They are so close to having a nuclear weapon

I figured out why I don't like this series (I love it actually but one thing I just fucking hate).


*SPOILERS* The Ned Stark murder people argue that it makes the show interesting "Oooo now anyone can die isn't that different than any other show? Doesn't that raise the tension?" The answers to those questions are YES it is different than any other show...but no it doesn't raise the tension. To me if you say everyone can die that means that I'm just waiting for when. It's like before I was in a room where I know various deadly traps exist but I can't see them. With the execution now there is a nuclear weapon just above the room waiting to drop. There's no tension for me because I know I'm screwed. Also building tension for seemingly unkillable contracted TV stars is a skill, one that some people (Joss Whedon) can master and well this show didn't even try. Just fuck it, they're all able to die it's just like real life. Don't like real life, I want a TV show instead I've been given a horror movie where nothing is fun it's only inevitable. *SPOILERS*

Yeah no one agrees with me...I don't care.

It's a complicated issue from a Christian perspective. Jesus said, if possible, live at peace with everyone. Overall, we should strive to avoid conflict and make peace, even at our own expense. However, this doesn't mean there is no such thing as a just war. WW2 for instance was a just war. Not everything done in WW2 was just or good, but our involvement as a nation was morally right. We had an obligation and a duty to defend the world (and ourselves) from the tryanny of the Nazi regime.

Jesus never says, go ahead and let someone kill you; don't defend yourself. Turn the other cheek means dont repay evil for evil and be ready to suffer patiently, not go ahead and let someone murder you. We are also told to follow the laws of the nation and seek after its well being. So, a case can be made for a just war, but this could only be very limited in scope. Our adventure in Iraq was very unjust and based on faulty intelligence and reasoning. I supported going after Osama bin laden in Afgahnistan, but on a limited basis and certainly not a nearly decade long conflict.

A war with Iran may be inevitable, but would it be just? Well, this is what we know..Iran is an islamic regime, and their goal is to acquire nuclear weapons. We also know that radical Islam is seeking to wipe Israel off the map, but many people don't understand why. The reason is, according to their end-times scenerio, that judgement day wont come until all the jews are killed:

"Judgment Day will come only when the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, until the Jew hides behind the tree and the stone, and the tree and the stone say: ‘Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah , there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him"

So they have a religious duty, according to their hadiths, to destroy Israel. Iran possessing a nuclear weapon could make that a reality. For the sake of Israels existence, we may be committed to stopping Iran. If it happened, would the United States screw it up ever worse than Iraq? Almost certainly..but we also can't stand by and watch someone nuke Israel from the map.

>> ^StukaFox:

There's only two kinds of Republicans: Corporate tools and complete psychopaths.


You forgot the VAST majority: turkeys voting for christmas.

>> ^quantumushroom:

That's the problem with the Blame America First mindset, believing the rest of the world is made up of innocent countries populated by angels who NEVER fight, but then mean old USA comes along and look: WARS!
What will you do when red china and iran ignore the Golden Rule?


Well that's the point. The USA won't be able to do or say SHIT without being laughed at. Economic bullying, kidnapping, torture, murder, aggressive regime change, invasion of Taiwan, S Korea, anywhere with oil, use of nuclear weapons, mass obfuscation and propaganda, strongarming UN votes in its favor (no statehood for enemies of China's friends! WE WILL NOT ALLOW IT!!)


Trust me, even the most dull witted US reactionary will finally get the picture after a century or two of forlornly begging China not to be such an asshole.
And the answer they'll get from the uneducated, untravelled and increasingly obese 2 BILLION murdoch-viewing consumers? CHINESE EXCEPTIONALISM FTW!!!

>> ^A10anis:

Catagorically stating that it was the USA or Israel, is one of the worst cases of conjecture, and junk journalism, it has been my misfortune to witness.


*snort* Who else would it be on the likely end of the table of probabilities?

I get that the case isn't airtight but we have two prime suspects who have everything to gain by killing off the guys working on Iran's nuclear program... Both governments which are not above using assassination raids in to foreign countries. Both countries who are piss scared of Iran developing a nuclear program (even though both countries already have a nuclear weapons program). Both countries have the means, the will, the opportunity and the motive. At the very least it's a case for further investiation, not that either country would cooperate in any meaningful way anyway...

