Saddam is purging Kirkuk at this very moment.

[Darth Wong]

To be honest, yes, I do, Edi. Your nation was allied to Nazi Germany in WWII and in being a Nazi ally, helped perpetuate the horrors of that regime. It deserved in the very least to be occupied and reconstructed, and since the Soviets were the only ones who could get the job done, I wish they'd done it. I think your nation would be a better place - Wiser to the cost of freedom - had it endured a few decades of Soviet occupation, instead of what it is today, the one Nazi satellite that escaped retribution.

This is some of the most disturbing shit I've ever seen. You just took a nation which has turned out fine, and which is not causing any trouble, and argue that it would have been better if it had suffered horribly because it would have taught them a lesson.

What moral perogative is served by this scenario of yours, Marina? Some twisted sense of retribution for not fighting alone against the Nazi war machine with precious little support? Men and women and children must suffer so they learn your little lesson? How would the world be a better place now if this had happened? How would the resulting INCREASE in overall suffering have been justified?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I have a huge problem with genocides committed by anyone. I favor eliminating the immediate threat and the capacity to threaten, instead of blanket annihilation. I can very well envision such an embargo that would result in starvation, in fact there is one in place right now that places the Iraqi people in similar straits, though not in quite as serious ones as a similar one would be for Israel.

What if genocide is necessary to eliminate the immediate threat? There are some situations in which it may be, at least theoretically.

As for killing in self-defense being justified, yes it is. You just need a lot of justification. If you shoot someone who breaks into your house out of hand, you'll get charged with 2nd degree murder (possibly with extenuating circumstances). If somebody comes at you with a baseball bat trying to kill you and you dodge and then shove the ravening maniac in front of a car and he gets run over and killed, you don't (assuming it's the only feasible way you can stop him). It's always evaluated on a case by case basis and whether use of less lethal means could have been sufficient and realistically feasible in a given situation. The same is true of all self-defense situations that end up in court (fatalities or not), and imo the standards are too heavily slanted in favor of the assailant and against the victim. The majority of the population is in agreement with me.

There was one case where woman who had a black belt in jujutsu killed a would-be rapist by tearing his throat out with her hands when he pinned her down on the ground. She was acquitted completely, because she had panicked and snapped and did the first thing that came to mind in blind desperation. There have been other cases, but most often when a person gets killed, the use of lethal force for self-defense was not necessary. In dicey situations even of you do get convicted, the sentence is short and shortened more by several applications of extenuating circumstances.

Edi

Hrmm. In general it's accepted that lethal force in self-defence is always acceptable in the USA. As for property, it varies from state-to-state, though the general rule is "it's always self-defence if they've entered your home."

[Darth Wong]

I have a huge problem with genocides committed by anyone. I favor eliminating the immediate threat and the capacity to threaten, instead of blanket annihilation. I can very well envision such an embargo that would result in starvation, in fact there is one in place right now that places the Iraqi people in similar straits, though not in quite as serious ones as a similar one would be for Israel.

What if genocide is necessary to eliminate the immediate threat? There are some situations in which it may be, at least theoretically.

That's a terror tactic. The immediate threat you speak of is the silly bogeyman of a conventional Arab army attacking the Israeli border. Instead of using conventional weapons or tactical nukes on its rear echelons to annihilate their supply train and stop their advance without having to use nuclear devices too close to your own troops, you immediately suggest tactics designed to cause the maximum possible civilian death and suffering in their respective homelands.

If Israel behaved in this fashion, it would be more than self-defense. It is one thing to shoot a thief as he enters your home; it is quite another to murder his family.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

This is some of the most disturbing shit I've ever seen. You just took a nation which has turned out fine, and which is not causing any trouble, and argue that it would have been better if it had suffered horribly because it would have taught them a lesson.

What moral perogative is served by this scenario of yours, Marina? Some twisted sense of retribution for not fighting alone against the Nazi war machine with precious little support? Men and women and children must suffer so they learn your little lesson? How would the world be a better place now if this had happened? How would the resulting INCREASE in overall suffering have been justified?

Mike, considering I'm friends with highly intelligent, rational people who think we should have tested the atomic bomb on Germany after they surrendered, I think we're coming at this from such an extremely different angle it's totally pointless to try and debate it.

Some things that the Germans did - their whole populace willing - were just so horrific and beyond comprehension that those who aided them don't deserve human sympathy. They willfully removed themselves from the human race as a nation - And so did their allies, the guilt of conspirators.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

That's a terror tactic. The immediate threat you speak of is the silly bogeyman of a conventional Arab army attacking the Israeli border. Instead of using conventional weapons or tactical nukes on its rear echelons to annihilate their supply train and stop their advance without having to use nuclear devices too close to your own troops, you immediately suggest tactics designed to cause the maximum possible civilian death and suffering in their respective homelands.

