Exactly right- and when I find I'm in a game that I'm losing, I quit. When I find meat that has grown mold- I throw out the meat AND the mold. We should do something similar with the US Patent Laws.
Hey, Bush is guilty of the same sort of terrorism, but if he's elected fairly, isn't assasinating a definite No-no?
Of course not. Assassination is always the ultimate defense against an unjust leader, no matter how he got into office.
How was Mossadeq a terrorist?
No, you misunderstand- the terrorists influenceing us in that were not the ones we were fighting against, they were our friends the Sauds.
He was voted in and supported by the people, that doesn't give the US, who claims to support all democracy, the right to go and install a dictatorship.
The United States hasn't actually supported democracy ever- we supported democratic republics at one time, but began to give that up back in the 1870s when we made corporations a separate and superior class of citizenry to natural human beings. Follow the *money*. The US government doesn't give a shit about democracy, what they care about is profit.
He wanted to sell oil to the highest bidder or something?
Thus harming the profit margin of US oil comanies.
I thought I answered this- but yes, I am. Fascism was originally the combination of corporate power and government- and a Fascist government is what we have in the United States. We gave up being a Democratic Republic over 110 years ago now. The only choice left is the peace of the grave.
Tell me, were we being pushed around by terrorists before we helped the coup in Chile, Guatemala, or Panama?
Depends on the coup- those countries average a coup a decade, and have since the 1890s.
Were we being pushed around by terrorists before we backed the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem?
Well, yes- considering that President Diem himself, and the Viet Cong, were terrorists.
Were we being pushed around by terrorists before the U.S. overthrew Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran, and installed the Shah as dictator?
Uh, yes- that's why we did it (we've been pushed around and controlled by terrorists in the Middle East since Prescott Bush sold guns to the Wahhabis and allowed the House of Saud to come to power).
That last was very interesting- it never occured to me before, but it's completely right, that the Republicans have fallen into moral relativism, that very evil that Pope Benedict XVI preached AGAINST the night before his election. I always think of the left as falling into this sin, not the right- but it explains so much including my most recent Journal Entry about the new federal budget turning against those who voted for Bush.
The only ideal I can see that we won't violate is "make the short term 3-month bottom line profitable at all costs". That to me is an ideal not worth keeping.
You may think they are mythical and that we don't live up to them, and you may be right. But the solution is to find a way to live up to them, not to abandon them. I think you have become a little too fixated on your Rome/Carthage analogy. Our real choice is to either handle our problems in a way that allows us to live in harmony with the world and other nations, or (as you say) to continue to exploit others' suffering for our own gains. The latter course is unsustainable in the long term -- note that the Roman empire (and all other empires) are just as extinct as Carthage. You might also think about why Germany lost World War II.
Germany lost WWII because Hitler didn't have WMDs and mismanaged his generals. And if you think America will give up the profit motive to live in harmony with the world and other nations- then you're as much of a dreamer as I was 6 years ago before corporate America decided that my life wasn't worth supporting.
Assuming that you are serious about the subject and not just being deliberately provocative, you might be interesting in this book, which looks at how various societies succeeded or failed in dealing with their problems, and why.
Interesting, I'll add it to my reading list- I liked Guns, Germs, and Steel, though I disagreed with some of it's primary ideas.
Don't have time right now to reference it properly, but I think you'll find the Koran saying specifically that Allah does not punish the son for the sins of the father
The Koran also says you shouldn't take innocent life, that only a cleric or above can declare Jihad or a Fatwa, and that you shouldn't use violence to achieve your aims. I'd say the IslamoNazis have been very Sola Scriptura- picking and choosing the verses they like and ignoring the rest.
No, we shouldn't. What you propose is equivalent to the destruction of the USA -- by destroying all the things that make it worth keeping.
And what things would those be? What makes the United States worth keeping? We've sucked resources and capital out of the rest of the world. Our freedom is built upon the slavery of people in the third world around the globe. Our cheap oil depens on supporting despots like the Sauds and dictators like Hussien. We've even decimated the native population of our own land in search of profit. We already ARE Carthage- sucking profit built on the misery of others. We can either end like Carthage- or become Rome. That's the real choice here. Your myth of independance and freedom is just that- a myth. It hasn't been reality for more than a century now.
