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Current WTC happenings: The FBI is searching ISPs with FISA warrants. Architects and civil engineers are starting to speculate on why the towers collapsed. Pictures: NASA, a powerful photoessay, newspaper headlines. Current investigation news: LA Times, NY Times, CNN. They're finally starting to mention casualty figures. Finally, bjb writes: "It isn't the hollywood blockbuster of a story, but I'm a daily reader of Slashdot, and I was on the 38th floor of the WTC 1 building when the first plane hit. Oh, and I was reading Slashdot at the time. You can read about my experience here. It was originally an email that I sent out to friends and family, but I was asked by NPR's Talk of the Nation to make it a web page."
This, from a Canadian newspaper, is worth sharing. America: The Good Neighbor. Widespread but only partial news coverage was given recently to a remarkable editorial broadcast from Toronto by Gordon Sinclair, a Canadian television commentator. What follows is the full text of his trenchant remarks as printed in the Congressional Record: "This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars! into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon -! not once, but several times - and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those."
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
let's sum it up :
the FBI arrested one month ago an Algerian,
and the french secret service warned them
that the suspect had a "pedigree long as an
arm" linking him to Bin Laden, he also
had Boeing manuals and related stuff
The hijackers at Boston airport matched several
of the criteria for suspicion, and were not
searched : Arabic names and passports,
4 one-way last minute tickets bought by the same
credit card. One guy looked for several minutes
at an X-Ray machines and avoided eye
contact with the staff.
The authorities had almost one hour to
react between the first and the last crash,
and did not scramble at least one jet
to just "follow" the hijacked planes,
as occurs in other countries.
I am on the verge of thinking that
someone wants a war with Irak in order
to secure approvision in oil, or at least
to make huge benefits of rising prices.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
You bullshit con artist.
It was the West that expropriated the Arabian deserts in their greedy thirst for oil. That soil has *never* belonged to America in any way, shape or form.
And Isreal is not the holy-white lamb of peace: it's just as bloodthirsty, crude, and fucked-up as the countries that surround it. Read your history: Isreal's hands are dirty.
Not to mention how American political involvement has continually exacerbated the problems over there. CIA subterfugue, crippling economic policies, asinine support of terrorists and regimes, and bone-headed moves every other month.
Get off your fucking high horse: the USA is just as dirty as everyone else in this. The mid-East is fucked up because *EVERYONE* contributed to fucking it up.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Are you planning to sight-see and get in the way?
Really, what concievable need would you have for a map of the area right now, considering it's still full of damaged buldings and rescue workers?
Using this as an excuse to install carnivore. How do the ISPs know its gonna be easy to have the boxes removed later? The FBI could just keep saying "no, we need more time." Carnivore didn't help prevent this. Any communications will 99.99% definitely be encrypted.
Also, doesn't anyone think its strange that the FBI happened to find the rental car with Manuals, Notes, Videos, Names and a Koran (spelling) on the back seat? Why would someone take the risk of this behind to be discovered in time to stop the hi-jacking? if they spent so long training why would they need to bring a flight manual? for last minute cramming? and why would they bring a video tape? did they have a player? As for the Koran, wouldn't they bring that with them on the plane? This all looks extremely dodgy. Anyone planning something on this scale wouldn't be so sloppy and unprofessional.
You lot will never get proper revenge for this because the hi-jackers are already dead. They were prepared to kill themselves for the cause and their plan has worked. If Bin Laden and/or the Taliban are responsible, then they will kill themselves (and probably take others with them) before being caught.
Theres nothing you can do to stop this happening again.
- If you ban all hand-luggauge on planes, they'll hide it up their asses (ROFL south park.. LOL:).
- If you ban asses, they'll use their bare hands to break peoples necks.
- If you separate the pilots cabins, they'll train for years as pilots real, join the airline and strike when the time comes (like EgyptAir).
- You can step up security at your airports to stop bombs in the luggage, but they'll put bombs on the plane at their own airports.
- You can't circle your cities with fighters for ever, and you can't expect people to live with having SAMs aimed at them whenever they fly, just waiting to fire if the plane goes of course.
They can sent bomb filled 747's as normal passenger planes and you won't know until its too late.