If Israel behaved in this fashion, it would be more than self-defense. It is one thing to shoot a thief as he enters your home; it is quite another to murder his family.

Israel is so small that the fallout from an attack on the rear echelons of an invading army would threaten the country.

[Darth Wong]

Some things that the Germans did - their whole populace willing - were just so horrific and beyond comprehension that those who aided them don't deserve human sympathy. They willfully removed themselves from the human race as a nation - And so did their allies, the guilt of conspirators.

Good, now explain this viewpoint in light of your assertion in the other thread that it's OK to ally yourself with butchers and dictators as long as it's convenient at the time. Could you be any more hypocritical?

[MKSheppard]

Mike, considering I'm friends with highly intelligent, rational people who think we should have tested the atomic bomb on Germany after they surrendered, I think we're coming at this from such an extremely different angle it's totally pointless to try and debate it.

You've gone way beyond the pale, O'leary. Germany surrendered
UNCONDITIONALLY, as did Japan. And your friends think it's "ok"
to drop the Bomb on a surrendered nation?

I wonder what kind of "friends" you have. Probably crackpots sitting up
north in Montana, railing against the black man and the freemasonry.

[Stuart Mackey]

This is some of the most disturbing shit I've ever seen. You just took a nation which has turned out fine, and which is not causing any trouble, and argue that it would have been better if it had suffered horribly because it would have taught them a lesson.

What moral perogative is served by this scenario of yours, Marina? Some twisted sense of retribution for not fighting alone against the Nazi war machine with precious little support? Men and women and children must suffer so they learn your little lesson? How would the world be a better place now if this had happened? How would the resulting INCREASE in overall suffering have been justified?

Mike, considering I'm friends with highly intelligent, rational people who think we should have tested the atomic bomb on Germany after they surrendered, I think we're coming at this from such an extremely different angle it's totally pointless to try and debate it.

Some things that the Germans did - their whole populace willing - were just so horrific and beyond comprehension that those who aided them don't deserve human sympathy. They willfully removed themselves from the human race as a nation - And so did their allies, the guilt of conspirators.

And supporting the Soviets and their blackmail of Finland would have been any different? I think not.
As to your Highly intelligent, rational freinds, I trust they have no morals and are fervant promoters of genocide?

[Xisiqomelir]

He said said it would be justified, DW. And saying that genocide is justifiable against Jews is quite clearly anti-semitism to me.

Just why do you believe that any ethnic group or country with a majority population of a specific ethnic group should be immune to countervalue strikes launched in response to a nation's indiscriminate use of nuclear weapons?

Enlightenment, I have no such beliefs, and have never said anything of the sort. All I said was that calling a Holocaust (which is specifically Jewish genocide) justifed, is an anti-semitic position.

Should Israel be pressed into using it's nuclear arsenal, I would naturally expect that there should be reprisals from whatever Arabic portion of the Middle East remained. In my opinion that would lead to the absolute destruction of the region. And I would consider no state involved in such actions to be "morally superior".

[Edi]

Right, which is why this is silly - I was discussing it more for the technical aspects than anything else. I owe you an apology for jumping on you when you came into the thread from a different angle.

The immediate threat in the case of Israel would be impossible to annihilate due to those technical aspects. They would just have to remove the supply it has - IE, blow up the homelands those armies come from - and hope they can then defeat it conventionally.

Apology accepted. As for the rest of it, I'll be observing the moratorium so I'm dropping this. I still disagree with you on several levels, however.

Well, we have different views in context of the defence. I would note, however, that it depends on the damage done to Israeli agriculture. 80% of their food production is exported, so they're hardly reliant on foreign food to survive. In fact, depending on how many casualties they took, they could handle the destruction of more than 80% of their agricultural infrastructure and still be self-sufficient.

Their agriculture depends on water supplies that can be cut off, but assuming this is not done, point conceded.

As for being overrun by the Soviets, I did not find that comment amusing. You have no possible idea of the horror of the scenario you casually bandy about. I've seen its fallout in Estonia, and my parents have seen what happened to the homes their families had lived in for decades (both sides of my family hail from the ceded territories). I've talked with people who lived through the Soviet oppression in Estonia and elsewhere. Take a good look at what Finland is like now and what the former Soviet satellites are like, and honestly tell me that you wish that because I made a comment that is somewhat inflammatory, but far less so than many things you have said. Do you really wish that had happened?

Edi

To be honest, yes, I do, Edi. Your nation was allied to Nazi Germany in WWII and in being a Nazi ally, helped perpetuate the horrors of that regime.