Why would they need to smuggle anything anywhere anyways? Look at Oklahoma city. All you need is to procure right where you are innocent ingredients. Mix them up in non-innocent recipes, and voilà. I'm sure they have chemists to guide operations. That's why the only possibly effective measure against such attacks is infiltration. They won't catch them all, but they make it harder. A big military machinery sucking up all the resources doesn't do much against terrorism. But of course it can be useful to fund the big buddies in the weapons/aeronotics complex that really runs the government. (yeah, I know, and the oil industry guys, but it's not like they are even bothering to hide or anything).
Some key ingredients of nukes are not "innocent ingredients". But beyond that- if travel were strictly curtailed, there would be almost no terrorism. And for that, you need a big military machine- but one much different than the one we've got. Fixed positions with overlapping fields of fire, not highly mobile attack squads.
The 4 cylinder offenhauser is just mind-numbingly macho at 500 RPM, if you don't understand the difference, you probably never will. Maybe it's because i grew up listening to race cars with these engines screaming arround the track at indy.
And my point is, we can simulate ALL of that- the sound, the vibration, if you really wanted to, you could fix up some sort of software governor system between the batteries and the engine to require you to press a clutch and shift to change the RPM range of the foot pedal. I'm willing to bet that with enough work, you could simulate all of that "mind-numbingly macho" and then some in an electric vehicle....
Except for now we're on the fourth war since the fall of Byzantium- the Ottoman Empire- and Jeffers would indeed find this new pattern most familiar. The key as always for him was Inhumanism- and I too completely agree.
Carthage, back in the pre-Roman world, invented international trade- survived on it, the only thing the Phonecians had to offer from their cruddy little empire was the movement of goods. They made nothing themselves other than ships and armies- trade was their entire reason for being; and envy of that trade was the cause of their unpopularity. They enjoyed a higher standard of living built on the slave labor of other cultures; eventually those greater cultures destroyed them.
America can either learn from Carthage's mistake, or make the same mistake. We're currently making the same mistake- the choice before us is threefold: Surrender to the great new power of Protestant Islam; withdrawl from world trade; or becoming genocidally ruthless. The longer we wait, the more death there will be.
How can someone's family be executed for what they do?
In the old days, they always were- that's why the sins of the father are visited upon the sons for seven generations...this is the justice system that the terrorists already believe in, and by not following it, we're wimping out.
Would you kill the families of American murderers too?
Doing so would most certainly wipe out certain types of rather dangerous genetic mental disorders, and would leave behind only people who have an utter lack of such behavior. It's just adding a new evolutionary pressure.
Suicide bomber or not, killing is killing.
No, because suicide bombers are an invader- and empires can't put up with invaders and still remain empires.
You kill the families of suicide bombers, their neighbours will say that the families and countrymen of your soldiers equally deserve to die, and we are all killing each other. Have you even thought this out???
Absolutely. And when the human race is wiped out we will either have a single country left the winner, or we'll have no winners. And there will be peace once more. Graveyards are very peacefull.
As for revenge and fear...fear of the US is what drives a lot of terrorism anyway, and your government knows this. Those who want more war know this.
Where you see, I want NO more war- ever. There are two ways I can see to accomplish that- limit the influence of the US government on the world and retreat, or advance and make the human species extinct, or at least those who would attack their neighbors, since they're a mutant abberation anyway.
People who aren't afraid will stand up in a definite way, either in military or diplomatic fora.
And thus, People who Are Not Afraid should not be allowed to live.
The fear you want to instill simply breeds more terrorists
Not once they're all dead. There will eventually be peace again- when the Middle East becomes a shipping channel between the Mediteranean and Indian Ocean that is very useful because it glows in the dark. But there is an alternative option- make a 12 mile border around the United States and it's territories, and destroy any vehicle, animal, or other animated being trying to cross.
Well... you make an interesting point, but the difference between the two cargos is clear. Any operation like the Mexican tunnel you talk about cannot be the product of one individual, or even a handful of like-minded individuals. It's going to be the result of a concerted effort of something like an organized drug cartel. In theory I guess it's possible that a terrorist group operating on North American soil could be sufficiently organized to pull off an anthrax-smuggling operation like you describe. It's just very unlikely.
