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Sulaco

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Everything posted by Sulaco

  1. That seems to me to be a strange proposition. Why is war an exception? Is it also an exception to the hammer of religion you choose to wield - in what I suspect is a non-serious manner? Given your choice of wording you're probably neither Christian nor Jewish - perhaps you just don't understand either religion and have chosen to speak out of ignorance, reducing the complexities of the two religions to nothing. By the way, most death row inmates disagree with your view of death. most death row inmates choose to spend a decade or more in isolated conditions fighting their sentences.
  2. It is the belief that innocent life should not be taken but the life of a criminal is up for grabs - for whatever reason. Where is the inconsistency? Most people who support prison terms for criminals do not believe kids should be caged - what hypocrisy (the most overused and misspelled word on these here internets). Brings me to a more general point - seems to me that more often than not charges of hypocrisy stem from a willful or negligent misunderstanding of the position assailed. They levelling of the charge usually says more about the accuser than the accused.
  3. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Ponczki/Detail.aspx http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ponczki.jpg Looks like I did transcribe it correctly.
  4. I haven't had good ponczki (heck - I've forgotten how to spell it now) in such a long time.
  5. I see where the misunderstading is - for irony's sake I was playing Kengs' game. I mean you know he believes that next to satanistic atheists and jews catholics are the enxt worst thing. My point stands - German society was christian in several varied forms. While the Nazis entertained non-christian theologies, the npeople who fought for them, and murdered for them, were, in the main, christian. Again - I am not arguing this in any way prejudices christianity. Merely pointing out that when Keng attempts to absolve Christians of being human, he is playing a fools game. But there is another possibility. Kengs may be making n error that should, really be considered heretic. One that is made by some fundamentalis off-shoots. The idea generally appears to be is that you cannto be considered a Christian if you do not live a life in Christ. This is nto actually a works based model of salvation. Rather to be considered a Christian one has to love Christ, but any "misbehavior" shows a lack of love and thus non-Christian status is betrayed. In that view one can pop in an out of being a Christian pretty frequently. Why is this heretical? Well - the dogmatists of this sort begin confusing what it means to be a Christian with what it means to be Christ. They attempt to rais the status of bbeing Christian, to the status of perfection Christ exemplified. In that they are heretical.
  6. On the other hand, in some US states statutory rape laws are so irrational as to brand nineteen year olds who have consensual sex with sixteen year olds lifetime sexual offenders. Two sides to every issue.
  7. The atrocious grammar was a result of a hasty attempt to encapsulate twisted logic. To recap - you seem to be saying that: a. In the minds of most people Al Quaeda is directly tied to 9/11 b. Bush tied Al Quaeda to Iraq c. Therefore in the minds of most people 9/11 became directly tied to Iraq at the urging of Bush. My point is that your underlying assumption is incorrect. Most people can think in far more nuanced terms. They are not as stupid as you assume, nor is there reason to believe Bush would assume people are that stupid. I think most would gave agreed there was no direct connection. The reason most people tie 9/11 to Iraq is because they see that indirect connection - the endorsement of 9/11 by Iraq's harboring of Al Quaeda. And Bush was right to deploy that indirect connection as one of his arguments. That connection is unquestionable.
  8. But by lending general support to AQ , Iraq endorsed the actions of AQ on 9/11. Much like any given Virginia Hillbilly who may have aided Eric Rudolph, Iraq was absically saying to Al Quaeda - we support you. That is unacceptable. So while there is no evidence whatsoever of an direct connection between Iraq and 9/11, there is a connection - and a pretty glaring one. What I don't understand is why it is so difficult to see this connection.
  9. These things are ahrd to predict but I think the Huck has poretty much hit the ceiling of support he will get. Generally I have nothing against evangelicals and have several good friends, highly intelligent men and women, who are evangelicals. But ultimately, just like they do, Huck cannot help but begin looking a little worrisome to the mainstream of the party. his religion is ffar more bible-thumping than that of GW. And that is coming out now. I suspect most Guiliani supporters will shift to Romney of Guiliani starts dropping. The Huck's best hope is that Guiliani and Mitt stay in second and third throughout the primaries. I suspect however one or the other will drop out and I think these two can draw from a same pool of support. The huck is unlikely to pick up to much more support from the non-evangelical wing of the party.
  10. Ok - I hate these stupid your religions murdered this many people games. Generally they are simlistic gobbets of dung we fling at each other., On a deeper level, however, when carried out in more sober fashion, the inquiry can be enlightening. The fact is Germany - regardless of what the Nazi's believed - was predominantlyu christian and catholic. The German people stood by or assisted Nazi faithful, as these carried out the mass slaughter. While Nazi ideology was pseudo-christian most Germans, as most people usually, did not bnuy into the whole of it, and even more so into the more cultish aspects fostered by the SS. Rather they remained Christian, though not vigilant for the suffering of their fellow men. Basically most Germans remained human. But there is no question that the holocaust can be said to have been perpetrated by a Christian nation.
