A Windows 98 & ME forum. Win98banter

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   Home » Win98banter forum » Windows ME » General
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Recent subjects I brought up



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #11  
Old January 22nd 07, 11:22 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
webster72n
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 1,526
Default Recent subjects I brought up


"Eric" wrote in message
...

"webster72n" wrote in message
...
The Vietnam War was largely considered lost, but I suppose you could
consider it a win for both sides, since we got our troops out and they
are
now at peace. We didn't accomplish what we went there to do, but we
shouldn't have tried to do that to begin with.


Leaving the rest up for discussion, I must whole heartedly agree with

this
viewpoint and include Iraq in this equation. Initially we didn't go

there
to
fight terrorism, nor to preserve *our* freedom, but for control of the
oil
reserves. Time *to wake up*. H.


Bush says we initially went there to fight terrorism, that the main if not
only reason we removed Saddam from power was because he was allowing
terrorists to train in his country and was even funding their efforts.
While this may have been our main reason for initially sending in troops,
Bush did seem to make a fool of himself by repeating that we were there
because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (which were apparently
smuggled out of the country just before we got there). I am a little
puzzled by every Bush speech that makes it sound like our entire mission

in
Iraq is still fighting terrorists, even though we reportedly did kill
al-Quaeda's #2 guy among others. It seems most of our missions there have
nothing to do with any terrorists that are remotely connected with the
destruction of the World Trade Center. Our main mission it appears is
keeping the peace, which has a lot to do with religion (Sunnis fighting
Shi'ites), and surely has something to do with the flow of oil.
So I am in favor of keeping our troops there for as long as the Iraqi

people
need us and as long as they are committed to taking over the peacekeeping
efforts themselves as soon as possible, and even sending more troops
temporarily, but it would be nice if a Bush speech would tell the whole
story.


That's an entirely personal view and you are entitled to it.
IMHO our presence in Iraq is no more than a show of force and domination
and morally, to say the least, not justified.
EOC (end of chapter). H.





  #12  
Old January 23rd 07, 12:27 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Job
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 45
Default Recent subjects I brought up

Norman,
Very good post. Viet Vets like your self should hold your
heads high with pride. You were treated very shabbily by
the same types that you can see are still around and that
have answers for everything. I like Isreal's approach, d**k
with us and we'll put your lights out.
"Norman" wrote in message
...
I have to wonder if such off topic is an effort to kill ME,
since this is a
wME group.

That said here goes. Populace has to have guns in the event
it is necessary
to revolt against mind control of Hitler types. Otherwise
you get Sadam and
minions overlording the populace. You can find many examples
of such around
the world like in Africa. Besides, guns won't kill wME.

And something else to chew on. (Vietnam Veteran) We didn't
lose that Fing
war. The war was lost by the same types that today are
saying Iraq is
another Vietnam. White House tapes prove it was hampered by
diplomacy
because of nuclear concerns. No one can say that the push at
the end if at
other time would not have proven concerns correct. Although
peace monkeys
likely brought that push about, they should weigh their
actions against the
millions of lives lost after the peace. That sums the many
years of the war,
except the end when the push occurred. (when I served). From
68 to 72, much
control had been handed to RVN, especially in air control,
albeit with old
antiquated planes and equipment. Major offensive launched
by NVA, Easter of
'72, moving massive amounts of arms and troops south of
border, large
numbers of Marines and Marine air wing moved back into
Vietnam to stop their
advance. Peacenik pressure against Vietnam moved most of us
to support
areas, within flying distance. With winning or losing forced
to foreground,
Linebacker I and II were exercised. We finally did what
could have been done
earlier if not for the diplomacy thing. We took it to Hanoi
and forced them
to meet in Paris. But because of traitors like John F Kerry
who held
unauthorized meetings with them, they renigged, resulting in
Linebacker II.
They signed that time. It is the Kerry types that would
rather have you, us,
lose wars. Maybe it would put most diplomats out of a job.
Lose, no way, we won the peace and that is what going to war
is about.
We are disgraced by the fact that the peaceniks have not had
to wear the
scars of what they did, yet we are constantly forced to wear
the albatross
they created. They and the Capitol monkeys of the same mind.
RVN lost in the
end because the Capitol monkeys, in a single stroke, cut all
money for the
promised weapons and support to RVN. If someone takes away
your guns, how
long can you last against a well armed force that is being
resupplied by
Russia and China?

