If you believe that "He's" using it correctly, then you believe that I am begging the question.
But this is a non sequitur; he made a statement about another statement ("that begs the question"), not about a person. I responded to his post (not yours). The question begging statement may have occurred in your post, but was derived from the article*. The "they" I was referring to were the originators of this particular example of faulty reasoning, not the people (such as yourself) who incidentally quoted, alluded to, or derived things from it.
--MarkusQ
* To see this quite clearly, consider the fact that without the circular reasoning there would be nothing newsworthy about the story. Lots of people have bio-goo in jars (take my fridge for example) but you don't see stories about them making/.'s front page. Yet. Likewise, lots of people have stuff that has clearly fallen from space. The only reason that this story made the front page was that they assumed that the stuff in their jar fell from space and thus was proof that stuff like that falls from space.
As the "they" you are referring to, I do NOT assume that this is from space. I simply stated that it should be tested before calling it bullshit. In fact, my first question implies the opposite - if it rained this way for 2 months, how could it have anything to do with an object from space?
I understand your description of "begging the question", but I don't think the original author's intent was of this meaning.
Uh, no, you weren't the "they" I was referring to. If I meant you I'd've written "he" or "LS" or "the grandparent. And while I don't claim to understand the original author's intent (nor even to know who you mean by that) I do claim to be an authority on who I was referring to by "they."
I suspect that either 1) we are reading things differently (which, given that English grammar permits a great deal of ambiguity, is not surprising). or 2) one or both of us are drunk and studying for philosophy finals, these being the two main causes for this sort of discussion. Since I neither of us are attempting to force the other to look at a Venn diagram that will make everything clear, I suspect the former is the case.
Couldn't that be applied to all fusion tech other than solar energy that we currently aware of?
Stars may look easy, but have you ever tried making one? Just figuring out where to put all the hydrogen you'll need is a major logistics headache. And don't even get me started on the nightmare Environmental Impact Statement you have to fill out. Face it, if the sun hadn't just been there by chance, we never would have gotten the funding / permits needed to build it.
That begs the question: Are the contents of the bottle guaranteed to be sterile, uncontaminated by their trip from space (theoretically) to the bottle? From reports of the collection methods, chances are slim.
"That begs the question"... No it doesn't. That does not mean what you think it means.
Actually, I beg to differ. He's using it correctly (or at least, it can be read that way). Begging the question is assuming what you are claiming to prove; in this case, they are assuming that the bio-goo in the bottle is from space (and not a contaminant) and using it as evidence that there is bio-goo in space. That, in a nutshell, is question begging.
The only thing newsworthy is that this paint contains nanotechnology. Sure, that's nice.
And it's not even the original/interesting type of nanotechnology. It's the "me too" big-stuff-made-out-of-randomly-placed-bit-of-small -stuff type of nanotechnology, just like cupcakes and floor wax and a billion other things.
The sad part is, it used to be a fine paper. Then it started getting more and more biased, and substituting some oddball theory of compensating biases for investigative reporting, as if finding the objective truth wasn't as important as presenting both major brands of half-truth. They aren't alone in this, but it's more disappointing coming from them than from a paper that was never any good.
Actually, the NYT, like most media outlets, has an agenda, and they selectively choose what information they try to get out to the people.
While I agree with your statement, I disagree with the form you seem to think the bias takes. In the olden days they had a clear liberal bias, but since the management change they have been all but apologists for the Bush administration. Consider, for just a few examples:
Judith Miller's long string of pro-war nonsense, most of which was discredited (or easily discreditable) at the time she wrote it.
Their sitting on the NSA wiretapping story till after the election
Their continued misrepresentation their involvement in the Chaney/Rove/Libby/Wilson/Plame et al. as a case of protecting a whistle blower when in fact they were protecting people who had retaliated against the whistle blower.
These wiretaps aren't being used by the administration directly, as with that cheater Nixon. There's a reason we voted for these guys, even if 'we' doesn't include Slashdot or the NYT. We're getting democracy, there are still 500+ representatives on Congress who could have stopped this in the last decade, if we had voted that way.
