What about the people who were stopped from entering the poles? (I'll tell you now, it wasn't the elite that were kept out!) What about the people who refused to vote because the theoretical "choices" were virtually identical? What about the people who voted their conscience and spent the next several months being blamed for Dubya? What about the fact that the president's brother--his BROTHER--was responsible for delaying the recounts; can we spell "conflict of interest", boys and girls? What about the fact that Florida law called for a recount that was not allowed to procede? Remember, Gore NEVER asked for a recount! It was legally required, not by ordinary Florida law, but by its CONSTITUTION?
Now might be the time to admit that the electoral system was ment to keep democratic government out of the grubby hands of the people (it's true, read the work of the founding fathers, especially Mr. Adams the elder). Now might be the time for a revolution.
Thomas Jefferson, by the end of his life, felt that a revolutionary war would be required every twenty years, every generation, so that the government could be redesigned to fit the needs of the citizens, so that the government would be precious, vital, painted with blood, to those who mandate it. By his reconning, we're two centuries and more overdue.
Put your head between your legs...
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...and kiss your lifestyle goodbye. THIS is what can, will, must be done about this.
The modern, western, American lifestyle is already doomed; like the dinosaurs, we just haven't noticed. If humanity doesn't stop us, nature will. Not the Xian God come down off his mountain-top to smite us, but sheer, scientific, biological limitations. This cannot go on.
The World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, the White House, these are both the means and the symbols of this way of life. The national/international air system: again, a means, and a target of this attack that cannot be ignored.
America may, finally, be forced to step down off its pedistal. It's going to be hard, and a hell of a lot of us are going to die--because biologically we aren't fit to survive.
So what can be done about Terrorism? Get down on your knees, or out in a sacred circle, or wherever you feel is appropriate, and pray to the gods of your choice. And if you worship money, now might be a good time to convert.
I'm frickin' depressed. That's enough of this crap; I'm goin' home. Bless you all.
Plase note, my dear coward, that Christianity was also a "gutter religion" from a "garbage country" in the time of the Romans. The Xians came to power through Jihad, through a hollocaust of proportions, in comparison to the population of the time, that shames the Nazis (Xians) and all the so-called extremist Islamic movements ever. But if I start talking of witch burnings, I'm sure I'll hear about my own religion being extinct, and about survival of the fittest (though Xians deny that last). "Leave the world to the strong"? Did not Christ say "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"?
Or perhaps you're a follower of the state religion of the United States, the religion of money, of pop-psychology, of self-indulgence. Of self-importance, of greed, of medicated contentment and willful ingorance. Go back to your shrink and work through your post-traumatic stress syndrome, stemming from a disaster half a continent away that you saw on TV, with a commercial break every ten minutes, and that is ultimately no more real to you than an episode of Survivor.
By the way: your kind? What rock dwelst thou under?
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
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Hear, hear, jiheison! And I have a logical distinction between "corporate greed" and "individual greed".
An individual is bound by his conscience, by the social contract, and by the law. A corporation's only moral obligation is to further its bottom line.
If an individual kills to further his greed, he is, at least in theory, caught, and when caught, punished severely. If a corporation kills to further its greed (by poisoning the earth, placing its employees in unsafe conditions, selling ultimately fatal products (I'm considering cigarettes, here)) it gets off with a slap on the wrists. Like a military action, a corporation's quest for profit has a certain "acceptable" threshold of civilian casualties.
A corporation, legally, is not held to the same standards as an individual. Morally, the standards SHOULD be the same. This is why you hear so much about "corporate greed".
Re:US foreign policy, not global trade, the issue
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If we give someone a gun, and he shoots someone, are we to blame? We wouldn't be to blame if he got the gun himself, but once we're involved, we have responsibility. Even if he would, in the normal course of events, gotten his own gun or opted for a knife instead, by choosing to become involved we have accepted responsibility.
Please don't automatically fault the critical thinking skills of college students; some of us have yet to acquire our visual blockers.
Points 1-3:
If we turn our eyes from the fact that our own actions cause human suffering, among civilians, among children, we can hardly consider ourselves above being hated. If we willfully cause the suffering of civilians in order to further our point, the only distinction between us and the terrorists is that we're unwilling to get our hands dirty.
Point 5.1:
Have you read about any of the CIA's actions in the '70s and '80s? The ones they've ADMITTED to?
Point 5.2:
Geeks tend to come from the educated elite. Obviously. Those who can afford the hardware, if nothing else. As a former--often on the verge of current--citizen of Third World America, I feel quilified to answer your final trailing question.