Vietnam should never be compared to Iraq, just for the
reason that it was
about Communist dominoes and this one is about a bunch of
fanatics
indoctrinated in getting to Allah quickly via nuclear,
biological, and
chemical. You have to know if they were handed a bomb that
would vaporize
Earth, they'd hold a party and detonate it. KEEP THAT IN
MIND!

Last thought, and something for the Brits to chew over,
Geneva Convention.
That Armed Forces Geneva Convention Card troops carry is a
bunch of baloney
created post the big one. If it had been in place during
WWII, England would
have lost, US likely would have lost. At the top and bottom
of that Geneva
document it should have in very large letters, "YOU BREAK
THESE RULES, SO DO
WE, WITH PAYBACK!" You don't win wars by tying hands behind
back.

Norman

"Shane" wrote in message
...
I'll send paragraph by paragraph and see which do and

don't get through.



Shane wrote:
I've sent three posts this morning - a response to Job,

an inserted
oar to Patc, and the response I promised Figgs (in which

I now see I
repeat quite a lot and its not quite as incisive as I

originally
meant). The first two got through, the last hasn't (I've

reset the
group twice). The last one gives my reasons for no

longer believing
in a law passed here some years ago now, allusions to

which I've made
before. The question is: who would censor it? Because

these days it
wouldn't necessarily be MS and such is precisely why I

justified my
current position on the emotive subject. If this gets

through and
*it* hasn't I'll repost it in various forms.






  #13  
Old January 23rd 07, 02:58 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Eric
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 216
Default Recent subjects I brought up


"webster72n" wrote in message
...
That's an entirely personal view and you are entitled to it.
IMHO our presence in Iraq is no more than a show of force and domination
and morally, to say the least, not justified.
EOC (end of chapter). H.


What are you saying, you think we should just get all our troops out and
hope they're ready to solve their own problems, or hope the sectarian
violence that has been around for thousands of years just disappears without
our troops there and doesn't escalate to world war? Can we afford to take
that risk?
What is "morally unjustified" about our troop presence?
Do you know anything about the situation over there?
There are 3 religious groups in Iraq (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd).
They have always been at conflict with each other.
While Saddam was in charge, doing horrible things to his people, he kept the
conflict under control.
When we removed Saddam from power, we disbanded his military. Some of his
troops were killed. Others were simple not allowed to join the military of
the new government due to their loyalties to Saddam.
With no military, the religious sects went back to fighting each other, and
other terrorist groups from neighboring countries joined in that fight as
well as a fight against us.
Our troops have attempted to train a new Iraqi army and keep the violence
under control at the same time.
To accomplish these 2 tasks, we need more troops there at least temporarily.
It takes our military at least 15 years to train one military commander.
We've only been in Iraq since 2003.
You expect us to give up on Iraq in less than 4 years?


  #14  
Old January 23rd 07, 07:03 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
webster72n
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 1,526
Default Recent subjects I brought up


"Eric" wrote in message
...

"webster72n" wrote in message
...
That's an entirely personal view and you are entitled to it.
IMHO our presence in Iraq is no more than a show of force and

domination
and morally, to say the least, not justified.
EOC (end of chapter). H.


What are you saying, you think we should just get all our troops out and
hope they're ready to solve their own problems, or hope the sectarian
violence that has been around for thousands of years just disappears

without
our troops there and doesn't escalate to world war? Can we afford to take
that risk?
What is "morally unjustified" about our troop presence?
Do you know anything about the situation over there?
There are 3 religious groups in Iraq (Sunni, Shi'ite, Kurd).
They have always been at conflict with each other.
While Saddam was in charge, doing horrible things to his people, he kept

the
conflict under control.
When we removed Saddam from power, we disbanded his military. Some of his
troops were killed. Others were simple not allowed to join the military

of
the new government due to their loyalties to Saddam.
With no military, the religious sects went back to fighting each other,

and
other terrorist groups from neighboring countries joined in that fight as
well as a fight against us.
Our troops have attempted to train a new Iraqi army and keep the violence
under control at the same time.
To accomplish these 2 tasks, we need more troops there at least

temporarily.
It takes our military at least 15 years to train one military commander.
We've only been in Iraq since 2003.
You expect us to give up on Iraq in less than 4 years?