The problem with the current way of doing things is that all these sorts of arguments are now inherently circular. It could be just as you say. But since we don't know who's being wiretapped, it could just as well be:
These wiretaps are being used by the administration directly to go after their adversaries, just like with that cheater Nixon, only more so. There's a reason we don't hear more than a peep about the easily hackable voting machines that gave these guys the win even though most of us voted against them. We've lost our democracy, and our 500+ representatives in Congress who should have stopped this in the last decade are either in on it or are being quite effectively blackmailed using information collected via the wiretaps.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but without any other data how can you claim that one is correct and the other false? They both fit the known facts, both have historical antecedents, and both have a considerable number of people who believe them. Neither is intrinsically more or less plausible.
The whole process with allowing "you'll have to just take our word for it" is that, once you allow it as a permissible response, your entire system is now suspect. That's why we don't allow it in science, and that's why we don't allow it in banks. The parts of the internet that cause the greatest problems all share one feature--somewhere in their design, they accepted "you just have to take my word for it" as a valid response.
Knowing this at some level, most reasonable people have a intrinsic distrust of anyone who's only answer to a challenge is "Trust me!"--if you have good and valid reasons for what you are doing, you should be able to state them clearly to your employers (in this case, the American public). If you can't explain to your boss why it looks like you are doing something that seems suspicious without a lot of hand waving boiling down to "you'll just have to take my word for it" there's a good chance you're up to no good.
this attitude is so utterly arrogant. i'd happily tune in to the life of at least 6.5billion people, minus the 'few thousand' so arrogant as to imagine themselves of Vinge's ilk, disinterested in ones fellow man, regardless of status or girth..
Don't forget the few dozen or so out there that can't recognize a joke when they see one.
6.5 Billion this weekend, according to a headline I saw.
Yes, but as I said the note was writen a few years back, using a normal pen on one of those little pads that hotels scatter around meeting rooms, so it doesn't automatically update itself to reflect such changes.
The climate changes from global warming, and associated change in habitat ranges for other species (eg: malaria) is the best chance for the carbon mongers to wipe out the human race. Nuclear power has a better potential -- if people are stupid enough with it -- to wipe out our species outright.
It just struck me--we're contrasting the potential worst case of nuclear with the expected outcome if everything works as it should with fossil fuels. And, if we do that, it's pretty much a toss up.
I happened to be sitting next to Vernor Vinge at a convention a few years back, listening to a presentation on trends in monitoring technology. We passed a few notes back and forth, but the one that really stuck in my mind was this one (paraphrased, 'cause I don't have the paper handy):
I'm afraid that we'll all have the ability to watch everyone on the planet 24 hrs a day long before the vast majority of them learn to do anything even remotely interesting. Six billion channels, and nothing on...
You are correct, the link text I wrote at 5-something AM, pre-coffee, after reading three different articles on the same topic was not only full of typos but, as you point out, possible to read in a number of ways, some of which are mutually exclusive and (consequently) not all of which are true.
Your name calling, however, made no mention of the link text and was instead based on the false statement that the article did not mention Abu Ghraib, to wit: "Idiot / you're getting your prisons confused. the article you posted talks about gitmo, not abu gharib.," when, in fact, I had a) never said that the article was about Abu Ghraib, and b) the article did talk about it.
Even if I had gotten them confused, you'll have to admit that the very fact that there are so many prison-related atrocities under this administration that it's possible to get them confused says something about the systemic nature of the problem. Just as, with Clinton, the sheer number of questionable activities with women who were not his wife gave us an insight into his character (or at least his conduct), the fact that there are dozens of prison scandals surely tells us something about Bush.
Despite all this, I am willing to accept your assertion that pigs will fly before you abide by the conventions of civilized discourse at face value.
With all due respect, I am beginning to suspect that you are a troll. But on the off chance that you are simply obtuse, and for the benefit of any casual readers who may be following this thread, I will respond to your points, such as they are.