Living on the streets is illegal in the cities of the Unitied States. Living in poverty is illegal. Most so-called "welfare reform" movements are almost explicitely designed to take children away from the poor. In many towns and cities, there are "rif-raf" ordinances, where one can be ticketed and (if one can't afford to pay the ticket) jailed simply for looking scruffy in public! Americans are slaves to the dollar, sir, we are slaves to the bottom line; we are slaves to the American Dream, to keeping the nightmare it has become out of the eyes of those who have attained it in illusion. A few fortunate ones among us are able to find work that we can love; the vast majority dread waking up in the morning and being forced to go to work. Yes, in theory, there are other options: we can go to prison, or we can die. These are NOT, however, the options available to the people of a free nation.
Our last presidential election was a sham; if this had happened in a "developing nation" the UN would have sent in peace keepers to implement democratic elections. Dubya CLEARLY lost the popular vote (note that Gore also had only a plurality, not a majority). The outcome of the electoral vote stands undefined; a deadline was artificially set so that Americans could have "closure" when what we wanted was "democracy". Pop psychology (the modern state religion, and the opium of the masses) won out over law, justice, and common sense.
Our nation's ruling class, the class that controls 95% of the wealth, as well as virtually all of the means of production, consists of less than 5% of the population; more than 90% of the wealth is controlled by less than 1% of the population. Think fast: who knows was "oligarchy" means?
My mother, an ordained minister and community organizer, nearly fifty years old (sorry, mom) and holding a Divinity degree from Harvard, was teargassed during a peaceful demonstration in Eugene, Oregon several years ago. Her lungs were permenantly scarred--primarily due to the fact that, as a minister to the poor and disposessed, she can't afford health care. Sound like a story from some bizarre third-world nation? It is, a story from third world America.
Most of all, Americans are slaves to our own willful ignorance. It's truly telling that an appearantly intelligent man like yourself (at least, you're capable of logging on to/.) can believe that Americans, the majority of Americans, are free. We don't know what's going on all around us. We want to cling to an out-dated image of America; we may be clinging to an image of an America that never was.
If you think you are free, sir, you're one of the lucky ones. The rest of us are not so skilled in the art of doublethink.
Slashdot Mirror
What about the people who were stopped from entering the poles? (I'll tell you now, it wasn't the elite that were kept out!) What about the people who refused to vote because the theoretical "choices" were virtually identical? What about the people who voted their conscience and spent the next several months being blamed for Dubya? What about the fact that the president's brother--his BROTHER--was responsible for delaying the recounts; can we spell "conflict of interest", boys and girls? What about the fact that Florida law called for a recount that was not allowed to procede? Remember, Gore NEVER asked for a recount! It was legally required, not by ordinary Florida law, but by its CONSTITUTION?
Now might be the time to admit that the electoral system was ment to keep democratic government out of the grubby hands of the people (it's true, read the work of the founding fathers, especially Mr. Adams the elder). Now might be the time for a revolution.
Thomas Jefferson, by the end of his life, felt that a revolutionary war would be required every twenty years, every generation, so that the government could be redesigned to fit the needs of the citizens, so that the government would be precious, vital, painted with blood, to those who mandate it. By his reconning, we're two centuries and more overdue.
...and kiss your lifestyle goodbye. THIS is what can, will, must be done about this.
The modern, western, American lifestyle is already doomed; like the dinosaurs, we just haven't noticed. If humanity doesn't stop us, nature will. Not the Xian God come down off his mountain-top to smite us, but sheer, scientific, biological limitations. This cannot go on.
The World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, the White House, these are both the means and the symbols of this way of life. The national/international air system: again, a means, and a target of this attack that cannot be ignored.
America may, finally, be forced to step down off its pedistal. It's going to be hard, and a hell of a lot of us are going to die--because biologically we aren't fit to survive.
So what can be done about Terrorism? Get down on your knees, or out in a sacred circle, or wherever you feel is appropriate, and pray to the gods of your choice. And if you worship money, now might be a good time to convert.
I'm frickin' depressed. That's enough of this crap; I'm goin' home. Bless you all.
Plase note, my dear coward, that Christianity was also a "gutter religion" from a "garbage country" in the time of the Romans. The Xians came to power through Jihad, through a hollocaust of proportions, in comparison to the population of the time, that shames the Nazis (Xians) and all the so-called extremist Islamic movements ever. But if I start talking of witch burnings, I'm sure I'll hear about my own religion being extinct, and about survival of the fittest (though Xians deny that last). "Leave the world to the strong"? Did not Christ say "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth"?
