Hey hey

HE sucked MY dick. He's the gay.

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ROFL what yarr said!

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The whole freedom thing is that the Persians had a history of enslaving any nation they conquered. They would take that nation and use their people in their army to invade the next nation on their way. Leonidas did not want any of his people to be slaves (he would not have been himself), so he decided to fight the Persians instead of being warlord of Greece and helping the Persians defeat Athens. The Spartans lost the battle we see at the end of 300 (10k Spartans with 30k free Greeks) vs the Persians, but seriously damaged the Persian army. The remaining Spartans were slaves and helped the Persians in their unsuccessful campaign against Athens. The Persian ruler sat on his throne and watched the Athen's navy use their "Greek fire" and destroy his entire flee and he was forced to retreat. I am not sure if the Persian king was actually named Xerxes. This is just stuff from memory and it could be wrong.

This film has nothing to do with America versus any other nation. Most Americans are not Greeks lol. So I doubt they would get this huge pride thing from this movie. The type of freedom in this movie is a whole different meaning than what Americans hold as values towards freedom. This could be seen as a whole Euro vs Asia thing though by the narrowminded.... as the Persians basically were madeup of almost all of Asia at the time. The Greeks were just one nation in Europe of course. If anything America would be Persia (invading army) and Iran/Iraq would be Sparta (smaller nation at a serious disadvantage). Except the US is killing the Iraqis at a exponentially higher rate than the Iraqis are killing Americans at the moment. Well more Iraqis are killing Iraqis than anything there right now. The US also doesn't plan on enslaving Iraq like the Persians were so fond of doing lol. Iran is completely unrelated because they are developing a nuclear program when the UN has specifically stated they were not allowed to (same goes for North Korea).

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Yes the Persian king's name was Xerxes. And your point that "the persians are nothing like the americans because we don't plan on enslaving Iraq is extremely weak. To say that there's no immediate economic gain from dominate America interests in the persian gulf is ludicrous; we're doing the same thing only in that we're reaping economic benefit in a different way than xerxes would have.

edit: That is, the PLAN was to reap economic benefit. In reality it was a colossal fuck-up.

Economic gain is one thing, enslaving people is giving them no choice as to where or how they work and is a whole different category. They really don't have any income as slaves and are just given enough to live off of (forced into the army to invade the next country). That is how the Persians treated people they invaded lol (it got to a point that the vast majority of their population were slaves). All the US have to gain is oil and Iraq isn't as oil rich as some of its neighbors. That would be a bandaid at best, and all they would do is sell to US at a discount in the best case scenario. Most likely they would make money off of the US in the droves like Japan, Germany, and now China. The US is the consumer whore nation of the world, we would buy more of their shit than they would buy of ours... which is just like what is happening in China (the opposite of what Gore said would happen... 230 billion a year trade defecit is a colossal fuckup kthx).

Iraqi's would have the chance to have a decent economy and government if they would just stop killing each other long enough for us to leave lol. They are nothing like us as to how they think, that is why democracy isn't working there and probably will not ever work. They need a ruler with a firm hand that can intimidate their people, not some elected guy who is accountable to criticism from the people. That indicates weakness to them.

We would never benefit from Iraq, our nation knew they would be paying out the ass to fix their infrastructure and only gain a marginal discount on oil. The whole arguement of financial gain from war is usually fool's gold for politicians looking for a silver lining (technological advancements being made is a more realistic result from war). Look the Spartans thought they would get treasure from the Persians too. We don't go into a nation and loot their cities and burn the rest down, enslave their people and impregnate their women. The Persians would kill women and children on purpose. This is not like the US killing innocents because the extremists were smart enough to put their base of operations under a nursery to deter being bombed in return by the US. Totally different eras of warfare and rules of war.

We aren't threatening Iraqis with slavery or anything, the US is after a specific part of their population that has only the worst intentions for the US, Israel, and any other perceived allies. Saddam was a concern because he fired SCUD missles into Tel Aviv, Isreal and has gassed 100k Kurds. 9/11 was the opportunity for the US to launch a campaign against a portion of its Islamic extremist enemies in the Middle East. Bush jumped on the opportunity, some say not as fast as he should have, while others say he should not have gone into Iraq altogether. This would be more like Persia trying to take over both Athens and Sparta at the same time (Afghanistan and Iraq). Then putting democratic governments in the place of despots, instead of enslaving the nations under their god king lol.

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Slaves were the staple economic unit. Slaves were how gigantic kingdoms operated, just as oil is how our gigantic country operates. That's the extent of my analogy. My point being that both Xerxes and the U.S. would destabilize a region to get their desired resource.

