The Roman Empire and the Barbarians

You're all over the place, it's like reading experimental stream of consciousness stuff.

I'm not sure what you mean.

I see what you mean with this critique. Sorry for that, but as I started talking about the general reasons why Kurds or other people should not be pushed into forced migration as is currently occurring, I realized that there is a larger general discourse about migration and who should be allowed and/or required to move where for various reasons, so my post expanded to that level. I thought it was somewhat clear and concise, but maybe not by your standards.

This all goes back to the carving up of the Ottoman Empire following WW1.

A Kurdistan should have been created then, it wasn't, it's territory was carved up between Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

The Kurds want and deserve self determination, but none of those countries are going to want to give up territory.

It's a problem that won't go away.

Supposedly the land the Kurds are being pushed off is going to be used to house people who survived ISIS.

Why do Turkey and Syria favor those people over Kurds? Is it because of economic reasons?

Turkey favours Turkomens because they're the same ethnic group.

Turkey is claiming they're creating a buffer zone to keep the Syrian Kurds (YPG) from supplying/dealing with the Turkish Kurdish PKK which is considered a terrorist organisation.

Yes, I've read that Turkey is fine with Kurds who just assimilate, but when they deem themselves ethnically different, that is not accepted.

It seems like they need to resolve the terrorism so that it doesn't have this negative effect on the Syrian Kurds who are being displaced/pushed.

Shouldn't there be some way for non-terrorist Kurds to declare themselves independent of terrorism, or is there too much potential for lying/subversive tactics?

You have an incredibly simplistic world view that doesn't recognise national aspirations.

If you are part of an ethnic minority that faces discrimination you're bound to have some degree of sympathy for those resisting discrimination.

It's way more complicated than your questions suggest.

Why do you say that?


Why wouldn't you even if you identify with an ethnic majority? It is possible to think about ethnicity as more than a conflict between majority and minority, you know.


I assume so, but the issue is whether the Turkish assessment of Kurdish independence as terrorism is valid or not. People have a right to express a will to independence, but not to commit acts of terrorism in pursuit of it.

Now, when democracy isn't working to give people a non-violent means of pursuing a reasonable solution to their problems, there is a case to be made for war of course, but if they have no hope of winning against a stronger military force, that's where terrorist tactics become a logical, albeit unethical, course of action.

I preach democracy often for this reason, i.e. failure of democracy is cause for terrorism. When reasonable people are able to pursue goals in cooperation with other swho are also reasonable, there is no reason to resort to violence. It's unreasonability on either or both sides that provokes and sustains violent cycles of reactions.

You have an incredibly simplistic view in that you can only see in black and white. Terrorist/non terrorist, where it's way more complicated than that with lots in between.

The Kurds are a minority in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq. That's who we're talking about, but you have problems following a line of argument so you start talking about the majority which is completely irrelevant

Maybe it's a lack of empathy, you are part of the population that pretty much exterminated the indigenous population and inspired the holocaust so not surprising you would support the extermination of the minority Kurds.

You've never preached democracy, you've preached, hated bigotry, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. You support a health system that butchers poor people and the NRA's campaign of mass school shooting.

Of course I can see nuances, but I can't discuss them in a single post/thread without it getting convoluted.

Ultimately, I think you can evaluate the morality of a given tactic or pattern of violence as being terroristic or not. I don't think it's purely subjective that "one person's terrorists are another person's freedom fighters" and vice versa.

As I said, I think how well democracy functions makes a big difference. E.g. if you approach someone to discuss a problem and they listen and seek to resolve the problem in good faith, then there is no reason to attack them. On the other hand, if you are not reasonable in the issues you seek to resolve, e.g. you want free gourmet coffee because of historical inequality, and someone listens but can't reasonably comply and then you bomb them, that's terrorism.


What is completely irrelevant? You have some notions about majorities and minorities here that you're not explaining.


I am an individual who looks at collective phenomena as phenomena. You and some other people are fixated on positioning people within various collectives and that accusing them of being biased in certain ways, but the reality is that each individual has a mind capable of observing and thus controlling for bias in their thinking/analysis.


Ok, you're falling back into your own partisan bias, which 'frames' me for all sorts of things I've never advocated and which denies everything I've said about democracy and liberty. I don't know what you've read that I've posted and what you haven't, but your overall assessment of me is so skewed it's like you're talking about someone completely different, or that you've read posts that were attributed to my user name but were put into your feed content in order to demonize me. I don't know how exactly you got the impression of me you have, but it is false and I'm not sure of whether it's due to partisan bias and worldview-differences, or whether you are just reading someone else's posts and thinking they are mine.

Democracy without social justice and a respect for human rights is meaningless. That's the same "democracy" that butchered the indigenous population and enslaved Africans.

Your take on democracy condemns thousands of American to an early grave through inadequate health coverage.

You need to think very carefully before you try to imposer that on other people.

We definitely don't want democracy American style over here.

You are thinking on a different level than I am. Democracy is a means of achieving social justice or anything else by means of civil discourse and consent and not by means of autocratic force/coercion.

Now you may claim that people are being unreasonable when it comes to listening to calls for social justice and that justifies going beyond democracy to pursue social justice using autocratic or other authoritarian means; but that is effectively a declaration of war.

The problems of war are many, but some big ones are 1) what if you don't win and you face retribution for your actions, 2) war involves perpetrating actions/violence against individuals based on collective identity instead of their individual actions. So, for example, if you decide that slavery-retribution is justified against all people identified as racially 'white' because race/color was used as a basis for granting people different rights before and following slavery, then your means of pursuing 'justice' replicates the same disrespect of individual accountability that slavery did by using collective/racial identity to designate who was a slave and who wasn't.

Yes, slavery was unjust to the extent it exempted free whites from labor responsibility. If slave-duties had been distributed without discrimination throughout the population of people who benefited from the economy, it would have been a reasonable method of requiring people to perform necessary labor, without which there would have been starvation and other deprivation.

Slavery was not new in the Americas. The Roman Empire enslaved people by conquering them, and the slaves acquired from slaving ports in west Africa were not exclusively owned/controlled by Europeans, let alone US Americans. Most slaves were brought to Brazil and the Caribbean to grow sugar. Cotton is the famous cash crop that caused the expansion and growth of slavery in the 19th century before the US Civil War, and British/European markets were largely responsible for buying/funding cotton exports, to the point that US Southerners expected to win the Civil War due to cotton being 'king.'

In recent years I have been looking at the Louisiana Purchase, which doubled the US national debt and was funded by British and Dutch banks at a rate of 6%. Thomas Jefferson supposedly mortgaged slaves, which required calculating birth rates and the productivity that could be expected from future slaves. This was inhuman business that treated human beings and their offspring and labor as commodities to be mortgaged, but it was not only US Americans or British/Dutch who benefited, but really everyone who prospered and/or just survived during the time. It may sound horrible to say, but if you survive as a slave when you (and/or your family/children) would have otherwise died free, is it better to be enslaved or dead? Obviously the most ethical thing is for people to be as free as possible, and there have been people pursuing the expansion of liberty and democracy for all, including enslaved/indentured people; but it isn't necessarily because of their lack of effort that liberation hasn't been achieved faster.

Anyway, you've opened a whole can of worms by bringing this issue of slavery into the discussion. The reality is that labor economics is not black and white in terms of slavery v. freedom. Capitalism enslaves people to varying degrees with debt, housing costs, taxes, etc. so you can argue that many people are still today and always have been enslaved by labor/economic conditions that restrict liberty/freedom that they could otherwise enjoy if everyone involved was more ethical.

You cannot say that just because someone is white, or because they are otherwise identified with a majority population that they are more free and/or live a better life than someone in a minority population. There may be non-minority Turkish citizens, for example, who are living in a city and suffering worse living conditions than some Kurdish individuals. This doesn't mean that majority-minority identity aren't relevant in analysis, but that they are more complex than you might assume.

Many of your posts toss around powerful rhetoric without respecting others' right to engage in dialog/discussion without being emotionally blackmailed with accusations, etc. You can and should discuss these issues, but in a way that is more respectful and considerate of others who also struggle with these things and the historical patterns of injustice they correlate with, although maybe in a way that you don't agree with.


Health insurance, providers, regulators, expensive medical schools, and many other obstructions condemn people to their/our own natural fates. Using socialism to fund more insurance is a fake solution that condemns people to even worse capitalist obstructions to health care while pulling the wool over their eyes with false hope.


You have created false webs of causation in your mind and because you avoid critically reviewing them, you perpetuate false assumptions and accuse/blame people and institutions that don't actually cause the effects you think they cause in the ways that you think they do.


The fact that you are oriented against a foreign system of government just proves that you've been exposed to jingoistic/fascist propaganda that distracts you from thinking about solving your own problems.

You can't look at "American style democracy" as a thing that is somehow transplantable in total. Whatever has happened or not with democracy throughout the Americans and/or in US America is due to historically-specific events and patterns that have emerged and evolved.

Democracy as a principle is simply governance by consent. It means that instead of expecting people to do as they're told, you expect them to listen to what they're told, to be reasonable and accept it if warranted, and if they disagree to voice their reasoning and for authority to give consideration to their dissent. In this way, people are not enslaved but free, albeit with the need to cooperate economically to the extent the the failure to cooperate economically in some ways could result in serious problems. So, for example, it is important to have enough food to go around, but then you run into the problem of what to do when people are undernourished because they waste their money on drugs and other things instead of buying the nutritious food they should.

Well yes.

You seem to think of democracy as some sort of panacea. Well Turkey is a democracy, it's an imperfect democracy but they have elections and Erdogan wins them with the support of rural conservatives.

None of this stops the Kurds being treated terribly, because they're a minority.

The Weimar Republic was a pretty decent democracy too, but that didn't stop the Nazis coming to power.

What irritates me most about you isn't your political outlook or your ignorance. It's the way you think you can lecture us all about stuff you know next to nothing about.

Your answer to the problems in Turkey, is democracy. It's already a democracy. You could have looked that up instead of basing everything on assumptions.

You are talking about governmental institutions like voting and multi-branch government that are supposed to achieve democracy, but in practice can be abused to achieve authoritarian power.

I explained what democracy is at the most basic level, governance by/with consent of the governed. Governmental institutions are designed to achieve that goal, but if they are failing, you can't call it 'democracy.' The facade of democracy does not democracy make.

Now I'm not making any specific claims about Turkish government here, because I am not familiar with it. I am just saying it because you are talking about democracy on a different level than I am. I am talking about negotiations between Kurds and others they have to deal with and whether people on different sides of the table can listen to each other and reason with each other in constructive ways. I'm not talking about bargaining, quid pro quo, compromise, or anything else except the pursuit of consent by mutually reasonable sides discussing their issues to arrive at a peaceful common agreement.


Yes, attempts to achieve and/or secure democracy against authoritarianism and other abuses of power don't always work.


You are just a person who is biased against being lectured. It is a hate problem that is programmed deep into your brain. You need Jesus, to put it mildly.


If you don't understand my 'lecturing' and you assume I know "next to nothing" about what I'm talking about, it is because you haven't developed thinking that is deep and clear enough to fully understand the things you have a bunch of facts memorized about.

Start with what I explained in this post about democracy. If you don't believe me, analyze how democratic institutions evolved from more fundamental social philosophies and ask yourself what the fundamental ideas behind democracy were, why the institutions that were created were expected to achieve those ideals, and why/how they have variously succeeded and/or failed, in what ways, and why/how.

You accuse me of knowing nothing, but you fail to consider that I might have spent a lot of time and energy analyzing a lot of information and what I post is succinct yet derived from valid thought processes about real facts.

The Republican gerrymandering is a prime example. As is the electoral college, other democracies go for the popular vote.

All democracies are imperfect, ancient Greeks democracies didn't vote but chose civil positions by lot. People would suddenly find out they were in charge of something like the military, and they would have to do it.

The only way to end this **** is to create an independent Kurdistan from the Kurdish parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran, but that won't happen.

I have no problems being lectured by people who know what they're talking about. That's not you, you haven't shown any original thinking just made a load of incorrect assumptions.

As for Jesus, you should take your own advice.

This is the most ironic thing I've read on A2K. You're the one falling back on programming, it's exactly the same as Oralloy's unthinking mantras.

Majoritarianism can be a form of authoritarianism when the majority seeks to force things through against dissenting minorities. Remember, democracy is governance with consent by the governed, so if a majoritarian government is trampling over dissenters instead of listening to and trying to seek common ground, it is not real democracy any more than if a government of the elite refuses to listen to and reason with voices of the people/majority.

Democrats just demonize things that obstruct them from achieving more votes in order to force their policies on people who dissent. Certain governmental mechanisms that give dissenters more power to resist majoritarian steamrolling are actually more democratic than those that allow/facilitate such steamrolling.


Separating the world into ethnic nations segregated from each other by national borders/institutions is not the only way to achieve peace, and it is definitely not the best. Different cultures/ethnicities can live together in the same area if they are responsible for the liberties they have. Freedom of religion/speech assumes that there will be different religious/cultural/political views but that people will be able to deal with differences in a peaceful and constructive way. It may not be easy and it may not happen in practice very often, but it is not outside the realm of human possibility.


You have no way to know if someone who is lecturing you knows what they are talking about. All you can do is listen to what people have to say, think about it, and reply with what you think.


Yes, I don't judge people before listening to what they have to say, nor do I judge them for being wrong. I just think about what I read and respond with what I think. You should try it.

My impression with you is that aside from a few posts in this thread where you engaged in respectful discussion, you generally accuse, insult, and otherwise say things to provoke defensive responses. I don't know why you are such a bully, although you have probably been bullied by teachers/professors/etc. and that's what causes you to talk like that in your posts. Whatever the case, you should put more effort into being more civil. Your rhetoric is the kind of rhetoric that starts fires and stokes wars.

More ignorance. I'm not a Democrat. I'm not even an American Your gerrymandering would be illegal over here.

It's undemocratic.

I never said anything about you being a Democrat. I just explained why the Democrats complain about things like gerrymandering and the electoral college.

It is because they want to use majoritarian voting to force things through without listening to and respecting dissent.

Just as Hitler was elected by referendum, the Democrats think that if they can achieve majority votes on anything they want, they can have it.

They don't understand that with majoritarian power comes the responsibility to listen to and respect dissent and seek common ground with others who see things differently than they do, including Republicans.

Your response to my point about gerrymandering was to talk about the Democrats. That implies you think I'm a democrat, otherwise why bring it up.

I do not have a 'bunch of facts' memorised about the Roman Empire or the situation in the ME. I have studied Rome and have kept up with news reports in the ME since I was a kid.

I know what I'm talking about which is why I know you're talking a load of old bollocks. There's no evidence of 'deep' or any other thinking, just a load of assumptions, ignorance and inane questioning.

And you're off your head, Trump is riding roughshod over democracy not anyone else.

You may be daft enough to believe the Fox News bollocks, but I'm not.