Or perhaps you're a follower of the state religion of the United States, the religion of money, of pop-psychology, of self-indulgence. Of self-importance, of greed, of medicated contentment and willful ingorance. Go back to your shrink and work through your post-traumatic stress syndrome, stemming from a disaster half a continent away that you saw on TV, with a commercial break every ten minutes, and that is ultimately no more real to you than an episode of Survivor.
By the way: your kind? What rock dwelst thou under?
Hear, hear, jiheison! And I have a logical distinction between "corporate greed" and "individual greed".
An individual is bound by his conscience, by the social contract, and by the law. A corporation's only moral obligation is to further its bottom line.
If an individual kills to further his greed, he is, at least in theory, caught, and when caught, punished severely. If a corporation kills to further its greed (by poisoning the earth, placing its employees in unsafe conditions, selling ultimately fatal products (I'm considering cigarettes, here)) it gets off with a slap on the wrists. Like a military action, a corporation's quest for profit has a certain "acceptable" threshold of civilian casualties.
A corporation, legally, is not held to the same standards as an individual. Morally, the standards SHOULD be the same. This is why you hear so much about "corporate greed".
If we give someone a gun, and he shoots someone, are we to blame? We wouldn't be to blame if he got the gun himself, but once we're involved, we have responsibility. Even if he would, in the normal course of events, gotten his own gun or opted for a knife instead, by choosing to become involved we have accepted responsibility.
Please don't automatically fault the critical thinking skills of college students; some of us have yet to acquire our visual blockers.
Points 1-3: If we turn our eyes from the fact that our own actions cause human suffering, among civilians, among children, we can hardly consider ourselves above being hated. If we willfully cause the suffering of civilians in order to further our point, the only distinction between us and the terrorists is that we're unwilling to get our hands dirty. Point 5.1: Have you read about any of the CIA's actions in the '70s and '80s? The ones they've ADMITTED to? Point 5.2: Geeks tend to come from the educated elite. Obviously. Those who can afford the hardware, if nothing else. As a former--often on the verge of current--citizen of Third World America, I feel quilified to answer your final trailing question. Living on the streets is illegal in the cities of the Unitied States. Living in poverty is illegal. Most so-called "welfare reform" movements are almost explicitely designed to take children away from the poor. In many towns and cities, there are "rif-raf" ordinances, where one can be ticketed and (if one can't afford to pay the ticket) jailed simply for looking scruffy in public! Americans are slaves to the dollar, sir, we are slaves to the bottom line; we are slaves to the American Dream, to keeping the nightmare it has become out of the eyes of those who have attained it in illusion. A few fortunate ones among us are able to find work that we can love; the vast majority dread waking up in the morning and being forced to go to work. Yes, in theory, there are other options: we can go to prison, or we can die. These are NOT, however, the options available to the people of a free nation. Our last presidential election was a sham; if this had happened in a "developing nation" the UN would have sent in peace keepers to implement democratic elections. Dubya CLEARLY lost the popular vote (note that Gore also had only a plurality, not a majority). The outcome of the electoral vote stands undefined; a deadline was artificially set so that Americans could have "closure" when what we wanted was "democracy". Pop psychology (the modern state religion, and the opium of the masses) won out over law, justice, and common sense. Our nation's ruling class, the class that controls 95% of the wealth, as well as virtually all of the means of production, consists of less than 5% of the population; more than 90% of the wealth is controlled by less than 1% of the population. Think fast: who knows was "oligarchy" means? My mother, an ordained minister and community organizer, nearly fifty years old (sorry, mom) and holding a Divinity degree from Harvard, was teargassed during a peaceful demonstration in Eugene, Oregon several years ago. Her lungs were permenantly scarred--primarily due to the fact that, as a minister to the poor and disposessed, she can't afford health care. Sound like a story from some bizarre third-world nation? It is, a story from third world America. Most of all, Americans are slaves to our own willful ignorance. It's truly telling that an appearantly intelligent man like yourself (at least, you're capable of logging on to /.) can believe that Americans, the majority of Americans, are free. We don't know what's going on all around us. We want to cling to an out-dated image of America; we may be clinging to an image of an America that never was.
If you think you are free, sir, you're one of the lucky ones. The rest of us are not so skilled in the art of doublethink.