tvashtarkatena

I held the same conviction after reading it...for about a week, when I started slinking back to Taco Bell for my beef soft taco fix.

At 6 to 8 words, at least the posts don't block traffic much. I'm not quite sure what you're on about, here. I've seen some excellent and substantive debates on this site about timely topics, in addition to the one liners, IM style drivel, and midget pics. As for the small number of posters, I wouldn't know if it has ever been any different or not. It seems fairly natural to me that any one thread has a few diligent posters engaged in a dialogue with a sprinkling of occasional participants. Standard 80/20 rule. There seem to be different threads for different groups and desires, which, again, is natural. Try Ascentionist: about 1 post every three days. Or NWHikers: everything you always wanted to know about the mating habits of pica but were afraid to ask. And don't even think about a political discussion. Their 137 moderators are constantly circling overhead, waiting to pounce on the slightest rise in blood pressure or suggestive phrase.

...and unprecedented environmental devastation. Globalization and 'the pricing mechanism', while attractive in their simplicity and ruthless efficiency, have a single criterion for success: profits. They lack criteria for environmental quality, sustainability, quality of life (money isn't everything everywhere). In addition, industries in an unrestrained environment rarely pay the 'full market value' for the public resources they use or pollute. Finally, these mechanisms assume an unlimited supply of cheap energy. I'd love to find a silver bullet as much as the next guy, but I'm not holding my breath.

These few climatologists have little or no stature in their field and are doggedly championing ideas (through research funded primarily by energy companies) that have failed to convince their peers. Give Sport an 'A' for analogies.

Nothing captivates an audience more than two strutting, budding prototitans of academia locked, guano a guano, in a peer review cockfight.

How dare Josef Conrad presume to have a more knowledgeable and observant view of the English language than one who was raised speaking it? How dare my sister in law, an adult convert, presume to have a more knowledgeable and observant view of Catholicism than me, who was raised in it? How dare those 20 something upstarts presume to have more knowledgeable and observant view of quantum mechanics than the Great Einstein? The human being is the ultimate configurable device.

No. That's what brain stems are for.

This is our problem? I've heard Rushdie's speech. In fact, I've heard his speel several times on the interview circuit. Most, not some, of terrorist actions by Islamicists fit into the category I described earlier. The latter examples you gave were either isolated incidents, or didn't really have any long term legs. The exception to this are the immigrant riots in Europe, which seem to be more akin to the race riots in our own past than to some new form of violent religious zealotry.

....Again, the interview cited above speaks of a "new Islamic virus". This kind of thinking is really unfortunate among otherwise intelligent people, and speaks to the irrationalism that characterizes the dominant narrative. I agree. Rushdie speaks of a 'they' as if it were a single body with one agenda. If Palestine and Israel made up, terrorism in that area would certainly diminish because the political and security interests of each party would presumably be satisfied, but it's hard to imagine a scenario where the economic and emotional pain inflicted to date would suddenly evaporate. Rogue hardcores may well choose to ignore a truce and continue blowing up bus terminals. Overall, however, terrorist attacks would likely be reduced to these unhappy few, which would certainly be an improvement. Most terrorist attacks are part of a political negotiation between perceived occupier and the occupied. As in any negotiation, both sides have interests, and these interests vary widely depending on geography. Some conflicts will end in an accord; as will probably be the case for the Sunni/Shiite punch up in Iraq. Too many powerful forces want stability in that region for the outcome to be otherwise. Others conflicts are irreconcileable, as is the case with the Taliban, which must be marginalized and/or destroyed. Even in this latter case, providing a better options for the Afghan population would make defeating the Taliban much easier. If you can't satisfy the offending party's interests, satisfy their constituents. Rushdie's partially right; most conflicts would probably continue after an Israeli/Palestianian truce, but not for the reasons he has cited. Each conflict requires its own political resolution. Rushdie confuses Islamofascist hyberbole crafted to pump up jihadists with the varied political agendas that underly such rhetoric. There are very few terrorist movements that actually believe they can reconstitute the Caliphate. Some do, of course, but Rushdie lumps all terrorist movements in with this extremist few. This mentality effectively reduces the options for a country such as the US to extermination of all terrorists, a pipe dream which has clearly backfired. The US and Iran are making motions to establish a dialogue. That, to me, given Iran's support of several movements that employ terrorism, would be a step in the right direction.

Rushdie would have a hard time finding his mythical Leftie. His death threat collection certainly colors his thinking and sours his view of Islamic fundamentalism, appropriately so, but his broadbrush denouncement of the Failed Left constitutes an unfocused, and therefore failed idea.

I was responding to several comments made by posters on this very thread, actually. Rummy and Co. were not involved.

[quote Do you want this guy out there flying jets: Into a cliff, yes.

It sooths their collective white guilt. It was a proposal by one person that was shot down. There's no 'they' here. Desegregation is cool if it's limited to allowing students of all races to attend any given school. Busing, however, aside from not following the principle of color blindness, is a way to postpone or avoid fixing shitty schools.

Funny, you didn't similarly respond to pics of the hotties that are so central to Rushdie's ideas. Nice try at tit for tat. I mistakenly thought you'd be above that. As always on spray, the audience decides the relevance of a post. Thank you for one man's opinion.

Call me Master of the Obvious

You have so got the one up on me Dru. Smarter...wait no you are not. More attractive... wait... you look like a tin-tin that just got out of Auchwitz... well... you definitely are better paid than I am... oh wait... NO YOUR NOT! Perhaps, but he's definitely funnier than you.