I don't need a "serious refutation" untill you can offer a serious argument.
Ah, but you haven't offered any refutation. While you may dispute any of the specific points I have made, or challenge the credibility of any of the sources I cite (e.g. you might, for all I know, think CNN is run by the Illuminati and prefer I find something on the same topic from your hometown paper), you have not done so. Further, while you have disagreed with me you haven't offered any substantiation for your position, such as it is.
Just to refresh your memory, all you've offered so far is articles which have very little to do with the point you're trying to make. You'd have the same degree of relevancy if you linked to articles about McDonalds finding out that their fries have more fat than previously thought. And then claimed that Bush knew and lied about the "high fat situation".
This is, flatly, a lie, as anyone who cares to follow the links can see. I made a clear-cut series of statements and I sourced every one of them. While there are certainly better sources for all of them (I believe the actual text of Bush's signing statement, for example, is still on the whitehouse.gov web site somewhere), I see no point in spending half an hour using Google to gild the lily.
While we may hold the "chief executive" responsible for the actions of subordinates, we certainly do not do so when it is clear subordinates were acting against the directions given. Otherwise we'd never get anything done because nobody in their right mind would ever want to be in charge of anything. The training given to military on everything from racism prvention to rules of engagement, the geneva conventions, and the escalation of force model, far outweighs anything you'd ever see civvie side. Every member of the military is at all times fully aware of how much force he or she is authorized to employ, and in what fashion.
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem. The Geneva Convention you refer to is considered "quaint" by this administration; the rules of engagement are precisely what McCain was calling on them to abide by, and by their very refusal to do so they undermine the system you describe. I have no doubt that, as you state, every member of the military is at all times fully aware of how much force he or she is authorized to employ, and in what fashion. The problem is that, according to their commander in chief that now includes what most of the civilized world would call torture.
Claiming that Bush should be held responsible because some ass-clowns did what they KNEW was wrong is just ridiculous. You may as well hold him responsible when some grumpy old Sgt. goes home at the end of the day and beats his wife. Don't be stupid. Unless you can prove that the personnel in Abu Gharib were authorized to do what they did, you have no case.
There actions so far as I know did not cause organ failure, which means the Bush administration holds them to be legal. And, if you recall, (sourced in the same article), they also maintained that "torturing suspected al Qaeda members abroad 'may be justified' and that international laws against torture 'may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation' conducted against suspected terrorists."
So I'm not sure how they were supposed to "know" that it was wrong when their commander in chief does not.
And while we're at it, your inability to research anything, or understand points of view which you disagree wit
you're getting your prisons confused. the article you posted talks about gitmo, not abu gharib.
Before you start calling people names, you ought to at least check your facts. From the linked article:
The documents provided to the ACLU also contain acknowledgment that the FBI was aware of allegations of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq before they came to public attention.
The person you responded to didn't make that claim. I sort of did, but if you had been paying attention you'd see that I was implying he said and using generalized "quotes" from his speech.
You can't even keep track of with whom you're talking, why should I even bother pointing these things out to you?
That was a pretty weak dodge. I'm not asking you to point these things out to me, I'm asking you to substantiate your assertion, which you still have not done. My failing to clearly distinguish between two interlocutors on a message board is hardly more pressing a concern than a prominent US official committing treason by telling a foreigners to come kill us. And I understand that you were implying Gore said these things using "generalized quotes" (i.e. putting words in his mouth).
So the question still stands: can you substantiate your claims in any way?
In other words, you're making a wild guess based loosly on semi-related events. Nice attempt to dodge, but you're still in the crosshairs. None of the articles you linked make any claims which support your conclusion. You're like one of those clowns who claim that because so few jews died durin 9/11, it's proof that "they" must have been responsible for it. Nonsense. Correlation is not causation. People like you are why poorly supported theories can often get passed off as "the truth". All it takes is some good publicity and a plauisible-sounding theory.
