There is a country called Scumeria. Scumeria has never invaded its neighboring countries. It doesn't support terrorists aboad. Scumeria is sitting on an ocean of oil reserves. It is a horrible dictatorship. It meticulously follows international law regarding it's relations with other countries. However, inside its borders, it kills political enemies of the state by the hundred thousand. It enforces it's rule by torture chambers, rape rooms, midnight raids by the police - all the things dictatorships do. Of course the people have zero rights in Scumeria.

Now the question is, what if anything should other countries do about Scumeria?

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If all of the freedom-loving freedom-lovers who love freedom live by their word they will not have traded with Scumeria, so its government will not be able to import the arms with which to continue the subjugation of their people. It will be crushed by popular revolution if not suppored by external powers - read the history.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Oh, like the soviet union, nazi germany, and north korea have been crushed by popular revolution? Garsh, it sure seems people are always ready to trade with dictators - certainly europeans. Hell, even as we speak, euros are catching some rays on Castro's beaches.

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...you dont mean to suggest that Europeans are somehow singular in having traded with dictators, do you?

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

No, but they just seem to have, how to put this, an affinity for them. They do have the history of George III, Hitler, Napoleon, Marx, Mussolini, etc. They traded with Vietnam during the vietnam war. They traded with iraq, not for strategic reasons like the US, but just to make money. They about sh_t their pants when the US wanted to bring in Pershing II's during the cold war to counter the soviets. "Don't be mean to the soviets, you'll upset them."

They are eager supporters of the UN, a conclave of scores of dictators, which puts the worst dictatorships on the hauman rights commission. And of course, they screamed bloody murder when the US moved in to take down Iraq, one of the worst dictatorships in the world at the time. It's just a lot of things over time, when added together, that gives the impression that they really don't have a problem with dicatators.

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...the 'special' relationship.

And yes, they didnt help you invade a few countries; guilty as charged.

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Yeah, they had no problem with the communist takeover of south vietnam, no problem with the murderous baathist dictatorship - exactly what I'm talking about.

Glad you agree.

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Are you equally vehement in your opposition for US support to non-democratic states? `Cos otherwise you could come across a mite hypocritical.

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Marx (G.)

(1) Neither did the Vietnamese, elections were not held under pressure from US for fear of the majority Communists winning, as we see, doesn't seem like letting the Vietnamese chose their leaders in a democratic fashion to me.

(2) And the US did? The US only seems to considers a country as a dictatorship if it is against their interests.

The US dealt with unsavory dictators as part of the greater issue of taking on the soviet union, practically alone, during the cold war, while euros sat on the sideling eating their croissant and sucking their demitasse. As Harry Truman famously said of one such dictator - "He's a s.o.b. - but he's OUR s.o.b." This context, along with why the US dealt with saddam in the eighties, is uniformly ignored by anti-american types. This is to be completely distinguished from euroweenies, who never saw a dictator they didn't like when it comes to pulling in hard currency for everything from small arms up to chirac's nuke factory for the iraqis.

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