A person's native country SHOULD be the most important for him.
Your nationality is an accident of birth. Making that the most important aspect of your life is totally irrational. If you don't believe me, change nationality with some other characteristic that is beyond your control and see if the statement makes any kind of sense:
A person's native eye colour SHOULD be the most important
See? It's just dumb...
Do I think an American is inherintly (sp?) better than someone who is Indian or Japanese...NO! And I have nothing against them getting ahead in the world...but, not at the expense of even one American job or to the detriment of our economy or society
So, as it turns out, you do believe that Americans are inherently better than people of other nationalities...
I like having our country the leader of the world...and prefer to keep it that way as long as humanly possible.
Gee, an imperialist too. If history is any guide, imperialist nations do not fare all that well in the long run...
5. Suddenly realize that the countries where the cheap labor is obtained tend to be socialist and have much more inflationary fiscal programs and a much more extensive welfare state. 6. Realize that in that context the four things you listed first make you look ignorant.
Oh yes, those rampant socialist governments in the third world that set up "economic zones" where human rights, and labour laws do no apply. Where the welfare state is so pervasive that children have become a critical, low-paid component of the work force.
The only interesting thing about your post is that after exposing your own ignorance, you have the nerve to accuse someone else.
Oh, you're white and middle class or higher and have had just about everything in your life handed to you? What a surprise.
Exactly!
Rex Murphy, a Canadian journalist had this to say:
If you were born in the West, you've won the only lottery that really counts from the very first moment you take air.
It amazes me just how much we take for granted, and this is just a few short weeks after 150,000 people were wiped out in a natural disaster...
I do not understand the "me first, screw you" attitude that some people are expressing in this discussion. Perhaps it is too much to expect that recent events would have provided a reality check and a bit of perspective...
Private education works better, solves issues such as whether or not to teach about evolution vs. creationsism, and ensures access to a quality education much better than a public school system.
I am no expert on education, but I think that you are talking out of your hat. Children who attend private schools typically come from more privileged backgrounds than children who have no alternative but to attend public schools. If parents can afford the expense of private schools, they almost certainly can afford to feed and clothe their kids, hire a tutor if the kids require extra assistance with their lessons, give their child a computer and Internet access, books and reference material, and so on. Contrast this with the starting point of some children in the public system who have parents that are unable to provide some or all of these things.
Plus, the private schools have a distinct advantage over the public schools - they get to choose who is admitted and who is not. The public system is obliged to educate everyone. Disturbed and problematic kids do not have a right to attend a private school, and can be expelled with no recourse for appeal.
As for your statement that private schools ensure better access to a quality education than public schools, that might be true for students who are motivated to learn and have parents affluent enough to afford the private school fees. Not every child is so fortunate.
Further, capitalists are not known for ignoring the long-term in favor of temporary gains.
LOL! Care to cite an example?
The rest of your rant about capitalism versus socialism suggests a certain naivete about economics and political science. It seems to me that the world is more "socialist" now than it has ever been throughout history, and we are all the better for it. We have public infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals, libraries, parks, and so on) that simply did not exist a few hundred years ago. Would you want to give all that up?
Whatever. Several permanent members of the security council supported those resolutions yet firmly oppose the war as being both illegal and immoral. You are grasping at straws here trying to defend somthing that is not particularly defensible unless one happens to hold imperialist ambitions...
He said there were links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq
He certainly did! During his state of the union address, Bush said:
"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people
now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida."
A few others from Bush:
"Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."
"We have removed an ally of Al Qaeda."
"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."
Powell:
"sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network"
Rice:
"There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented."
Rumsfeld:
"Iraq's ties to terrorist networks are long-standing."
Cheney:
"His regime has had high-level contacts with al Qaeda going back a decade and has provided training to al Qaeda terrorists."
"His regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. He could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us."
"I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government."
"There's been enormous confusion over the Iraq and al-Qaeda connection, Gloria. First of all, on the question of - of whether or not there was any kind of a relationship, there was a relationship. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early '90s...There's clearly been a relationship."
"Saddam had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional weapons."
"Saddam had long established ties with Al Qaeda."
"Iraqis were... providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the Al Qaeda organization."
The logical impliation is that Saddam Hussein aided and supported Al Queda, therefore Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
The arguments were deliberately constructed to lead to a conclusion that was known to be false.