We had no business being there in the first place under the circumstances,
never mind Saddam Hussein, the *Bad Man*.
All we have to do is, look in the mirror.
To top it off, we are in the process of tangling with Iran.
What do you expect the consequences to be?
On the other hand, the Bible will fullfill itself, no doubt.





  #15  
Old January 23rd 07, 07:36 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Eric
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 216
Default Recent subjects I brought up


"webster72n" wrote in message
...
We had no business being there in the first place under the circumstances,
never mind Saddam Hussein, the *Bad Man*.
All we have to do is, look in the mirror.
To top it off, we are in the process of tangling with Iran.
What do you expect the consequences to be?
On the other hand, the Bible will fullfill itself, no doubt.


Going to Iraq in the first place has been the subject of much debate.
The top reasons for going in a
- Saddam supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use
them, which were apparently smuggled out of the country as we invaded
- Saddam was supporting and supplying terrorists and allowing them to train
in his country
- Saddam was murdering Iraqi civilians like a small scale Stalin, and the
people of Iraq needed a liberator
- Saddam caused problems for Bush Sr, so Bush II had to take him out as soon
as he had the power no matter how strong the case was for war
- The world oil market was becoming unstable, so the US had to lead the
charge to secure it

Whichever reason you believe we went there for, and whether or not you
believe we should have been there in the first place, doesn't matter
anymore. The fact is we are there and we are searching for the best
strategy to finish the job. You didn't bother to explain your statement,
"IMHO our presence in Iraq is no more than a show of force and domination
and morally, to say the least, not justified.". You just repeated that
tired old whine that we shouldn't have gone there.

As for Iran, I believe our diplomatic relations with them are better than
they were before we sent troops into Iraq.
You are either John Kerry, or someone who listened to him too much. Instead
of offering insight on what to do about Iraq, you whine that we shouldn't
have gone there and shift the subject to Iran. That is why John Kerry lost
the election. He agreed with you, and thought we should just get out no
matter what happens after we're gone.


  #16  
Old January 23rd 07, 08:29 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Shane
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 480
Default Recent subjects I brought up

Quite apart from the fact those posts are a different one broken down into
paragraphs in order to try to discover why the original failed to make it to
the servers, and Heather's paragraphs were mostly removed for that purpose
and so it will obviously be taken out of context...and which, having
completed the exercise I 'cancelled', so they weren't supposed to still be
there to argue about anyway...and apart from the fact that one does not
intend to unblock a particular poster who appears to have a habit of not
merely misunderstanding one's words - which is fair enough, I'm not
especially eloquent - but embellishing them, which isn't...

....nonetheless I'll say this: it is irresponsible to give a drunk his car
keys. Is it not then irresponsible to give the same man (or woman) - who
wants to drive, drunk - a handgun?

Wanting to drive, drunk, is adopting the position that your pleasure or
convenience is more important than, say, a child's life. But it'd be okay to
give them their gun back? Or doesn't anyone who owns a handgun drink too
much? Do only responsible people own guns? This is what I mean by rights
clashing and gun advocates who put theirs first.

Actually - reading about Job's Ruger - I read about key locks for the hammer
mechanism which, because I've been out of the loop so long, I was unaware
of. What a good idea! As a gun advocate, I'm all for those (I don't like the
idea of weapons that can only be fired by the owner though). Not that either
stop an irresponsible gun owner causing the death of a third party.

Democracy - quite apart from the fact I doubt true democracy exists
anywhere - has nothing to do with taking legislator's words for what is
right or wrong. That's laziness or craven cowardice and probably both. You
make your own mind up about ethics - that's what democracy is about. That's
(part of) what Consciousness is about. And growing up.

