blackascoal

I totally agree. Hate-mongers only appear intelligent to sheeple who stand for nothing, thus they'll fall for anything. Look no further than the American south where the confederate flag is still looked upon by many as a symbol of "culture". Zero intelligence. At least the German people had the wisdom to rid themselves of the vestiges of their period of evil and hate. Thus, one cannot fly the swaztiga in Germany today.

I wouldn't be so quick to count on Gulliani if you know anything about his track record. He doesn't appear to be serious about this run for the White House, just like his half-hearted effort to run for the Senate against Hillary Clinton in 2000. All the pronouncements, fund-raising, and republican hopes for his run, and he just flamed-out. McCain is already shrinking due to his support of Bush, the surge in Iraq, and a continued military presence in a war that we've already lost. If he was smart, he's jump ship like the rest of the republicans .. even Lizzy Dole has bailed out. Ron Paul is a good candidate, but right-wing conservatives will not support him and his ability to raise the incredible amount of money needed to run is questionable. I think it fairly safe to say that there will be no republican in the White House in 2008 .. thank you George Bush. In fact, if the democrats play it smart, they may have the same total control of government in 2008 that the republicans had for the past 6 years. But I wouldn't count on the democrats playing it smart either. There is a gaping hole in the concept of democracy .. and it's called money.

The U.S. has national interest, as do 'tin pot dictators'. http://www.fff.org/comment/com0501i.asp Who's side are you on? And guess what, Iran could be in serious trouble again. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3355234,00.html Perhaps you should do more study on Iran. We overthrew their government so that we could continue, along with British Petroleum, to rape their country of it's oil resources. Then we installed a brutal "tin pot" dictator, the Shah, who brought along one of the most brutal secret police forces, SAVAK, in human history. Perhaps that makes sense to you as prudent policy. Who's side am I on? I'm on the side of freedom and justice throughout the world, but if you believe that overthrowing governments and murdering, raping, and torturing innocent people is prudent policy .. then I'm not on your side. There is a thing called blowback .. and our troops in Iraq are feeling it right now. I'm an American citizen, not a subject. Whatever Iran does with their nation, their government, is totally up to the Iranian people, not those who only care about Iran because of its oil.

Black Dog, I didn't say China couldn't top our record, but that "90% of the rest of the world" could not. As I've said all along, there is no moral high ground here, especially if you include our historical record as you did that of China. Slavery (not implying that the US is the only one who did it) and the millions of bodies beneath the waters of the middle passage, the genocide of America's indigenous people, and our use of nuclear weapons alone disqualifies us (America) as "saints" by any measure. But if the moral argument is not relevant to you, then let's move from it. I don't agree that we have more to fear from China than they have to fear from us and the hypocrisy demonstrated in this very argument is proof of that. The Bush Administrtation refuses to sign any agreements that prohibit weapons in space .. then pursues them. That raises the ante for the Chinese, the Russians, and everybody else. Because we are pursuing space weapons. If your adversary was building weapons in space, wouldn't it prudent for you to develop a means of blowing them up? Even if any attack didn't come from space, if the US attacks China we will be heavily dependant on satellites to fight them .. which makes the ability to blow them up a prudent and intelligent defensive strategy. Everytime we trumpet "democracy" are we not applying moral principles to our foreign policy? Isn't that what we did in Vietnam and what we claim to be doing in Iraq? I have children and some of them have children and I do not want to see any escalation of weapons in space. My comments have nothing to do with being "anti-american" and everything to do with being anti-end-of-human-existence.

US argument over the Chinese test SCREAMS hypocracy. China isn't the only one rushing to acquire military capabilities in space. President Bush signed an order in October tacitly asserting the U.S. right to space weapons and opposing the development of treaties or other measures restricting them — a move some analysts speculated may have helped spur the Chinese test. Bush has also pushed an ambitious program of space-based missile defense and the Pentagon is working on missiles, ground lasers and other technology to shoot down satellites. However, the Pentagon's budget is severely constrained by Iraq and Afghanistan and a drive to replace outdated planes and ships, making space programs a lower priority and prompting some to warn the U.S. could be losing ground in space. "We are falling behind, if not losing, on many measures of space superiority," Defense Department contractor Stephen Hill said Monday at a forum in Washington. http://www.ajc.com/news/content/shared-gen...ssile_Test.html

No my brother. My computer hums. It took 47 seconds to search, review the list of hits, and select one. You should try it. Try searching News hits ... or not. You act as though this behavior is strange and foreign to the US and just couldn't possibly be true .. but you're reluctant to research it yourself. I believe that no matter what you find, nothing will change your mind .. which is why I didn't want to get into finding links you don't care about in the first place. Did the US play a significant role in the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iran, or did bloggers just make that up?

Better! I had stuff to add .. but I can't top this.