I can hear you saying that this statements were based on the best available intelligence at the time, and that is simply not true. Numerous claims (the aluminium tubes, the yellow cake, the 45 minutes, the links to Al Queda, etc.) were known to be of dubious legitimacy if not outright incorrect at the time, but that did not stop the politicians from taking those "facts" and swearing that they were the absolute truth.
The spymasters qualified their information indicating that it could not be verified by multiple sources, and the politicians ran with it anyways, in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.
I doubt that you can define a deliberate attempt at deception as anything other than a lie.
the 9/11 commission confirmed that association.
Oh really? Here's a quote from that commission for you:
"We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States"
"There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship"
The U.S. was not under any obligation to find WMD'
Your use of the term "unlawful" implies a law was broken in order to facilitate the invasion of Iraq. This is a common misconception, and I'll be happy to point out why you're wrong.
I suspect that the nuances of diplomacy are more than a little foreign to you, hence your incorrect interpretation of the UN resolutions. If it were as cut and dried as you presume, the world would have almost certainly attacked Israel some years ago, as it is also in material breach of a number of UN resolutions.
You have a curious view of the UN. In previous posts, you condemn it as impotent and unwilling to enforce it's own laws, and yet when it suits you, you invoke the UN to justify something that international scholars with academic credentials in the field condemn.
Since you seem to genuinely believe that the war was somehow just, or are having a really good troll, I doubt that I will be able to persuade you otherwise.
Lies?
I'll let you in on a little secret - you cannot trust what politicians tell you. So, when Bush et. al. claimed that Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, it was a lie, and a real whopper at that. When they told you that Saddam Hussein had "connections" to Al Queda, it was another lie and there is no other way to describe it. When they told us about the Nigerian yellow cake, a lie. When they told us about the aluminium tubes that could only be used as centrifuges, a lie. When they told us that Iraq could launch a WMD attack with 45 minutes notice, it was a lie.
When these lies were exposed, the justification for the war changed - several times. But we were clearly told early on that the war was not based on humanitarian reasons. That was only a side-benefit.
I can understand why you do not want to acknowledge this possibility. It is a classic case of cognitive dissonance. We look for information to justify our beliefs, because we do not want to admit that we were played for fools.
I don't know the answer to that and neither do you.
No, I do not know the answer. But it is still a valid question, and one not so easily dismissed. It is entirely possible that the Shia majority may well choose an Islamic state, and they have the numbers to achieve that goal democratically. Unless you want the military to kill anyone with a contrary opinion, it is a real possibility, and one that would prove highly embarrasing to the occupying powers.
You should try examining this with an open mind and disregarding whatever your first emotional reaction may be.
It is beyond debate whether the politicans lied to us. They clearly did. It would be political suicide for any of them to acknowledge this of course, so they will change their story as the situation warrants. I would encourage you to take off the rose tinted glasses of nationalism and view the situation from a different perspective. You have been manipulated, and willingly it would appear.
Since France, Germany, and Russia all had pre-war intelligence showing the presence of Iraqi WMD's,
Source? Hans Blix has stated several times on the record that there were none. His UN replacement came to the same conclusion. The US replacement who had thousands of men working for him came to the same conclusion. What WMDs were known to exist before the war?
But that doesn't mean such a suitcase does not exist.
It is logically impossible to prove that something does not exist. Your example is a hollow one that is more suited to rhetoric than rational discussion.
You know what is truly sad about this? The war against terror has created the very thing it promises to eliminate. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent could have fed, housed and cured tens of thousands of people and that would have done more to defeat the terrorists than all the bunker busters we have dropped so far.
Instead, we take the reckless cowboy approach and send promising young lives half a world away to die for nothing but the promise of cheap oil.
What the Iraqi people (who'se lives are so insignificant that we do not even bother to track civilian casualties) get out of this is difficult to fathom. Less murders and fewer tortures perhaps? They deserved so much better from us...
Umm, no. It was the most secular Arabic state and one where women had greater freedom and opportunity than any neighbouring states.
It was not the killing fields of Cambodia. It was not anything like the Stalinist purges. It was certainly no utopia, but there were worse places to live in the Middle East than Iraq.
Twenty-six million Afghans believe it.