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^Yogi:
I like Hitchens and he's probably correct in this video. However I remember him on Bill Maher once talking about North Korea and sounding like a complete moron. So much so that Noam Chomsky indirectly had to correct people on Hitchens quoting of an article in the New York Times.
The story was that basically North Korea wasn't going to fulfill their contractual agreements with the United States because the United States wasn't going to fulfill theirs. It was North Koreas natural reaction to a breach of contract by the States. Hitchens glossed over that and condemned North Korea, like an idiot not even bothering with the rest of the article which stated WHY they were acting this way.
In summery Noam Chomsky > Hitchens in my mind because he's too fucking lazy to read an ENTIRE Article.

No, Hitchens was refusing to be a fool and base his entire opinion on a New York Times article. He actually went over and spent time in North Korea to put his view of the country to the test.
And Yogi, what is with you acting like America is the big evil baddie in the relationship between it and North Korea? America agrees to pay North Korea an enormous amount of aid, including the construction of a pair of nuclear reactors, and all that North Korea was asked to do in return was to stop making nuclear weapons.
Hitchens also destroyed Noam's argument by noting how rapidly North Korea was able to get it's nuclear weapons program back up and running at 100%. It was almost as if they'd never stopped it in the first place, because THEY HADN'T!

Sorry after you said Noam Chomskys argument was destroyed I stopped considering you as someone who knows anything about anything. Fuck off.


Well said.

>> ^bcglorf:

>> ^Yogi:
I like Hitchens and he's probably correct in this video. However I remember him on Bill Maher once talking about North Korea and sounding like a complete moron. So much so that Noam Chomsky indirectly had to correct people on Hitchens quoting of an article in the New York Times.
The story was that basically North Korea wasn't going to fulfill their contractual agreements with the United States because the United States wasn't going to fulfill theirs. It was North Koreas natural reaction to a breach of contract by the States. Hitchens glossed over that and condemned North Korea, like an idiot not even bothering with the rest of the article which stated WHY they were acting this way.
In summery Noam Chomsky > Hitchens in my mind because he's too fucking lazy to read an ENTIRE Article.

No, Hitchens was refusing to be a fool and base his entire opinion on a New York Times article. He actually went over and spent time in North Korea to put his view of the country to the test.
And Yogi, what is with you acting like America is the big evil baddie in the relationship between it and North Korea? America agrees to pay North Korea an enormous amount of aid, including the construction of a pair of nuclear reactors, and all that North Korea was asked to do in return was to stop making nuclear weapons.
Hitchens also destroyed Noam's argument by noting how rapidly North Korea was able to get it's nuclear weapons program back up and running at 100%. It was almost as if they'd never stopped it in the first place, because THEY HADN'T!


Sorry after you said Noam Chomskys argument was destroyed I stopped considering you as someone who knows anything about anything. Fuck off.

>> ^Yogi:

I like Hitchens and he's probably correct in this video. However I remember him on Bill Maher once talking about North Korea and sounding like a complete moron. So much so that Noam Chomsky indirectly had to correct people on Hitchens quoting of an article in the New York Times.
The story was that basically North Korea wasn't going to fulfill their contractual agreements with the United States because the United States wasn't going to fulfill theirs. It was North Koreas natural reaction to a breach of contract by the States. Hitchens glossed over that and condemned North Korea, like an idiot not even bothering with the rest of the article which stated WHY they were acting this way.
In summery Noam Chomsky > Hitchens in my mind because he's too fucking lazy to read an ENTIRE Article.


No, Hitchens was refusing to be a fool and base his entire opinion on a New York Times article. He actually went over and spent time in North Korea to put his view of the country to the test.

And Yogi, what is with you acting like America is the big evil baddie in the relationship between it and North Korea? America agrees to pay North Korea an enormous amount of aid, including the construction of a pair of nuclear reactors, and all that North Korea was asked to do in return was to stop making nuclear weapons.

Hitchens also destroyed Noam's argument by noting how rapidly North Korea was able to get it's nuclear weapons program back up and running at 100%. It was almost as if they'd never stopped it in the first place, because THEY HADN'T!

Disgusting that everyone seems agreed that it's a grey area because the legal loop hole makes it legal. If a company supports the nuclear weapons program of a regime that calls your own country the great Satan, that's not a grey area. It is black and white, and Haliburton should be utterly destroyed over this.

Of course, there have already been myriad reasons to go after them to no result, so not much hope from me this will lead any further either.

I like both Chris and Sam, but after reading the passage I think Sam was irresponsible in his writing - though I see it as more glib than malicious. I'm happy to discuss it with anyone who disagrees, but the way I interpret the passage is...

