And people should feel downright ASHAMED about devoting their lives to the aquisition of wealth.
But those who devote their lives to building a great company or practice or business, and get rich in the process, may very well be doing something noble. They may be advancing science or improving people's lives in ways that would be impossible in the public or non-profit sector. And that wealth can then be deployed again to help people through charitable giving.
I think Bill Gates, for example, is being far more effective in the way he invests his charitable giving than the government would be with the same money.
However, at least in Europe it can be observed that more liberal abortion laws (often, but not always coupled with better sex education) lead to lower rates of abortion than stricter laws
Here in America, I'm pretty sure there has been a much higher incidence of abortions since abortion was made legal nation wide.
It's not killing babies. It's killing life-forms in early stages of development.
Are you in favor, then, of making late term, say 3rd trimester, abortions punishable as murder? How about babies that are half in, half out of the mother?
Furthermore, what is a baby if not a human life-form in an early stage of development?
Technically, a month-old embryo is about as advanced as a shrimp. If you are against killing them, then you better be vegetarian, because when you're munching on a ham sandwich, you are partaking in killing and consuming of a creature far more advanced than an embryo, or, hell, moreso than a fully matured pre-natal human child.
...or I'm a proud, pro-human bigot, who unapologetically decides to value a lesser developed member of my own species over a more developed member of another species.
Wow. I loved the way the President handled this interview, based on the transcript.
Your concern about the President not answering questions amuses me, as most of the reporter's utterances are pronouncements more than questions. Bush's "let me finish" thing is very much a part of American media sparring.
I especially loved the part about "shouldn't we solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict before...". That Europeans believe that the greater Arab world gives a whit about the Palestinians would be laughable if it were not so sad. Arab nations do very little for the Palestinian refugees in their midst, when they're not outright discriminating against them. At least Saddam paid them for dying. That's something I guess.
I would never, ever, ever become a PR consultant. I can't stand the type of work it is ( running aorund, chatting it up with people, lying for a living).
Given the current state of the IT field with many jobs leaving to go to those in India or other low wage nations, why, would anyone WANT to get in the field?
HALLELUJAH! Can I get an Amen?
I scanned through this list looking for a post just like yours, cause I figured I couldn't be the only one to see this obvious fact.
Who are these idiots that are trying to persuade women to enter a field that has certainly peaked in the Western world (at least for the foreseeable future) as jobs flood out of the country as fast as CEOs can move them?
In fact, maybe it suggests that women had better instincts all along? As fewer women than men entered IT during the delusional dot com era, maybe less of them subsequently lost their jobs. In my experience, there's a lot more women project managers than women coders, and that certainly looks like a heck of a lot better career path right now.
And I've seen multiple statements that Bush ordered people to find an Iraq link, not to find the people responsible.
It's telling that you still haven't offered a source backing up your statements. For what it's worth, though, I believe you're referring to when Bush asked Clarke to find out IF there was a 9/11 connection to Hussein. Much different than ordering someone to just "Find a 9/11 connection to Hussein".
Even if you're the most well behaved nation on Earth (arguably not), you should still be judging yourself based on your own moral standards, rather than against the worst offenders.
I can't disagree with you. Only seeking to explain, not excuse.
But allow me to present another problem, the conflation of weakness with virtue.
The most prominent example of this is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians are unquestionably the weaker party in the conflict. Thus, they naturally garner more sympathy internationally.
But if you look at the so called Palestinian "leadership", I challenge you to find anything laudable about, say, Yasser Arafat. He has done nothing to improve the Palestinians' lot, he
embezzles from his own people, he has never been democratically elected by anyone, his organization summarily executes anyone they suspect of disloyalty with nothing remotely resembling due process, not to mention his overseeing escalating violence at times when peace and compromise seemed more possible.
The extent to which Saddam Hussein's atrocities are ignored by many on the left almost cast him in a sympathetic light, as well.
So this is the problem with reflexively sympathizing with weakness. Your words and actions can end up supporting some truly loathsome characters, and not necessarily help the lot of those with whom you truly do sympathize.
From the information currently available, Bush was not mislead greatly by underlings, but he instructed them to find only that which supported his presupposition.
Back that up. Bob Woodward's book reports Tenet telling Bush the evidence is a "slam dunk", as Bush expresses skepticism about the evidence. He trusted his top intelligence advisor, and that turned out to be a mistake.