Oh yes, that election was a paragon of democracy. Don't let the fact that more votes were cast than registered voters tell you otherwise. Perhaps it was the best sort of election that could be held under the circumstances (with a timetable set for Washington's benefit and not Afghanistan's) but it does not change the situation that the elected governement only holds power in the capital city while the remainder of the country is controlled by the warlords.
1. What "international law" is that, exactly? You can't just make something up and call it "international law."
Are you implying that sovereign nations are free to invade and occupy other sovereign nations at any time and for any purpose? How is that any different from anarchy where might == right?
2. There was nothing unprovoked about it. If you believe that, you're ignorant of the period between 1991 and 2003.
When exactly did Iraq launch any sort of attack against the United States?
3. There was nothing aggressive about it.
LOL! As if the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation is not aggressive!
I don't recall any Coalition forces kidnapping people, torturing them and sawing off their heads, so I'm gonna say "yes."
We do what we do because we believe in the principles of our country, and spreading democracy and freedom are noble goals.
While it must be agreed that democracy and freedom are noble goals, it is unclear whether the unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq had anything to do with spreading democracy and freedom.
Sure, the politicians made that one of the justifications, although it was a late addition to the schedule after the previous justifications had been exposed as lies.
I wonder how "free" Iraq will be in the future. Would your government recognize and accept it if the Iraqi people voted to establish an Islamic theocracy in a fair, democratic election?
I doubt it...
I'm going to give us the benefit of the doubt.
I'm not, because of the deliberate lies we were fed by Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice and their lapdog Blair.
If the need to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation were that great, there would have been no need to resort to deception.
The US does something nice like offer to cover your country from missile attacks, and the media twists it into some sort of "the US is making us put weapons in space" bs.
I think that you made some really good points in your post, but I take issue with the above statement.
Who do you suppose is planning on launcing a long-range missile at Canada? How likely is it that Nunavut will be the next target of a terrorist attack?
Let's face it, the offer is not particularly benevolent. The Canadian government will of course participate, not because it wants or needs protection, but because the US government will implement this project regardless, and dissent (regardless of how thoughtful) is not well tolerated by the current government.
These weapons are not intended to protect the citizens of Mexico or Canada. The politicians and citizens of those countries know this full well. Unfortunately, they also have little choice on the matter.
I haven't heard of too many decisions where governments and especially businesses would make a minor sacrifice to affect a larger benefit in the future.
Well, the corporation I work for has laid off >20,000 people this year. We are told this is being done in the best long-term interests of the corporation.
Of course, it is a matter of opinion as to whether 20,000 people is considered to be "minor". I guess it would depend on the number of stock options you have, and what the strike price is!
So despite the best efforts of Michael Moore, CBS, the NY Times, China, Osama Bin Laden, and Slashdot to swing the election the Kerry, it didn't work.
I think Bin Laden's plan did work. It is more likely to be in Bin Laden's best interests for Bush to be elected rather than John Kerry. He will find it much easier to recruit people for the cause with Dubya in charge.
Of course, some will spin a Bush victory as Osama's worst nightmare come true, but if fighting terrorism was really the mission, Iraq would never have been invaded in the first place.
If anything, it makes Al Queda's job easier if the US is isolated from and mistrusted by the rest of the world. It is difficult to imagine Bush making amends for the past and working with the same allies he has previously treated with contempt. The foreign policy of the past four years will continue, and depending on who replaces Colin Powell, it might get worse.
A Bush victory is Michael Moore's worst nightmare, but I would wager that it is welcome news for Osama Bin Laden.
as I understand it, Infants actually learn grammar before they learn words.
I recall hearing something to that effect in my cognitive psychology classes too. IIRC, children seem to almost inately understand certain grammatical concepts such as putting words in the past tense or forming the plural of a word.
Chomsky has/had a theory about children being hard-wired with the basic rules of a universal grammar, and I think this research was examining that theory...
There was a video of a researcher showing young child a stuffed toy called a "wug". The child was shown another wug and was asked how many there were now, and the child indicated that there were two wugs, without being told what the plural for wug was.
Later on in the video, the researcher told the child that the the wug likes to "gling" every day. Today the wug glings. When asked what the wug did yesterday, the child replied that the wug glinged, which is a grammatically correct past test expression of the "word" gling.
The study was conducted with a number of participants, and the results were statistically significant. Admittedly, the subjects were 4-year olds (and not infants), but it is unlikely that children of that age were given formal instructions on the rules of grammar.
