Enough with the attempts at changing the subject. I've never held that the United States is a utopia. I've only held that we have more respect for the free practice of religion than some European countries. This is evidenced by the fact that they are removing the ability of Muslims (and Jews in the case of France, see the skullcap ban in public schools) to freely practice their faith. No amount of rationalization will change this underlying fact.
Oh - I don't know about that. All Russia needed to do was wait for the idiots in Germany to launch a couple more winter campaigns against Moscow.
Your right, you don't know about it. The Soviet Union's entire logistical apparatus was dependent on lend-lease. They brought American supplies to the front using American trucks. Their fighters flew with high octane gasoline that was refined in American refineries. Their trains were pulled by American locomotives. Their troops were fed American rations.
For the most part they made their own weapons (though in some instances these with combined with American material aid, i.e: Katyusha rockets that were launched from the back of Studebaker trucks) systems but in so doing they neglected the rest of their economy. That's where lend-lease came in. Don't take my word for it though, ask Uncle Joe: "Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."
I hate when my fellow Americans take the attitude that we won the war after Europe lost it.
I didn't take that attitude. I just pointed out that the Soviet Union would have not survived without Western material aid. That's a historical fact that isn't in much dispute -- even most Russian historians will acknowledge it.
Those people forget that we actually helped to enable Hitler in his earlier years. How 'bout those IBM contracts, that helped to chart all those Jew's geneology?
Peacetime trade is not the same thing as enabling. The real enabling occurred in Paris and London. If the French had marched into the Rhineland and enforced the Versailles treaty the war might never have happened. Ask the man himself:
Once again, the whole world waited to see how the French and British would react. German troops entering the Rhineland even had orders to scoot back across the Rhine bridges if the French Army attacked. But in France, the politicians were simply unable to convince their generals to act, and were also unable to get any British support for a military response. So they did nothing. The French Army, with its one hundred divisions, never budged against the 30,000 lightly armed German soldiers occupying the Rhineland, even though France and Britain were both obligated to preserve the demilitarized zone by the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact of mutual assistance.
It had been a tremendous gamble for Hitler, one that might have cost him everything if his troops had been humiliated by their old enemies. Later, Hitler would privately admit: "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
My friend who fought in the Pacific probably wouldn't want a Shinto Temple near Pearl Harbor either but that doesn't mean that we trample on the 1st amendment to accommodate him.
Comparing public outrage to institutionalized discrimination is disingenuous. The United States has it's share of people that are intolerant towards other faiths yet our government isn't busy drafting laws to control what kind of Houses of Worship can be built (the Swiss minaret ban) or what kind of clothing can be worn (the French legislation). You've literally got national governments in Europe that are concerning themselves with the clothes that people wear. That's absurd and frightening.
Russia is probably owed as much for the defeat of the Nazis as the Americans.
It was a collaborative effort. The Soviet Union would not have been able to defeat Germany without logistical support from the US and UK. The Western Allies would not have been able to fight a relatively bloodless campaign (compared to the losses of the other Allied powers, both in actual numbers and as a percentage of pre-war population) without Soviet manpower. Both sides contributed.
and form a new Manhattan style project to harvest energy directly to the sun to end our oil addiction
That analogy is getting old. The Manhattan project cost $22,000,000,000 when adjusted for inflation. The United States Department of Energy had an annual budget of $24,100,000,000 for the last fiscal year. It's literally getting a Manhattan project sized check every year and we are still dependent on oil. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the fact that petroleum is an energy dense substance that's easy to suck out of the ground? No amount of money is going to change that -- unless all of our knowledge of chemistry and physics is wrong.
Stop lumping Afghanistan and Iraq together as if they were the same thing. They weren't. Afghanistan was harboring a terrorist organization that murdered 3,000 people on American soil. No nation-state in the history of humanity with the ability to respond to that action would have declined to do so
It did not help that we were bullied into joining the Coalition of the Unwilling
"Bullied"? I thought it had something to do with NATO. My country stood on the brink of nuclear devastation to honor it's commitments to Europe during the Cold War. Now you consider it "bullying" when you are asked to stand up and honor them yourselves?