  11. I tend to agree on the analysis of Kissinger and Nixon. In realpolitik terms Kissinger was da' man - but of course so was the reviled Cardinal Richelieu. I'm not a big fan of realpolitik - in other words.
  12. I should hope so. What is amusing is the simplisme your argument implies. In your view if Al Quaeda brings to mind 9-11 and Iraq, Al-Quaeda, then 9-11 was caused Iraq in most minds. That assumes stupidity for the vast majority of Americans. That assumption says more about you than about anything else. I doubt the Administration made the same silly assumption. But - let's be even a little more nuanced. If Iraq was supporting Al-Quaeda, in the aftermath of 9-11 they, arguably, endorsed 9-11. In that sense Iraq was tied to 9-11.
  13. This has been brewing for years. And by this I mean the melt-down of any "law and order" credentials Labour may have claimed. If only there was a a party in Britain with the ability to exploit this situation. Alas, there isn't.
  14. Well - we are talking about one's civil right to one's own image - and in general various issues surrounding copyright and such. Not criminal liability based on child pornography laws.
  15. I am right on the for profit part as well. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~c...=all~order=page http://rogerowengreen.blogspot.com/2006/01...-book-pt-1.html
  16. Under the right conditions they can sell that work as well. Imagine a politicla cartoonist commenting on Disney's leviathan like reach. he might draw a mickey mouse in front aof a map showing strategic plans for the conquest of Poland and then france. He woulkd, in fact, be able to sellt hat cartoon to newspapers and see it published and would have a defense that he did not violate copyright under the fair use doctrine.
  17. People can paint mickey mouse. It is a permissible use of copyrighted material. They can even display that painting. http://www.batnet.com/~rjg/parody.html http://www.net4tv.com/VOICE/Story.cfm?storyID=149
  18. I know this may be hard to square - it is high-minded strategy after all but... The pressure includes the threat of war. That threat must be credible. Generally that means you better be ready to carry it out and you can show that. Nope - in retrospect that was easy.
  19. Bleach - that's saying pretty much the same thing. I notice how important you find it to differentiate this war from all the other wars the US was involved in. I guess acknowledging that the US constantly starts wars would amke BUsh's "crimes" seem far less unsual. Given that you, on the one hand, insist on renouncing any responsivility for the war in Iraq in regard to yourself - you must try to divorce Bush from the People who supported hium when he went to war. That way you can continue to eblieve he has hijacked the nation - or something. it's absolution for you. That is not the case. The US continually intervens militarly abroad. Has done so for more than a century, always for its own benefit. That's the country you and I live in. It's just generally ahs been far more virtous, far less tyrannical, as it goes through the standard motions of any powerful state. Thus,tTry as you might to escape this conclusion,. it has, in fact, been the norm for the US to carry out military interventions and invasions. Usually the American people accepted far less as reason for intervention. I like to think that's because we generally understand that the US needs to be involved in world affairs and that some things must be dealt with with force. Ot that our natioal interest is to see conflict. Iraq could have been justified to the people without a 9-11. It is a ridiculous proposition that 9-11 was carried out, or permitted to take place, for the purposes of starting a war with Iraq. It's a mad scientist scenarion you present. One would ahve to be mad to go to such lengths to get the war justified - because the risks of discovery are so great. If one is so mad than it is leven mor elikely the plot would be discovered. In otherwords - the mad professor carries out mad plans and his madness results in discovery. But - something I always forget - y'all have already discovered the conspiracy.
  20. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who learn from history are doomed to a lifetime of reruns. In other words - history repeats and no amount of learnin' will change that. And that's true for everyone, everywhere.
  21. yes - but you were involved in a conversation on MAD. As for the United States' pladge to strike first in case of oconventional attack by the Soviets in the European theater - the doctrine made sense given the fact that Soviet conventional forces were far larger. It was also a limitted doctrine. The US assured the SU that if the SU attacked the US would carry out nuclear strikes but those strikes would be tactical rather than strategic - defensive rather than offensive. At that point - in theory MAD kicks in, in that the Soviets would be faced with a choice of escalating a tactical nuke attack into a full exchange. Again - SU was always assumed to be a rational player - therfore the umbrella created by American doctrine worked.
  22. If a country which has nukes is not led by a rational government then everything is out the window. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't practice MAD with rational players. MAD still works with rational players. It means you should preven non-rational players from getting a hold of niukes. This is what NPT is about and this is why the US worked to preven Iraq from attaining WMDs. This is also why everyone is worried about Iran. The prevention of nuke war is a two pronged approach - one half is MAD for existing rational players and the other half is NP for new players who are potentially irrational. If a new player enters you either have to teach him to be rational or - at that point - it amke sense for all the senior pplayers to wipe out this destabilizer before he builds up a sizeable arsenal. Let me ask you this. In the absence of MAD what would you do? Absence of MAD basically means that party X tells part Y that if party Y launches the first strike party X will specifically NOT retaliate. It's really a binary system. So again - what you guys do instead of employing MAD where possible?
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