In other words, you can't offer a serious refutation. I made a series of concrete claims. I backed every one of them up with a link to a hard news source (cnn, findlaw, nytimes, etc.). The "wild guess" that the chief executive of any organization bares moral, legal, and operational responsibility for the actions of subordinates that are consistent with his publicly avowed policy and directed at targets which he has publicly designated (e.g. we hold Bin Laden responsible for 9/11 even though he didn't fly a plane) is so well established that you'd have to be seriously loopy to challenge it. It is not a matter of correlation equating to causation, but of authority equating to responsibility.
As for "people like me" causing "poorly supported theories" to get "passed off as 'the truth'", I suggest you direct some attention to the chap above (for whom I apparently mistook you), claiming that Gore told the Arabs to "come kill us" without providing a shred of proof. Unless, of course, you share his views, in which case introspection would serve you better.
Ah yes. You must be one of those people who has "conclusive proof" that the moon landing was faked. Ofcourse, yor evidence is almost non-existant, and whenever anyone challanges whatever little evidence you DO have, you simply ignore them and continue saying that your point of view "has been proven". Right?
Kind of ironic, coming from somebody that is objecting to the contents of a speech he didn't hear and can't find a transcript of, isn't it? But I'll bite.
My claim, which you are objecting to:
This is now known to be false; the treatment was in fact authorized (by redefining torture) and Bush has yet to recant his position. It looked for a minute as if McCain had cornered him into showing some sense, but his signing statement makes it clear that he still endorses torture. The only thing that clearly wasn't authorized (and what the Bush administration has actually objected to) is taking pictures of the torture and leaking it to the media. The "perps" who have so far been charged are (last I heard) only the low level grunts who got caught.
My proof (or at least a sampling thereof--there's lots more):
There is, of course, a lot more where that came from.
Now, can you please back up your claim that Gore told the Arabs to attack us?
--MarkusQ
Re:I think I've snapped from all the loonie news
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I would have to disagree with you on a couple of points.
refers to Abu Graib as "Bush's gulag" (that one is a quote), even though Bush had nothing to do with it and the perps who did are either on trial or in prison;
This is now known to be false; the treatment was in fact authorized (by redefining torture) and Bush has yet to recant his position. It looked for a minute as if McCain had cornered him into showing some sense, but his signing statement makes it clear that he still endorses torture. The only thing that clearly wasn't authorized (and what the Bush administration has actually objected to) is taking pictures of the torture and leaking it to the media. The "perps" who have so far been charged are (last I heard) only the low level grunts who got caught.
tell them how horrible the US is
George H. W. Bush is not the United States. Saying that GHWB is incompetent, stupid, or criminal does not say that the US is these things, anymore than saying that the US has twelve thousand miles of coastline means the GHWB is fat.
I realize that many of his supporters would like to blur this point, in effect making him a monarch, but so long as there is even a pretense of democracy here the distinction between a particular president and the nation he serves will stand.
generally makes it clear that the US is now the enemy of Arabs/Muslims, should be considered treasonous
It will be a sad day indeed when "making something clear" is treasonous. It may be fraud, if the point being made clear is untrue, but even then, not treasonous, unless you are purposing a rather radical reinterpretation of the constitution. And given that we don't know what he actually said, even the conclusion that it is untrue seems premature.
Do you have a link to the text of Gore's speech? The transcripts I've seen don't say anything about him asking them to "come and kill us, please!" and I agree that that would be quite newsworthy if true. I can't even find any quote of him saying that we deserved 9/11. Where did you see this? And are you confident of your sources?
Rolling all of your points together so I can give a glib response I just thought of, the cautious position boils down to:
Using uranium to generate electricity has various potential drawbacks; we'd better make bombs with it so we don't have to worry. That way we'll be all set to fight over the remaining oil.
That said, I agree with most of your points; the only detail I'd quibble with is "About the worst disaster the carbon mongers will inflict is global warming.": pollution from burning coal and oil kills people right now (mostly, the elderly), damages buildings and plants (remember acid rain), and the death toil from obtaining it in the first place is considerable, even if you don't count the wars. Global warming is just icing on the cake.
