IRAN ZAMIN

Nousha Arzu & NP

Nousha Arzu, I have a Libyan friend who gets pretty irate when she talks about how North Africans are treated in France. And the strange thing is she's a bit of a Francophone! North Africans seem to have a love-hate relationship with the French which I can't understand...

NP, no problem :)

Craig

Right on the money with your Obama marxist analysis and him being more influenced by X, as opposed to MLK. He's friends with every bastard lefty leader in the world -- just count them! And your following quote is spot on, "shocked at how "guest workers" are treated in germany. There's no comparison."

In general, the US treats its immigrants FAR BETTER than Europe -- in France, for example, they can even bring themselves to let muslim woman wear their tents in schools, not that I'm a fan of that sort of demeaning nonsense. But at least in America we have the freedom to express our personal beliefs with what we wear. Immigrants should consider how hard it is to declare bankrupcy for example in any one of the European countries, or how hard it is to start a corporation as an immigrant or to become a naturalized citizen, in Germany, for example.

It's not even close -- America is FAAAAAAAAAR more hospitable for immigrants, and it should be, as the land of immigrants.

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

EPC oops!

i didn't notice it was you with that long response. the questions/comments were directed at someone else. i was in the 'curt' mode there due to being called names ('notorious', 'liar') and asked if i was smoking something etc..

we would have to start over in this discussion, but am pooped! later perhaps?

NP

(ever heard of) mexicans and other latino slave labourers in the US?

I've lived in the Latino Captital of America for 20 some years...

I'm sorry you didn't understand the point I was making. And I'm sorry you don't understand that I was offering Germany as an exact counter-example to how we do things in the US. Anyone who has lived in the US for any period of time - particularly if they live in an immigrant community like I do - would be shocked at how "guest workers" are treated in germany. There's no comparison.

no i never lived in the US. why would i?

Well, for one thing then you'd know the difference between truth and fiction when you compare the US to Europe. And for another thing, it would make you seem less like a hypocrite when you criticize others for voicing their opinons about Europe when they have "obviously" never been there :)

ever heard of

mexicans and other latino slave labourers in the US?

no i never lived in the US. why would i?

NP

you obviously have not been to europe. 

I've been to Europe! I lived in Germany for 6 months working on a major construction project, on which I was involved in electronic control systems.

The construction work was being done by Irish workers that lived in portable trailers on the job site. The menial labor (like cleaning the bathrooms, mopping and sweeping, etc) was all being done by turkish women who were all wearing black tents. The only Germans on the site were the administrative people, and while I was working 16 hour days, they were working *maybe* 6 (being very charitable with that estimate!) hour days. And that's only when they weren't on vacation. It seems Germans get 4 hour lunch breaks and take 150 days of paid vacation per year (the vacation part is an estimate, the lunch breaks is not).

The German economy cannot sustain itself indefinately by exploiting cheap imported labor to do all the work that Germans are unwilling to do. German society cannot continue indefinately to give "real" Germans so much of a free ride on the backs of guest workers. I suspect those guest workers and their offspring already outnumber "real" Germans, and how long can the Germans deprive the people who actually do the work of the same rights and privileges that "real" Germans have?

The only other place I've been in Europe is the UK, where you live. And I'm sorry to break it to you, but if I didn't know better I'd think the UK was part of the US. The British are far more like Americans than they are like anyone in continetal Europe. And I know the very idea that could be true would be appalling to most Brits, but that doesn't change reality!

america is planning to become more like europe.

No, I don't think so. Especially not with this President. He's not looking to Europe, he's looking to the American marxists and socialists who were his college profs. And he's also looking to the American Civil Rights movement, which I personally believe has affected his policies more than anything else. Although, I think he's gotten too much into Malcolm X's version of it and not enough into Martin Luther King's.

where you gonna move to? 

Well, I guess I'd move to the UK. I still have my house key! I'll just invoke my right of return. How could they refuse me? And then after we get the British back on the right track we can re-export the "American way" back to the US.

By the way, have you ever lived in the US? Or do you just trust the BBC's version of America when you pass judgments?

too bad for you

america is planning to become more like europe. where you gonna move to?

Yes, in Europe,

They have nationalized health care, but also, they have obscene tax rates (Sweden: 65%-70%), and in England, patients have been known to wait for months to get an operation that in the US we would get overnight!

Efficiency of the private sectar and less taxes, those are my ideas. What are yours -- more power to the government, more taxes, and less efficiency. Please stay in Europe. We want America to remain America (and innovative) and not some lame version of Europe.

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

NA

you obviously have not been to europe. in most countries everyone has access to great health care at a fraction of the cost to the average taxpayer a compared to the US.

and why resort to name calling? ran out of ideas? 

Nuri al-aziz

Thank you for the suggestion and for your lucid explanation, even though I'm not completely on board. Nonetheless, I will look into your suggested books, specially de Tocqueville.

Good night!