I wonder if further studies were able to prove or disprove the hypothesis that children seem hard-wired with certain grammatical rules?
The 'Who, why, when, where and how' are theoretically excluded from the debate, although the idea is more often than not identified with religious arguments, with inevitable extension into those other domains. Religious proponents of ID use the argument from design to argue for the existence of a god
I thought that argument from design was pretty much destroyed by David Hume in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. So, anyone who invokes the argument from design in order to prove the existence of God must respond to Hume's objections. Are the ID people doing any of this?
It seems to me that ID does not work as a theory because it cannot be falsified. It presupposes the existence of God from a prioi thinking, there really is no way to invalidate the theory of intelligent design. It is not so much a theory as a belief.
I is incorrect because you are committing a logical fallacy.
It is irrelevant whether people who are against the oppression of women in Islamic nations protest here or in Tehran. The issue is still valid and worthy of concern. It is not an either/or proposition as you imply.
Your environmental example is guily of the same false claim, although you throw in an a fallacious appeal to authority for good measure...
Feel free to vent your spleen some more, but you haven't actually raised any issues worthy of intellectual discussion yet.
Merely a woman being taken advantage of, and the story was quite fitting with several such stories from that time.
Oh yes. When one thinks about the American Civil War, stories of Black women being "taken advantage of" by white men must be the first think that comes to mind for most people. How silly of me to forget...
We needed a story arc, and we chose one with blacks because it was easy to portray them and we had a voice-over.
OK, you are going to have to help me with this one. How exactly is it easy to portray black people (as opposed to any other ethnic group) and how does the presence (or absence) of a voice-over make the slightest bit of difference?
I would hate to assume that there are inappropriate racial stereotypes involved here...
I'm all for political correctness, but if you're getting mad at someone for portraying a Civil War era story with racial and sexist discrimination, I'm sure you also don't support Nazi era stories where Jews are being killed.
A few notes:
I don't believe in political correctness
You have my pity, rather than my anger
I don't believe that all stories about WWII have to deal with Jewish people being murdered.
You pretending that it didn't happen isn't going to change a damn thing.
What am I pretending did not happen?
IMNSHO
Truth!
most feminists are a hypocritical bunch - they whine about stupid things in a place and time where they know they'll have their way, but I don't see any of them doing a damn thing to stop the flesh trade in Asia or protesting against women's rights in the Middle-East. Bah.
"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" (Macbeth, Act V, Scene V)
You haven't made anything even remotely resembling an argument - just ad homenin attacks and an appeal to a false dichotomy. Furthermore, I suppose that just because you don't see it happening, it must not be happening right?
I sincerely doubt that you understand much about environmentalism or feminisism. The sweeping (and incorrect) generalizations you have made in this thread make it difficult to assume otherwise.
Quite frankly, given a choice between your admiration and disdain, I suspect that the feminists and environmentalists welcome your contempt. It validates their efforts and proves that there is still much work to be done.
Dude, the *only* people standing up for the rights of oppressed women in Islamic nations are feminists!
Your examples are entirely fallacious. It is a false dichotomy to imply that people who oppose the oppression of women (I could not help but notice the venom you apply to the term "feminist") can only oppose some idiot's version of the past in a game instead of focusing on something more significant. Similarly, environmentalists can protest events occurring locally and remotely without any apparent contradiction.
If you have a valid point, please feel free to try and make one. Just leave the misogyny behind - it's a fairly irrational point of view and works against you from the very start.
Stupid idiotic feminists
Blah. Feminists are funny people
Bleh. Stupid females
Geez, the misogynists are out in full force today!
It is unfortunate that someone in your group did not have sense enough to realize what a disaster in waiting you were setting yourselves up for. The American civil war offered a fairly broad spectrum of possibilities, and for reasons that are not adequately apparent, the choice was to focus on rape and exploitation. The fact that you totally fail to understand how offensive others might find your fiction truly speaks volumes.
I think it would be in the best interests of humanity if you did not breed, but if the above post is typical of your behaviour and attitude, I don't think there is much chance of that happening!
However, it does prove that firearm ownership does not necessarily create high crime, by being a counterexample. (It destroys the principal anti-gun argument).
