This is a test of my offensive Avatar Image

[Greg_W]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dr Flash Amazing:

Is America not founded on the idea that if one does not like the way things are being done, one might use the means legally afforded as a citizen to change them?

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Yes, that is true. However, your posts give the impression that there is a lack of understanding about the uniqueness of such a system and how wonderfully lucky we all are to be living in the USA. There, literally, is no other system like ours in the world. I think it is important to accept and appreciate that before embarking on change.

 

$.02 from Greg W

[allthumbs]

DFA =

[MtnGoat]

"There we go with the "minimum American casualties" argument. Are American lives worth any more than Afghanistani lives? If so, why?"

 

Because they are my fellow citizens with whom I share culture, govt, and certain agreed upon routines and practices. Like it or not, the reality of the world requires I make distinctions. I am plain and honest about these distinctions.

 

I do not think it is a good thing to kill innocents, but sometimes doing good means unavoidably doing bad. I am sure you accept this very principle when you support the coercion of your fellow citizens in service of a goal you personally deem more important than their own control over their own lives. This does not mean dealing with non citizens with disrespect, nor treating them as chattel, expendable, or anything else, but the simple fact is that if we are in a war, and we are, I prefer them to die instead of us.

 

It's ugly but that's the way it is and I will not lie to you. If you go and say the opposite, that you prefer Americans die instead of others, see what response you get and who will support you.

 

"Destruction of Al Qaeda's infrastructure was militarily appropriate, yes, however destruction of civilians is not, and the destruction of Al Qaeda's stuff led to a great deal of innocent lives lost."

 

Yes it did but there is no way to get one without the other without exposing our troops to more danger.

 

"Do you base all of your actions solely on fact? Do you ever act based on feeling or opinion? Or is everything you do dictated by cold logic? Surely you make some decisions based on your feelings?"

 

Yes I do, but I try not to claim my feelings validate my critique of one action, but do not suffice to validate what I think should be done instead!

 

"The Doctor finds war and murder to be morally objectionable, and while he understands that it is frequently unavoidable and will never go away, he feels that any military action that is carried out so as to limit civilian casualties is a good start."

 

We agree on this, we obviously have differing limits.

 

"The point was that we were ostensibly looking for Osama B. Laden and rooting out a government we disagreed with, which is a fairly specific task, so it is analagous."

 

Police do not root out govts they disagree with.

 

"You don't hunt down a criminal by demolishing the country he was last seen in and taking thousands of civilians down in the process."

 

but you do destroy an infrastructure this way, which was the other task.

 

"The question of Bin Laden being alive is not a "judgement call ... take[n] for granted as proof;" it is something that is accepted as fact by the president whose actions you're so keen on defending."

 

On bin laden specifically, you have a point, on the larger question of dealing with the base of operations, that was very successful.

 

"So assuming that the government is on the level telling us we face continued threats of terrorist attack, does that not indicate that there is still a functional terrorist apparatus out there?"

 

Of course. Who thought we'd end this quickly? No one I'm aware of. We can only do what we can do when we can do it. We are not gods. We deal with what we know and hunt for the rest. This is how life works. I am kind of mystified by a requirement that something as messy as this situation be solved and all wrapped up when it will most likely take years and everyone knows it.

 

"DFA knows it's a lot to ask to interpolate things using known information, but humor him, here. It won't kill you to accept something without empirical proof, you know."

 

OK by me. But I'll still use that as a sticking point because without empiricism, we're off into the dark ages.

 

[ 09-17-2002, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: MtnGoat ]

[Fence_Sitter]

thanks mountain goat...i find this thread hilarious... but somewhat informational and it is a good thing to see what others view points are and whatnot...but ta ta for now i am off to rugby...have i night and i trust you will all be here when i return? such is out plight as cc.commers

[Poseur]

I like Necronmicon's avatar, it's really offensive.

 

Page top, bitch.

[iain]

quote:

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Originally posted by MtnGoat:

This is the problem I have with this. The entire debate assumes an unknown and arbitrary setpoint, which does not exist. It stakes such a point as the current time (or a few decades previous), when a look at any climate chart shows how rediculous this is, and then people claim we must save the earth from change, when all it has ever done is change, for reasons no one can explain!