I think that, even if every underling below Bush was still there, if Gore were in office, we'd have invaded Afganistan and Iran, with some action against Saudia Arabia (where most of the terrorists were from and much of the money came from). Of course, I think that the oil prices would be much higher, the budget would be balanced, and Gore would lose the next election for the same reasons that Bush will lose (the economy).
No way to know the outcome of a Gore presidency.
But I don't think the economy is Bush's real problem. The country's pretty much split on whether they trust Bush or Kerry on the economy, because they know Kerry will raise taxes, and many Americans get suspicious when a politician promises to raise taxes "only on the rich."
If WMD were found, we're talking Reaganesque blowout. Even if you just take away Abu Ghraib, I think Bush has a significant lead right now.
I think Kerry would have gotten more "bounce" if he had stuck to Edwards' formulation of "we will destroy you [terrorists]", as opposed to only promising retaliation if something bad happens again.
Let me give an example of current American attitudes toward right and wrong. When the news about the Abu Ghraib prison abuses came around, someone in the U.S. government (can't remember the name) publicly defended the actions saying that it wasn't as bad as what was happening there under Saddam.
I think the person saying that was a member of Congress (can't be sure with out the name). I'm pretty sure no one in the Bush administration said that. I'm sure every country has some foolish people in their Congress or Parliament, but the point of having a balance of powers is to limit the damage such people can do.
There is a frustration sometimes that America doing something bad dominates the world press, while much worse things done by much worse regimes are relatively ignored. I suppose that just indicates the U.S. doing something bad is still newsworthy, while it's just assumed of the dictators and truly repressive regimes of the world.
Having said that, Bush has had two unequivocal failures. Being wrong about WMD in Iraq, and Abu Ghraib. Both of these can be attributed to mistakes made by people under him, but for better or worse, the final responsibility for these things end up with the man in charge.
As a child I thought it was the most thrilling read ever. I suppose our imaginations are more suited to fantasy as children. Everyone knows how imaginative children can be.
For me, it was quite the opposite. As a child, I finished the books but found them slow and somewhat difficult to get through, in the sense of "is something finally gonna happen here or what?".
Reading them again recently as an adult, I found the human interactions much more profound and interesting. The friendship and loyalty between Sam and Frodo and the tragedy of Gollum are quite moving. The sense of sacrifice is palpable. The entreaties to the various kings and stewards to stand up and fight to defend their people's way of life is powerful. The underlying value of humility is an important lesson for our time.
What clinched it for me is the ending with Sam's daughter on his lap. As a new father at the time, that scene generated a lump in my throat.
I am aware that it's very popular, won Oscars etc, but I myself found the book to be very very long winded and the films to be somewhat self-indulgent on the part of, well, everyone in them.
Some things are meant to be unhurried. Those of us who liked the books enjoy hanging out in Middle Earth and were in no rush to leave.
The movies are uneven, but I find Fellowship to be, by far, the best done and most important of the 3. What's important is that you see what the hobbits are giving up and exactly what it is they want to protect. They are most reluctant to enter this war, but know they have no choice.
Also, the allure, seductiveness and power of evil is illustrated quite vividly, also establishing what is at stake and how difficult the task before them will be.
Without first establishing these things, there wouldn't be much point to the other films.
They could attack comptetitors very successful with billions of dollars, but by that they destroyed the markets. After MS has destroyed a market they had to find new ways to generate profits again. But in most cases this was not successful yet.
I suggest those with mod points mod parent up. I haven't heard this point made quite so clearly before.
If MS takes over a market by dumping, customers will expect product prices to be free or at least selling below cost. It is then quite difficult to raise prices again. Witness the difficulty (but not impossibility) of having a successful content-for-pay website after so many free sites were developed during the.com boom.
So MS is left owning a market they can't profit from. Race to the bottom.
I think you guys in the USA mustn't have been paying attention lately. You have very little real freedom left.
One of the highest grossing movies this year is Fahrenheit 9/11. No one has come to arrest Michael Moore. We have had 100s of thousands of people protesting in the streets of Manhattan dissenting from the government's views. As far as I know, these went on quite peacefully and were not disrupted by the government.
(Meanwhile, there are now groups explicitly planning to come to NYC during the Republican convention actively plotting to set up diversions to distract police and maybe force an evacuation of Madison Square Garden with false threats.)