When dealing with statistical probablilities, counterexamples are not particularly significant
Consider smoking: Let us assume that 95% of the people who live to be at least 90 have never smoked. The existance of at least one person who is 90+ years old and has smoked heavily for their entire adult life does not invalidate the claim that smoking kills. It merely illustrates that at least one person has defied the odds.
However, your argument that high rates of gun ownership do not necessarily correlate to higher rates of violent crime is not without merit.
Consider that in Canada, the percentage of the population who own firearms is actually higher than it is in the United States. The violent crime rate in Canada however, is significantly lower than it is in the United States, per capita.
Switzerland is a small country, with a small population, no poverty, and excellent social programs. I suspect that there is more likely to be a causal relationship between those factors and crime rates than firearm ownership.
If you compare the incidents of violent criminal acts per 100,000 people in western European nations versus that of the US, you will see that there is no positive correlation between higher rates of gun ownership and a lower incent rate of violent crime. If there is no correlation, there cannot be a causal relationship...
Yes, this is off-topic, but I could not let the claim stand unchallenged.
Slashdot Mirror
Your nationality is an accident of birth. Making that the most important aspect of your life is totally irrational. If you don't believe me, change nationality with some other characteristic that is beyond your control and see if the statement makes any kind of sense:
See? It's just dumb...
Do I think an American is inherintly (sp?) better than someone who is Indian or Japanese...NO! And I have nothing against them getting ahead in the world...but, not at the expense of even one American job or to the detriment of our economy or societySo, as it turns out, you do believe that Americans are inherently better than people of other nationalities...
I like having our country the leader of the world...and prefer to keep it that way as long as humanly possible.Gee, an imperialist too. If history is any guide, imperialist nations do not fare all that well in the long run...
Oh yes, those rampant socialist governments in the third world that set up "economic zones" where human rights, and labour laws do no apply. Where the welfare state is so pervasive that children have become a critical, low-paid component of the work force.
The only interesting thing about your post is that after exposing your own ignorance, you have the nerve to accuse someone else.
Exactly!
Rex Murphy, a Canadian journalist had this to say:
It amazes me just how much we take for granted, and this is just a few short weeks after 150,000 people were wiped out in a natural disaster...
I do not understand the "me first, screw you" attitude that some people are expressing in this discussion. Perhaps it is too much to expect that recent events would have provided a reality check and a bit of perspective...
I am no expert on education, but I think that you are talking out of your hat. Children who attend private schools typically come from more privileged backgrounds than children who have no alternative but to attend public schools. If parents can afford the expense of private schools, they almost certainly can afford to feed and clothe their kids, hire a tutor if the kids require extra assistance with their lessons, give their child a computer and Internet access, books and reference material, and so on. Contrast this with the starting point of some children in the public system who have parents that are unable to provide some or all of these things.
Plus, the private schools have a distinct advantage over the public schools - they get to choose who is admitted and who is not. The public system is obliged to educate everyone. Disturbed and problematic kids do not have a right to attend a private school, and can be expelled with no recourse for appeal.
As for your statement that private schools ensure better access to a quality education than public schools, that might be true for students who are motivated to learn and have parents affluent enough to afford the private school fees. Not every child is so fortunate.
Further, capitalists are not known for ignoring the long-term in favor of temporary gains.LOL! Care to cite an example?
The rest of your rant about capitalism versus socialism suggests a certain naivete about economics and political science. It seems to me that the world is more "socialist" now than it has ever been throughout history, and we are all the better for it. We have public infrastructure (schools, roads, hospitals, libraries, parks, and so on) that simply did not exist a few hundred years ago. Would you want to give all that up?
Whatever. Several permanent members of the security council supported those resolutions yet firmly oppose the war as being both illegal and immoral. You are grasping at straws here trying to defend somthing that is not particularly defensible unless one happens to hold imperialist ambitions...
He said there were links between Al-Qaeda and Iraq
He certainly did! During his state of the union address, Bush said:
A few others from Bush:
Powell:
Rice:
Rumsfeld:
Cheney:
The logical impliation is that Saddam Hussein aided and supported Al Queda, therefore Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
The arguments were deliberately constructed to lead to a conclusion that was known to be false.
I can hear you saying that this statements were based on the best available intelligence at the time, and that is simply not true. Numerous claims (the aluminium tubes, the yellow cake, the 45 minutes, the links to Al Queda, etc.) were known to be of dubious legitimacy if not outright incorrect at the time, but that did not stop the politicians from taking those "facts" and swearing that they were the absolute truth.