Black Dog, Again, I respect the right to your opinion, but I disagree. Would the fact that America is the only nation to use nuclear weapons also not be relevant to this conversation? I won't include the fact that we didn't have to use nukes .. either time .. but the question most critical to this argument is whether China has the right to protect itself. I would suggest that the character of the nation it feels it has to protect itself from is indeed relevant to this argument. I don't think that because we are perceived as less evil, no matter what level of less evil, is what's relevant. Does China have a legitimate reason to fear the west, specifically the US? THAT is what's most relevant my brother. The british went to war with China to protect the interests of british opium dealers. Is that relevant to this argument? We (America) just mass-murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people .. for profit. Saint? I doubt if 90% of the rest of the world can top that .. for starters

Absolutely correct. We're juggling just trying to find the additional 20,000 to send to Iraq. We've extended, over-extended, and stop-lossed our troops to the brink of desperation already.

Perhaps that's how it works in the world you live in, but if I challenge anything that anyone has said, I simply research it for myself. I don't need to be held by the hand and led to information. Here's a link, one of thousands, that took me all of 47 seconds to find, that I'm betting you will reject anyway .. The U.S. role in the Venezuelan coup Author: John Gilman People's Weekly World Newspaper, 06/15/02 00:00 http://www.pww.org/article/view/1408/1/91/ When the coup took place in Caracas, Venezuela, on April 11, the usurper of the U.S. Presidency, George W. Bush, had his press agent, Ari Fleischer, state, “Chavez brought it on himself.” Yet, according to an article in The London Observer by Ed Vulliamy, “Washington was deeply immersed in the overthrow of Chavez many months ago.” The plan was hatched by Otto Reich, the professional liar and behind-the-scenes hater of Cuba just shortly after Bush named him Under Secretary of Latin American Affairs. There were a number of other players besides Reich in the Bush administration who planned this coup d’etat. One of the main characters was Eliot Abrams, convicted of giving false information during his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair, later pardoned from prison by former President George Bush. Abrams presently heads the National Security Council for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations. A leading braintruster in the Council, Abrams was head of the school known as ‘Hemispherism,’ the main purpose of which is to combat Marxism in the Americas. The third person in the coup conspiracy is John Negroponte, newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Negroponte, ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1986, sat silently while death squads tortured and murdered hundreds of political activists campaigning for social change. The death squads were trained at the School of Americas. The London Observer confirmed that, “the U.S. government was not only aware of the coup but sanctioned it.” --------------------------------------------- Here's another .. another 47 seconds US Returns to Bad Old Ways in Venezuela by Wayne Madsen and Richard M. Bennett The one important thing to be learnt from the Venezuelan coup is that the United States has not changed its view that only Governments acceptable to Washington can be allowed to survive in Latin America and that like it or not, the United States will undermine and help overthrow even legally elected administrations if it so chooses. This became obvious when Pentagon sources gleefully revealed that the United States provided critical military and intelligence support to the Venezuelan military coup against President Hugo Chavez on Friday 12th April. http://www.uvm.edu/~wmiller/venezuelancoup.htm ---------------------- I could go on ..

Black Dog, A: because it's true B: because we (America) like to pretend that our purity gives us the right to American exceptionalism. Obviously, my brother .. you haven't seen my face. .. Me Tonto.

I'm not even slightly attempting to think for you. Surely you know how to search for relevent information .. that does not come from talk radio. It takes no genius to understand why the Bush Administration was so quick to recognize the coup and the installed government .. which lasted about 5 minutes. See: "us overthrow chavez venezula" Do you also need information on the CIA overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian government or the attempts on Castro or what our support of the Contras was about or our history in Bolivia? How do you speak with suthority on Chavez when you are unaware of our quite obvious attempts to overthrow him .. which is no secret? Surely you know how to search.

I'm not sure I would rely on Amnesty International for US support. They denounce a great many US abuses such as torture and mistreatment fo prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Gharib, the incarceration of 9 million us citizens the most of any nation, the death penalty, the Iraq war, on and on. The issue isn't whether China or the US is more evil than the other. The point is that the US has no authority, moral or otherwise, to stop the Chinese from doing exactly what we are doing.

The Bush Administration doesn't care about Afghanistan or Bin Laden and there was never enough troops sent there to support the so-called "mission". All they care about is the pipeline they're building. It's all about the oil. Nor does the Bush Administration care about Iraq .. outside of the proposed oil contracts giving the west exclusive rights to Iraq's most precious resource at highly inflated profits. It's all about the oil.

Black Dog, That was true of our past, but are we in that same position today? One could argue that we've been outsmarted by the Chinese and the biggest threat to America does not come from space but rather in our own backyard and in our Treasury. My point to you brother is that we don't have any authority to keep the Chinese from doing what we, ourselves, are doing and we have no capability to stop it. Whether one looks at this from the pragmatic or moral point of view, the conclusions remain the same. There is nothing we can do about it. We opened Pandora's Box and we have no way to close it.