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Of course it was much hotter and colder before we were here, I don't think anyone is saying otherwise. But when we can correlate changes in climate directly to our activity, doesn't that cause even the slightest concern? This is like arguing the concept of evolution or something. If evidence were produced tomorrow that evolution was totally refutable, do think we biologists and geologists would continue supporting it? I think you would agree that's ridiculous, of course. Why are people so resistant to this idea? Do you think scientists like staking their reputations on wild theory? Isn't it worth at least considering with a little less bias?

 

Rather than clog this board with a ton of stuff, here's one paper to start with, a summary of our impact on global climate change. It is a summary for policy makers from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It's a PDF on a web server of mine if you want to read it. Yes, there's room for interpretation of course, but I think you'd agree that there is cause for concern.

 

I just want to make it clear that if evidence against human-caused climate change were presented tomorrow, I think many scientists would be overjoyed to drop the whole issue. But you can't drop something as important as this, in my opinion, until it has been disproven. Police still respond to bogus 911 calls, so should we, as a collective group.

 

link here

[Necronomicon]

How do you like my new, extremely offensive avatar image?

 

My life has a value of $US2.5E7. Isn't that hilarious? You'd think that one of my "henchmen" would have turned me in by now, for the coin, that's quite a few goats. I guess they hate you more than they want your money. My favorite was the air drop of envelopes containing a two $100 bills and a picture of you're douche-bag President Select. Do you know how many civilian casualties were inflicted upon the Afghan people during this "War on Terror" (read "War on Dissent and Civil Rights"). Here's a simple equation:

 

Total number of 911 Casualties < Total Dead Afghan Civilians

 

How much hate do you think that foments?

 

Allah is great!

[Greg_W]

quote:

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Originally posted by Necronomicon:

How do you like my new, extremely offensive avatar image?

 

My life has a value of $US2.5E7. Isn't that hilarious? You'd think that one of my "henchmen" would have turned me in by now, for the coin, that's quite a few goats. I guess they hate you more than they want your money. My favorite was the air drop of envelopes containing a two $100 bills and a picture of you're douche-bag President Select. Do you know how many civilian casualties were inflicted upon the Afghan people during this "War on Terror" (read "War on Dissent and Civil Rights"). Here's a simple equation:

 

Total number of 911 Casualties < Total Dead Afghan Civilians

 

How much hate do you think that foments?

 

Allah is great!

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Now that IS getting offensive.

[Uncle_Tricky]

The giardia in the Nalgene bottle of MtnGoat's cultic devotion to philosophy of Objectivism is not in the use of reason, or in the emphasis on individuality, or in the belief that humans are self motivated, or in the conviction that capitalism is the ideal system.

 

The wet runout rhetorical slab that faces MtnGoat is the belief that absolute knowledge and final Truths are attainable through reason, and therefore there can be absolute right and wrong knowledge, and absolute moral and immoral thought and action.

 

For MtnGoat, once a principle has been discovered through reason to be True, that is the end of the discussion. If you disagree with the principle, then your reasoning is flawed.

 

So, MtnGoat, let's hear the objectivist take on bolting issues and sport climbing. Using Reason, what conclusions of absolute Truth or moral Right or Wrong have you arrived at in regards to these topics?

 

------

 

"We objectivists are not a cult in the literal, dictionary sense of the word, but certainly there was a cultish aspect to our world . . . . We were a group organized around a charismatic leader (Ayn Rand), whose members judged one another's character chiefly by loyalty to that leader and to her ideas" Nathaniel Branden, Rand's chosen intellectual heir.

 

[ 09-17-2002, 02:47 PM: Message edited by: Uncle Tricky ]

[Necronomicon]

What could be more offensive than a million dead Iraqis? Casualties in "World Wars" have increased by an order of magnitude, so WWIII could bring an excess of 100,000,000 dead. That's a big pile of carcass. That's offensive. How many people have you killed? I've seen one fresh dead guy, and that was enough for a lifetime. I guess I don't play enough Quake to be a Good American.