--MarkusQ
I think I've snapped from all the loonie news
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Yahoo Reverses Allah Ban
I think I've finally snapped from all the loonie news lately. My first thought was: "What!? Now you are required to have 'Allah' in your name? That's even worse!"
--MarkusQ
And before you give me grief, in just the last few weeks:
Hundreds of people have killed each other over a bunch of cartoons.
The vice president of the US shot someone
Bell South wants to charge Google for using its bandwidth when Bell South's customers use Google's services for free and already pay Bell South for the privilege.
We are engaged in a huge debate, not over the fact that the control of our nation's ports has been turned over to foreign governments in the first place, but rather over the fact that it may be racist to suggest that a nation that funded Bin Ladin, passed sensitive information to him, had top level meetings with him, recognized the Taliban, and was home to two of the 9/11 hijackers might not be trustworthy
People have been caught distributing free software in accordance with the license, and had their CDs seized to protect the rights of the Authors who gave them permission in the first place
Uh, I think you drank the kool-aid. Nuclear reactors works fine, and overall are much safer than fossil fuels. You actually got what you were promised. But along the way the fossil fuel industry got serious about controlling public perception, so that everybody knows that nuclear power is deadly dangerous and coal and oil are sweet, kind and friendly.
They do this in all sorts of ways, but here are a few examples:
Dealing with waste is presented as a "big problem" for nuclear power but not for fossil fuels, when in fact there's are a number of reasonably sound solutions in the first case (e.g. bury it back in the mines where you dug up the nuclear material in the first place) while in the later case the "solution" is to just dump the waste into the air we breathe.
Ignoring the facts, such as the fact that any coal fired plant that's running releases radioactive gasses (14-CO2) at levels that would be considered an "incident" in a nuclear plant, or that isotopes with long half lives are by definition more stable than isotopes with short half lives (but they'll stay like that for a gadzillion years!)
Focusing on imaginary "China syndrome" scare stories about nuclear and ignoring the oil spills, coal mine fires, and other horrors of the fossil fuel industry (oh yeah, the wars is about 9/11...no, WMD...I mean regime change...fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here...or was it spreading democracy?...but not oil. We never would go to war over oil.)
Adroitly dodging regulation while imposing absurd regulatory burdens on nuclear power, and then using this to claim that nuclear isn't as cheap as promised.
Nuclear power may not be perfect, but even the horror stories are better than what we're drifting into by letting the fossil fuel industry lead us down the garden path.
Slashdot Mirror
If you believe that "He's" using it correctly, then you believe that I am begging the question.
But this is a non sequitur; he made a statement about another statement ("that begs the question"), not about a person. I responded to his post (not yours). The question begging statement may have occurred in your post, but was derived from the article*. The "they" I was referring to were the originators of this particular example of faulty reasoning, not the people (such as yourself) who incidentally quoted, alluded to, or derived things from it.
--MarkusQ
* To see this quite clearly, consider the fact that without the circular reasoning there would be nothing newsworthy about the story. Lots of people have bio-goo in jars (take my fridge for example) but you don't see stories about them making /.'s front page. Yet. Likewise, lots of people have stuff that has clearly fallen from space. The only reason that this story made the front page was that they assumed that the stuff in their jar fell from space and thus was proof that stuff like that falls from space.
As the "they" you are referring to, I do NOT assume that this is from space. I simply stated that it should be tested before calling it bullshit. In fact, my first question implies the opposite - if it rained this way for 2 months, how could it have anything to do with an object from space?
I understand your description of "begging the question", but I don't think the original author's intent was of this meaning.
Uh, no, you weren't the "they" I was referring to. If I meant you I'd've written "he" or "LS" or "the grandparent. And while I don't claim to understand the original author's intent (nor even to know who you mean by that) I do claim to be an authority on who I was referring to by "they."