Would you mind giving a link showing at least a left-wing kook swearing this is true, or better yet a link with actual evidence that Bush tried to overthrow Chavez? This is the guy(Chavez) who wants to shut down an entire TV station because it wasn't friendly to him during the last election. Actually, he's forcing it off the air when its current license expires, and has a war going with many private radio and TV stations. Has Bush done anything remotely like that. No, of course not. He believes in democracy, not socialism. And this guy calls Bush names. He's a danger to freedom of the press. You don't need a link. All you need is a search engine. "US overthrow chavez venzuala" should get you all the information you need .. and are you unaware that this isn't this first time the US has had a hand in the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected government. Is this like a surprise to you? The radio station that Chavez sgut down worked with the CIA in the attempted coup .. which in this country would be called treason. Anyone caught or suspected of such treason would be jailed in this country and that business shut down. As far as Bush .. you must be kidding. Does secret wiretaps ring a bell? I could go on .. but don't think it will make any difference to you.

Sure, like invading small countries and overthrowing democratically elected governments. Brilliant policy. Would consideration of blowback also be considered "foolish" in your opinion?

Well, you invoked teh moral aspet by bringing in up the invasion of small countries and the mass murder of innocents. On those scores, the U.S. does indeed hold the moral high ground compared to China. I respect your right to your opinion, but our history is litered with a hell of a lot more than invasion and mass-murder. Irrespective of how you interpret "moral authority" or any authority at all, the US cannot dictate policy to the rest of the world and it has no authority to do so. How do you suggest we talk about weaponizing space without talking about US policy regarding it?

Black Dog, Nor have I suggested that America is "the worst place on earth." However, the argument is about the weaponization of space, and the duplicity of American policy in this issue is undeniable and just as hypocritical as American policy on nuclear weapons. I do not believe that foreign policy based on American exceptionalism (do as I say not as I do) is in our best interests and it does not make us secure. We do not have the right nor possess the strength to dicate policy to all the world. My comments are not meant to defend China, but rather to defend America from the thoughtless self-serving foreign policy that got us in the crisis we now face.

You do know, of course, that when it comes to mass murders of innocents, few hold a candle to China. FYI: it is possible to be critical of the U.S. without supporting countries that are worse. The point wasn't just to be critical of either country but to demonstrate that no one holds the moral high ground in this argument, and that China has every right to protect itself.

The Chinese are playing the game like any other country with political interest. The point of the matter though is who owns outer space relating to killer satellites? The tiny strip around the earth that harbours satellites is controversial. The Chinese are being accused of not co-operating with treating that strip of space as a 'civil space area'. The problem I have with this is if indeed this strip is reserved for electronic communications serving the world, then what the hell are spy satellites doing there. As much as I hate to say it the Chinese could be within their rights, to protect their national interest. The Chinese ARE within their rights to protect themselves from the only nation that has ever used nuclear weapons .. twice .. and a nation that attacks small nations whenever it feels like it and mass-murders hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The American military/industrial complex thinks that only they own space. After all, that's what God wanted, right? What are we (America) going to do about this? Nothing. China owns the US debt.

The Bush Administration tried to orchestrate a coup to overthrow him, but it failed and he remains popular with his people. The US/CIA has a long history of overthrow of even democratically elected governments, then installing a brutal dictator that tortures and murders his own people. Small wonder that Chavez told us to fuck off.

Absolutely.

I don't see the public being ready yet for either of them, although I do think Colin Powell would have had a good chance. Al Sharpton is talking about running again which means he'll likely take votes away from Obama. I don't think Edwards is a strong enough candidate either, maybe someone else will surface who can beat them both. Powell has no chance of ever being president .. and he knew it. Sharpton won't run, nor should he. Obama's biggest threat is the DLC.

I thank the heavens for each and every spanking my parents gave me. I learned consequence and discipline at home not in the streets of Detroit or prison. The most troubling thing about this law is that society doesn't really care about these children. We talk a good game but try getting a runaway or throwaway teen some help and you'll find out that it's just talk. There are a lot of kids growing up in tough neighborhoods with danger all around them and their parents are the only buffer between them and the danger. If spanking is required then the parents should be the ones to make that decision, not some politician far removed from that child's life. Abuse is an entirely different issue and shouldn't be confused with discipline. Many of those who argue that children shouldn't be spanked are drugging their own. American children are being drugged at an astronomical rate, often with Ritalin, a drug for a disease that doesn't exist. ADHD (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and of which it is said that it is, "Specific etiology of this syndrome is unknown, and there is no single diagnostic test. Adequate diagnosis requires the use not only of medical but of special psychological, educational and social resources." These drugs are often nothing more than a short-cut to parenting. I'll take the supposed long-term effects of spanking in raising my children compared to this ... "Ritalin should not be used in children under 6 years of age, since safety and efficacy in this age group have not been established. Clinical experience suggests that in psychotic children, administration of Ritalin may exacerbate symptoms of behavior disturbance and thought disorder. Long-term effects of Ritalin in children have not been well established." Additionally, children aren't stupid. Talk to teachers and you'll find that many of their students tell them and their parents that if you hit me, or do something I don't like, I'll call the police.