Ok. A quick lesson on quoting. First off there is a quote button near the bottom right. However as you've probably noticed it doesn't break up paragraphs and stuff.

The way to format things is to have a [/quote] at the end of every quote and a [quote] at the beginning.

Now if you use the forums quote button it'll put a =Name;post# in there like [quote=Tanja;438929]. That puts a little thing you can click in the quote to get to the post. That's more useful when quoting something pages earlier or in another thread.

it looks like
you can also just do =name

Also if people are using formating and you want to know how to do it when you quote you get to see all that stuff.

You did not answer my question. I asked what practical value the embargo has to us. What are we gaining right now at this moment by keeping Cuba under embargo?



Why was it "invented" if we dont care about Democracy? What practical value did we have in creating the democracy argument for Cuba? What did it get us?


I never complain when a non-democracy is attacked or isolated. I don't really care what the justification is. So if it makes you feel better to believe our motives are selfish, thats ok with me. So long as we get our way.



Oh no, our government is despised. How ever will we live with ourselves. heh heh



Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. A lot of people who share your beliefs on here tend not to know what democracy is. Since you agree with the dictionary definition, we don't have to waste time with that.


A vote for what?



We have in the past. And we were wrong to do so. isn't it nice we are finally changing?

You can thank the Neocons for that.



It might. But I wouldnt know based on what you have presented so far.

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This is a very good point which most history classes fail to mention with 1920s US nationalism. In fact, I've never heard it mentioned in a textbook or by a teacher - shows you how subjective our education system is when we are taught about the horrors of the holocaust.

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It is a good point to you, as you are a type of person that will always prefer the truth and objectivity over biased reports. Not something I could say about Sadistic Saviour, though

Yes, because it's only history when you're getting into details about how your country isn't perfect. Never mind the entirety of the spanish American war that I bet most graduating high schoolers don't even know about. They need to spend time on this.

Also I think it's twisting the facts. I've heard from multiple sources that we did NOT know what was really going on with the holocaust until near the end of the war. And (checks wiki). Yeah it looks like by the time deathsquads and "the final solution" were underway the war was also going and I doubt hopping a plane to the US was a viable option even fi the US had it's borders wide open.

I don't know about the rest of what was listed. But I'm suspect from the first two contortions.

A vote/consensus as to a) which country is non-democratic as you put it (this particular question has been a subject to various interpretations, as you yourself said) and b) what measures are to be taken against the said country, by whom, and to what extent. Now, there is an international institution with a mandate to do this, United nations. However, since your country by-passed it more than once, I believe my question to be valid and directly relevant to the discussion we've been having.




So you're not doing it anymore? Afganistan, Iraq? Kosovo? If someone gives military/logistical/financial support to topple one regime and put another in place, that's interfering in the internal matters of a country, no matter what that country is. Now, you will say that those regimes were oppressive, and lost mandate with its people. So be it. But where does it end then? Turks oppressing the Kurds? Israel oppressing Palestine? China oppressing Taiwan? Spain oppressing Basques? Russia oppresing Chechens? India oppressing Kashmir? Egypt and Saudis oppressing women, et cetera. It goes on doesn't it, and you have a very eclectic taste as to where you will intervene or not.

...so he believes that Spain oppresses Basques as well as Russia oppresses Chechens!

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Will American Empire End Before It Ends the World?

By Paul Craig Roberts

The hypocrisy of US government officials is boundless. On February 18, the US government inflamed Serbians by recognizing Muslim separatists in Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia, as an independent country. Two hundred thousand Serbs marched in protest and the US embassy in Belgrade was damaged. Is this surprising? No, not unless you are an official in the American Empire. The notorious Empire Neocon Counsel, Azlmay Khalilzad, Bush’s representative to the UN, declared: "I’m outraged by the mob attack."

What’s an embassy building compared to a province of Serbia, a province that stirs nationalist sentiments associated with the Serbs' long military struggles with the Turks? Had it not been for the Serbs, Europeans would probably be Turks.

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a break-away movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be "intolerable."

Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also sees no reason for the Serbs to be upset that America gave away part of their country. He explained away the Serbian protests by declaring: "The Russians are behind this."

