Cory1848

8 minutes ago, Baerboxer said:

 

And nothing you have written excuses the Iranians or denies the evil nature of the current regime that imposes its rule on Iranians.

I did not intend to excuse anyone -- I was just pointing out that the Iranians did not set out to kill civilians. As for the “evil nature” of the regime in Tehran, I try to be careful with words like that.

45 minutes ago, Thomas J said:

Gwelloman, so I assume Trump should have just allowed Qassim Solemani to continue his objective of killing Americans.  I suppose however you had no problem with Obama having hundreds of military strikes and of course killing Osama Bin Laden.  Perhaps Trump should have followed Obama's example and let a few more terrorists out of Guantanamo and sent Iran a few hundred billion for good measure.  

 

 

The blame game is too obvious, and too futile; sure, we can go back to Mosaddegh, or Thermopylae if you like. But what happened in this latest dust-up is that virtually no military personnel lost their lives, whereas a few hundred civilians died (including at the funeral stampedes in Iran). What I see are two aggressive, hyperactive boys roughhousing in the living room while mom and dad are out, cheered on by other boys, and suddenly an antique lamp gets knocked over and busted. Whoops.

It’s been one of Obama’s better post-presidential ideas that maybe women should be given a shot at running the world (of course, many already have, but there are still notable barriers -- President Klobuchar, anyone?). Women might come up with the idea of using international support and cooperation to build a memorial at the Ukrainian Airlines crash site in Tehran and having everyone come for the opening, and while we’re all there, let’s seriously discuss ways to simmer down, starting with interests that we share, and how do we preserve those. Sure, that’s stupid and naïve (not to mention sexist), but at this point I’m at a freakin’ loss.

18 minutes ago, bristolboy said:

I think you'll find in general that rural populations tend to be more easily manipulated by fundamentalist ideology and suspicion of foreign influence. Just consider how they vote in the U.S. elections.

Red state/blue state thing; I suppose there are equivalents everywhere. I’m also a dual citizen but US-born, and I’m sure I have a lot more in common with my Iranian friend than with a Trump voter from Wichita, Kansas -- and I mean no disrespect in any direction; that’s just the way it is. (Granted, my friend has spent much of her adult life abroad, and she speaks fluent English.)

3 hours ago, rabas said:

80 million, I have been there many times. Why? Don't understand the thought process behind your question. A very large part of the population is anti-regime.

 

Is it your sense that rural Iran is also anti-regime? I have a good friend who’s a dual Iran/UK citizen who spends maybe four months a year in Tehran, and she’s been disgusted by the mullahs and, more, by the Revolutionary Guards for years (her niece and a dozen other people were recently sentenced to ten years in jail for spying, when all they were really doing was tracking endangered cheetahs). But my friend is very much a part of the “urban, educated elite,” with family connections even to the Ancien Régime (of the shah), and while I trust everything she tells me, I wonder how predominant her opinions are nationwide in Iran.

28 minutes ago, JHolmesJr said:

 

come on dont be a crybaby...iranians are resourceful....I expect thousands of women and children to be (forcibly) moved to live among these ruins very soon. anything for the eternal leader.

Right. Anything for the eternal leader. So I assume that you, too, will be among the first to enlist?

40 minutes ago, hydraides said:

Really really pisses me off when people keeping saying "Trump did it because of impeachment/Election for Trump"

 

This has nothing to do with trump..........Even if the media says it was trumps decision......its the larger America establishment/Israel Geopolitical moves in the area

Trump did it because of impeachment.

You’re right -- corporate interests (including the defense industry) feed money to politicians, who then owe them favors in return. (Theoretically, politicians also have a civic duty to the people who vote for them, a duty that some take more seriously than others.) Some wars, like Bush’s Iraq invasion, are primarily driven by corporate profits (especially when the politician in charge and the CEO are one and the same person). And you may be right about some of the motivating factors here. But politicians are players, too, with enormous power of their own, and Trump is using his exclusively to save his own copious rear end. Until real evidence of corporate malfeasance and corruption (and government collusion) comes out -- and it may well do so -- we’re only speculating.

As for “Israel geopolitical moves” -- Get off your rocker. Repeat ten times after breakfast every day: “Israel is just another country. Israel is just another country.” Etc.