The best seller lists are filled with books attacking the Bush administration. Pretty much everyone over here knows the media leans away from this administration (to put it mildly) on almost every issue, and their coverage reflects that.
Let's face it, you can't even show a bit of tit on your TV during the superbowl, just exactly what sort of freedom are you talking about?
But no, a country where you can say anything you want about the government without fear of reprisal, but get in a little trouble for "show[ing] a bit of tit... during the superbowl" (while you can see as much of that as your heart could possibly desire on the web or at your local newsstand) is a country with no freedom left.
a state that locks people up without charges and detains them indefintely
This is indeed a problem, but even here the Supreme Court has stepped in to give these people more rights than the administration had been willing to give them. Our system sometimes moves slowly (look at slavery, women's suffrage, etc.), but it generally moves in the direction of greater freedom and progress over time (not always over the short term).
On the DMCA and IP laws that favor deep pockets, I can't argue with you. Those are unequivocally net losses for freedom, and I don't see it improving any time soon. The only thing we can hope for is that the IP lobbies will continue to over-reach to the point where they impact a majority of citizens, who will suddenly decide they care about this issue.
Also I find waving your arms up and down and doing spining in circles will help with universal translation. Very popular at the UN council meetings, I hear.
Thanks. If you can give me the Slashdot-post equivalent of this technique, I will try it the next time I encounter a similar situation.
Like people speaking to someone who doesn't seem to understand English very well, I thought "shouting" might help get my point across. Because the post I was replying to did not display a very firm grasp of the English language.
Sorry I didn't think of the "!!!1!". Maybe that would have helped, too.
But when you bought the old chess game it didn't specify it would work on the new OS? And this is the programmers fault for not making things compatible with technology 10 years in the future?
I'll just pick just this one example of total, complete, utter lack of reading comprehension.
NOWHERE IN THE SENTENCE YOU QUOTE IS THERE ANYONE ASSIGNING FAULT OR BLAME OF ANY KIND. IT IS A SIMPLE STATEMENT OF FACT, SETTING THE SCENE FOR SUBSEQUENT SENTENCES WHICH WILL VERY LIKELY BE ABOUT THIS SAME TOPIC.
Your entire post consists of similar un-comprehensions. Apply the principles from this example to your other pronouncements to attain enlightenment. Or middle school level reading comprehension skills, at least.
The personal computing revolution has stalled with the advent of the WWW. Excluding the MS virus, personal computing was making a lot of progress up until the mid 90's. Since then we've failed to truly exploit the power of both a computing platform and a means of communication. Somewhere along the way we've floundered. It's not necessarily a bad thing but think about where we could be.
Listen to the guy. He's really just asking where should we be?
I'd just like to point out this would make a very good textbook example of how not to make an argument. No examples. No recommendations for improvement. No citations. No engaging alternative points of view. Asking rhetorical questions and making no attempt to answer. Vague, unsubstantianted criticisms.
This is almost perfectly awful. Of course, Kay's excerpts in the article were pretty much on par with this. Hopefully the reporter just left out all the interesting, cogent parts.
The same is true in the U.S., where the plurality of the electorate does not wish to aggress against the lands of the Ummah.
Where do you get that from? On the particular case of Iraq now, it's very close, with perhaps a plurality now against that war.
But Afghanistan is still seen as uncontroversial (even Michael Moore no longer argues that it wasn't neccessary). Wasn't (isn't?) Afghanistan a land of Ummah, too?
Just curious, what's your position on agression on the part of Ummers in non-Ummah parts of the world, like, say bombing trains in Madrid or blowing up skyscrapers in New York City?
There's a difference between causality and correlation...
Are you seriously saying that the Madrid bombings had NO effect on the outcome of the election? It's quite possible that it was the mishandling of the aftermath that caused Aznar to lose, but without the bombings there is no aftermath to mishandle.
PR is making people believe that it's true, and maybe their PR is that good.
Slashdot Mirror
The fact remains that walmart has such a huge purchasing power, that little stores can not compete.
And when you're Walmart, they're ALL little stores.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
And people should feel downright ASHAMED about devoting their lives to the aquisition of wealth.
But those who devote their lives to building a great company or practice or business, and get rich in the process, may very well be doing something noble. They may be advancing science or improving people's lives in ways that would be impossible in the public or non-profit sector. And that wealth can then be deployed again to help people through charitable giving.