Waiting until the next election to change what's morally wrong doesn't work,
or nowhere near reliably enough, because doing nothing until then sends the
signal that you'll accept what ever it is actually you'd rather not accept
(such as, here, the Poll Tax) - so even the opposition will likely adopt the
contentious issue, for expediency; but also who is voted in or out will come
down to more than just one issue. If society seems to be working otherwise,
likely the Government will be re-elected. What do you do now, wait until the
*next* election? You already waited for one. What most people would do is
just forget about it, and so society evolves unchallenged for the worse.

The People decide. It doesn't mean if neither serious contender for office
understands ethics then it must be *you* who 'fails to get it'. They're
supposed to represent you, not manipulate you. If they say black is white,
they're wrong, full stop.

The political classes of the Western World today are dominated by
professional liars - mostly lawyers. To know that and continue to trust them
even to the extent of telling one what to think is that kind of
irresponsibility that 'The Right To Bear Arms' precludes. If you let them
tell you what to think then of course you will never, ever bear arms against
them when they go too far! You'll believe the lies. That's what the lies are
for.

Stanley Milgram already demonstrated all you need to know, decades ago. But
he's far from the only one.

Norman. I expect - if I was looking for an argument - I could argue with you
until natural causes intervened. The rest of the world disagrees with the
US, much of the time. In part that relates to Americans who don't think we
have the right to - which is only satisfactorily explained by the 'bully
syndrome' by which Might equals Right. At which times your having the bomb
is frightening. I have more sympathy with the French independent nuclear
deterrence than our own 'at-the-beck-and-call-of-the-US' version (though not
doing atmospheric testing until the 90's! That was crass, much as, in some
ways, I'd love to see one).

Meanwhile, we began what ended up as Trinity and we designed and built our
own A- and then H-bombs and the only reason we didn't end up producing them
to this day is (likely that) you blackmailed us as part payment for
supplying us when we were the only ones standing against Hitler. Like a bank
foreclosing on you home.

We began almost everything. The jet, of course (though the Germans may have
independently come up with that one) which we then gave you and then our
government sabotaged our own efforts to break the Sound Barrier by forcing
Miles (iirc) to give you our designs in the sort of sharing that only goes
one way - then forcing Miles to give up pursuing it. Almost as if strong
hints that the US wanted to be first had been given.

Our brilliant Lightning interceptor didn't get sold to Germany because our
government secretly briefed the Germans against it in favour of the
iconic-but-generally-agreed-to-be-otherwise-awful Phantom. The only
reasonable explanation for that - because it happened almost everywhere else
in Defence and Technology arenas too - is we were blackmailed by the US
following WWII.

It is extremely tempting to believe that the prevailing view of Americans
pre-war was that they'd happily have done business with Nazi Germany if we
were destroyed. There are Americans I have tremendous respect for, and
Americans I am profoundly grateful for, and FDR is one of them.

We may not have started colonialism but we certainly made it ours! And one
way or another we gave up or lost the Empire. And that is good, because it
was morally wrong. Invading other nations is wrong. Justifying it because
they were naive enough to 'sell' us vast tracts of land for beads does not
make it alright, it makes it about as honourable as 'stealing candy from a
child'. Justifying it because we gave them a lifestyle more like our own is
at best questionable. Yet this is what US foreign policy is - Cultural
Imperialism - Free Enterprise, a phrase too many Americans hear and stop
thinking thereafter, that encompasses blackmail and flim-flam and plying
entire nations with temptations that natural greed and laziness makes their
voters ripe for - that's why kids everywhere want to be American, not
because they love the thought of freedom - they don't even know what it
means - but because they do little but watch mindless American TV that
tempts them in the name of selling them stuff. Like the way advertisers
increasingly target children because they'll nag the parents.

If you think 'whatever you can get away with' is therefore justified, you
*are* in league with the devil like various people think! I mean, the Middle
East has a very, very strong case, which it's unthinking hotheads, just like
everyone else's, go and ruin. Just because the gangster (like your old
friend Saddam) in charge is happy to 'give' his people's property to the US
whether they like it or not, in exchange for expensive toys and status
symbols akin to the bigger dick American spammers hope to sell us, because
*he* is a megalomaniac, doesn't make it okay, but that would appear to be
exactly what supporters of peacetime US Foreign Policy think. It makes it
look as if Organised Crime is so successful in the US because the US is run
and supported by people without morals; that the way the Mafia runs *is* The
American Way.