2 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Where are all the Jack Kennedy's when the Dems need them?

An old guy that said stupid things while VP is the best they have?

Good question. Actually, I think in 1960 a lot of Americans thought that Jack Kennedy was too young and naïve for the job; no reason that a President Klobuchar or Buttigieg can’t quickly grow into it. The most qualified person still standing, and the one whom Americans need the most, unfortunately is probably too far to the left to win in a general election. I’d be happy with Biden for one term. Christ, at this point Marianne Williamson sounds good ...

29 minutes ago, Monomial said:

 

Hmm...actually the second sentence is more lazy writing. "They" as a gender specific singular pronoun I don't think has a long history of being proper use of the language. Lazy, possibly, but not proper.

 

In the first case (the theft), it is not that you don't know the gender which requires you to use they, it is that you don't know for sure if it was stolen by a single person or possibly by a group. They is referring back to who in this case, which may be singular or plural, and the punishment may need to apply to more than 1 individual.  If you said instead "which one of you", then the correct terminology (in modern language or to avoid pedantic, childish arguments) would indeed be "he or she".

 

"When I find out which one of you took it, he or she is going to get it."  "They" even sounds wrong in this context, because you would also need to conjugate the verb "to be" as are, which is clearly plural. Or are you honestly suggesting that anyone would actually say:

 

"They is going to get it."

 

I don't know. Maybe rednecks in the deep south...

 

In fact, when I was in school, I was specifically taught that the masculine was the correct neutral term to use for people when you were unsure of gender. Using "they" would have resulted in being corrected and marked down.  There was never any notice given to your theory that it has a long history of being used in the manner you suggest.

 

It is only recently that the whole use "she" instead of "he" phenomenon has become popular due to the concerns about gender bias.  Never, not even once, have I seen anyone advocating to use "they".

 

Some of what you say is accurate, and I agree that, often, the use of “they” in a genderless singular sense comes down to lazy writing. As an editor, I was a stickler for this sort of thing and would optimally recast the sentence in the plural. “He or she” is awkward, and alternating between “he” and “she” seems excessively self-conscious. Sometimes, simply using “he” is the best solution, depending on the context.

However, language evolves, and the “rules” usually change to follow actual spoken usage. A few years ago, AP style changed its policy and said that the singular “they” was OK. And the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, the long-established bible of publishers and editors, threw in the towel on the issue and said that using the singular “they” was now fine, even in formal and scholarly writing. I now leave it up to the preference of authors I work with, and sometimes I raise the issue if I sense they haven’t thought about it, but I don’t try to “correct” them anymore.

Likewise, there are tons of examples of the singular “they” going back to Chaucer.

It’s a brave new world!

On 1/4/2020 at 12:56 PM, Kelsall said:

Did you read the article? 

 

"We took action last night to stop a war. We did not take action to start a war."

 

And you know this because you can see the future? Or because Trump said so in his statement. Unfortunately, there are more than 15,000 (and counting) documented reasons to distrust whatever comes out of the great maw of Trump, so actually thinking for oneself is probably the best strategy here.

1 hour ago, Nigel Garvie said:

Yes, you are correct, the whole Iraq War was a commercial venture, for the benefit of Bush and his friends, and even Blair got rewarded with highly lucrative, speech tours of US colleges. Shock doctrine (Naomi Klein) is an eye opener, indeed. I am also not into conspiracy theories, and the point I was making was general rather than specific. However I can't imagine that the Israelis are unhappy with Trump's approach to Iran, and I think that it is naive to think that the Israelis and Russians have no effect on the US, and particularly Trump's foreign policy.  

I’m sure at least the hardline Israelis are thrilled with Trump, and while Israel has certainly had an outsize effect on US foreign policy over the years, not to mention the buckets of aid they get, they don’t control the US government as some have claimed. In any event, it’s well past time for Netanyahu to go and more progressive leadership to come in; I’ve always thought in fact that Israel and Iran would be natural allies, as sort of the “big boys” on the block, but the leadership in both places is way too extreme for now -- a close Iranian friend who spends a lot of time in Tehran (she’s a UK dual citizen) tells me that the Revolutionary Guards are a total nightmare who basically control everything.

1 hour ago, TEFLKrabi said:

Taken seriously by many, but the many are still few.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, definitely a minority!