Or they could just Hire the Drug Cartel, couldn't they? After all, what does it matter to MS-13, who ran this tunnel, what the hell they're smuggling as long as they get paid for it?
You have to define innocent here. Innocent as in American, or innocent as in has done nothing to warrant being killed? Because we have killed FAR more truely innocent people than the terrorists ever killed of Americans. When we bomb a city to kill a couple terrorist targets, and end up killing thousands in "collateral" damage, are we any better than they are?
No- but then again, the aim isn't to be "better" than they are- the aim is to get revenge and instill enough fear of the US to end the freakin' jihad.
The VAST majority of Afganistan is innocent and Al Queda wasn't even in Iraq until we started bombing it and killing more innocent civilians all in the name of "protecting the homeland." Would it have been acceptable, if say, we knew there were a few terrorists cells living in downtown Chicago so we then leveled downtown Chicago? Are their innocent people any differant than the innocent people here, other than they have the misfortune of being labeled as terrorists because of their relative proximity to some?
Well, we'd be better off if we either based it on families or areas many more miles wide...I prefer the idea that the family of a suicide bomber simply isn't fit to live.
Why would the rich like a small government that they can't control, over a large corrupt government that they can? It's not like citizens have any choice in the matter.
An incendiary response but actually pretty insightful. I' m guessing that whoever modded you flamebait did not see that your tongue was in your cheek. the key words are "if we really wanted to". That hits the nail on the head. Could we stop illegals from crossing over? Stem the flow of drugs crossing the borders? Of course. How much money do we want to throw in that direction. Don't forget though, those mexicans are propping a large segment of our economy up with their cheap replaceable labor. Therefore we don't really want to stop them we just want to control and slow them down, as dysfunctional as the whole thing sounds.
And the reason behind that is that we don't want to actually do the work to have a real economy that provides a reasonable standard of living for citizens. Instead we focus on cheap and replacable labor- and take the meth and drug problems as part of the price. I find that sad.
If the question is,"What makes America Great?" the answer is a loud and resounding, "IMMIGRANTS!"
If we need immigrants or in fact anybody else to make America Great, then we really should be questioning what we mean by the word "Great". I'd personally say that makes the American economy a huge and dismal failure- and our utter lack of ability to net export at all in the last 30 years is the nail in THAT coffin. If we really wanted to make America Great- we'd need to fight a couple more world wars. We don't want to make America Great- the people who are in charge are quite content with simply amassing huge amounts of money at the expense of everybody else, especially those "IMMIGRANTS".
Yes, what I said was partially tounge in cheek- but it was based in a sound understanding of just how corrupt society really is.
Ok, I've jumped universes AGAIN...Could have sworn I was still working for IMG in 1998 when the Cole was attacked and we finally retaliated against bin Laden the first time lobbing a few cruise missiles into one of his training camps- but it might have been only the embassies. At any rate- that attack was *not* unprovoked.
Ever stop to think that maybe some people who wish to harm Americans are reacting self-defensively to previous Administrations' wrongful actions against them? You solution for this is 10 eyes for an eye?
Well, actually, YES. Unlike Christianity, America is more heading down the road of Carthage- and if we don't modify ourselves to be more like Romans, we'll get pushed around by every two-bit terrorist who wants to make a name for themselves. Of course, the Roman Solution when faced with Jewish Terrorism was 500 lives for a life. If we're going to be the evil empire eating babies no matter what we do, just like Carthage was, shouldn't we play the part?
True enough- I should have said gas usage. But then again, as a rule based on LOCAL input vs LOCAL output, erg for erg grid power is the absolute best way we've got to charge batteries, because it's not being generated locally.
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Exactly right- and when I find I'm in a game that I'm losing, I quit. When I find meat that has grown mold- I throw out the meat AND the mold. We should do something similar with the US Patent Laws.
Hey, Bush is guilty of the same sort of terrorism, but if he's elected fairly, isn't assasinating a definite No-no?
Of course not. Assassination is always the ultimate defense against an unjust leader, no matter how he got into office.