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

Ms. Parsi

"government-run health care systems are the best."

Please tell me what you're smoking, I would like to try some someday. Are you joking?

Dare I say, people like you are the problem in politics -- you're a notorious lefty who never tells the truth -- never! I, on the other hand, am not right nor left, but independent. You take sides, and your side is the side that ignores barbarity EXCEPT when it involves the U.S.

You couldn't care less about the Soviet genocidal crimes against humanity during the heyday of the Soviet Union, when 35 million people were murdered in Siberian gulags (because that would make the left look awfully bad), but when it involves America, as in the case of Vietnam or Iraq, you're all over like fly on shit.

Your kind is a political reptile, with a very pronounced partisan streak, which I consider sickening. In fact, people like you are the enemy of a FREE Iran! You promote the cause of the IRI for the monstrous and petty reason that the mullahs stand up to the big bad USA. The enemy of your enemy is your friend.  But do you really care about the people of Iran and their quality of life under the IRI?

Hardly. 

What you wrote in your comment is 100% partisan, which makes you part of the problem, not the solution. And for that, you're a waste of my time.

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

Nousha

As someone else said it here, the interests of the American people and the US parted company long ago. I don't believe it is the case that Bush was real and Obama is not. Both represent interests of powerful factions of the establishment and so are merely its temporal political figureheads, i.e. its PR spokespersons, and nothing else. Bush, however, turned into a complete disaster for this establishment itself so in order to quell a possible social explosion that would've made the '60s look like nothing by comparison, this establishment willingly consented to having an appearances-sake change happen in the US by putting Obama (i.e. a black-man) in the White House. Otherwise, under different circumstances, there is no way Obama could have ever become a major party candidate let alone elected president. As anyone who has had a reality check happen and so been jaded by the farce that is the American (or, rather, current Western democratic) political system as a whole will tell you, all power and position in the US is brokered by elites at various levels and the mass electorate is merely the window-dress rubber-stamp to the process. Period! Y'ani hamash az avval ta akhar zad o band ast! 

Incidentally this was all actually foreseen by a great French intellectual and aristocrat named Alexis de Tocqueville who toured America in the 1830s and wrote a tell-all book of his experiences and insights entitled Democracy in America. Anyone who really wishes to understand the nature of the American political system should read this book along with Jonathan Rauch's Government's end: Why Washington Stopped Working.

Blurb:

Hmmm

Obama promised to engage with the world, and that is what he is trying to do. he is still too much of an interventionst, but still better than the last clown in charge.

his policy toward iran is good for reformists in iran. none of them have asked for US government intervention. quite the opposite.

He sees that the US has gone broke through excessive militarism, and he wants to fix it.

the US taxpayers pay more for the defunct US health care than all other industrialised countries, and they get the worst deal. he's trying to fix that. government-run health care systems are the best. no one should make too much profit from health care. it is a social service and a right.

Nuri al-aziz

I agree with you, but Obama was supposed to be "change." As the astute massoudA writes, he's not even representing the interests of America. He's weak, and a phony. As least Bush was real -- we knew what his ilk was like, but this Obama wants to appease everybody and be friends with everybody so that he can say, "I was no Bush, so please re-elect me!" 

You know why he's bad for the world?

He's bad because he's good for dictators and bad news for freedom seeking people all over the world (Hondurous, Iran, etc. ) Dictators love and fawn over him (because they know he's a chicken weakling and a pathetic tool and he will never put up a fight, and that in turn crushes hope amongst the freedom seeking people of the world who look to the US for moral support (if nothing else).

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

Dearest Q

The fact that you disagree with me makes me believe that what I wrote is absolutely right on the money -- thanks for the affirmation, not that I needed it. But thanks nonetheless.

Happy Halloween! ;-)

LONG LIVE THE GLORY OF KUROSH 

This garbage is not worth commenting to

Mehrdad

you are such a sore loser! God!

You and the rest of the right wing machine can't stand that your collective asses were handed to you n a landslide election.

Now just like those other losers you're making illogical excuses and laughable comparisons.

The Manchurian Candidate

U.S. interests and that of american people have long since parted company. Imam barak hussein is just the latest version.

"U"-bama-nist is correct!

Everything is sacred.

Well Said Nousha

Obama does not even protect US Interests - at least on his foreign policies.   Just like Carter - he works more for Europeans interests than for America.  

Yeah, like Duyba did anything

If you expected Obama to actually do anything other than pushing US interest in the region, you are sadly mistaken.

Iranians need to help themselves and the way we are divided (just read the various posts by IRI apologists, monarchists, and others here), we have a long long way to go. In fact, it looks bad for us, but good for ghadesiyeh backers.  

________________

PUT IRAN FIRST 

________________

No

But was anyone really under the illusion that Obama could actually work through the well-entrenched special interest plutocratic oligarchy of the American establishment and actually do something? Obama, as with every US president since...., is merely a figurehead. Nothing more.