The spymasters qualified their information indicating that it could not be verified by multiple sources, and the politicians ran with it anyways, in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.
I doubt that you can define a deliberate attempt at deception as anything other than a lie.
the 9/11 commission confirmed that association.
Oh really? Here's a quote from that commission for you:
The U.S. was not under any obligation to find WMD'
I suspect that the nuances of diplomacy are more than a little foreign to you, hence your incorrect interpretation of the UN resolutions. If it were as cut and dried as you presume, the world would have almost certainly attacked Israel some years ago, as it is also in material breach of a number of UN resolutions.
You have a curious view of the UN. In previous posts, you condemn it as impotent and unwilling to enforce it's own laws, and yet when it suits you, you invoke the UN to justify something that international scholars with academic credentials in the field condemn.
Since you seem to genuinely believe that the war was somehow just, or are having a really good troll, I doubt that I will be able to persuade you otherwise.
Lies?I'll let you in on a little secret - you cannot trust what politicians tell you. So, when Bush et. al. claimed that Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, it was a lie, and a real whopper at that. When they told you that Saddam Hussein had "connections" to Al Queda, it was another lie and there is no other way to describe it. When they told us about the Nigerian yellow cake, a lie. When they told us about the aluminium tubes that could only be used as centrifuges, a lie. When they told us that Iraq could launch a WMD attack with 45 minutes notice, it was a lie.
When these lies were exposed, the justification for the war changed - several times. But we were clearly told early on that the war was not based on humanitarian reasons. That was only a side-benefit.
I can understand why you do not want to acknowledge this possibility. It is a classic case of cognitive dissonance. We look for information to justify our beliefs, because we do not want to admit that we were played for fools.
I don't know the answer to that and neither do you.No, I do not know the answer. But it is still a valid question, and one not so easily dismissed. It is entirely possible that the Shia majority may well choose an Islamic state, and they have the numbers to achieve that goal democratically. Unless you want the military to kill anyone with a contrary opinion, it is a real possibility, and one that would prove highly embarrasing to the occupying powers.
You should try examining this with an open mind and disregarding whatever your first emotional reaction may be.It is beyond debate whether the politicans lied to us. They clearly did. It would be political suicide for any of them to acknowledge this of course, so they will change their story as the situation warrants. I would encourage you to take off the rose tinted glasses of nationalism and view the situation from a different perspective. You have been manipulated, and willingly it would appear.
Since France, Germany, and Russia all had pre-war intelligence showing the presence of Iraqi WMD's,Source? Hans Blix has stated several times on the record that there were none. His UN replacement came to the same conclusion. The US replacement who had thousands of men working for him came to the same conclusion. What WMDs were known to exist before the war?
But that doesn't mean such a suitcase does not exist.It is logically impossible to prove that something does not exist. Your example is a hollow one that is more suited to rhetoric than rational discussion.
You know what is truly sad about this? The war against terror has created the very thing it promises to eliminate. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent could have fed, housed and cured tens of thousands of people and that would have done more to defeat the terrorists than all the bunker busters we have dropped so far.
Instead, we take the reckless cowboy approach and send promising young lives half a world away to die for nothing but the promise of cheap oil.
What the Iraqi people (who'se lives are so insignificant that we do not even bother to track civilian casualties) get out of this is difficult to fathom. Less murders and fewer tortures perhaps? They deserved so much better from us...
Umm, no. It was the most secular Arabic state and one where women had greater freedom and opportunity than any neighbouring states.
It was not the killing fields of Cambodia. It was not anything like the Stalinist purges. It was certainly no utopia, but there were worse places to live in the Middle East than Iraq.
Twenty-six million Afghans believe it.Oh yes, that election was a paragon of democracy. Don't let the fact that more votes were cast than registered voters tell you otherwise. Perhaps it was the best sort of election that could be held under the circumstances (with a timetable set for Washington's benefit and not Afghanistan's) but it does not change the situation that the elected governement only holds power in the capital city while the remainder of the country is controlled by the warlords.
1. What "international law" is that, exactly? You can't just make something up and call it "international law."Are you implying that sovereign nations are free to invade and occupy other sovereign nations at any time and for any purpose? How is that any different from anarchy where might == right?
2. There was nothing unprovoked about it. If you believe that, you're ignorant of the period between 1991 and 2003.When exactly did Iraq launch any sort of attack against the United States?