This _will_ happen again. Maybe next tuesday at 9 (10 central) Only on Fox.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Uh, no... but then, I'm not jealous and envious of people who have more money than I do.
If you don't live in the South, you might want to move there. I hear they have a lot of bigots down there also. Why didn't you just post, "This won't be a popular opinion, but admit, if you had to crash an aircraft anywhere you would surely choose the middle of a bunch of niggers."
It's exactly the same thing. But, hey, I bet you've always thought of yourself as not one of "them". Welcome to their club.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
"Those who would sacrifice liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberrty nor safety".
The government is not there to hold your hand. People should take back personal responsibility and stop abdicating it to the government in the name of convenience.
Implementing carnivore is unlikely to stop terrorist attacks, just as implementing x-ray scanners and explosive sniffers at airports did.
And, does anyone else find it just a little too convenient that the terrorists left behind flight instruction manuals IN ARABIC?
I didn't think anyone was that stupid.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
All terrorists believe their cause is more important than human life--including their own. The way America can eradicate terrorism is by eliminating their cause. That is the whole issue everybody is debating--how to respond. I am not a religious person, but the further loss of human life does not appeal to me. However, I believe that all other avenues have already been persued. There is no cure for cancer, but there are treatments. These treatments affect not only the bad cells but some of the good cells as well--for the benefit of the whole. I believe it is time to treat that cancer for the benefit of the whole--even though it means taking some of the good with it. The world will never be united. There will always be difference of opinion--that is what America was built upon. The United States will always be "above" terrorism simply because we give everybody the benefit of the doubt. The WTC debacle removed any doubt that lingered--we must retaliate with force, and with overwhelmingly superior force. Nuclear weapons have always been a last resort; I don't think we're quite there yet. So let's just take over the MiddleEast, steal all their oil, weapons, and make them take showers. Then let's give 'em the finger when they leave.
Those who can, do.
Those who cannot, teach.
Those who think they can but cannot, manage.
> > Unfortunately, it seems that Bin Laden and others have taken religion as a vehicle to project their political hatred and motives.
Gee, he and Pat Robertson should get together and compare notes.
BTW, as others have said before me: holding all "Arabs" accountable for something that a few did is about as logical as holding all persons of European descent accountable for what AH did. The Americans shooting up mosques make me sick.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
so true . . .
The intelligence level of Slashdot seems to be just smart enough to be able to see that others can be wrong, but not enough to realize how ignorant one is.
I am getting sick of this moderation. Reading posts based on slashdot moderation is like listening to top 100 music
You're correct. We can't attack Muslims for this any more than we can attack Christians for McVeigh's bombing.
But I think people really need to start seeing religion for what it is, a method of brainwashing. Sure, most people just act like passive sheep. But there are some who would twist even an overtly loving message into one justifying killing.
It's not like the only people who deceive are religious ones, or that the only mental control is that exerted through religion, but it's significant. Moreso than just for its numbers, but for the acceptance. When someone leads a thousand followers in the quest for the alien masters, everyone rightfully judges them to be crazy and watches them to make sure they're not harmful.
Yet everyday we pass buildings built by those who are essentially cultists. These buildings a meeting halls for people who believe an internally inconsistent set of beliefs that culminates in an omnipotent being creating the entire universe, for humanity, specifically their fellow believers, who then gets petulent when his tiny creations don't worship in the exact ways specified...
We don't give these people any thought because we're told that religion is good, religion is normal.
To borrow a phrase, Hell no! A bunch of sick people acting in direct contrast to what a rational view of reality would suggest is NOT something we should sit back and accept as normal.
We need to see that allowing people to brainwash their children with religion is child abuse, similar to indoctrinating them with any other wildly unrealistic lie. You might as well tell your children they can fly, as to bring them up religious.
This indoctrination hurts us all by raising people unable to cope with reality without retreating into their fantasy world. It raises people who act in a manner that is insane when viewed by someone who hasn't been similarly brainwashed.
These attacks were made by people who believed they would live forever in paradise if they killed enemies of their religion.
Seriously, if anyone said that they thought they would live forever in paradise for committing murderous attrocities, you'd call them insane and lock them up, unless they then claimed to be religious, at which point you sigh with relief and release them.
This insanity MUST stop. Religion is the direct enemy of all rational people. We must see it as the brainwashing that it is and take steps to eliminate it, as well as people who make use of it to control others, and people who profit from it. The victims we will try to rehabilitate into useful and rational members of society.