I suspect that either 1) we are reading things differently (which, given that English grammar permits a great deal of ambiguity, is not surprising). or 2) one or both of us are drunk and studying for philosophy finals, these being the two main causes for this sort of discussion. Since I neither of us are attempting to force the other to look at a Venn diagram that will make everything clear, I suspect the former is the case.
--MarkusQ
Stars may look easy, but have you ever tried making one? Just figuring out where to put all the hydrogen you'll need is a major logistics headache. And don't even get me started on the nightmare Environmental Impact Statement you have to fill out. Face it, if the sun hadn't just been there by chance, we never would have gotten the funding / permits needed to build it.
--MarkusQ
That begs the question: Are the contents of the bottle guaranteed to be sterile, uncontaminated by their trip from space (theoretically) to the bottle? From reports of the collection methods, chances are slim.
"That begs the question" ... No it doesn't. That does not mean what you think it means.
Actually, I beg to differ. He's using it correctly (or at least, it can be read that way). Begging the question is assuming what you are claiming to prove; in this case, they are assuming that the bio-goo in the bottle is from space (and not a contaminant) and using it as evidence that there is bio-goo in space. That, in a nutshell, is question begging.
--MarkusQ
The only thing newsworthy is that this paint contains nanotechnology. Sure, that's nice.
And it's not even the original/interesting type of nanotechnology. It's the "me too" big-stuff-made-out-of-randomly-placed-bit-of-small -stuff type of nanotechnology, just like cupcakes and floor wax and a billion other things.
--MarkusQ
The sad part is, it used to be a fine paper. Then it started getting more and more biased, and substituting some oddball theory of compensating biases for investigative reporting, as if finding the objective truth wasn't as important as presenting both major brands of half-truth. They aren't alone in this, but it's more disappointing coming from them than from a paper that was never any good.
--MarkusQ
Actually, the NYT, like most media outlets, has an agenda, and they selectively choose what information they try to get out to the people.
While I agree with your statement, I disagree with the form you seem to think the bias takes. In the olden days they had a clear liberal bias, but since the management change they have been all but apologists for the Bush administration. Consider, for just a few examples:
--MarkusQ
The problem with the current way of doing things is that all these sorts of arguments are now inherently circular. It could be just as you say. But since we don't know who's being wiretapped, it could just as well be:
I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, but without any other data how can you claim that one is correct and the other false? They both fit the known facts, both have historical antecedents, and both have a considerable number of people who believe them. Neither is intrinsically more or less plausible.
The whole process with allowing "you'll have to just take our word for it" is that, once you allow it as a permissible response, your entire system is now suspect. That's why we don't allow it in science, and that's why we don't allow it in banks. The parts of the internet that cause the greatest problems all share one feature--somewhere in their design, they accepted "you just have to take my word for it" as a valid response.
Knowing this at some level, most reasonable people have a intrinsic distrust of anyone who's only answer to a challenge is "Trust me!"--if you have good and valid reasons for what you are doing, you should be able to state them clearly to your employers (in this case, the American public). If you can't explain to your boss why it looks like you are doing something that seems suspicious without a lot of hand waving boiling down to "you'll just have to take my word for it" there's a good chance you're up to no good.
--MarkusQ
this attitude is so utterly arrogant. i'd happily tune in to the life of at least 6.5billion people, minus the 'few thousand' so arrogant as to imagine themselves of Vinge's ilk, disinterested in ones fellow man, regardless of status or girth
Don't forget the few dozen or so out there that can't recognize a joke when they see one.
--MarkusQ
6.5 Billion this weekend, according to a headline I saw.
Yes, but as I said the note was writen a few years back, using a normal pen on one of those little pads that hotels scatter around meeting rooms, so it doesn't automatically update itself to reflect such changes.
--MarkusQ
The climate changes from global warming, and associated change in habitat ranges for other species (eg: malaria) is the best chance for the carbon mongers to wipe out the human race. Nuclear power has a better potential -- if people are stupid enough with it -- to wipe out our species outright.
It just struck me--we're contrasting the potential worst case of nuclear with the expected outcome if everything works as it should with fossil fuels. And, if we do that, it's pretty much a toss up.