You should check your facts. We fought beside Nazi Germany, yes, because nobody else was willing to help us against the Soviets, but there was never a treaty of alliance. Being on the same side with them as far as the Russians were concerned was the only way to guarantee that equally bad or worse horrors would not be committed against us. The people living near the border where Russian guerilla patrols operated suffered enough, many of them raped, tortured or murdered outright. Besides, we did not fight a war of aggression, we were invaded without provocation to begin with, so we had a whole load of justification for killing as many as we could of the Russian soldiers we faced. I will also note that ambitions toward a state of Greater Finland by some Finnish factions in the Continuation War of 1941-44 were not shared by most Finns. Quite a few men were court-martialed and shot for refusing to cross the pre-Winter War border.

It deserved in the very least to be occupied and reconstructed, and since the Soviets were the only ones who could get the job done, I wish they'd done it. I think your nation would be a better place - Wiser to the cost of freedom - had it endured a few decades of Soviet occupation, instead of what it is today, the one Nazi satellite that escaped retribution.

We had a Russian Oversight Commission here until 1947 and they sure tried to find excuses for full occupation, except we didn't give them any. We reconstructed our country ourselves and paid tremendous war reparations to the aggressor of a war we didn't start, reparations that almost broke Finland but somehow didn't, and in the process forced a transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. We had constant Soviet interference in our politics until the 1980s and more than once near-overt threat of another invasion. We'd be a whole fucking lot worse off if we'd been occupied, we wouldn't be free in the first place!

As for us being a Nazi satellite, go fuck yourself! We were never that, and the cooperation and arrangements we had with Germany were done on our terms more than on theirs. We did not have German occupation (stress on that word) troops here, nor did we hand over our Jewish population to the Nazis as they demanded. 8 people were handed over and they later died in concentration camps, something which the whole country apart from some fuckwit neonazis is still ashamed of. You should really check up on history and take a closer look at the state of the Nazi satellite states that did get occupied by the Soviets before spouting such utter bullshit.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Good, now explain this viewpoint in light of your assertion in the other thread that it's OK to ally yourself with butchers and dictators as long as it's convenient at the time. Could you be any more hypocritical?

The perversity of Nazi evil was a unique blight in history, a national sickness which was not equalled before or since.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

We had a Russian Oversight Commission here until 1947 and they sure tried to find excuses for full occupation, except we didn't give them any. We reconstructed our country ourselves and paid tremendous war reparations to the aggressor of a war we didn't start, reparations that almost broke Finland but somehow didn't, and in the process forced a transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. We had constant Soviet interference in our politics until the 1980s and more than once near-overt threat of another invasion. We'd be a whole fucking lot worse off if we'd been occupied, we wouldn't be free in the first place!

As for us being a Nazi satellite, go fuck yourself! We were never that, and the cooperation and arrangements we had with Germany were done on our terms more than on theirs. We did not have German occupation (stress on that word) troops here, nor did we hand over our Jewish population to the Nazis as they demanded. 8 people were handed over and they later died in concentration camps, something which the whole country apart from some fuckwit neonazis is still ashamed of. You should really check up on history and take a closer look at the state of the Nazi satellite states that did get occupied by the Soviets before spouting such utter bullshit.

How many Russian civilians died on the Ostfront because you were tying up Soviet divisions fighting your forces?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

And supporting the Soviets and their blackmail of Finland would have been any different? I think not.
As to your Highly intelligent, rational freinds, I trust they have no morals and are fervant promoters of genocide?

No, actually. Would you like an invitation somewhere?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

You've gone way beyond the pale, O'leary. Germany surrendered
UNCONDITIONALLY, as did Japan. And your friends think it's "ok"
to drop the Bomb on a surrendered nation?

They did surrender unconditionally. I'm not entirely sure what they mean by it - Probably that the Germans deserved to get nuked.

I wonder what kind of "friends" you have. Probably crackpots sitting up
north in Montana, railing against the black man and the freemasonry.

No, those would be people like you, who get upset at the idea.

[Edi]

Some things that the Germans did - their whole populace willing - were just so horrific and beyond comprehension that those who aided them don't deserve human sympathy. They willfully removed themselves from the human race as a nation - And so did their allies, the guilt of conspirators.

So because the Germans did bad things, we should be tarred with the same brush just because we didn't oppose them? In light of the events of that time, maybe you should re-evaluate your position?

To recap: In 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union entered into a secret pact called the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty that specifically stated that Finland was free game for the Soviets and Germany wouldn't interfere. They kept their word, and we just barely beat back a huge, unprovoked Soviet invasion. It was literally a matter of minutes whether we'd have lost or not, because by the time word of the cease-fire reached the front, the Finnish troops were out of ammo for having beaten back a major assault. One more charge would have finished us. We got no help from the Germans. We had asked help from the Allies, specifically England, but they said that we'd have to declare war on Germany first. Getting pulverized between the two superpowers on either side, we refused. Later, that equation was the same, except that Hitler betrayed Stalin and had no problem helping us out because it adversely affected the Russians, and we were just taking back land that had been taken from us in the first place. Hitler was furious at us on more than one occasion (not helping take Leningrad, for example) for not doing as he wished us to do.