"If Muslim Jihadists - who fear not death and want nothing more than to nuke us for religious reasons - ever came to power in a state that possessed nuclear weapons, our only option would be to nuke them first. It would be horrible, absurd, unthinkable and would result in millions of deaths and would likely lead to retaliation.... BUT IT WOULD BE THE FAULT OF RELIGION."

I think the problem is three-fold, a) that he mounts an argument that justifies preemptive global nuclear war, b) that, sadly, he paints our conflict as one of religion and not one of foreign policy and c) that he sees Muslims as crazy people who would sacrifice the lives of their children in exchange for dead Americans and heavenly virgins. This is indefensible.

Let me respectfully remind my good sift libs that Middle Eastern rage against the US has to do with foreign policy, not religion. It's blowback. It was Bush that said they hate us for our freedom, and Chomsky (on the left) and Ron Paul (on the right) that said they want us to stop bombing them, building bases in their countries and installing puppet dictators. Are we really going to side with the Bush doctrine instead of having to concede something to a person of faith?

Again, I like both these guys and would rather they didn't fight, but Hedges makes a fair point. We atheists aren't used to being criticized from the left and it puts us in a weird position. I don't think Sam is a hater, I think he just wrote an irresponsible couple of paragraphs in haste.

Anyway, the full passage is below. Judge for yourself. Tell me where I'm wrong.

SAM HARRIS: "It should be of particular concern to us that the beliefs of Muslims pose a special problem for nuclear deterrence. There is little possibility of our having a cold war with an Islamist regime armed with long-range nuclear weapons. A cold war requires that the parties be mutually deterred by the threat of death. Notions of martyrdom and jihad run roughshod over the logic that allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to pass half a century perched, more or less stably, on the brink of Armageddon. What will we do if an Islamist regime, which grows dewy-eyed at the mere mention of paradise, ever acquires long-range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide, we will not be sure about where the offending warheads are or what their state of readiness is, and so we will be unable to rely on targeted, conventional weapons to destroy them. In such a situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival may be a nuclear first strike of our own. Needless to say, this would be an unthinkable crime—as it would kill tens of millions of innocent civilians in a single day—but it may be the only course of action available to us, given what Islamists believe. How would such an unconscionable act of self-defense be perceived by the rest of the Muslim world? It would likely be seen as the first incursion of a genocidal crusade. The horrible irony here is that seeing could make it so: this very perception could plunge us into a state of hot war with any Muslim state that had the capacity to pose a nuclear threat of its own. All of this is perfectly insane, of course: I have just described a plausible scenario in which much of the world’s population could be annihilated on account of religious ideas that belong on the same shelf with Batman, the philosopher’s stone, and unicorns. That it would be a horrible absurdity for so many of us to die for the sake of myth does not mean, however, that it could not happen. Indeed, given the immunity to all reasonable intrusions that faith enjoys in our discourse, a catastrophe of this sort seems increasingly likely. We must come to terms with the possibility that men who are every bit as zealous to die as the nineteen hijackers may one day get their hands on long-range nuclear weaponry. The Muslim world in particular must anticipate this possibility and find some way to prevent it. Given the steady proliferation of technology, it is safe to say that time is not on our side."

This is why Iran would be fucking stupid to not try and obtain a Nuclear Weapon. It's a deterrent against the most dangerous force in the world. And why when you poll other countries surrounding Iran they'd rather Iran HAVE a Nuclear Weapon so that they don't get invaded by the US.

@longde

So everyone who competently resists conquerors should go to hell? When Feynman joined the Manhattan Project, it was unknown whether fascist states like the Nazis, the Soviets, Mussolini, and the brutal Japanese empire would succeed in conquering the world.

What I don't understand is why, if we follow the consequences of your position, you appear to wish the Soviets developed nuclear weapons first.

The individuals criticizing Feynman are only able to live such mundane, unchallenged lives because genuine fascist states didn't succeed in conquering the world.

>> ^criticalthud:

let's give him nuclear weapons!


I think he'd prefer nucular weapons instead.

let's give him nuclear weapons!

Oh he definitely doesn't. I mean... as much as I dislike republicans, this russian dude is hardcore straight-up INSANE. Just check out the wikipedia file on him. He's not only anti-semitic, he's racist, nationalist, defends the use of nuclear weapons, has had actual fisticuffs with other people, etc.



this is the part of russia that's actually scary. I can deal with the scariness of someone like Putin (and he is really scary), but at least he doesn't seem or act insane.


This guy? Give him the nuclear codes, and watch the world burn to the ground in the same day.