You know what amazes me, increasingly (as I get older)? How recent history
is. By which I mean how much was metaphorically 'just yesterday'. Along with
the assertion that 'history repeats itself' - which doesn't mean what it is
taken to mean, because we are always at somewhere new, because the
technology is so advanced on a generation previous and there are subtle
differences in what we now want. I'm still only middle-aged. I was born as
the Space Age began and the Jet Age took off (pun not intended). Look at
where we are today? World War II seemed a lifetime ago when I was a kid, but
more time has passed now since I rode a Jota than between the end of
hostilities and my coming into the mix!

Look where we were a century ago. Less than a century! I've been telling my
sister about the Tuskogee Airmen recently. I was actually alive when
Americans you'd respect for fighting in Viet Nam, or Eric would allow to
have a gun *and* bullets until proven unfit, were pulling coloureds up into
the trees by the neck! It's not that long ago, is it. A lot of those
Americans are still alive - and voting. You think you deserve to tell the
world what to do? You still haven't meaningfully compensated the Native
Americans! Or do the whites tell themselves they're happy running their
casinos so everything's okay?

Almost nobody has an open mind. Not just American, all nationalities. That's
part of being human, just like normal perception misses so very much because
the point of it is to help us survive rather than to help us have fun. But
we're not animals - or if we are, if it's each person for themselves, then
I've got a few people to kill before they get me. You know? I'm sure you do;
if you were in Viet Nam you must know what people are really like. I mean,
unless it traumatised you so much you're in denial now.

About Viet Nam, I liked the movie with Eric Roberts - To Heal A Nation -
about the Memorial. The attitude that movie advances is the right one, imo.
If you didn't like that movie I would consider you just too angry to think
straight, but I really hope you liked that movie.

Do you think Kent State was justifiable? If you do, you justify the
protests, at least from your opponent's pov. It doesn't matter which came
first, because what came first was the willingness to shoot unarmed
protesters, and *that's* really what the protests were about (just not on
the surface where most people's minds remain). But all mass movements are
dominated by the unthinking, left or right. There is no actual difference
when you come down to it. Like left wing dictatorships and right wing
dictatorships are the same thing, people who murder and imprison political
opponents and treat the rest of us as valueless beyond as cheap labour or
other means to an end. Labelling them 'Left Wing' or 'Right Wing' rather
misses the point.

People who vote for whoever their parents voted for, never having really
thought about switching. People who think that changing your mind is a sign
of fickleness. Authoritarians are the ones who just do what they're told,
even if its murder; even if its mass murder. It is alarming that mainstream
political groups still encourage authoritarianism and do things like 'play
the Race card', it implys that those vying for power don't care about
'collateral damage' - such as encouraging genocide elsewhere - but is
entirely consistent with the current notion of politics as a career rather
than a public service, in other words too often it doesn't seem to be the
public that comes first, its the politician - and sometimes only the
politician. Short-termism is widely recognised as the problem of the Human
Race.

I believed what I heard about global warning as a kid, and watched as people
discredited, with no justification beyond that doing anything about it would
be bad for their particular business, the scientists who warned about it.
Ah, but you're an American, you'll be deluding yourself because the American
way of life depends on burning all that - our - fossil fuel - so we all
choke for you.

What I believe in is acting honourably. You do too, don't you, Norman? And,
as an example, you don't think villages burnt and farmers machine-gunned was
excusable do you? I'd rather you thought the people responsible should have
done hard time, that it brought shame upon the US. I found it reassuring
that there were prosecutions, though wasn't the soldier convicted then
released? True he was probably a scapegoat - like Lindy or whatever her name
is. England? - who actually I feel kind of sorry for. Certainly in the UK
murder or torture while in uniform (or, indeed, plain clothes) gets tacit
approval by virtue of lack of consequences.

But if Viet Nam was so Just, how come the North won and yet Viet Nam is a
pretty good country now? And why would you expect the Soviet Union to have
shrugged it's shoulders and moved on when the US developed the A-bomb and
kept it to themselves? I'll grant that there were valid reasons for so
doing, but like hawks everywhere you seem to blame your enemy for acting
exactly as you would were the positions reversed. In other words you don't
appear to step back and look at yourself - which is required except for
being a hothead.