Hopefully, this will cover up Phoenix.

You've never had a bad idea? Perhaps this is only one of the dipshit's ideas out of many, some of which you might actually agree with. Hard to say unless you track all of their proposals rather than this one snapshot.

I believe fat people should be inducted into the military. I guess I'm a weighcist.

The discussion here assumes several generally accepted 'truths' regarding terrorism that do not hold up against studies of suicide bombing and other terror tactics to date. Truth 1) Terror attacks are conducted by Islamofascists bent on spreading their ideology worldwide. In fact, terror attacks are primarily used by a weaker force against a stronger occupier for political, not religious, purposes. As an example; prior to the Iraq war, the Tamil Tigers, a non-religious separatist group, conducted half of all suicide bomb attacks prior to the Iraq. They are always carried out by political organizations, only some of which use religion as a unifying force. These organizations favor suicide attacks as a military tactic because they are inexpensive, extremely effective in killing and terrorizing a stronger enemy, virtually unstoppable, garnish the most publicity, and never want for volunteers. The bulk of today's terror attacks are carried out by organizations with some connection to various Islamic sects, including a minority of extreme fundamentalism, but this is a very recent trend that has spiked since the invasion of Iraq. Truth 2) Suicide bombers are primarily 'lost' young men indoctrinated and driven by fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Profiles of suicide bombers to date quickly debunk this widely held idea. What we do know about suicide bombers is that they are primarily young, relatively educated, middle class people with reasonably normal social lives. A growing number of them are women, and now children; target countries do not profile these as threats and such attacks attract much more publicity. In addition, most suicide bombers (according to pre-attack statements and post attack interviews of suicide bombers who failed their missions) seem to be motivated by an altruistic impulse to do something important for their political cause rather than religious zealotry. Truth 3) The Islamofascists are out to destroy our way of life and take over the world. The very term 'Islamofascist' is misleading in that it implies a serious effort to politically, militarily, and religiously occupy some or all of the Western world. It might apply to groups bent on imposing sharia on specific regions; the Taliban in Afghanistan, for example, but no terrorist group anywhere seriously believes that it can or will dominate the globe. Calls to kill westerners anywhere in the world in no way implies this goal; they are merely an effective tactic to terrorize an entire population, regardless of geography. Even Osama bin Laden, according to his public and intercepted private messages, has outlined specific political goals (the expulsion of U.S. forces from Arab territory being the primary one) at various times. If the goals of Al Qaeda are unclear today, it is because the movement has splintered and spawned many independent groups, including rogue actors (Zarkawi was the most notorious) with political agendas that vary widely in scope and specificity, and that may or may not include localized ethic cleansing. Thank you, George Bush, for providing an excellent, destabilized sandbox in Iraq for such groups to play in. What the 'Left', or any detractor from the so called 'War on Terror', want, I believe, is to cease the misguided rhetoric that governs American thinking on terror (they're hate our freedom, blah, blah, blah) and recognize what these groups are really about and who makes fills their ranks. It was, in part, because of this rhetoric that we sent troops into Iraq to 'fight the War on Terror', a policy which has predictably increased terrorist attacks. I think what the 'Left' would like to see is a switch to policies that recognize the true nature of the threat and have either worked in the past or hold real promise for the future. This might include funneling some of the 8 or so billion dollars we burn in Iraq each month into cutting off terrorist funding, a strategy which has worked. It would certainly include improving diplomatic relationships to garner intel, infiltration, and focused military or law enforcement action, as well as incentives. It will probably include engaging (non-military) nations such as Iran in an effort to reduce their support of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. In the end, it should include strategies for these groups to lay down their arms and join the political process. (Recent elections in Lebanon and Palestine suggest that we’d best address this last issue sooner than later). A re-definition of our relationship with Israel should also be on the table. Such a program must include the abandonment of the misguided pipe-dream of replacing Islamic ideologies with western values (so far at the point of a gun). Policies based on THAT ideology have only spawned more terrorism. We should focus on stopping the use of terrorism as a tactic, rather than besting ideologies that we assume, wrongly in most cases, drive the use of that tactic. This should not be limited to impossible goal of exterminating these groups, but rather focus more on addressing the political environment that motivates them to kill. For the few, if any survivors of this post, here are a few of many links about suicide bombers: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB408.pdf Some decent summaries: http://worldnews.about.com/od/islamreligionpolitics/a/islam_terrorism.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Wi...icide_Terrorism

How about Twelve Angry Men?

Dude looks like a lady

It might be a form of excretion. The producing organ has yet to be identified. The brain has already been ruled out.

There is no misunderstanding between a man and his beer.

[quote The United States: 1865, after the U.S. Civil War (Several states abolished slavery for themselves at various dates between 1777 and 1864) Puerto Rico 1873 and Cuba: 1880 (both were colonies of Spain at the time) Brazil: 1888 Korea: 1894 (hereditary slavery ended in 1886) Zanzibar: 1897 (slave trade abolished in 1873) China: 1910 Burma: 1929 Ethiopia: 1936, by order of the Italian occupying forces (see Second Italo-Abyssinian War). After Ethiopia regained independence in 1942 during World War II, Emperor Haile Selassie did not re-establish slavery. Tibet: 1959, by order of the People's Republic of China Saudi Arabia: 1962 Mauritania: July 1980 Well, at least we beat Burma, Zanzibar, and Mauritania. This reads like our list of 'allies' for Gulf War, The Sequel.