How was Mossadeq a terrorist?
No, you misunderstand- the terrorists influenceing us in that were not the ones we were fighting against, they were our friends the Sauds.
He was voted in and supported by the people, that doesn't give the US, who claims to support all democracy, the right to go and install a dictatorship.
The United States hasn't actually supported democracy ever- we supported democratic republics at one time, but began to give that up back in the 1870s when we made corporations a separate and superior class of citizenry to natural human beings. Follow the *money*. The US government doesn't give a shit about democracy, what they care about is profit.
He wanted to sell oil to the highest bidder or something?
Thus harming the profit margin of US oil comanies.
Let him!
Not a chance- it harms profits.
And my point is that people, rather than goods, are much easier to stop....
I thought I answered this- but yes, I am. Fascism was originally the combination of corporate power and government- and a Fascist government is what we have in the United States. We gave up being a Democratic Republic over 110 years ago now. The only choice left is the peace of the grave.
Tell me, were we being pushed around by terrorists before we helped the coup in Chile, Guatemala, or Panama?
Depends on the coup- those countries average a coup a decade, and have since the 1890s.
Were we being pushed around by terrorists before we backed the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem?
Well, yes- considering that President Diem himself, and the Viet Cong, were terrorists.
Were we being pushed around by terrorists before the U.S. overthrew Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran, and installed the Shah as dictator?
Uh, yes- that's why we did it (we've been pushed around and controlled by terrorists in the Middle East since Prescott Bush sold guns to the Wahhabis and allowed the House of Saud to come to power).
That last was very interesting- it never occured to me before, but it's completely right, that the Republicans have fallen into moral relativism, that very evil that Pope Benedict XVI preached AGAINST the night before his election. I always think of the left as falling into this sin, not the right- but it explains so much including my most recent Journal Entry about the new federal budget turning against those who voted for Bush.
Our ideals.
The only ideal I can see that we won't violate is "make the short term 3-month bottom line profitable at all costs". That to me is an ideal not worth keeping.
You may think they are mythical and that we don't live up to them, and you may be right. But the solution is to find a way to live up to them, not to abandon them. I think you have become a little too fixated on your Rome/Carthage analogy. Our real choice is to either handle our problems in a way that allows us to live in harmony with the world and other nations, or (as you say) to continue to exploit others' suffering for our own gains. The latter course is unsustainable in the long term -- note that the Roman empire (and all other empires) are just as extinct as Carthage. You might also think about why Germany lost World War II.
Germany lost WWII because Hitler didn't have WMDs and mismanaged his generals. And if you think America will give up the profit motive to live in harmony with the world and other nations- then you're as much of a dreamer as I was 6 years ago before corporate America decided that my life wasn't worth supporting.
Assuming that you are serious about the subject and not just being deliberately provocative, you might be interesting in this book, which looks at how various societies succeeded or failed in dealing with their problems, and why.
Interesting, I'll add it to my reading list- I liked Guns, Germs, and Steel, though I disagreed with some of it's primary ideas.
Don't have time right now to reference it properly, but I think you'll find the Koran saying specifically that Allah does not punish the son for the sins of the father
The Koran also says you shouldn't take innocent life, that only a cleric or above can declare Jihad or a Fatwa, and that you shouldn't use violence to achieve your aims. I'd say the IslamoNazis have been very Sola Scriptura- picking and choosing the verses they like and ignoring the rest.
Not much point in going after a terrorist firebrand's estranged family members.
Allegedly estranged- bin Laden for instance gets a lot of money from family holdings in Sudan.
No, we shouldn't. What you propose is equivalent to the destruction of the USA -- by destroying all the things that make it worth keeping.
And what things would those be? What makes the United States worth keeping? We've sucked resources and capital out of the rest of the world. Our freedom is built upon the slavery of people in the third world around the globe. Our cheap oil depens on supporting despots like the Sauds and dictators like Hussien. We've even decimated the native population of our own land in search of profit. We already ARE Carthage- sucking profit built on the misery of others. We can either end like Carthage- or become Rome. That's the real choice here. Your myth of independance and freedom is just that- a myth. It hasn't been reality for more than a century now.