You probably thought Oliver North was a hero? But how can the US expect
respect from the Middle East (or anywhere not already in it's pocket like
the UK) when it deals with total hypocrisy? Its like the supporters of such
enterprises think no-one else is smart enough to see the inconsistences. You
don't deal with terrorists. You don't appease dictatorships. Unless all its
really about is business. Do you think supporting death squads in Central
America was a good thing? What is Law for? Just something to keep your own
people under control - along with that 'opium of the masses' known as
television? If that's what it's about, there's no Democracy there, it's just
a way to be totalitarian by stealth. But isn't Democracy what you fought
for? Maybe you confused 'Democracy' with 'America'.

Anyway, this was a series of posts taken out of context and I don't want to
spend the rest of my life on the computer. I believe we're going to hell in
a handcart because of partisanship, because almost no-one thinks 'one step
beyond'.

I don't kid myself, or not for long. Ceasing it requires admitting you *can*
kid yourself, instead of believing yourself infallible. My contribution to
the world, if ever I convince anyone at all, will be to make them really
beware of self deception, not think that because they gave the issue five
minutes thought as a teenager they've been immune ever since. But as long as
people believe what they want to believe, big business - and their
politician partners - will kill us for short term profit.

Shane





Shane wrote:
Surprised that one got through. 7th:

We do have it pretty good with our National Healthcare System.....so
don't complain. And I do believe ours is better than the UK. Had a
lot of time to investigate that one.


Yes. Probably wasn't until recently, but I almost died because of
what ours has become (under Thatcher, Major and Blair. Must figure
out some time how to sue the f**ker for it!).

Off to bed.....getting as bad as Shane and Mike!!

Night.....Figgs


Hope you haven't slept all this time, Figgs!


Shane



Shane wrote:
6th paragraph:

However, here we're seeing the consequences of a politician banning
handguns. Whether he started out meaning well or was always a
megalomaniac is moot, the point is *we* need weapons to protect
against tyrannical government! Our freedoms are being removed piece
by piece, relentlessly, and a police state being established. Someone
wrote a letter (to the Independent?) recently asking (something like)
if when Blair is no longer PM, will he continue to work for the
Republican Party? That is not really a joke.




Shane wrote:
Hmm again. Not only has every thing but the first paragraph got
through so far, I just e-mailed the post to myself, so it wouldn't
have got through if it was, say, the British Government doing the
censoring.
Next paragraph:

Yes, the psychopaths and organised crime have so many guns that it
makes sense for anyone who doesn't think there'll always be a
policeman to protect you to have one to, but mostly they'll only
shoot you if you interfere with business. The crazies are, imo, a
better argument for having a gun yourself (if you're in the US. That
isn't really an issue here, nor presumably in Canada?).




Shane wrote:
4th paragraph:

Meanwhile the US of course has the right to bear arms in the
constitution, a fact that has frequently been cited as the reason
they must be allowed to do so - to defend against tyranny from
their own government. Unfortunately the only ones who use that
argument I ever saw who would bear arms against the government -
as opposed to just letting freedom be encroached on out of
existence - are the crazies who do basically want to shoot the
weak and anyone who tries to protect them. The rest are just like
the British citizens, who can't help defining what is right as
whatever the government of the day tells them it is.

Shane wrote:
Hmm. 3rd paragraph:

Anyway, I say yes to gun control. Because we're not living on the
frontier - or most of us aren't anyway. Maybe those in the rural
mid-west should just lobby to leave the Union - or stop pretending
to care about Americans rather than just America. However,
handguns are a fact of life. I say better to live with it,
responsibly, than to pretend they don't exist. They're like the
atomic bomb, it would be nicer if the technology had never been
dreamt of, but it was and they're here to stay.


Shane wrote:
2nd paragraph:

But the world over, people are lazy thinkers and don't look
beyond the first conclusion. So its like we're living in a world
ruled by children. And the politicians pander to them, of course.