 

The Strong are not Just, but even Rome fell in time. I think that we're living in the end time for the Good Ol' USA. George W. Dipshit and his flock of hawks are about dumb enough to actually use the ground penetrating nukes that they want so badly, and that's what it's going to take to get the "Sixteen Point" that Moron is so eagerly demanding. Where will that put us? Rogue state, power hungry, anything goes, fuck what any other nation says or thinks, but you'd better be our allies, or you're next, Terrorist.

[Fence_Sitter]

do you want to add the number of afganistan women and men the taliban killed? cause i have seen videos of them shooting rows of people just like hitler did to the jews...now you insensitive fuck this guy man the entire villages gather in the sports arena (that we built) and watch as their friends and family were murdered and beaten... 1,000's of civilians were killed was the allied powers fought the evil of hitler...you aren't complaining about that are you...but now...we have to be PC even to people attempting genocide on their own people... makes sense to me...

[rbw1966]

Must have been a fast scrum.

[sexual_chocolate]

"Still, some great thinking on your part."

 

Dare I accuse you of sanctimony here? I certainly hope you wouldn't become so uncivilized, after holding up so well under your own scruples for so long....

 

"But I really find someone believing we cause more extinctions than any other cause to be a pretty big statement."

 

Ahhh, but you did not read my post carefully! Either that, or your intention is lost, due to some vague word usage. Clue: We are free to consider the correlations as we desire, yet I believe it would be silly to dismiss perhaps the most obvious possibility. I would think this to be the dominant paradigm in scientific circles....

 

"But what about weeds, trees, frogs, ants, birds, etc now with us? They survived too, without any of the qualities you describe as necessary for ours. The constant of the earths climate is *change*. I see here defenses of an idea where the climate is static. IMO this is not supportable."

 

My bad. I neglected to reply in completion. Yes, indeed, many organisms have survived, many have not. Those that survived simply did, because the changes in the environment didn't kill them. Quite simple! Of course we will ALL cease to exist, but sheesh, I think understanding our role in the continuation of environmental viability is of paramount importance, don't you think? A higher calling, if you will....

 

Why do we get to assume this causes harm and suffering, a-priori? How do you know the temperature isn't "supposed" to be 5 degrees hotter or cooler? The idea that the earth is "perfect" now is *itself* a construct that must be defended and explained before one can make a case against warming, and I don't see any of that here yet!

 

I have never said anything is "perfect". I think sometimes the notion of perfection is a construct of our limited awareness. But I think it to be self-evident that a lack of stewardship towards the earth will result in harm to ourselves and our environment. Do you not think that we have created many casualties due to our lack of foresight and episodes of greed?

 

" ...when the Vikings were growing crops in Greenland, a place where they later starved to death when it got towards todays "normal" temperature, wouldn't they consider the future cooling to *now* insufferable?"

 

I believe they might be a little more pissed if they saw that they did it to themselves, especially if they ignored a ton of clues along the way!

 

"This is the problem I have with this. The entire debate assumes an unknown and arbitrary setpoint, which does not exist."

 

For me, the argument isn't about optimal setpoints, it's more about the potential or actual consequences of our actions....

 

It stakes such a point as the current time (or a few decades previous), when a look at any climate chart shows how rediculous this is, and then people claim we must save the earth from change, when all it has ever done is change, for reasons no one can explain!

 

Some changes are readily explainable, others not. In the case of climate change, obviously some disagreement exists, yet did not a major scientific organization sign off on a statement indicating their opinion to be in accordance with the idea that we are indeed raising our temperatures due to greenhouse gases?

 

I flew to Thailand not too long ago, and realized that we live on quite a small planet! Then, flying into Bangkok and seeing the smog stretching out into the horizon, by god, and all the millions of cars churning out burn by-products 24/7, and the factories with their attendant pollutions... I'd have to be a fool to think that this wasn't affecting our environment tremendously! I think "setpoint" debates become secondary at this point, yet this is a problem with science: to argue a point, one needs objective criteria with which to argue, yet many of these criteria are only indicators, small pointers easily manipulatable and argued about endlessly. The forest is burning, yet we argue about individual trees!