Why would they need to smuggle anything anywhere anyways? Look at Oklahoma city. All you need is to procure right where you are innocent ingredients. Mix them up in non-innocent recipes, and voilà. I'm sure they have chemists to guide operations. That's why the only possibly effective measure against such attacks is infiltration. They won't catch them all, but they make it harder. A big military machinery sucking up all the resources doesn't do much against terrorism. But of course it can be useful to fund the big buddies in the weapons/aeronotics complex that really runs the government. (yeah, I know, and the oil industry guys, but it's not like they are even bothering to hide or anything).
Some key ingredients of nukes are not "innocent ingredients". But beyond that- if travel were strictly curtailed, there would be almost no terrorism. And for that, you need a big military machine- but one much different than the one we've got. Fixed positions with overlapping fields of fire, not highly mobile attack squads.
The 4 cylinder offenhauser is just mind-numbingly macho at 500 RPM, if you don't understand the difference, you probably never will. Maybe it's because i grew up listening to race cars with these engines screaming arround the track at indy.
And my point is, we can simulate ALL of that- the sound, the vibration, if you really wanted to, you could fix up some sort of software governor system between the batteries and the engine to require you to press a clutch and shift to change the RPM range of the foot pedal. I'm willing to bet that with enough work, you could simulate all of that "mind-numbingly macho" and then some in an electric vehicle....
Except for now we're on the fourth war since the fall of Byzantium- the Ottoman Empire- and Jeffers would indeed find this new pattern most familiar. The key as always for him was Inhumanism- and I too completely agree.
Carthage, back in the pre-Roman world, invented international trade- survived on it, the only thing the Phonecians had to offer from their cruddy little empire was the movement of goods. They made nothing themselves other than ships and armies- trade was their entire reason for being; and envy of that trade was the cause of their unpopularity. They enjoyed a higher standard of living built on the slave labor of other cultures; eventually those greater cultures destroyed them.
America can either learn from Carthage's mistake, or make the same mistake. We're currently making the same mistake- the choice before us is threefold: Surrender to the great new power of Protestant Islam; withdrawl from world trade; or becoming genocidally ruthless. The longer we wait, the more death there will be.
How can someone's family be executed for what they do?
In the old days, they always were- that's why the sins of the father are visited upon the sons for seven generations...this is the justice system that the terrorists already believe in, and by not following it, we're wimping out.
Would you kill the families of American murderers too?
Doing so would most certainly wipe out certain types of rather dangerous genetic mental disorders, and would leave behind only people who have an utter lack of such behavior. It's just adding a new evolutionary pressure.
Suicide bomber or not, killing is killing.
No, because suicide bombers are an invader- and empires can't put up with invaders and still remain empires.
You kill the families of suicide bombers, their neighbours will say that the families and countrymen of your soldiers equally deserve to die, and we are all killing each other. Have you even thought this out???
Absolutely. And when the human race is wiped out we will either have a single country left the winner, or we'll have no winners. And there will be peace once more. Graveyards are very peacefull.
As for revenge and fear...fear of the US is what drives a lot of terrorism anyway, and your government knows this. Those who want more war know this.
Where you see, I want NO more war- ever. There are two ways I can see to accomplish that- limit the influence of the US government on the world and retreat, or advance and make the human species extinct, or at least those who would attack their neighbors, since they're a mutant abberation anyway.
People who aren't afraid will stand up in a definite way, either in military or diplomatic fora.
And thus, People who Are Not Afraid should not be allowed to live.
The fear you want to instill simply breeds more terrorists
Not once they're all dead. There will eventually be peace again- when the Middle East becomes a shipping channel between the Mediteranean and Indian Ocean that is very useful because it glows in the dark. But there is an alternative option- make a 12 mile border around the United States and it's territories, and destroy any vehicle, animal, or other animated being trying to cross.
No way what you want is a 4 cylinder offenhauser breathing through 3 inch headers and twin glass-pack mufflers, idling at 500 RPM
And this would be different from a piston speaker thumping the floor at 33.33 hz exactly how?
