness to the taking of human life. By his own admission, Sheeran participated in numerous massacres and summary executions of German POWs, acts which violated the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1929 Geneva Convention on POWs. In his interviews with Brandt, Sheeran divided such massacres into four different categories.
1. Revenge killings in the heat of battle. Sheeran told Brandt that, when a German soldier had just killed his close friends and then tried to surrender, he would often "send him to hell, too." He described often witnessing similar behavior by fellow GIs.^[63]
2. Orders from unit commanders during a mission. When describing his first murder for organized crime, Sheeran recalled: "It was just like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to 'hurry back'. You did what you had to do."^[64]
3. The Dachau massacre and other reprisal killings of concentration camp guards and trustee inmates.^[65]
4. Calculated attempts to dehumanize and degrade German POWs. While Sheeran's unit was climbing the Harz Mountains, they came upon a Wehrmacht mule train carrying food and drink up the mountainside. The female cooks were first allowed to leave unmolested, then Sheeran and his fellow GIs "ate what we wanted and soiled the rest with our waste." Then the Wehrmacht mule drivers were given shovels and ordered to "dig their own shallow graves." Sheeran later joked that they did so without complaint, likely hoping that he and his buddies would change their minds. But the mule drivers were shot and buried in the holes they had dug. Sheeran explained that by then, "I had no hesitation in doing what I had to do."^[66]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...s#World_War_II

In Taken by Force, J. Robert Lilly estimates the number of rapes committed by U.S. servicemen in Germany to be 11,040.^[56] As in the case of the American occupation of France after the D-Day invasion, many of the American rapes in Germany in 1945 were gang rapes committed by armed soldiers at gunpoint.<sup>[57]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_d...ny#U.S._troops</sup>

The Soviet Army committed more rapes - understandable if you look at the war crimes of Germany in the UdSSR - , but there are more than one eye witness reports that many soviet officers killed rapists immediately among their soldiers.

The US Army closed both eyes about american war crimes in Germany. No one was ever convicted or persecuted for those crimes.

But hey Legio don't let disturb you while you are painting your good US, evil UdSSR/Russia picture.

[Lord Thesaurian]

>Calls use of the “tankie” monicker a projection of American red scare nationalist “superiority complex.”
>Pivots to calling Soviet war crimes “understandable” and hey “what about [insert bad thing] Americans probably did?” Classic.

The US is not an empire, nor is a democratic republic necessarily well suited to such a system - hence why we’re not proving to be very good at maintaining absolute hegemony compared to the longevity and durability of an actual empire like Britain or Rome. I’ve never argued that the US is inherently superior to any other country, because that’s not how US hegemony operates. All the US has is a system - of ideas, of products, of politics - which is advanced in our national interests abroad, just as all large and powerful countries do. The last 80 years of world history has seen not imperial domination, but a coalition of the willing, against the Nazis, against the Soviets, against Islamic terror, against authoritarian expansionism, etc.

The plain fact is, world leaders are comfortable with the US taking the lead, and if anything, are aghast and annoyed whenever we drop the ball, as evidenced by the boilerplate backseat driving seen in this thread. If the naysayers get their wish, I can only hope for their sake they’ll be just as free to argue the moral inconsistencies of international hegemony in Russian or Chinese. Won’t be me suffering from a humbled and castigated America without the moral “superiority complex” that might otherwise compel us to fight and die on behalf of far flung people and countries most Americans can’t locate on a map. If we’re no fun anymore, our international partners are free to shop around. Some will, most aren’t.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

Won’t be me suffering from a humbled and castigated America without the moral “superiority complex” that might otherwise compel us to fight and die on behalf of far flung people and countries most Americans can’t locate on a map.

This sentence is ridiculous if you compare the soviet blood toll with the US blood toll during the liberation of Europe from Germany's Nazi Terror.

[Cookiegod]

>Calls use of the “tankie” monicker a projection of American red scare nationalist “superiority complex.”
>Pivots to calling Soviet war crimes “understandable” and hey “what about [insert bad thing] Americans probably did?” Classic.

>lol. completely ignores the argument because he has no answer.
>has to pretend that Morticia and I are the same person, because the fact that I addressed one aspect, and she another one, doesn't fit a very stupid narrative.
>pretends the US is fighting for "far flung people" by supporting people like Pol Pot, Pinochet, Islamists, Nazis, and other sterling groups. Those characters weren't the exception, but the norm. Done for very transparent and very selfish interests of the oligarchy, not those of any people, be it the American, or that of the people whose weddings you bomb.