 

But, I think I see some of the points you are making, and in many ways I have no disagreements with some of them. I just think we see a different forest; mine is green, yours is blue.

[Fence_Sitter]

its not till 4 now and i do not scrum...i am a back!

[rbw1966]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fence Sitter:

its not till 4 now and i do not scrum...i am a back!

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And trask is a "front"?

[Necronomicon]

We fire bombed Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe during WWII. "Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equivalent period of] time in the history of man." 100,000 dead in six hours. These were CIVILIAN populations. We killed 40,000 people INSTANTLY at Hiroshima (where US POWs were KNOWN to be kept), and 20,000 people INSTANTLY at Nagasaki (both of which were spared fire-bombing to that military stratagists could acuratly determine the destructive potential of our new weapon). Is that offensive?

 

[ 09-17-2002, 03:02 PM: Message edited by: Necronomicon ]

[Dru]

quote:

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Originally posted by rbw1966:

quote:

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Originally posted by Fence Sitter:

its not till 4 now and i do not scrum...i am a back!

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And trask is a "front"?

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I heard trask is a "slave"

[Poseur]

quote:

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How do you like my new, extremely offensive avatar image?

 

My life has a value of $US2.5E7. Isn't that hilarious? You'd think that one of my "henchmen" would have turned me in by now, for the coin, that's quite a few goats. I guess they hate you more than they want your money. My favorite was the air drop of envelopes containing a two $100 bills and a picture of you're douche-bag President Select. Do you know how many civilian casualties were inflicted upon the Afghan people during this "War on Terror" (read "War on Dissent and Civil Rights"). Here's a simple equation:

 

Total number of 911 Casualties < Total Dead Afghan Civilians

 

How much hate do you think that foments?

 

Allah is great!

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You just took all the fun out of being offensive.

[Fence_Sitter]

yah...war over... what excuse are you going to give for the japaneese bombing us? if we didn't end the war...chnaces are double that many civilians would have been killed because of the ensuing conflict... what would you have done mister secretary of defense? keep sending in more 18 year old boys to get killed?

 

[ 09-17-2002, 03:04 PM: Message edited by: Fence Sitter ]

[rbw1966]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fence Sitter:

yah...war over... what excuse are you going to give for the japaneese bombing us? if we didn't end the war...chnaces are double that many civilians would have been killed because of the ensuing conflict... what would you have done mister secretary of defense? keep sending in more 18 year old boys to get killed?

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Wait a second--the "japs" bombed us? This is news to me.

[Necronomicon]

Your point is valid, we were certainly stuck between a rock and a hard place. But history tends to repeat itself, and I don't think that anyone would want to go back down that road. Our "leaders" don't seem to see it the same way, but rather seem to look at it from the perspective of securing natural resources for the Capitalist Machine and increasing the value of there stock portfolios.

[Fence_Sitter]

mabe youshould read your history there fuck head... the name starts with p... i'll give you a new hint in 10 minutes... i cant believe this one...

[Fence_Sitter]

i agree necro...i would never want that to be an option for the U.S. EVER again...but if this anti american sentiment and subsequent terrorist action contitues and it is shown to be supported with the $$$ of iraq...i dont think that Bushy boy will agree with either of us...lets jsut hope it doesn't get to that...agreed?

[rbw1966]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fence Sitter:

mabe youshould read your history there fuck head... the name starts with p... i'll give you a new hint in 10 minutes... i cant believe this one...

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Ahhh. . yes, you are right. A bit of rectal-cranial inversion there. So sorry.

 

Fuck head? Mkay. mi culej dint lernt mee sow gud.

[Necronomicon]

The Japanese civilians were at the point of pushing the militarists to surrender. Even the emperor was pushing to surrender. We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in part, to end the war quickly so that the USSR would have no claim to occupying Japan, as they had yet to declare war against Japan. We also sent a message to the Soviets saying "Hey, look what we have and you don't."