We have about 5% Muslims in Western Europe
And? We more immigrants than that and we aren't passing laws to make it harder for them to exercise their religion.
Although I admit that the ban on Burqas (face-covering thing for women) seems a ban on religion, the facial expression is a vital part in conversation.
Irrelevant. You are trampling all over the free exercise of religion. That legislation is indefensible.
Re:No successful terrorist attacks since 9/11?
on
Top Secret America
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, but if most of the fighting happens "over there" instead of "over here" we can use more of our cool toys. Not as easy to drop JDAMs and Hellfire missiles on the terrorists in Arkansas;)
That's done with a lancet - like a mini knife - that cuts you with a spring mechanism. It happens so fast you really don't feel any pain at all. It's usually used on small children but there's no reason why it won't work on an adult. No needles involved.
I'm with the people who are afraid of needles and those damn things bother me more than the actual needle. Waiting for that spring to fire just sucks. I donate blood regularly and I hate that finger-prick for the iron count more than the IV.
Re:"No terrorist attacks since 9/11"?
on
Top Secret America
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes they were. They intended to extort money out of the Government and were willing to use violence against the population to intimidate the government into complying. That's almost a textbook definition of terrorism.
Funny that in Europe many people think its the redneck militaristic Americans who are the douchebags.
At least we respect freedom of religion in this country and aren't busy passinglegislation to infringe upon the practice of that freedom. Maybe you should take a look at your own backyard before you start throwing stones into mine?
Not having a gun handy very likely doesn't affect the number of suicide attempts, but it may reduce the number of successes. Not all methods of suicide are equally effective.
So you are going to take away my gun lest someone else find an effective means of offing themselves?
I've never understood why suicide numbers are even a legitimate topic of conversation with regards to gun rights. Why would you take away the liberty of all because of the self-harmful actions of an extremely small minority?
On August 23, 2003, while in protective custody at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his cell by Joseph Druce, a self-described white supremacist and inmate serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole for killing a man who allegedly made a sexual pass after picking Druce up hitchhiking. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be "ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma."[citation needed] There have been questions raised about the wisdom and propriety of placing these two men in the same unit, since prison officials had been warned by another inmate that Druce had something planned.[3]
A Worcester, Massachusetts jury found Druce guilty of first-degree murder on January 25, 2006, after the jury rejected his insanity defense. The next day, Druce was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a second time.
Interesting that the guy who killed him try to claim insanity. What's the point when you are already serving a life sentence? I would have stood in open court, confessed to the crime and asked the Judge for a medal. What more can they do to you?
Attempted rape or even rape itself is not a good reason to murder someone.
The law disagrees with you. Rape and kidnapping are crimes that one is entitled to respond to with deadly force in the overwhelming majority of American jurisdictions.
Crime and gun ownership, in most western nations (Russia is not in this category) work the way I noted.
Except that it doesn't. Switzerland, Sweden, France, Finland, Germany and Norway all have higher rates of ownership than the UK yet have less violent crime. Perhaps you should just throw in the towel and admit that you can't prove a linkage between gun ownership rates and crime?
I'm condemning the short-sighted viewpoint that views gun ownership as a solution to violent crime.
Nobody has suggested it's a "solution" to violent crime. Guns are just a means for people to defend themselves against violent crime. Self defense is an inalienable right of all human beings.
Americans discuss the virtue of blowing people away and never
Point out the post in this discussion where somebody said it was virtuous to blow someone away. Or STFU and stop repeating stereotypes. Your choice.
I can at least somewhat fight someone who has a knife
You don't know much about self-defense. I've had training in defending against attacks with both firearms and knives. Knives are the tougher proposition by far. You can disable a firearm by pushing it out of battery (automatic) or locking up the cylinder (revolver). You can render it impotent by grabbing onto it and pointing it away from you. Grabbing onto a knife is generally not advised.