I think Bill Gates, for example, is being far more effective in the way he invests his charitable giving than the government would be with the same money.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I believe that the primary function of society is to give everyone an even chance.
Or, to put it another way, respect each person's inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
However, at least in Europe it can be observed that more liberal abortion laws (often, but not always coupled with better sex education) lead to lower rates of abortion than stricter laws
Here in America, I'm pretty sure there has been a much higher incidence of abortions since abortion was made legal nation wide.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
It's not killing babies. It's killing life-forms in early stages of development.
Are you in favor, then, of making late term, say 3rd trimester, abortions punishable as murder? How about babies that are half in, half out of the mother?
Furthermore, what is a baby if not a human life-form in an early stage of development?
Technically, a month-old embryo is about as advanced as a shrimp. If you are against killing them, then you better be vegetarian, because when you're munching on a ham sandwich, you are partaking in killing and consuming of a creature far more advanced than an embryo, or, hell, moreso than a fully matured pre-natal human child.
...or I'm a proud, pro-human bigot, who unapologetically decides to value a lesser developed member of my own species over a more developed member of another species.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with space. There can't possibly be that much email worth keeping.
Ever get attachments? Subscribe to any mailing lists?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Wow. I loved the way the President handled this interview, based on the transcript.
Your concern about the President not answering questions amuses me, as most of the reporter's utterances are pronouncements more than questions. Bush's "let me finish" thing is very much a part of American media sparring.
I especially loved the part about "shouldn't we solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict before...". That Europeans believe that the greater Arab world gives a whit about the Palestinians would be laughable if it were not so sad. Arab nations do very little for the Palestinian refugees in their midst, when they're not outright discriminating against them. At least Saddam paid them for dying. That's something I guess.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I would never, ever, ever become a PR consultant. I can't stand the type of work it is ( running aorund, chatting it up with people, lying for a living).
...
So why can't the same be said of women?
So...you're saying women are liars? :)
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Given the current state of the IT field with many jobs leaving to go to those in India or other low wage nations, why, would anyone WANT to get in the field?
HALLELUJAH! Can I get an Amen?
I scanned through this list looking for a post just like yours, cause I figured I couldn't be the only one to see this obvious fact.
Who are these idiots that are trying to persuade women to enter a field that has certainly peaked in the Western world (at least for the foreseeable future) as jobs flood out of the country as fast as CEOs can move them?
In fact, maybe it suggests that women had better instincts all along? As fewer women than men entered IT during the delusional dot com era, maybe less of them subsequently lost their jobs. In my experience, there's a lot more women project managers than women coders, and that certainly looks like a heck of a lot better career path right now.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
And I've seen multiple statements that Bush ordered people to find an Iraq link, not to find the people responsible.
It's telling that you still haven't offered a source backing up your statements. For what it's worth, though, I believe you're referring to when Bush asked Clarke to find out IF there was a 9/11 connection to Hussein. Much different than ordering someone to just "Find a 9/11 connection to Hussein".
You really need to do a little more research.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Even if you're the most well behaved nation on Earth (arguably not), you should still be judging yourself based on your own moral standards, rather than against the worst offenders.
I can't disagree with you. Only seeking to explain, not excuse.
But allow me to present another problem, the conflation of weakness with virtue.
The most prominent example of this is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Palestinians are unquestionably the weaker party in the conflict. Thus, they naturally garner more sympathy internationally.
But if you look at the so called Palestinian "leadership", I challenge you to find anything laudable about, say, Yasser Arafat. He has done nothing to improve the Palestinians' lot, he embezzles from his own people, he has never been democratically elected by anyone, his organization summarily executes anyone they suspect of disloyalty with nothing remotely resembling due process, not to mention his overseeing escalating violence at times when peace and compromise seemed more possible.
The extent to which Saddam Hussein's atrocities are ignored by many on the left almost cast him in a sympathetic light, as well.
So this is the problem with reflexively sympathizing with weakness. Your words and actions can end up supporting some truly loathsome characters, and not necessarily help the lot of those with whom you truly do sympathize.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
From the information currently available, Bush was not mislead greatly by underlings, but he instructed them to find only that which supported his presupposition.
Back that up. Bob Woodward's book reports Tenet telling Bush the evidence is a "slam dunk", as Bush expresses skepticism about the evidence. He trusted his top intelligence advisor, and that turned out to be a mistake.