What you are right about though, is that we shouldn't be targetting any skin color, or national boundary. There are dangerous religious followers of all colors and living all around the world. The true crime wouldn't be in unfairly targetting someone for this specific crime, but in not finding and stopping a fanatic who is just waiting to be commanded by god to kill the innocent.
Remember, almost all Arabs in the US are here because they want to be. Attacking locals is not going to help. I'm concerned about getting on a plane, train or bus, with an arab, not about them attending the local mosque.
You fucking idiot. Nobody is demanding a police state. Some people have suggested that more sensible checks on people boarding aeroplanes for domestic US flights (like, say, those which are absolutely standard for international flights) might be a good idea, even if they do reduce the profitability of the US airline industry. Perhaps the entirely sensible recommendations of the 1996 Gore report could be looked at again, since the airlines won't be in the mood to stomp all over it this time.
The only way to prevent these attacks is to give those who, for one reason or another, rightly or wrongly, think that the USA is the reason why their lives are so bad, an alternative realistic way to interact with the USA. At the moment, that's not possible; the US doesn't compromise on a number of foreign policy measures.
You're fighting a war, it's true. This was an act of war. But it wasn't a declaration of war. The war's being going on for years. It's just that you didn't notice, because this theatre hadn't opened up before.
I will be traveling by air soon, and I intend to make up some leaflets to distribute at the airport about this
Oh right, I get it, you're a nut. You might have put this at the top of your post and saved me the trouble.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I give a rats ass what they gave. They claim to be such a charitable organization and do SWEET FUCK ALL to actually help people. Oh, how nice. I'm supposed to be happy that they gave away licenses to a company who couldn't have bought them. Cost to MS, $0, lost sales, $0. Yet they claim millions in tax relief.
And they take sales from companies who sell products that the charities could afford.
MS is slime, by slime, and evidently, supported by slime.
Wow, so MS followed the crowd and donated cash THIS TIME, but only to match what other companies are doing.
I wouldn't care if they didn't donate at all, I care that they make such a half-asses attempt and then expect to be praised.
Well, you obviously fell for it.
You can't cut me down for failing to logical and then proceed to beat the fallacy horse until it dies.
The least logical thing you said was "you can't disprove the existance of god, can you?"
I don't need to. All I need to do is point to two or more mutually exclusive religions, that alone is proof that one or more are wrong.
Now, as further evidence in this line, I doubt you can state your belief in god as a testable theory, thus there's nothing to disprove.
Further, you can't prove a negative, calls for someone to do this are empty. Instead, you proceed by disproving the positive form. I can't prove there ISN'T a god, because your definition will change to suit the moment. I can attack your proof that the is a god, and in the absence of proof, I think it's fairly obvious which is correct. Either your god, alone of all gods, exists, or we could show that at most one religion could be true, and with the many inconsistencies in them all, it's likely that instead of 99% of them being false, it's more likely that 100% are false.
If you want to see a list of these inconsistencies, go to google and search for "bible inconsistencies" or something similar. There are hundreds of sites which address this.
Having shown strong cause to disbelieve the existance of a god, I think it falls upon you to present a theory for and prove the existance of god. The burden of proof is yours, because you're asking me to accept the existance of something for which there is no direct evidence. (No, the bible doesn't count.)
"coercion was not been part of the process that led me to be a believer."
Not that you see. That's the whole idea with brainwashing. If you start with a child, telling them something, discouraging them from thinking analytically about it, and from questioning it, of course they're going to believe it. Now, if you have been similarly raised, you're going to believe this yourself, so you will likely see it as a loving duty to the child. The fact that you do this kindly doesn't change the fact that it's mental manipulation.
Did you parents raise you in a religious vacumm, to decide upon your 18th birthday, the truth behind god? If so, what proof (tangible) swayed you to make the decision?
"Does it occur to you that people may have an internally and externally consistent beliefs,"
No. I've read enough of the bible to know otherwise, remember, all it takes is one inconsistency to disprove that it was directly passed down as the word of god.
I also know enough religious people to spot inconsistent behaviour, which goes to suggest that this is endemic.