He certainly won't be able to go on a mass killing spree
If you want to kill (or even maim) someone, standing at any distance with a gun is a comparatively uninvolved way of going about it.
Only if you are a sociopath. Well adjusted people do not snap and commit murder just because it's "easy" If they did I suspect we'd hear a lot more stories about people being run over.....
If you seriously want someone dead, a knife is at least a more "honest" way of going about it.
I don't want anybody to be dead. I want to defend myself. Guns are more effective than knives for this application. They also come with less legal hassles in most of the United States.
However, that doesn't mean I have to be a shrinking violet when it comes to defending myself.
Have fun defending yourself with that knife if you get attacked by more than one aggressor or run into a scumbag with a 9mm.
I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that 12-year old girls are generally underrepresented in gun ownership as well as in accidental gun deaths and that perhaps these could be related.
Actually that's quite the stretch. 12 year old girls are generally underrepresented in automobile ownership yet they die almost every day in automobile crashes. Figure that one out.
Somehow, the whole rest of the western world manages to not only have less violent crime, but also less private gun ownership
Crime and gun ownership do not correlate. Finland has a lot of guns and a low crime rate. Russia has next to no guns (in civilian hands) and a high crime rate.
Perhaps the Open Carry folk could try and think a little bit harder and try to address the epidemic poverty, horrible education and nonsensical drug policy instead of pouring more gasoline on the fire?
That's funny, you tacitly admit that guns don't cause crime yet continue to condemn them. Interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
Enough with the attempts at changing the subject. I've never held that the United States is a utopia. I've only held that we have more respect for the free practice of religion than some European countries. This is evidenced by the fact that they are removing the ability of Muslims (and Jews in the case of France, see the skullcap ban in public schools) to freely practice their faith. No amount of rationalization will change this underlying fact.
Oh - I don't know about that. All Russia needed to do was wait for the idiots in Germany to launch a couple more winter campaigns against Moscow.
Your right, you don't know about it. The Soviet Union's entire logistical apparatus was dependent on lend-lease. They brought American supplies to the front using American trucks. Their fighters flew with high octane gasoline that was refined in American refineries. Their trains were pulled by American locomotives. Their troops were fed American rations.
For the most part they made their own weapons (though in some instances these with combined with American material aid, i.e: Katyusha rockets that were launched from the back of Studebaker trucks) systems but in so doing they neglected the rest of their economy. That's where lend-lease came in. Don't take my word for it though, ask Uncle Joe: "Without American production the United Nations could never have won the war."
I hate when my fellow Americans take the attitude that we won the war after Europe lost it.
I didn't take that attitude. I just pointed out that the Soviet Union would have not survived without Western material aid. That's a historical fact that isn't in much dispute -- even most Russian historians will acknowledge it.
Those people forget that we actually helped to enable Hitler in his earlier years. How 'bout those IBM contracts, that helped to chart all those Jew's geneology?
Peacetime trade is not the same thing as enabling. The real enabling occurred in Paris and London. If the French had marched into the Rhineland and enforced the Versailles treaty the war might never have happened. Ask the man himself:
Once again, the whole world waited to see how the French and British would react. German troops entering the Rhineland even had orders to scoot back across the Rhine bridges if the French Army attacked. But in France, the politicians were simply unable to convince their generals to act, and were also unable to get any British support for a military response. So they did nothing. The French Army, with its one hundred divisions, never budged against the 30,000 lightly armed German soldiers occupying the Rhineland, even though France and Britain were both obligated to preserve the demilitarized zone by the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact of mutual assistance.
It had been a tremendous gamble for Hitler, one that might have cost him everything if his troops had been humiliated by their old enemies. Later, Hitler would privately admit: "The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tail between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance."
My friend who fought in the Pacific probably wouldn't want a Shinto Temple near Pearl Harbor either but that doesn't mean that we trample on the 1st amendment to accommodate him.
So your defense if European bigotry is to point out that other countries on this planet are worse? Yeah, that's a winning argument you've got there.
