Iranian boats attempted to seize British tanker

It's astounding to see the comments from those who think that Sunni and Shia are best buddies, might you, that is assuming they have even heard of Sunni and Shia. Mention Alawite and there will be silence They tend to not even know that Iran and Iraq are different countries

 

Are you claiming that Hezbollah and Hamas are not both in Syria today?

 

Yes, that does make it okay. There are only a few ways that military operations inside another sovereign nation are legal. One is two be invited in by the legitimate government of that country ( I don't like Assad either but his regime is the recognized government of Syria) The other is by UN mandate or if attacked. None of these cases are the reality for the US and its proxies in Syria.

As for it being necessary to "visit pain" on innocents, yes, it is noted the the US feels itself above international law in bringing war, death and untold economic suffering upon the "shithole" countries of the world if they do not supplant themselves and cower in the face of the economic interests of the American corporate empire. This has always been the case from Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua to Iraq, Iran and the rest of the ME.

No, Iran said it would continue to honour the JCPOA as long as the other signers acted to mitigate the economic damage from the US economic strangulation of it's economy. Europeans seem to be unable to or unwilling to find effective ways of helping Iran's economy so Iran is acting accordingly in slow incremental and fully reversible steps in order to try to keep the deal alive after the US reneged.

It was the US that reneged on the terms of the JCPOA not Iran. Why again should Iran be forced to follow that deal when the US is doing all it can to strangle that country economically and is on the verge of all out war?

Because the US can do whatever it wants in flouting international law but everyone else must bow to the Empire's interests and aggression?



But it is a step in that direction.

No, Iran has stated that it will increase enrichment for its domestic energy program in steps hoping that Europe will find a way to work outside the mechanisms of the sanctions so that Iran will be able to sell it's oil on the world market. AS a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty it has every right to do so and it has the right to sell it's oil on the world market.

It is the US who is acting with aggression and threatening war not Iran. This aggression is illegal under international law......international law which the US considers itself above and not bound by while forcing those same standards arbitrarily on others it decides are enemies of American corporate interests.



[quoteWell, it is certainly no more biased than a quote from IAEA.org.

Like I just said...[/QUOTE]

The ADL is no more biased than IAEA????? Lol. If you say so, I guess....

 

I am guilty of using run-on sentences. Usually if I have time I edit down but apologies in this case...

Socialism or Communism don't hold the same connotations for me as they do for you. This is likely because I have studied the economics of those terms and the history of US aversion to any model of government that does not adhere to the unfettered capitalist model. A model that allow American corporations and their subsidiaries to exploit and dominate the global economy and access to resources of other nations around the globe and which the US imposes with economic war in the form of sanctions and if that doesn't work outright military force. Unfortunately, the US has spent the last 100 years or so squandering it's wealth on fighting a self-created, manufactured enemy that never needed to be meanwhile causing untold death and suffering around the globe from Latin America to Vietnam and the ME.

[/quote]I think the official term for that is litotes.

In other words, massive understatement (even if not actually expressed in the negative)...[/QUOTE]

Now hold your own government to the same standards you are trying to vilify Venezuela with. You could start with any of the Latin American coups against democratically elected leaders and finish with the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Mistakes would be another of your massive understatements.....No?

 

I don't think Iran will be seizing any British ships again. They have destroyed escorts now.

 

Now hold your own government to the same standards you are trying to vilify Venezuela with. You could start with any of the Latin American coups against democratically elected leaders and finish with the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Mistakes would be another of your massive understatements.....No?[/QUOTE]

Socialism or Communism don't hold the same connotations for me as they do for you. This is likely because I have studied the economics of those terms and the history of US aversion to any model of government that does not adhere to the unfettered capitalist model. A model that allow American corporations and their subsidiaries to exploit and dominate the global economy and access to resources of other nations around the globe and which the US imposes with economic war in the form of sanctions and if that doesn't work outright military force. Unfortunately, the US has spent the last 100 years or so squandering it's wealth on fighting a self-created, manufactured enemy that never needed to be meanwhile causing untold death and suffering around the globe from Latin America to Vietnam and the ME.

[/quote]I think the official term for that is litotes.

In other words, massive understatement (even if not actually expressed in the negative)...[/QUOTE]

Now hold your own government to the same standards you are trying to vilify Venezuela with. You could start with any of the Latin American coups against democratically elected leaders and finish with the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Mistakes would be another of your massive understatements.....No?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, The United States is immoral and nasty, huh. That must be why so many people from shitholes are dying to get here. Idiot.

 

I would not be insulted in you called me a socialist with the caveat that I believe in private property and democratic institutions and principles. You definitely went into Iraq for oil though that fact is lost as America is set to become a net exporter of oil and is no longer dependent on the Middle East. Why do you think the oil ministry was the only place Americans protected as crowds rampaged through Baghdad destroying infrastructure?

Unfortunately, American governments have never been willing to work with socialist or left-leaning governments and have spent countless billions and thrown away millions of innocent lives intervening to undermine or if possible overthrow governments who dare to try implementing such "un-American" ideas as land reform, nationalizing resources, providing health care and education.

