j_b

the topo in beckey seems allright to me but i haven't seen alan's to compare it with (are the missing pitches that mike mentions in his tr past the large shelf?). the climbing between the loose alcove at the end of pitch5 and the large ledge half-way up the climb is certainly confusing, but it is moderate and there is more than one way to go. we did not need crampons (in early august) and it was relatively easy to get on the rock in light approach shoes (accessed the moat via a crevasse) but everybody else i heard of seems to say they were glad they had poons. you probably should listen to someone who has done the trip more recently. i've heard rumor of a .10 independent line all the way to the half way ledge. it supposedly starts further to the west on the front face of the lower buttress. it could be very wet due to the ubiquitous snowpatch above it. unfortunately, i haven't seen a topo. have a good one!

wow! what an adventure. great looking rock with nice features on the lower pitches. quite a hawl in there though.

great list don. i can't wait to see what i have been missing. imo the dnb on bear is arguably better than the ne ridge on slesse. i don't really like the metamorphic rock on the upper ridge of slesse because it does not present clear natural lines and i am dubious of rock strength (at least as far as pro is concerned). the lower buttress has great rock but it is lower angled and often vegetated (at least last time i climbed it). in turn, even though the lower buttress on bear is not very high quality (so so rock and not sustained), the upper part has great rock (at least as good as anything on stuart). i do admit to a bias toward granite/diorite type rock. beside the views of the peak from afar (the fang!), the other attributes of the climbs seem comparable.

...maybe you can... well, until you provide evidence to the contrary there is no logical reason not to.

and somehow he makes abstraction of 50 years of empire building? hitchens is either a fool or he had a lobotomy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3281.htm

you are unintentionally right about one thing, punk! you'd be in a world of hurt trying to follow me

there is no fundamental difference between a regime that butchers 20,000 of its citizens and one that butchers 60,000. at least, not enough difference to make one a regime with "unsavory" aspects but otherwise ok whereas the other would be a bloody dictatorship. pretending, that killing fewer dissidents is ground for acceptability amounts to moral relativism.

and forget that our tax dollars financed and trained 10,000's of fundamentalists during the eighties in pakistan and afghanistan. these people eventually went back home with their weapons and know how. who do you suspect forms the backbone of extremism in islamic countries nowadays? accountability is essential if you don't want to repeat the same "mistakes".

that is certainly not true. the mullahs are terrible and they have to go, but the palhavis were bloody dictators whose actions hardly left a family untouched by repression and torture. moral relativism and revisionist history are leading you astray. let's not forget as well that before we installed the shah, iran had a democratically elected government. when you sustain a regime that is so repressive that for decades people can only congregate to the dark corners of mosques to express their opinions, what do you expect the outcome will be. "unsavory" is certainly a euphemism for regimes like that in uzbekistan that boils its perceived dissenters in hot water.

there are many ways available. be it through economic incentives, financing of pro-democracy media, international political pressure, etc ... of course, in times of specific crisis, international military help could be advisable (kurds and shiites in 91). but the most important part is to not support dictatorships. without outside support not only do dictators find it very difficult to grab power but whenever they do they eventually fall to reform movements, especially if the population is exposed to the way of life of the outside world.

i precisely mean not doing that. support the democrats not the dictators, even if the dictators give us what we want.

commit to policies that will allow some sort of true democracy to prevail in the countries whose populations support terrorists (i.e. supporting the current local dictator because it is expedient will not do). first be aware that democracy cannot be exported through warfare and occupation. for klenke: http://www.john-loftus.com/enron3.asp

i believe the case can be made that they are responsible for the increase in terror events (some would even argue that 9/11 is due to their policy in afghanistan). i totally agree that the terror problem as such is not new; however what is new is making it a global war that can only be won by confrontation and that it justifies invading countries. big mistake.

which image is objective? both? none? onion cells

klenke: at this point i think it'd be extremely difficult to find a terror expert not associated with this administration that does not think the increase in attacks is related to the iraq war.

the administration was comparing reports covering worldwide events to conclude we were winning. what has changed? nothing except for a doubling of the numbers initially reported, so i am not sure what it is "we don't understand". to answer your question of whether it is fair to point the finger at bush, we need to see if the victims of attacks worldwide tend to be allies that were hit in retaliation for cooperating with our policies or "collateral damage" to attacks against our interests abroad. i am willing to bet that it is indeed the case in a majority of cases.

well until someone shows us the last 20 years together in one data set, it'll be difficult to compare (curious how nobody discusses this, it must in the spirit of being objective ). but i recall that the trend for major events was downward for the previous 20 years and now it is the highest it has been since then. that is surely significant. so i assume you must have said something to the effect that it was too soon to say anything when armitage used the botched report to argue we were winning?

Of course a small factoid that all of you have cleverly decided to leave out is that the terror report statistics covered THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD! huh? what is it again that i cleverly decided? all reports from previous years, the blotched one with "errors" and the new one cover the entire world. i don't get it.

hmmm! so let me see if i get this right. when the report had a number of terror victims that were slightly lower than last year, it was good enough to conclude we were winning the war. but now that the report has been "fixed" and the number of victims is double than what was initially reported, the report is not good enough to say anything? now that the numbers of significant events are highest in 21 years it does not mean anything?

nice diatribe but i never said this. now, did i? i said that most all docu-movies are put together from a position of bias that expresses itself through editing, attention paid to various aspect of the matter (focus), etc ... and thus fit the definition of propaganda ("the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person"). i also asked for counter examples (i.e. non-biased docu-movies about politics/history/economy/etc ..) from the people who keep pretending that moore is uncorrigibly biased and that teh makority of other docu-movie film directors, news editors, etc .. aren't biased. i am still waiting ... i also said earlier that none of the very few factual untruth in bfc are damning to moore's central claim about violence in america. from what i can tell, the errors are very few and minor, and his intent when making generalisations remains to be determined. i am certainly not a postmodern relativist.

the distinction is ludicrous, most if not all documentary movies take a point of view. there are no docu-movies worth watching that do not portray politics, economy, warfare, etc .. from a position of bias (i'll wait for a few counter examples). from the capra movies about the 2nd world war ("why we fight") to the "fog of war" (the recent oscar winner), they are all propaganda. you should know better and at least, give the movie a chance since you haven't seen it yet. you may learn something.

you guys are good at slinging insults but short on providing verifyable evidence. that site of yours is full of gratuitous attacks, non-sequitur, strawmen arguments, and more. none of it that i read amounts to a flaw in m.moore fundamental story line in bfc, i.e. that widespread condoning of violence in our culture and institutions is responsible for the events of columbine. conservatives would much rather continue blaming individuals instead of confronting the societal problem. i'll grant you one thing: m.moore does not set out to be objective, but don't pretend that anyone else is. one only needs to consider the coverage of events in the media in the build up to war to see that editing, leaving out pertinent facts, etc ... is the rule and not the exception. i just can't wait to see sales receipts for moore's new movie.

nope, sorry! that's for the neocons in the crowd these days ...

my, isn't jayb feeling imperial today? irrelevance, backwater, yadda, yadda. the minows better do as they are told .... "now just imagine that instead of having canada, the region to the north was occupied by Japan blablablablablabla ..... blablablabla. so how much money did you save by not having to worry about your 3000miles long northern border? huh? huh?"

far from me not to discuss history. i am only concerned when we don't learn from it or behave as if the world is the same it once was.