There are Pro-gun lobbyists who deny irrefutable fact the way
some deny the Holocaust (another parallel!). Now, say they were
at a dance - and the polite thing to do was hand your firearm in
at the cloakroom. Handing it back at the end of the evening
would be akin, responsibility-wise, to giving back a drunk their
car keys (I'm drowning in parallels here!). There are certain
rights that conflict with other people's rights, aren't there.
But those Pro-gun supporters think theirs always comes first.
Maybe that comes in growing up in the mid-West, miles from
anyone else and they do still think they're on their own on the
frontier. Shane wrote:
I'll send paragraph by paragraph and see which do and don't get
through.


Shane wrote:
I've sent three posts this morning - a response to Job, an
inserted oar to Patc, and the response I promised Figgs (in
which I now see I repeat quite a lot and its not quite as
incisive as I originally meant). The first two got through, the
last hasn't (I've reset the group twice). The last one gives my
reasons for no longer believing in a law passed here some years
ago now, allusions to which I've made before. The question is:
who would censor it? Because these days it wouldn't necessarily
be MS and such is precisely why I justified my current position
on the emotive subject. If this gets through and *it* hasn't
I'll repost it in various forms.



  #17  
Old January 23rd 07, 08:39 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
webster72n
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 1,526
Default Recent subjects I brought up


As I said befo You are entitled to your opinion.
The whining I leave up to you and for the rest, time will tell. H.


"Eric" wrote in message
...

"webster72n" wrote in message
...
We had no business being there in the first place under the

circumstances,
never mind Saddam Hussein, the *Bad Man*.
All we have to do is, look in the mirror.
To top it off, we are in the process of tangling with Iran.
What do you expect the consequences to be?
On the other hand, the Bible will fullfill itself, no doubt.


Going to Iraq in the first place has been the subject of much debate.
The top reasons for going in a
- Saddam supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to

use
them, which were apparently smuggled out of the country as we invaded
- Saddam was supporting and supplying terrorists and allowing them to

train
in his country
- Saddam was murdering Iraqi civilians like a small scale Stalin, and the
people of Iraq needed a liberator
- Saddam caused problems for Bush Sr, so Bush II had to take him out as

soon
as he had the power no matter how strong the case was for war
- The world oil market was becoming unstable, so the US had to lead the
charge to secure it

Whichever reason you believe we went there for, and whether or not you
believe we should have been there in the first place, doesn't matter
anymore. The fact is we are there and we are searching for the best
strategy to finish the job. You didn't bother to explain your statement,
"IMHO our presence in Iraq is no more than a show of force and domination
and morally, to say the least, not justified.". You just repeated that
tired old whine that we shouldn't have gone there.

As for Iran, I believe our diplomatic relations with them are better than
they were before we sent troops into Iraq.
You are either John Kerry, or someone who listened to him too much.

Instead
of offering insight on what to do about Iraq, you whine that we shouldn't
have gone there and shift the subject to Iran. That is why John Kerry

lost
the election. He agreed with you, and thought we should just get out no
matter what happens after we're gone.




  #18  
Old January 23rd 07, 09:00 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
webster72n
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 1,526
Default Recent subjects I brought up


You deserve a medal, Shane, or a doctorate at least, for Philosophy.
Your reasoning is totally realistic and it offers workable solutions.
Hope Eric gets a glimpse of this.
My only wish, your wisdom could spread far beyond the borders of this forum,
but there doens't lie much promise in that, does it?
Thanks for your *eye-opening* contribution.

Harry.


"Shane" wrote in message
...
Quite apart from the fact those posts are a different one broken down into
paragraphs in order to try to discover why the original failed to make it

to
the servers, and Heather's paragraphs were mostly removed for that purpose
and so it will obviously be taken out of context...and which, having
completed the exercise I 'cancelled', so they weren't supposed to still be
there to argue about anyway...and apart from the fact that one does not
intend to unblock a particular poster who appears to have a habit of not
merely misunderstanding one's words - which is fair enough, I'm not
especially eloquent - but embellishing them, which isn't...

...nonetheless I'll say this: it is irresponsible to give a drunk his car
keys. Is it not then irresponsible to give the same man (or woman) - who
wants to drive, drunk - a handgun?