This has been true from Cuba and Nicaragua to Vietnam and Cambodia to the ME.

Venezuela got on the bad side of of the United States the moment it dared enact policies divergent from American corporate interests. This might be of interest to you or if so inclined you can read Abby Martin's reporting from Venezuela before sanctions shut down telstar from that country:
"
The administration of George W. Bush — whom Chávez infamously called “the devil” in a speech before the United Nations — backed a failed military coup against Chávez in 2002. The attempted coup was closely linked to prominent neoconservatives including Elliott Abrams, the disgraced Iran-Contra criminal who played a key role in covering up massacres committed by US-backed death squads in Central America and Otto Reich, a staunch supporter of Cuban exile terrorists who have killed at least hundreds of innocent men, women and children throughout the Americas. Two key coup plotters, Army commander Efraín Vasquez and Gen. Ramirez Poveda, were trained at the US Army School of the Americas. The coup briefly ousted Chávez but loyalist forces and popular support restored his rule 47 hours later.

Barack Obama continued Bush’s policy of demonizing Chávez, whose government he called “authoritarian.” This, despite the fact that former president Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work at the election-monitoring Carter Center, called Venezuela’s election process “the best in the world.” In 2015, Obama declared Venezuela an “extraordinary threat to national security,” a bewildering assertion considering the country has never started a war in its history. The United States, on the other hand, has intervened in, attacked, invaded or occupied Latin American and Caribbean nations more than 50 times and, as Obama spoke, the US military was busy bombing seven countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. For decades, successive US administrations have also lavished Venezuela’s neighbor Colombia — which has been condemned for its government and paramilitary death squad massacres and deadly corporate-backed crackdowns on indigenous peoples and workers — with billions upon billions of dollars in military and economic aid. "

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14263
"
Mr de Zayas recommended, among other actions, that the International Criminal Court investigate economic sanctions against Venezuela as possible crimes against humanity under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.

The US sanctions are illegal under international law because they were not endorsed by the UN Security Council, Mr de Zayas, an expert on international law and a former senior lawyer with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said.

“Modern-day economic sanctions and blockades are comparable with medieval sieges of towns.

“Twenty-first century sanctions attempt to bring not just a town, but sovereign countries to their knees,” Mr de Zayas said in his report.

The US Treasury has not responded to a request for comment on Mr de Zayas’s allegations of the effects of the sanctions programme."

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html


Yes, absolutely.



Especially because of that fact.

If these leaders failed their people by land reforms and social programs that helped those same people, then they had a lot of help from American sanction, boycotts and blockades which effectively strangled the economic viability of those attempts at radical reform.

US policy was never about "moderate forces." It was about exploiting an economic crisis brought about by extreme drought and Assads crackdown on the resulting protests in order to bring about regime change. There were no moderate forces. The forces the US and its allies were supporting in the regime were largely al Qaeda linked militias such as Jabbat al Nusra which was trying to overthrow Assad and impose Islamic fundamentalism on Syria.

Agreed. It is now the interests of Israel and SA that are driving American policy in the Middle East and largely for the reasons you have cited. Iran and its allies and proxies are the only force that can stand up to US/Israeli/SA hegemony in the region. It is not so much about who controls the regions oil anymore ( though both Russia and China have interests in this regard) as who controls the trade routes of central Asia. The US wants to project it's power in the ME as a counter to the interior lines both Russia and China control in central Asia.

Unfortunately, this struggle may get bloody and engulf the whole region in war.

I think we agree here again. Funnily enough, I don't think Trump really wants a war but he is easily manipulated and has little control over the forces he has unleashed by tearing up the JCPOA. There is no doubt he is an easily manipulated buffoon - but a very dangerous one none the less.

Google the PNAC and read the section on "rebuilding America's defenses." I should be an eye opener. Bolton was a member of the PNAC and Abrams was a signatory.

 

People are dying to get there in a desperate attempt to save themselves from the poverty and war, sanctions and violent gangs - things that are largely a product of American policies of regime change and war on drugs destroying the economic and democratic institutions that were present in those countries.

Nobody is saying that it is not safer and more prosperous in the heart of Empire than it is on the fringes where empire projects its power and exploitation through war and economic strangulation.

Ad hominems are the sign of someone of low intelligence unable to understand nuance or context. Try discussing the issues or even studying your own history rather than playground insults.

 

Hilarious. You don't know how to discuss issues. Your position is that the United States is responsible for all the problems in the world. That's weak and lame.

 

If Hamas is in Syria it's not because they were "invited in."

 

Of course I know how to discuss issues.

My position is that American support for vicious right-wing regimes going back to Batista forward to Saudi Arabia today, its history of coups and military intervensions in weaker countries all over the world to try and impose governments compliant to corporate interests and its history of economic warfare in the form of sactions that kill innocents by the hundreds of thousands are a cause of a lot of the problems in the world.

That you don't understand any of this history or are simply unwilling to face it means you are arguing from a position of ignorance and weakness.

Hence the name-calling rather than engaging in informed discussion.