I think that, even if every underling below Bush was still there, if Gore were in office, we'd have invaded Afganistan and Iran, with some action against Saudia Arabia (where most of the terrorists were from and much of the money came from). Of course, I think that the oil prices would be much higher, the budget would be balanced, and Gore would lose the next election for the same reasons that Bush will lose (the economy).
No way to know the outcome of a Gore presidency.
But I don't think the economy is Bush's real problem. The country's pretty much split on whether they trust Bush or Kerry on the economy, because they know Kerry will raise taxes, and many Americans get suspicious when a politician promises to raise taxes "only on the rich."
If WMD were found, we're talking Reaganesque blowout. Even if you just take away Abu Ghraib, I think Bush has a significant lead right now.
I think Kerry would have gotten more "bounce" if he had stuck to Edwards' formulation of "we will destroy you [terrorists]", as opposed to only promising retaliation if something bad happens again.
Guess we'll see in November.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Let me give an example of current American attitudes toward right and wrong. When the news about the Abu Ghraib prison abuses came around, someone in the U.S. government (can't remember the name) publicly defended the actions saying that it wasn't as bad as what was happening there under Saddam.
I think the person saying that was a member of Congress (can't be sure with out the name). I'm pretty sure no one in the Bush administration said that. I'm sure every country has some foolish people in their Congress or Parliament, but the point of having a balance of powers is to limit the damage such people can do.
There is a frustration sometimes that America doing something bad dominates the world press, while much worse things done by much worse regimes are relatively ignored. I suppose that just indicates the U.S. doing something bad is still newsworthy, while it's just assumed of the dictators and truly repressive regimes of the world.
Having said that, Bush has had two unequivocal failures. Being wrong about WMD in Iraq, and Abu Ghraib. Both of these can be attributed to mistakes made by people under him, but for better or worse, the final responsibility for these things end up with the man in charge.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
First Real makes their player compatible with the iPod. Now someone makes iTunes available on Linux.
Apple hardly needs to do a thing to improve iTunes. Their competitors are doing it all for them.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
As a child I thought it was the most thrilling read ever. I suppose our imaginations are more suited to fantasy as children. Everyone knows how imaginative children can be.
For me, it was quite the opposite. As a child, I finished the books but found them slow and somewhat difficult to get through, in the sense of "is something finally gonna happen here or what?".
Reading them again recently as an adult, I found the human interactions much more profound and interesting. The friendship and loyalty between Sam and Frodo and the tragedy of Gollum are quite moving. The sense of sacrifice is palpable. The entreaties to the various kings and stewards to stand up and fight to defend their people's way of life is powerful. The underlying value of humility is an important lesson for our time.
What clinched it for me is the ending with Sam's daughter on his lap. As a new father at the time, that scene generated a lump in my throat.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I am aware that it's very popular, won Oscars etc, but I myself found the book to be very very long winded and the films to be somewhat self-indulgent on the part of, well, everyone in them.
Some things are meant to be unhurried. Those of us who liked the books enjoy hanging out in Middle Earth and were in no rush to leave.
The movies are uneven, but I find Fellowship to be, by far, the best done and most important of the 3. What's important is that you see what the hobbits are giving up and exactly what it is they want to protect. They are most reluctant to enter this war, but know they have no choice.
Also, the allure, seductiveness and power of evil is illustrated quite vividly, also establishing what is at stake and how difficult the task before them will be.
Without first establishing these things, there wouldn't be much point to the other films.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
They could attack comptetitors very successful with billions of dollars, but by that they destroyed the markets. After MS has destroyed a market they had to find new ways to generate profits again. But in most cases this was not successful yet.
I suggest those with mod points mod parent up. I haven't heard this point made quite so clearly before.
If MS takes over a market by dumping, customers will expect product prices to be free or at least selling below cost. It is then quite difficult to raise prices again. Witness the difficulty (but not impossibility) of having a successful content-for-pay website after so many free sites were developed during the .com boom.
So MS is left owning a market they can't profit from. Race to the bottom.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
I think you guys in the USA mustn't have been paying attention lately. You have very little real freedom left.
One of the highest grossing movies this year is Fahrenheit 9/11. No one has come to arrest Michael Moore. We have had 100s of thousands of people protesting in the streets of Manhattan dissenting from the government's views. As far as I know, these went on quite peacefully and were not disrupted by the government.