--MarkusQ
I happened to be sitting next to Vernor Vinge at a convention a few years back, listening to a presentation on trends in monitoring technology. We passed a few notes back and forth, but the one that really stuck in my mind was this one (paraphrased, 'cause I don't have the paper handy): --MarkusQ
--MarkusQ
With all due respect, I am beginning to suspect that you are a troll. But on the off chance that you are simply obtuse, and for the benefit of any casual readers who may be following this thread, I will respond to your points, such as they are.
Ah, but you haven't offered any refutation. While you may dispute any of the specific points I have made, or challenge the credibility of any of the sources I cite (e.g. you might, for all I know, think CNN is run by the Illuminati and prefer I find something on the same topic from your hometown paper), you have not done so. Further, while you have disagreed with me you haven't offered any substantiation for your position, such as it is.
This is, flatly, a lie, as anyone who cares to follow the links can see. I made a clear-cut series of statements and I sourced every one of them. While there are certainly better sources for all of them (I believe the actual text of Bush's signing statement, for example, is still on the whitehouse.gov web site somewhere), I see no point in spending half an hour using Google to gild the lily.
And there, in a nutshell, is the problem. The Geneva Convention you refer to is considered "quaint" by this administration; the rules of engagement are precisely what McCain was calling on them to abide by, and by their very refusal to do so they undermine the system you describe. I have no doubt that, as you state, every member of the military is at all times fully aware of how much force he or she is authorized to employ, and in what fashion. The problem is that, according to their commander in chief that now includes what most of the civilized world would call torture.
There actions so far as I know did not cause organ failure, which means the Bush administration holds them to be legal. And, if you recall, (sourced in the same article), they also maintained that "torturing suspected al Qaeda members abroad 'may be justified' and that international laws against torture 'may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogation' conducted against suspected terrorists."
So I'm not sure how they were supposed to "know" that it was wrong when their commander in chief does not.
Before you start calling people names, you ought to at least check your facts. From the linked article:
Feel free to apologize whenever you like.
--MarkusQ
You do realize that you're defending someone who appears to have fanned the flames of Islamic extremism, don't you?
I realize that you claim that he apparently has. I'm still waiting for something a little more substantial than that.
Until I get it, I'm neither attacking nor defending his statements, whatever they may have been.
--MarkusQ
The FBI new about it before hand, at warned them to stop it.
--MarkusQ
The person you responded to didn't make that claim. I sort of did, but if you had been paying attention you'd see that I was implying he said and using generalized "quotes" from his speech.
You can't even keep track of with whom you're talking, why should I even bother pointing these things out to you?
That was a pretty weak dodge. I'm not asking you to point these things out to me, I'm asking you to substantiate your assertion, which you still have not done. My failing to clearly distinguish between two interlocutors on a message board is hardly more pressing a concern than a prominent US official committing treason by telling a foreigners to come kill us. And I understand that you were implying Gore said these things using "generalized quotes" (i.e. putting words in his mouth).
So the question still stands: can you substantiate your claims in any way?
--MarkusQ
In other words, you're making a wild guess based loosly on semi-related events. Nice attempt to dodge, but you're still in the crosshairs. None of the articles you linked make any claims which support your conclusion. You're like one of those clowns who claim that because so few jews died durin 9/11, it's proof that "they" must have been responsible for it. Nonsense. Correlation is not causation. People like you are why poorly supported theories can often get passed off as "the truth". All it takes is some good publicity and a plauisible-sounding theory.
In other words, you can't offer a serious refutation. I made a series of concrete claims. I backed every one of them up with a link to a hard news source (cnn, findlaw, nytimes, etc.). The "wild guess" that the chief executive of any organization bares moral, legal, and operational responsibility for the actions of subordinates that are consistent with his publicly avowed policy and directed at targets which he has publicly designated (e.g. we hold Bin Laden responsible for 9/11 even though he didn't fly a plane) is so well established that you'd have to be seriously loopy to challenge it. It is not a matter of correlation equating to causation, but of authority equating to responsibility.