Well... you make an interesting point, but the difference between the two cargos is clear. Any operation like the Mexican tunnel you talk about cannot be the product of one individual, or even a handful of like-minded individuals. It's going to be the result of a concerted effort of something like an organized drug cartel. In theory I guess it's possible that a terrorist group operating on North American soil could be sufficiently organized to pull off an anthrax-smuggling operation like you describe. It's just very unlikely.
Or they could just Hire the Drug Cartel, couldn't they? After all, what does it matter to MS-13, who ran this tunnel, what the hell they're smuggling as long as they get paid for it?
You have to define innocent here. Innocent as in American, or innocent as in has done nothing to warrant being killed? Because we have killed FAR more truely innocent people than the terrorists ever killed of Americans. When we bomb a city to kill a couple terrorist targets, and end up killing thousands in "collateral" damage, are we any better than they are?
No- but then again, the aim isn't to be "better" than they are- the aim is to get revenge and instill enough fear of the US to end the freakin' jihad.
The VAST majority of Afganistan is innocent and Al Queda wasn't even in Iraq until we started bombing it and killing more innocent civilians all in the name of "protecting the homeland." Would it have been acceptable, if say, we knew there were a few terrorists cells living in downtown Chicago so we then leveled downtown Chicago? Are their innocent people any differant than the innocent people here, other than they have the misfortune of being labeled as terrorists because of their relative proximity to some?
Well, we'd be better off if we either based it on families or areas many more miles wide...I prefer the idea that the family of a suicide bomber simply isn't fit to live.
That's called the Saddam approach.
Actually, it's the Machiavelli approach- Saddam was merely a bad student of it (in that he left witnesses behind....to testify at the current trial).
Why would the rich like a small government that they can't control, over a large corrupt government that they can? It's not like citizens have any choice in the matter.
An incendiary response but actually pretty insightful. I' m guessing that whoever modded you flamebait did not see that your tongue was in your cheek. the key words are "if we really wanted to". That hits the nail on the head. Could we stop illegals from crossing over? Stem the flow of drugs crossing the borders? Of course. How much money do we want to throw in that direction. Don't forget though, those mexicans are propping a large segment of our economy up with their cheap replaceable labor. Therefore we don't really want to stop them we just want to control and slow them down, as dysfunctional as the whole thing sounds.
,"What makes America Great?" the answer is a loud and resounding, "IMMIGRANTS!"
And the reason behind that is that we don't want to actually do the work to have a real economy that provides a reasonable standard of living for citizens. Instead we focus on cheap and replacable labor- and take the meth and drug problems as part of the price. I find that sad.
If the question is
If we need immigrants or in fact anybody else to make America Great, then we really should be questioning what we mean by the word "Great". I'd personally say that makes the American economy a huge and dismal failure- and our utter lack of ability to net export at all in the last 30 years is the nail in THAT coffin. If we really wanted to make America Great- we'd need to fight a couple more world wars. We don't want to make America Great- the people who are in charge are quite content with simply amassing huge amounts of money at the expense of everybody else, especially those "IMMIGRANTS".
Yes, what I said was partially tounge in cheek- but it was based in a sound understanding of just how corrupt society really is.
The No Fly Zones were US policy, not UN....and were never covered by a UN resolution or mandate.
Ok, I've jumped universes AGAIN...Could have sworn I was still working for IMG in 1998 when the Cole was attacked and we finally retaliated against bin Laden the first time lobbing a few cruise missiles into one of his training camps- but it might have been only the embassies. At any rate- that attack was *not* unprovoked.
Ever stop to think that maybe some people who wish to harm Americans are reacting self-defensively to previous Administrations' wrongful actions against them? You solution for this is 10 eyes for an eye?
Well, actually, YES. Unlike Christianity, America is more heading down the road of Carthage- and if we don't modify ourselves to be more like Romans, we'll get pushed around by every two-bit terrorist who wants to make a name for themselves. Of course, the Roman Solution when faced with Jewish Terrorism was 500 lives for a life. If we're going to be the evil empire eating babies no matter what we do, just like Carthage was, shouldn't we play the part?
When I was a kid, Westinghouse was REFRIDGERATORS!
True enough- I should have said gas usage. But then again, as a rule based on LOCAL input vs LOCAL output, erg for erg grid power is the absolute best way we've got to charge batteries, because it's not being generated locally.