3. There was nothing aggressive about it.LOL! As if the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation is not aggressive!
I don't recall any Coalition forces kidnapping people, torturing them and sawing off their heads, so I'm gonna say "yes."Kidnapping: Abu Ghraib - check.
Torture: Abu-Ghraib - check.
Murder: Abu-Ghraib - check.
The US/UK forces are not the epitomy of evil, but they are not exactly blameless either.
I doubt that we ever had the moral high ground in this war, but if we did, it has been lost...
While it must be agreed that democracy and freedom are noble goals, it is unclear whether the unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq had anything to do with spreading democracy and freedom.
Sure, the politicians made that one of the justifications, although it was a late addition to the schedule after the previous justifications had been exposed as lies.
I wonder how "free" Iraq will be in the future. Would your government recognize and accept it if the Iraqi people voted to establish an Islamic theocracy in a fair, democratic election?
I doubt it...
I'm going to give us the benefit of the doubt.I'm not, because of the deliberate lies we were fed by Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice and their lapdog Blair.
If the need to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation were that great, there would have been no need to resort to deception.
I think that you made some really good points in your post, but I take issue with the above statement.
Who do you suppose is planning on launcing a long-range missile at Canada? How likely is it that Nunavut will be the next target of a terrorist attack?
Let's face it, the offer is not particularly benevolent. The Canadian government will of course participate, not because it wants or needs protection, but because the US government will implement this project regardless, and dissent (regardless of how thoughtful) is not well tolerated by the current government.
These weapons are not intended to protect the citizens of Mexico or Canada. The politicians and citizens of those countries know this full well. Unfortunately, they also have little choice on the matter.
Exactly how many satellites has Al Queda launched in the past decade anyways?
Does the name Abu Ghraib mean anything to you?
Well, the corporation I work for has laid off >20,000 people this year. We are told this is being done in the best long-term interests of the corporation.
Of course, it is a matter of opinion as to whether 20,000 people is considered to be "minor". I guess it would depend on the number of stock options you have, and what the strike price is!
I think Bin Laden's plan did work. It is more likely to be in Bin Laden's best interests for Bush to be elected rather than John Kerry. He will find it much easier to recruit people for the cause with Dubya in charge.
Of course, some will spin a Bush victory as Osama's worst nightmare come true, but if fighting terrorism was really the mission, Iraq would never have been invaded in the first place.
If anything, it makes Al Queda's job easier if the US is isolated from and mistrusted by the rest of the world. It is difficult to imagine Bush making amends for the past and working with the same allies he has previously treated with contempt. The foreign policy of the past four years will continue, and depending on who replaces Colin Powell, it might get worse.
A Bush victory is Michael Moore's worst nightmare, but I would wager that it is welcome news for Osama Bin Laden.
I recall hearing something to that effect in my cognitive psychology classes too. IIRC, children seem to almost inately understand certain grammatical concepts such as putting words in the past tense or forming the plural of a word.
Chomsky has/had a theory about children being hard-wired with the basic rules of a universal grammar, and I think this research was examining that theory...
There was a video of a researcher showing young child a stuffed toy called a "wug". The child was shown another wug and was asked how many there were now, and the child indicated that there were two wugs, without being told what the plural for wug was.
Later on in the video, the researcher told the child that the the wug likes to "gling" every day. Today the wug glings. When asked what the wug did yesterday, the child replied that the wug glinged, which is a grammatically correct past test expression of the "word" gling.
The study was conducted with a number of participants, and the results were statistically significant. Admittedly, the subjects were 4-year olds (and not infants), but it is unlikely that children of that age were given formal instructions on the rules of grammar.
I wonder if further studies were able to prove or disprove the hypothesis that children seem hard-wired with certain grammatical rules?
sed 's/prioi/priori/'
Serves me right for not previewing...
According to the wiki:
I thought that argument from design was pretty much destroyed by David Hume in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. So, anyone who invokes the argument from design in order to prove the existence of God must respond to Hume's objections. Are the ID people doing any of this?
It seems to me that ID does not work as a theory because it cannot be falsified. It presupposes the existence of God from a prioi thinking, there really is no way to invalidate the theory of intelligent design. It is not so much a theory as a belief.
Are you suggesting that the
Are you suggesting that they don't?