I find it highly offensive in light of the actual events that you just label us Nazis or Nazi supporters and war criminals, when Finland was in fact a victim of the war as much as Poland, France and many other countries. Willfully removed ourselves from humanity? That's one fucked up, delusional, false claim.

Edi

[BoredShirtless]

Mike, considering I'm friends with highly intelligent, rational people who think we should have tested the atomic bomb on Germany after they surrendered, I think we're coming at this from such an extremely different angle it's totally pointless to try and debate it.

Get new friends.

[Edi]

How many Russian civilians died on the Ostfront because you were tying up Soviet divisions fighting your forces?

I don't know, and frankly, I don't give a fuck. Stalin had himself a very clear alternative for what he did: He could have fucking left us alone in the first place, then he would not have needed to send any divisions against us, because there would have been no Russo-Finnish war at all. He could have sent those divisions against Hitler's forces and saved the civilians instead of getting his soldiers (and more importantly, ours) slaughtered in a needless war. You can try to twist around the facts in an attempt to somehow place the blame on our doorstep, but it won't work. Russia has admitted to the truth of the events, how the Soviet invasion was made under a false pretext, so it is not my country's fault if Soviet civilians elsewhere died because of Stalin's willful malevolence.

Edi

[MKSheppard]

No, those would be people like you, who get upset at the idea.

More proof of your total moral bankruptcy. Go move to Baghdad and
start giving Saddam advice. You fit the psych profile of the Oriental
Despot you write about so much to a tee.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

To recap: In 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union entered into a secret pact called the Molotov-Ribbentrop treaty that specifically stated that Finland was free game for the Soviets and Germany wouldn't interfere. They kept their word, and we just barely beat back a huge, unprovoked Soviet invasion. It was literally a matter of minutes whether we'd have lost or not, because by the time word of the cease-fire reached the front, the Finnish troops were out of ammo for having beaten back a major assault. One more charge would have finished us. We got no help from the Germans. We had asked help from the Allies, specifically England, but they said that we'd have to declare war on Germany first. Getting pulverized between the two superpowers on either side, we refused. Later, that equation was the same, except that Hitler betrayed Stalin and had no problem helping us out because it adversely affected the Russians, and we were just taking back land that had been taken from us in the first place. Hitler was furious at us on more than one occasion (not helping take Leningrad, for example) for not doing as he wished us to do.

I find it highly offensive in light of the actual events that you just label us Nazis or Nazi supporters and war criminals, when Finland was in fact a victim of the war as much as Poland, France and many other countries. Willfully removed ourselves from humanity? That's one fucked up, delusional, false claim.

Edi

I'm fully aware of the context, Edi.

[Stuart Mackey]

And supporting the Soviets and their blackmail of Finland would have been any different? I think not.
As to your Highly intelligent, rational freinds, I trust they have no morals and are fervant promoters of genocide?

No, actually. Would you like an invitation somewhere?

Why, Marina, are you asking me on a date ?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I don't know, and frankly, I don't give a fuck. Stalin had himself a very clear alternative for what he did: He could have fucking left us alone in the first place, then he would not have needed to send any divisions against us, because there would have been no Russo-Finnish war at all. He could have sent those divisions against Hitler's forces and saved the civilians instead of getting his soldiers (and more importantly, ours) slaughtered in a needless war. You can try to twist around the facts in an attempt to somehow place the blame on our doorstep, but it won't work. Russia has admitted to the truth of the events, how the Soviet invasion was made under a false pretext, so it is not my country's fault if Soviet civilians elsewhere died because of Stalin's willful malevolence.

Edi

Oh - You would have been in the right, I'm not disagreeing with that. Unless, that is, you had not made the mistake of aligning yourselves with the Third Reich. That's the only thing I find offensive about Finland's behaviour in the entire conflict, and I find it offensive beyond comprehension.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Why, Marina, are you asking me on a date ?

Why yes - Though they won't even let me play with the pie cutters, so don't get your hopes up.

[Dalton]

This thread is being watched.

[Stuart Mackey]

Why, Marina, are you asking me on a date ?

Why yes - Though they won't even let me play with the pie cutters, so don't get your hopes up.

Well if you can get tickets to Christchurch, New Zealand, I know a very nice Japanese place, so theyneed only be worried about chopsticks

[Stuart Mackey]

This thread is being watched.

Yes mum.....