We can understand why US diplomacy is a failure when we see our diplomats explaining that, had it not been for the Russians stirring them up, Serbians wouldn’t have noticed the loss of a historic part of their country.

Perhaps Kosovo should have its independence. However, the US government could not have handled the issue in a more provocative way.

Washington has been interfering in Serbian internal affairs since the Clinton administration. Told that Americans had to prevent genocide, few paid enough attention to Washington’s facilitation of the breakup of the Yugoslav state during the 1990s and to the Clinton administration’s bombing and murder of Serbian civilians in order to support Muslim separatists in Kosovo in 1999. Clinton used NATO as cover, but the bombing campaign was not backed by the UN Security Council. Bombs fell on Serbia for 78 days, taking out public infrastructure, bridges, factories, power stations, petrochemical plants, telecommunications facilities, markets, refugees, the Chinese Embassy and a passenger train. "Sorry honey, tell the kids I won’t be home tonight. President Clinton decided to bomb my train." Cluster bombs and depleted uranium were used. Clearly, the US government and its NATO puppets were guilty of war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.......

Rest of the article

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We intervene where we feel it's pragmatic to do so. Under that scenario you will find our actions mostly make sense. Granted, we're not good at telling what's in our interests a lot of the time, but you will be able to follow the logic. If you try and go with the whole "humanitarian" nonsense nothing will make any sense. Why? Because our actions are rarely, if ever, based on such matters. If you go the pragmatist route, China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan etc. etc. being just fine by us makes total sense. If you go the "humanitarian" route you just end up with a headache. You'll never be able to reconclie why most non-democracies, dictators, murderous regimes, etc. are fine by us.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

Do the people living under non-democratic regimes get a vote too?



I'm not interested in what non-democracies have to say about that. They have no rights, and don't get a voice.



Which recognizes non-democracies as legitimate. In essence, it legitimizes the oppression of millions of people.

Thats why it has to be dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up as a democracy-only club. NATO would be a good nucleus for a new UN.



We don't really recognize it's legitimacy for the reasons cited above. We only pay lip service to it and use it as a tool when convenient. Our actions should make this clear. We obey the UN when convenient and ignore it when its not convenient. And since the UN has no backbone and needs our money, we get away with it every time.

They never do a (*)(*)(*)(*) thing about it. We went into a sovereign nation (Iraq), ripped out it's despotic leader, installed a democratic government in his place, and now the UN recognizes our installed government as legitimate. If we got away with it once, why wouldn't we get away with it again? The precedent has already been set.

I support us withdrawing from the UN completely rather than lying about our intentions and using it as a tool. Isn't that honest of me?


No. No. And no.

In all three cases we are freeing an oppressed people. They were oppressed before, and now they're not.



Which is wrong if that country is sovereign. We don't recognize non-democracies as sovereign. Thats why we feel we can topple them at will.

Non-democracies do not have a right to keep us out of their internal affairs. Because they don't have a right to rule in the first place.


When they are free. When their citizens elect their own leaders. When they are no longer oppressed.


Yeah, you keep saying that, but you don't give any examples.

Do the Turks force them to pay taxes and obey their laws without representation? Do they hold them against their will?

The Kurds have representation in Iraq now.


Ironically, I actually support a Palestinian state. But the Palestinians do not want just a state...they want to drive Israel into the sea. Negotiation cannot proceed on that basis.

Israel is acting in self defense, which is why that situation is not analogous.



No argument here. But like Kosovo, Taiwan is a nation in every way that matters. China is not really oppressing them. They elect their own leaders, have their own political system, military, education system and economy...completely independent of China.


I do not know enough about those situations yet to comment.


I advocate breaking off relations with Saudia Arabia for that reason. But I have been outvoted. Many Paleocons (and some Neocons) see Saudi Arabia as a useful tool. My personal belief is that we should several all ties with any non-democracy on the planet...economic, diplomatic and especially military.


I gotta be me.

Our resources are vast but finite. So we have to pick our battles. It is unfortunate for Serbia that they (Kosovo) were the ones who got our attention.

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