I see strong parallels between your line of thinking and those in the Turk/Azerbaijan threads. "Support" of my country just because, no matter how wrong the action. Rational thinking an option only when it doesn't get in the way. Has no place for nuance or critical thinking in his ideology.

Morticia doesn't deny that Soviets and Germans did war crimes. She doesn't need a shiny fairy tale. You do. Go on, tell us how that makes us "tankies" (whatever tf that is).

[Lord Thesaurian]

Curious that you would claim to differentiate your position from hers while doubling down on your barely topical, reductive rants. I don’t need to explain your rhetorical tactics to you. They are quite old.

[Cookiegod]

lol. I'd ask you again what makes me a tankie, but I'm not allowed.

but let's get back to the "barely topical" rant:

Never mind that the intellectual disconnect is strong with the guy.

Oh you're not with me? Oh that must mean you hate America!

~20 military veterans suiciding each day? Debt spiraling out of control, inequality in my country reaching new records year after year? The hilariously dysfunctional state of the oligarchic political system, healthcare, our inability to even hold proper elections?
That's what I call success of my country!
Utterly destroyed once functioning countries becoming havens for Islamists after our invasion/meddling?
That's the success of my country's mission!
Slave markets in Libya? Life, Liberty and Property, baby! America, yeah! I'm an American "patriot". I want my country to be the very best, by bombing the rest of the world to

First two lines proven right by your behaviour afterwards, if it hadn't been before.

The rest is listing just a couple of points that refute the hyping of what's arguably one of the most broken developed countries in the world, asking you a rather fundamental question. What success exactly?!
We'll never know, because once again you, like certain shills for other warmongering countries, have no case to make but just want to keep the BS claim of being "for the success of your country and it's mission", when you're not for any of that. You don't want your country to be the best it can be, if that means you'll have to sacrifice ego.

And you're not such a big fan of plurality either. If you cannot cope with dissent in any other way than having to shut out their arguments and call them tankies, if second guessing your countries motives and actions is "unpatriotic", if your only go-to "argument" always has to be the USSR and Russia (funnily enough whilst calling my "rant" "barely topical"), that just shows what standards you have for your own country.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Accusing me of being unable to cope with dissent doesn’t really hold water when the simple admission of my own ideological bias - something that, if anything, runs contrary such a claim - has triggered a full page of peripheral rage. Rather than “refutation,” your “argument” consists of ad hoc concern trolling about perceived moral inconsistencies of American military conduct versus the stated aims of getting involved in this or that conflict. These attempts of yours and others to cast US foreign policy as fraudulent warmongering might garner more specific attention from me if they weren’t so transparently derivative and worn out. I don’t need to pretend your furious contempt for US hegemony arises from some kind of intellectual interest in order to validate my clearly stated and supported position, any more than I need to pretend the Soviets actually cared about civil rights in the US.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

I guess 'tankie' is a female 'communistic' aka not republican student activist.

@Legio: And where are you arguments besides Tankie and Whataboutism and buzzwords like liberty and prosperty?

And what are the products the world wants so desperately from the US?

I don't think that your political institutions are at the moment really attractive for other countries.

[Cookiegod]

Accusing me of being unable to cope with dissent doesn’t really hold water when the simple admission of my own ideological bias - something that, if anything, runs contrary such a claim - has triggered a full page of peripheral rage. Rather than “refutation,” your “argument” consists of ad hoc concern trolling about perceived moral inconsistencies of American military conduct versus the stated aims of getting involved in this or that conflict. These attempts of yours and others to cast US foreign policy as fraudulent warmongering might garner more specific attention from me if they weren’t so transparently derivative and worn out. I don’t need to pretend your furious contempt for US hegemony arises from some kind of intellectual interest in order to validate my clearly stated and supported position, any more than I need to pretend the Soviets actually cared about civil rights in the US.

Concern trolling - I love it. Not long after this one:

Won’t be me suffering from a humbled and castigated America without the moral “superiority complex” that might otherwise compel us to fight and die on behalf of far flung people and countries most Americans can’t locate on a map.