"many people (myself included) do not believe God to be petulant in any way shape or form,"
This would be the same god who commanded people to be stoned, that order babies to be killed, etc? The same one who smote the enemies of the "chosen" for the sole crime of not believing in him? You know, I think your god is throwing a tantrum.
"Since our country has laws based on a the U.S. Constitution,"
I'll mention here that I'm Canadian, just to keep things clear, but I'll accept that comment as you intended it.
"you are free to disbelieve, but I am also free to believe , and practice my beliefs so long as they remain within the constraints of societal law."
And until "recently" US citizens were allowed to own slaves. The mere existance of a law allowing something does not make it a good choice to follow, nor does it say anything about the morality or correctness of that action.
"Most 'cults' do not remain within those constraints."
By your definitions. To me, they seem as arbitrary as my definitions much seem to you.
``A cult is a religion with no political power.'' - Tom Wolfe
"You just committed another logical fallacy by excluding the possibility that rational people can also be religious, another logical fallacy, like saying 'the sky is blue, my eyes are blue, therefore anyone whose eye's aren't blue can't possibly see the sky...'"
Sigh. No, I didn't commit a falacy here.
I attempted to show that belief in religion was directly contrary to observed reality. I then stated that religious people could not be rational.
Being that rational behaviour is defined as that you rationalize, or reason out, belief in something unproven isn't rational. Unless you have proof of god (which I'd love to hear) you can't be rational.
Or, to be precise, you are being irrational in one area, it goes to show that you have a history of irrational behaviour. While in some areas you may act rationally, as a whole, you are not.
"It is just as much brainwashing and dishonest indoctrination to to insist that our educational systems teach that atheism"
Irrelevant. I'm not saying our schools should teach athiesm. If I were to say what our schools should do, it would be that they should NOT teach religion. Simply not indoctrinating children with false teaching will allow them to choose on their own, and I see no reason why they would feel compelled to create a god to believe in. This may be equivalent to teaching them athiesm, but it allows them to reach the conclusions on their own and thus isn't brainwashing.
"I can easily be proven to be a useful member of society, even though I believe in God."
You freely admit you believe in something unprovable like a god, and you want me to believe you're rational and free-thinking? Sorry, I'll go for the person who doesn't believe what a church tells him.
While you may not be detrimental to society, what assurance do I have that your god, which I beleive to be a delusion, won't start telling you to kill... After all, most suicide bombers do so thinking they'll reach spiritual salvation for their acts, and their holy beliefs look much like yours. (Assuming you're christian, but likely true regardless.)
"I wonder what you would say if you were trapped in the WTC explosions and I was the only person who could help you get down the stairs and told you that it was my 'God-given duty to help you get out of the building alive.' Would you so glibly accuse me of retreating into fantasy then?"
No. I'd wait until we were out of the building. But that's irrelevant.
You exist, your actions influence my world, thus I can benefit from taking advantage of certain ones. This doesn't mean that I accept your reasons for performing these actions as valid, merely that I can see what you are doing and act upon it.
"True beliefs don't allow a retreat-- they obligate the owner of those beliefs to act."
That's the problem. If you truly believe your god gave you a mission, you'll do it. That's why religious people are a risk to those around them.
"So if you don't mind, I'll try to become a better person based on my beliefs,"
I don't mind your goals of self-betterment, but I do think your beliefs will get in the way. Until you know YOU, without the brainwashing, you'll never know your true potential.
"All I can suggest is that if you want to preach atheism, you at least learn to do a better, more logical job of it."
I wasn't preaching athiesm. For one, it's not a codified set of beliefs, it's the freedom from a set of religious beliefs.
Second, I didn't try to teach you that your beliefs were wrong (initially, though I did point out flaws this time.) Instead, I simply took it as being self-evident that you were wrong, and spoke to the other non-religious people, saying that being as most of our problem-people are religious, and it is a delusion, we might want to keep a better eye on you, or possibly regulate your brainwashing of future generations.
I'd venture a guess that you really don't understand what a falacy is, that you've simply been told "To counter the argument that X, say Y". You misidentified what I was saying as falacious, because your zeal to disprove my views got in your way. If you wish to continue the debate, please prove the existance of god, in such a manner as to be acceptible to a non-believer. This is the crux of the issue, if you can't prove the basis of your belief, you're not being rational.