Whatever....
I is incorrect because you are committing a logical fallacy.
It is irrelevant whether people who are against the oppression of women in Islamic nations protest here or in Tehran. The issue is still valid and worthy of concern. It is not an either/or proposition as you imply.
Your environmental example is guily of the same false claim, although you throw in an a fallacious appeal to authority for good measure...
Feel free to vent your spleen some more, but you haven't actually raised any issues worthy of intellectual discussion yet.
Oh yes. When one thinks about the American Civil War, stories of Black women being "taken advantage of" by white men must be the first think that comes to mind for most people. How silly of me to forget...
We needed a story arc, and we chose one with blacks because it was easy to portray them and we had a voice-over.OK, you are going to have to help me with this one. How exactly is it easy to portray black people (as opposed to any other ethnic group) and how does the presence (or absence) of a voice-over make the slightest bit of difference?
I would hate to assume that there are inappropriate racial stereotypes involved here...
I'm all for political correctness, but if you're getting mad at someone for portraying a Civil War era story with racial and sexist discrimination, I'm sure you also don't support Nazi era stories where Jews are being killed.A few notes:
- I don't believe in political correctness
- You have my pity, rather than my anger
- I don't believe that all stories about WWII have to deal with Jewish people being murdered.
You pretending that it didn't happen isn't going to change a damn thing.What am I pretending did not happen?
IMNSHOTruth!
most feminists are a hypocritical bunch - they whine about stupid things in a place and time where they know they'll have their way, but I don't see any of them doing a damn thing to stop the flesh trade in Asia or protesting against women's rights in the Middle-East. Bah."it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
(Macbeth, Act V, Scene V)
You haven't made anything even remotely resembling an argument - just ad homenin attacks and an appeal to a false dichotomy. Furthermore, I suppose that just because you don't see it happening, it must not be happening right?
Grow up...
I sincerely doubt that you understand much about environmentalism or feminisism. The sweeping (and incorrect) generalizations you have made in this thread make it difficult to assume otherwise.
Quite frankly, given a choice between your admiration and disdain, I suspect that the feminists and environmentalists welcome your contempt. It validates their efforts and proves that there is still much work to be done.
Dude, the *only* people standing up for the rights of oppressed women in Islamic nations are feminists!
Your examples are entirely fallacious. It is a false dichotomy to imply that people who oppose the oppression of women (I could not help but notice the venom you apply to the term "feminist") can only oppose some idiot's version of the past in a game instead of focusing on something more significant. Similarly, environmentalists can protest events occurring locally and remotely without any apparent contradiction.
If you have a valid point, please feel free to try and make one. Just leave the misogyny behind - it's a fairly irrational point of view and works against you from the very start.
Blah. Feminists are funny people
Bleh. Stupid females
Geez, the misogynists are out in full force today!
It is unfortunate that someone in your group did not have sense enough to realize what a disaster in waiting you were setting yourselves up for. The American civil war offered a fairly broad spectrum of possibilities, and for reasons that are not adequately apparent, the choice was to focus on rape and exploitation. The fact that you totally fail to understand how offensive others might find your fiction truly speaks volumes.
I think it would be in the best interests of humanity if you did not breed, but if the above post is typical of your behaviour and attitude, I don't think there is much chance of that happening!
When dealing with statistical probablilities, counterexamples are not particularly significant
Consider smoking: Let us assume that 95% of the people who live to be at least 90 have never smoked. The existance of at least one person who is 90+ years old and has smoked heavily for their entire adult life does not invalidate the claim that smoking kills. It merely illustrates that at least one person has defied the odds.
However, your argument that high rates of gun ownership do not necessarily correlate to higher rates of violent crime is not without merit.
Consider that in Canada, the percentage of the population who own firearms is actually higher than it is in the United States. The violent crime rate in Canada however, is significantly lower than it is in the United States, per capita.
And your point is?
Switzerland is a small country, with a small population, no poverty, and excellent social programs. I suspect that there is more likely to be a causal relationship between those factors and crime rates than firearm ownership.
If you compare the incidents of violent criminal acts per 100,000 people in western European nations versus that of the US, you will see that there is no positive correlation between higher rates of gun ownership and a lower incent rate of violent crime. If there is no correlation, there cannot be a causal relationship...
Yes, this is off-topic, but I could not let the claim stand unchallenged.