(Meanwhile, there are now groups explicitly planning to come to NYC during the Republican convention actively plotting to set up diversions to distract police and maybe force an evacuation of Madison Square Garden with false threats.)
The best seller lists are filled with books attacking the Bush administration. Pretty much everyone over here knows the media leans away from this administration (to put it mildly) on almost every issue, and their coverage reflects that.
Let's face it, you can't even show a bit of tit on your TV during the superbowl, just exactly what sort of freedom are you talking about?
But no, a country where you can say anything you want about the government without fear of reprisal, but get in a little trouble for "show[ing] a bit of tit ... during the superbowl" (while you can see as much of that as your heart could possibly desire on the web or at your local newsstand) is a country with no freedom left.
a state that locks people up without charges and detains them indefintely
This is indeed a problem, but even here the Supreme Court has stepped in to give these people more rights than the administration had been willing to give them. Our system sometimes moves slowly (look at slavery, women's suffrage, etc.), but it generally moves in the direction of greater freedom and progress over time (not always over the short term).
On the DMCA and IP laws that favor deep pockets, I can't argue with you. Those are unequivocally net losses for freedom, and I don't see it improving any time soon. The only thing we can hope for is that the IP lobbies will continue to over-reach to the point where they impact a majority of citizens, who will suddenly decide they care about this issue.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Also I find waving your arms up and down and doing spining in circles will help with universal translation. Very popular at the UN council meetings, I hear.
Thanks. If you can give me the Slashdot-post equivalent of this technique, I will try it the next time I encounter a similar situation.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
Those all-caps do make you seem so smart.
Like people speaking to someone who doesn't seem to understand English very well, I thought "shouting" might help get my point across. Because the post I was replying to did not display a very firm grasp of the English language.
Sorry I didn't think of the "!!!1!". Maybe that would have helped, too.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
But when you bought the old chess game it didn't specify it would work on the new OS? And this is the programmers fault for not making things compatible with technology 10 years in the future?
I'll just pick just this one example of total, complete, utter lack of reading comprehension.
NOWHERE IN THE SENTENCE YOU QUOTE IS THERE ANYONE ASSIGNING FAULT OR BLAME OF ANY KIND. IT IS A SIMPLE STATEMENT OF FACT, SETTING THE SCENE FOR SUBSEQUENT SENTENCES WHICH WILL VERY LIKELY BE ABOUT THIS SAME TOPIC.
Your entire post consists of similar un-comprehensions. Apply the principles from this example to your other pronouncements to attain enlightenment. Or middle school level reading comprehension skills, at least.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
In 1987 businesses were finally ramping up with $10-20K PS/2s...
...for playing Grand Theft Auto?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
The personal computing revolution has stalled with the advent of the WWW. Excluding the MS virus, personal computing was making a lot of progress up until the mid 90's. Since then we've failed to truly exploit the power of both a computing platform and a means of communication. Somewhere along the way we've floundered. It's not necessarily a bad thing but think about where we could be.
Listen to the guy. He's really just asking where should we be?
I'd just like to point out this would make a very good textbook example of how not to make an argument. No examples. No recommendations for improvement. No citations. No engaging alternative points of view. Asking rhetorical questions and making no attempt to answer. Vague, unsubstantianted criticisms.
This is almost perfectly awful. Of course, Kay's excerpts in the article were pretty much on par with this. Hopefully the reporter just left out all the interesting, cogent parts.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
The same is true in the U.S., where the plurality of the electorate does not wish to aggress against the lands of the Ummah.
Where do you get that from? On the particular case of Iraq now, it's very close, with perhaps a plurality now against that war.
But Afghanistan is still seen as uncontroversial (even Michael Moore no longer argues that it wasn't neccessary). Wasn't (isn't?) Afghanistan a land of Ummah, too?
Just curious, what's your position on agression on the part of Ummers in non-Ummah parts of the world, like, say bombing trains in Madrid or blowing up skyscrapers in New York City?
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
There's a difference between causality and correlation...
Are you seriously saying that the Madrid bombings had NO effect on the outcome of the election? It's quite possible that it was the mishandling of the aftermath that caused Aznar to lose, but without the bombings there is no aftermath to mishandle.
PR is making people believe that it's true, and maybe their PR is that good.
Well, we've found one point of agreement, then.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo