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Comment by tek-cyb-org | Hacker News Reader

Ask the arab and muslim world how non violent democracy is.

This. We portray the USA as a good peaceful nation while it was at war 218 out of 239 years of its history since 1776. On the other hand we portray Iran as an evil danger to mankind while they did not attack any country since 1795 but were invaded several times. Okay, there is IS having people with backward religious believes, attacking innocent countries, torturing and executing people, terrorizing their own people, producing propaganda and deliberately lying to get support for or justify unjust actions...uppps, sorry, that was the USA, too, sometimes I confuse them.

> Okay, there is IS having people with backward religious believes, attacking innocent countries, torturing and executing people, terrorizing their own people, producing propaganda and deliberately lying to get support for or justify unjust actions...uppps, sorry, that was the USA, too, sometimes I confuse them.

Arguments could be made for this in the case of the US, but it's pretty cut and dry as to IS.

With more time you could probably make this statement a lot smoother, I admittedly wanted to force it into shape quickly. Notwithstanding what I wrote, comparing the USA and IS involves a lot of apples and oranges and I don't want to imply otherwise. Still there are disturbing parallels.

If you watch pt1 and pt2 of this series, and take them at face value, you'd arguably be hard pushed to see a huge difference in them either? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwboEpZe88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDeT2tD97s

Thanks for the suggestion, I just watched this and it's really worth those two hours. Who is looking for a (relatively) quick glimpse at what a complex mess the situation in the middle east was and is, this would definitely not be the worst choice. And it is kind of beautiful in a strange way I can not really pin down.

Glad you found them useful, i was mildy surprised mainstream media (the bbc) was publishing them.

There's a digest and comments more eloquent than i can muster from the guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/26/bitter-l...

But yes, quite an eye opener and in place beautiful and haunting. If anyone has any similar pieces i'd be interested in them though Curtis himself seems to tackle some quite interesting topics: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis

Why don't you go to IS-controlled Syria and see how you feel about it. I'll wait. The fact is, in a democratic society, you are allowed to make comments and hold opinions like yours, as nonsensical as they are.

So what are you disagreeing with? Didn't the USA attack Iraq without justification? Did Iran fight wars I missed in the history books? Doesn't the USA have some quite backward Christians believing the earth is only a couple thousand years old and wanting to see all gays dead? Doesn't the USA still have capital punishment and makes use of it in 2015? Doesn't the USA use drones to kill people without due process? Didn't the USA torture people at detention site Cobalt or Guantanamo Bay? Doesn't the USA spy at its own people even if innocent? Didn't the USA stage a PR campaign leading to the Nayirah testimony? Didn't the USA present wrong evidence about weapons of mass destruction to the UN to justify the war against Iraq? Didn't the USA try to connect Saddam Hussein with 9/11?

And this is not a complete list, covers only pretty recent history and doesn't not mention any actions where the USA took indirect actions. Note that I wanted to make the statement sound provocative, see the related comments, but take out the rhetoric tone and you have proven facts. And that IS behaves even worse than the USA doesn't make the USA look any better, you are just setting the bar for what qualifies as a good peaceful country pretty low.

And by the way, this has nothing to do with a democratic society. You can have a perfect democracy and still behave evil against foreign nations. It actually is worse in the case of a democratic society because it implies that the actions were not done by a small evil regime but with support of the majority of the people.

Ask the Ferguson protestors.

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