Comparing public outrage to institutionalized discrimination is disingenuous. The United States has it's share of people that are intolerant towards other faiths yet our government isn't busy drafting laws to control what kind of Houses of Worship can be built (the Swiss minaret ban) or what kind of clothing can be worn (the French legislation). You've literally got national governments in Europe that are concerning themselves with the clothes that people wear. That's absurd and frightening.
For Anglo-Saxon contributions? How about the Magna Carta?
Russia is probably owed as much for the defeat of the Nazis as the Americans.
It was a collaborative effort. The Soviet Union would not have been able to defeat Germany without logistical support from the US and UK. The Western Allies would not have been able to fight a relatively bloodless campaign (compared to the losses of the other Allied powers, both in actual numbers and as a percentage of pre-war population) without Soviet manpower. Both sides contributed.
and form a new Manhattan style project to harvest energy directly to the sun to end our oil addiction
That analogy is getting old. The Manhattan project cost $22,000,000,000 when adjusted for inflation. The United States Department of Energy had an annual budget of $24,100,000,000 for the last fiscal year. It's literally getting a Manhattan project sized check every year and we are still dependent on oil. Why is that? Could it have something to do with the fact that petroleum is an energy dense substance that's easy to suck out of the ground? No amount of money is going to change that -- unless all of our knowledge of chemistry and physics is wrong.
The last time I checked that Mosque had been approved by the relevant NYC zoning departments. Got any other bad comparisons that you want to make?
stupid attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan
Stop lumping Afghanistan and Iraq together as if they were the same thing. They weren't. Afghanistan was harboring a terrorist organization that murdered 3,000 people on American soil. No nation-state in the history of humanity with the ability to respond to that action would have declined to do so
It did not help that we were bullied into joining the Coalition of the Unwilling
"Bullied"? I thought it had something to do with NATO. My country stood on the brink of nuclear devastation to honor it's commitments to Europe during the Cold War. Now you consider it "bullying" when you are asked to stand up and honor them yourselves?
We have about 5% Muslims in Western Europe
And? We more immigrants than that and we aren't passing laws to make it harder for them to exercise their religion.
Although I admit that the ban on Burqas (face-covering thing for women) seems a ban on religion, the facial expression is a vital part in conversation.
Irrelevant. You are trampling all over the free exercise of religion. That legislation is indefensible.
Yeah, but if most of the fighting happens "over there" instead of "over here" we can use more of our cool toys. Not as easy to drop JDAMs and Hellfire missiles on the terrorists in Arkansas ;)
That's done with a lancet - like a mini knife - that cuts you with a spring mechanism. It happens so fast you really don't feel any pain at all. It's usually used on small children but there's no reason why it won't work on an adult. No needles involved.
I'm with the people who are afraid of needles and those damn things bother me more than the actual needle. Waiting for that spring to fire just sucks. I donate blood regularly and I hate that finger-prick for the iron count more than the IV.
In Iran, rocks punish adultery.
FTFY
Yes they were. They intended to extort money out of the Government and were willing to use violence against the population to intimidate the government into complying. That's almost a textbook definition of terrorism.
Funny that in Europe many people think its the redneck militaristic Americans who are the douchebags.
At least we respect freedom of religion in this country and aren't busy passing legislation to infringe upon the practice of that freedom. Maybe you should take a look at your own backyard before you start throwing stones into mine?
Not having a gun handy very likely doesn't affect the number of suicide attempts, but it may reduce the number of successes. Not all methods of suicide are equally effective.
So you are going to take away my gun lest someone else find an effective means of offing themselves?
I've never understood why suicide numbers are even a legitimate topic of conversation with regards to gun rights. Why would you take away the liberty of all because of the self-harmful actions of an extremely small minority?
The only thing that's stupid is taking away liberty because some people do bad things with it.