Oil is a natural resource that is not renewable and is consumed by all nations. The US is going to buy oil maybe at a discounted rate (which it will consume). Slaves are also bought and sold, but Persia did not buy slaves.. they took slaves. You can breed slaves because humans reproduce, this makes them somewhat renewable. There was no country selling slaves to Persia that was a government set up by Persia but not controlled by them. This is moot because Iraq isn't even in the stage where they can successfully produce oil and sell it without fuckers lighting shit on fire. Slaves were the workforce... if the US was enslaving the Iraqi people to pump the oil and taking it for free it would be comparable to Persia. The Iraqis are getting paid for the oil (which really has not yet to be sold) and they are free to work whatever job they choose otherwise. Persia could take slaves and force them to acquire the natural resources of their area and use those resources and the slave labor for more financial gain. The US is not using slave labor to drill for oil in Iraq and fight the next war (which is coming in the next 10 years or less like it or not regardless which party is president). For Persia, they sold silk and other goods to drive their economy... slaves were an extremely low cost workforce (like China but far worse).

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No because no one uses manual labor anymore. In ancient times manual labor was done by slaves, and in modern times it is done by machines (which use fuel).

Actually historically speaking Xerxes (the first) and the Persian empire were not nearly as horrible as 300 makes them out to be. For the most part the Persians didnt force everyone they invaded into slavery. They let most people carry on their own lives and day to day things. There were slaves, but they were obtained from all over the empire and not just from one area at least iirc. As far as I remember (not saying im right) there werent any cases of genocide by slavery or anything like that.


300 was a movie based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller. You could then say that the 300 the graphic novel was based on "The Histories" (er a section of it atleast) that was a greek historical record of the Persian invation of greece. "The Histories" (I think that was the name of it) was writen by a greek historian (I forget his name, all greek names confuse me) who simply collected information second hand. Theres no way to really know exactly how accurate anything is.

Its just a story (loosly based on actual events), theres no deep meaning behind it. The only meaning behind anything in this movie is Money.

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RIP Shiloh

Western history texts have a strong bias towards Hellenistic cultures. You almost always see a preference towards Alexander rather than Darius.

Fun fact: they mispronounce darius' name in the movie. Almost everyone (including most of my teachers) have said "Dar ee us" but it's really "Dar I us"

They do manual labor in China and Mexico lol. In China they assemble parts of TVs by hand and same goes for a good portion of other consumer goods. Not everything is automated, even the assembly line at the BMW factory in Munich had some manual labor. Gasoline is used to run cars, which is how our workforce gets to their jobs. We use electricity to run machines in factories, which isn't usually powered by oil power plants. There sure as hell are people doing manual labor on oil rigs, they do get paid to do it though. Persia would have slaves pump the oil for them and maybe not rape their daughter if they did a good job. Mass enslaving is something that doesn't happen these days, and it is true some of it is due to industrialization.

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we aren't talking about china or mexico. We're talking about the US private sector

Yeah I know some historians say the Persians were not that bad. Mass enslaving did happen, but that doesn't necessarily mean genocide. Athens won, so that is why history is portrayed the way it is as far as Persia goes. The nations that made up Persia have obviously a different point of view on despotism as we do. Persians only forced the masses (not the royalty and wealthy) to be slaves. They killed off the opposing members of the upperclass and put the others who seemed loyal enough in leadership positions over the slaves. Leonidas and his family would have been very powerful and some of his politicians would be rich if they submitted to Persia, but the regular Spartan would be a slave. You can't convince me that a nation that takes over country after country and enslaves their people using them to fight the next nation is the same as the US. They are more similar to the US than Sparta was, which was what Yarr was trying to draw comparison to.

I know its a graphic novel by Frank Miller that takes liberties and has historical exaggerations. A good portion of it is true though sadly lol. The records of the Persian nations who claim they were not so bad are also biased and probably not totally accurate either. There are records of several states back then having their people raped and enslaved by Persian forces. The Persians also have their own records of course that say otherwise. Well at least they weren't anywhere near as bad as the Vikings lmao.

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We outsource our labor now. Outsource it to other countries like China and Mexico instead of having slave labor. Thats how our big wigs keep the bottom line and get their bonus from stockholders. If the labor is paid too much, lay them off and outsource the work to China or Mexico. Illegal immigrants do a good portion of the US's manual labor. The private sector just uses oil to drive to work. That oil is pumped by guys on a rig who are paid decently. The manual labor to make the car they drive is done in China and Mexico most likely. Our own labor unions made it so our companies can't afford to make affordable cars here. Those CEOs can't take a hit to their multibillion dollar bonuses and salaries. Those guys are the slaveowners and their foreign lowcost outsourced workforce is their equivalent of slaves (but they still get paid and aren't forced to work for them). That is why I mention China and Mexico.

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Iirc the guy who wrote the history of this war was the first official Historian ever, meaning he was the first to give completely unbiased accounts of occurrences in his time. I could be thinking of another guy but I'm pretty sure this is where it starts. Name Herodotus comes to mind but I could be wrong.

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That movie was pretty damn hot. Didn't need all the sex to make a point, but it could've been worse.

bump and this made me LAUGH!

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R.I.P.
Purity - April 2004 ~+> November 2005
[size=0]God, Im such a fag and god yarr is so bloody cool. =P[/size]