As for "people like me" causing "poorly supported theories" to get "passed off as 'the truth'", I suggest you direct some attention to the chap above (for whom I apparently mistook you), claiming that Gore told the Arabs to "come kill us" without providing a shred of proof. Unless, of course, you share his views, in which case introspection would serve you better.
--MarkusQ
Ah yes. You must be one of those people who has "conclusive proof" that the moon landing was faked. Ofcourse, yor evidence is almost non-existant, and whenever anyone challanges whatever little evidence you DO have, you simply ignore them and continue saying that your point of view "has been proven". Right?
Kind of ironic, coming from somebody that is objecting to the contents of a speech he didn't hear and can't find a transcript of, isn't it? But I'll bite.
My claim, which you are objecting to:
My proof (or at least a sampling thereof--there's lots more):
There is, of course, a lot more where that came from.
Now, can you please back up your claim that Gore told the Arabs to attack us?
--MarkusQ
I would have to disagree with you on a couple of points.
refers to Abu Graib as "Bush's gulag" (that one is a quote), even though Bush had nothing to do with it and the perps who did are either on trial or in prison;
This is now known to be false; the treatment was in fact authorized (by redefining torture) and Bush has yet to recant his position. It looked for a minute as if McCain had cornered him into showing some sense, but his signing statement makes it clear that he still endorses torture. The only thing that clearly wasn't authorized (and what the Bush administration has actually objected to) is taking pictures of the torture and leaking it to the media. The "perps" who have so far been charged are (last I heard) only the low level grunts who got caught.
tell them how horrible the US is
George H. W. Bush is not the United States. Saying that GHWB is incompetent, stupid, or criminal does not say that the US is these things, anymore than saying that the US has twelve thousand miles of coastline means the GHWB is fat.
I realize that many of his supporters would like to blur this point, in effect making him a monarch, but so long as there is even a pretense of democracy here the distinction between a particular president and the nation he serves will stand.
generally makes it clear that the US is now the enemy of Arabs/Muslims, should be considered treasonous
It will be a sad day indeed when "making something clear" is treasonous. It may be fraud, if the point being made clear is untrue, but even then, not treasonous, unless you are purposing a rather radical reinterpretation of the constitution. And given that we don't know what he actually said, even the conclusion that it is untrue seems premature.
--MarkusQ
Do you have a link to the text of Gore's speech? The transcripts I've seen don't say anything about him asking them to "come and kill us, please!" and I agree that that would be quite newsworthy if true. I can't even find any quote of him saying that we deserved 9/11. Where did you see this? And are you confident of your sources?
--MarkusQ
Rolling all of your points together so I can give a glib response I just thought of, the cautious position boils down to:
Using uranium to generate electricity has various potential drawbacks; we'd better make bombs with it so we don't have to worry. That way we'll be all set to fight over the remaining oil.
That said, I agree with most of your points; the only detail I'd quibble with is "About the worst disaster the carbon mongers will inflict is global warming.": pollution from burning coal and oil kills people right now (mostly, the elderly), damages buildings and plants (remember acid rain), and the death toil from obtaining it in the first place is considerable, even if you don't count the wars. Global warming is just icing on the cake.
--MarkusQ
Yahoo Reverses Allah Ban
I think I've finally snapped from all the loonie news lately. My first thought was: "What!? Now you are required to have 'Allah' in your name? That's even worse!"
--MarkusQ
And before you give me grief, in just the last few weeks:
Uh, I think you drank the kool-aid. Nuclear reactors works fine, and overall are much safer than fossil fuels. You actually got what you were promised. But along the way the fossil fuel industry got serious about controlling public perception, so that everybody knows that nuclear power is deadly dangerous and coal and oil are sweet, kind and friendly.
They do this in all sorts of ways, but here are a few examples:
Nuclear power may not be perfect, but even the horror stories are better than what we're drifting into by letting the fossil fuel industry lead us down the garden path.
--MarkusQ