I don’t need to pretend your furious contempt for US hegemony arises from some kind of intellectual interest in order to validate my clearly stated and supported position, any more than I need to pretend the Soviets actually cared about civil rights in the US.

Evidently you don't need to pretend you can make a case for your nationalism either.

It's time for us to part ways, but as homework, please do google "Kollektivschuld", and "Tätervolk". You are responsible for your regimes actions. All citizens are, but especially bhakts.
The US once knew that.

[irontaino]

Not sure what hunter gatherer societies (or European feudalism for that matter) being gradually phased out by the modern world has to do with anything, nor the disingenuous moralization of petty dictators deemed a lesser evil than world communism at the height of the Cold War. But you know, contrarian, reductive tankie cope always warms the nostalgic cockles of my capitalist pig heart.

The Killing Fields, Operation Condor, literal genocides in Guatemala and El Salvador, Iraq being worse off now than ever before, open air slave markets in Libya...these are just petty little bumps in the road. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette, amirite?

[Lord Thesaurian]

Concern trolling - I love it. Not long after this one:

Again, “No you” isn’t a refutation of anything I’ve said, notwithstanding your categorical claims to have done so. People in places like Korea or Taiwan, for example, will suffer in a much more immediate sense compared to the average American, from the end of American hegemony you seem to be clamoring for. Who will fill the gap when all these countries are liberated from the wretched sinners in the USM? That’s not concern trolling. Your catalogue of miscellaneous bad things Americans have done over the years, which you use for the purpose of moralistic castigation in place of making an argument on any peripheral subject, is concern trolling.

Evidently you don't need to pretend you can make a case for your nationalism either.

It's time for us to part ways, but as homework, please do google "Kollektivschuld", and "Tätervolk". You are responsible for your regimes actions. All citizens are, but especially bhakts.
The US once knew that.

I don’t need to detail why the USG is different from Nazi Germany in order to justify patriotism, just because you consider the USG to be evil in morally comparative terms. I guess it is indeed time to part ways given your vacuous conflation/confession.

I guess 'tankie' is a female 'communistic' aka not republican student activist.

@Legio: And where are you arguments besides Tankie and Whataboutism and buzzwords like liberty and prosperty?

Sadly, I’m no longer a student, and while I suppose I should update my registration someday, the only time I ever registered to vote was as a Democrat. I guess I’m just another speck in the blob of unaffiliated voters at this point. Anyway, I don’t think I’ve used “tankie” and “whataboutism” as mere red scare buzzwords. In a thread where we have people comparing the USG to Nazi Germany and extolling Soviet heroism, sacrifice or “understandable” vengeance against German civilians in contrast to American war crimes against German civilians or POWs in WW2, all in response to “I like America,” the reference speaks for itself.

And what are the products the world wants so desperately from the US?

I don't think that your political institutions are at the moment really attractive for other countries.

I think when the discussion has been reduced to rhetorical questions, we can agree it has run its course. As I said:

The US is not an empire, nor is a democratic republic necessarily well suited to such a system - hence why we’re not proving to be very good at maintaining absolute hegemony compared to the longevity and durability of an actual empire like Britain or Rome. I’ve never argued that the US is inherently superior to any other country, because that’s not how US hegemony operates. All the US has is a system - of ideas, of products, of politics - which is advanced in our national interests abroad, just as all large and powerful countries do. The last 80 years of world history has seen not imperial domination, but a coalition of the willing, against the Nazis, against the Soviets, against Islamic terror, against authoritarian expansionism, etc.

The plain fact is, world leaders are comfortable with the US taking the lead, and if anything, are aghast and annoyed whenever we drop the ball, as evidenced by the boilerplate backseat driving seen in this thread. If the naysayers get their wish, I can only hope for their sake they’ll be just as free to argue the moral inconsistencies of international hegemony in Russian or Chinese. Won’t be me suffering from a humbled and castigated America without the moral “superiority complex” that might otherwise compel us to fight and die on behalf of far flung people and countries most Americans can’t locate on a map. If we’re no fun anymore, our international partners are free to shop around. Some will, most aren’t.

[Heathen Hammer]

More like it went exactly the way we said it was. You're putting words in people's mouth. No one really argued here that communism is good. They could if they wanted to, nothing inherently wrong with that, but nobody really expressed an opinion on communism like that. Just because people don't equate communism with fascism to your liking doesn't mean they're advocating it. You're merely trying to project your own biased, and likely ignorant, arguments to create positions you can argue against.