On August 23, 2003, while in protective custody at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, Massachusetts, Geoghan was strangled and stomped to death in his cell by Joseph Druce, a self-described white supremacist and inmate serving a sentence of life without possibility of parole for killing a man who allegedly made a sexual pass after picking Druce up hitchhiking. An autopsy revealed the cause of death to be "ligature strangulation and blunt chest trauma."[citation needed] There have been questions raised about the wisdom and propriety of placing these two men in the same unit, since prison officials had been warned by another inmate that Druce had something planned.[3]
A Worcester, Massachusetts jury found Druce guilty of first-degree murder on January 25, 2006, after the jury rejected his insanity defense. The next day, Druce was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for a second time.
Interesting that the guy who killed him try to claim insanity. What's the point when you are already serving a life sentence? I would have stood in open court, confessed to the crime and asked the Judge for a medal. What more can they do to you?
Attempted rape or even rape itself is not a good reason to murder someone.
The law disagrees with you. Rape and kidnapping are crimes that one is entitled to respond to with deadly force in the overwhelming majority of American jurisdictions.
2- Baths, pools and rivers are not designed to kill. guns are. Spot the difference ?
No, guns are designed to throw a piece of lead downrange. What that piece of lead does is entirely up to the owner of the firearm.
Crime and gun ownership, in most western nations (Russia is not in this category) work the way I noted.
Except that it doesn't. Switzerland, Sweden, France, Finland, Germany and Norway all have higher rates of ownership than the UK yet have less violent crime. Perhaps you should just throw in the towel and admit that you can't prove a linkage between gun ownership rates and crime?
I'm condemning the short-sighted viewpoint that views gun ownership as a solution to violent crime.
Nobody has suggested it's a "solution" to violent crime. Guns are just a means for people to defend themselves against violent crime. Self defense is an inalienable right of all human beings.
Americans discuss the virtue of blowing people away and never
Point out the post in this discussion where somebody said it was virtuous to blow someone away. Or STFU and stop repeating stereotypes. Your choice.
I can at least somewhat fight someone who has a knife
You don't know much about self-defense. I've had training in defending against attacks with both firearms and knives. Knives are the tougher proposition by far. You can disable a firearm by pushing it out of battery (automatic) or locking up the cylinder (revolver). You can render it impotent by grabbing onto it and pointing it away from you. Grabbing onto a knife is generally not advised.
He certainly won't be able to go on a mass killing spree
You've never heard of the Osaka school massacre have you?
or kill me from a mile away
You could probably count on one hand the number of people in the world that could kill you from a mile away with a small arm.
it hardly stopped shootouts in the Wild West
The "Wild West" is largely a myth that was created by Hollywood.
If you want to kill (or even maim) someone, standing at any distance with a gun is a comparatively uninvolved way of going about it.
Only if you are a sociopath. Well adjusted people do not snap and commit murder just because it's "easy" If they did I suspect we'd hear a lot more stories about people being run over.....
If you seriously want someone dead, a knife is at least a more "honest" way of going about it.
I don't want anybody to be dead. I want to defend myself. Guns are more effective than knives for this application. They also come with less legal hassles in most of the United States.
However, that doesn't mean I have to be a shrinking violet when it comes to defending myself.
Have fun defending yourself with that knife if you get attacked by more than one aggressor or run into a scumbag with a 9mm.
If you shoot them from close range, they're most likely to be dead.
Learn something about guns before you go making these pronouncements. 80% of people shot by handguns survive.
I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that 12-year old girls are generally underrepresented in gun ownership as well as in accidental gun deaths and that perhaps these could be related.
Actually that's quite the stretch. 12 year old girls are generally underrepresented in automobile ownership yet they die almost every day in automobile crashes. Figure that one out.
Somehow, the whole rest of the western world manages to not only have less violent crime, but also less private gun ownership
Crime and gun ownership do not correlate. Finland has a lot of guns and a low crime rate. Russia has next to no guns (in civilian hands) and a high crime rate.
Perhaps the Open Carry folk could try and think a little bit harder and try to address the epidemic poverty, horrible education and nonsensical drug policy instead of pouring more gasoline on the fire?
That's funny, you tacitly admit that guns don't cause crime yet continue to condemn them. Interesting.