The only people who don't acknowledge functional equality of fascism and communism are fascists and communists.

[PointOfViewGun]

The only people who don't acknowledge functional equality of fascism and communism are fascists and communists.

I'm neither and I know for a fact that they're functionally not equal. What now?

[Aexodus]

I think this whole tangent demonstrates the sad lack of a negative stigma towards Communism, the same ideology that has allowed a genocide to happen right now in China.

[Heathen Hammer]

I'm neither and I know for a fact that they're functionally not equal. What now?

Saying that won't change the facts. Both ideologies are functionally equal, only difference is fascism is based on ruthless practicality, while communism is based on ruthless utopianism, but implementation is still the same. So you are either biased in favoring of one of those ideologies or your post sis simply dishonest.

[Cookiegod]

Again, “No you” isn’t a refutation of anything I’ve said, notwithstanding your categorical claims to have done so.

Again, nice projection dude. You accused me of concern trolling. An accusation without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It was hilarious though that you made that accusation right after making a big speech about the American man's burden to "far flung people he can't even point to on the map". So yeah, technically speaking I didn't refute it, you did.

People in places like Korea or Taiwan, for example, will suffer in a much more immediate sense compared to the average American, from the end of American hegemony you seem to be clamoring for. Who will fill the gap when all these countries are liberated from the wretched sinners in the USM? That’s not concern trolling. Your catalogue of miscellaneous bad things Americans have done over the years, which you use for the purpose of moralistic castigation in place of making an argument on any peripheral subject, is concern trolling.

Your claim that the US is acting out of unselfish reasons is one flaw in this; your claim to be able to read the future has no foundation either another; but likely the biggest flaw in your accusation is that for you this is obviously an either/or black/white game. You love projecting this accusation on to me, but I have never played this game that you do. A sane man's attitude would be: I can continue doing good things, I should just stop doing the bad things. Apart from dismissing this plethora unbroken string of incessant war crimes across the world as "contrarian", communist, anti-Americanism (you're much more of an anti-American if you genuinely believe this to be an integral part of the American identity), your only defense is to imply that supporting democratic countries in the far east can only be done by war criming across Latin America and the middle east, among many other countries?

Final sidenote: Both South Korea and Taiwan were dictatorships until the early 90s. I'm sure that's the Communists fault as well, right? No wait.

I don’t need to detail why the USG is different from Nazi Germany in order to justify patriotism, just because you consider the USG to be evil in morally comparative terms. I guess it is indeed time to part ways given your vacuous conflation/confession.

Nice strawman. I did not say that the US is as bad as the third Reich, but you're welcome to find a quote where I do. The principle nevertheless stands. The citizens of a country are responsible for its actions. Most responsible of them are the bhakts, the devotees who place factionalism above morality and rationality.

Anyway, I don’t think I’ve used “tankie” and “whataboutism” as mere red scare buzzwords. In a thread where we have people comparing the USG to Nazi Germany and extolling Soviet heroism, sacrifice or “understandable” vengeance against German civilians in contrast to American war crimes against German civilians or POWs in WW2, all in response to “I like America,” the reference speaks for itself.

Nice try: First of all, your red scare accusations preceded the statements that you chose to strawman that way, and secondly, yup, it's just strawmen.

I think when the discussion has been reduced to rhetorical questions, we can agree it has run its course.

mhm.

[Morticia Iunia Bruti]

In a thread where we have people comparing the USG to Nazi Germany and extolling Soviet heroism, sacrifice or “understandable” vengeance against German civilians in contrast to American war crimes against German civilians or POWs in WW2, all in response to “I like America,” the reference speaks for itself.

I will explain the comparison for you: the 'evil' communistic UdSSR, which lost at least 14.000.000 civilians in WW II by bloody german hands did a better job in persecuting and punishing their soldiers for rapes, while the US the bringer of the light of liberty, rule of law and prosperty to the world, failed miserable because no one was actual punished for the same sort of crime (rape), because "the units are already disbanded", "the soldiers are sent back home"? It makes your hymn on your country shallow.

The other parts i won't comment as its too much self-congratulation, overly national pathos and too less self reflection for my taste.