Wanting to drive, drunk, is adopting the position that your pleasure or
convenience is more important than, say, a child's life. But it'd be okay

to
give them their gun back? Or doesn't anyone who owns a handgun drink too
much? Do only responsible people own guns? This is what I mean by rights
clashing and gun advocates who put theirs first.

Actually - reading about Job's Ruger - I read about key locks for the

hammer
mechanism which, because I've been out of the loop so long, I was unaware
of. What a good idea! As a gun advocate, I'm all for those (I don't like

the
idea of weapons that can only be fired by the owner though). Not that

either
stop an irresponsible gun owner causing the death of a third party.

Democracy - quite apart from the fact I doubt true democracy exists
anywhere - has nothing to do with taking legislator's words for what is
right or wrong. That's laziness or craven cowardice and probably both. You
make your own mind up about ethics - that's what democracy is about.

That's
(part of) what Consciousness is about. And growing up.

Waiting until the next election to change what's morally wrong doesn't

work,
or nowhere near reliably enough, because doing nothing until then sends

the
signal that you'll accept what ever it is actually you'd rather not accept
(such as, here, the Poll Tax) - so even the opposition will likely adopt

the
contentious issue, for expediency; but also who is voted in or out will

come
down to more than just one issue. If society seems to be working

otherwise,
likely the Government will be re-elected. What do you do now, wait until

the
*next* election? You already waited for one. What most people would do is
just forget about it, and so society evolves unchallenged for the worse.

The People decide. It doesn't mean if neither serious contender for office
understands ethics then it must be *you* who 'fails to get it'. They're
supposed to represent you, not manipulate you. If they say black is white,
they're wrong, full stop.

The political classes of the Western World today are dominated by
professional liars - mostly lawyers. To know that and continue to trust

them
even to the extent of telling one what to think is that kind of
irresponsibility that 'The Right To Bear Arms' precludes. If you let them
tell you what to think then of course you will never, ever bear arms

against
them when they go too far! You'll believe the lies. That's what the lies

are
for.

Stanley Milgram already demonstrated all you need to know, decades ago.

But
he's far from the only one.

Norman. I expect - if I was looking for an argument - I could argue with

you
until natural causes intervened. The rest of the world disagrees with the
US, much of the time. In part that relates to Americans who don't think we
have the right to - which is only satisfactorily explained by the 'bully
syndrome' by which Might equals Right. At which times your having the bomb
is frightening. I have more sympathy with the French independent nuclear
deterrence than our own 'at-the-beck-and-call-of-the-US' version (though

not
doing atmospheric testing until the 90's! That was crass, much as, in some
ways, I'd love to see one).

Meanwhile, we began what ended up as Trinity and we designed and built our
own A- and then H-bombs and the only reason we didn't end up producing

them
to this day is (likely that) you blackmailed us as part payment for
supplying us when we were the only ones standing against Hitler. Like a

bank
foreclosing on you home.

We began almost everything. The jet, of course (though the Germans may

have
independently come up with that one) which we then gave you and then our
government sabotaged our own efforts to break the Sound Barrier by forcing
Miles (iirc) to give you our designs in the sort of sharing that only goes
one way - then forcing Miles to give up pursuing it. Almost as if strong
hints that the US wanted to be first had been given.

Our brilliant Lightning interceptor didn't get sold to Germany because our
government secretly briefed the Germans against it in favour of the
iconic-but-generally-agreed-to-be-otherwise-awful Phantom. The only
reasonable explanation for that - because it happened almost everywhere

else
in Defence and Technology arenas too - is we were blackmailed by the US
following WWII.

It is extremely tempting to believe that the prevailing view of Americans
pre-war was that they'd happily have done business with Nazi Germany if we
were destroyed. There are Americans I have tremendous respect for, and
Americans I am profoundly grateful for, and FDR is one of them.

We may not have started colonialism but we certainly made it ours! And one
way or another we gave up or lost the Empire. And that is good, because it
was morally wrong. Invading other nations is wrong. Justifying it because
they were naive enough to 'sell' us vast tracts of land for beads does not
make it alright, it makes it about as honourable as 'stealing candy from a
child'. Justifying it because we gave them a lifestyle more like our own

is
at best questionable. Yet this is what US foreign policy is - Cultural
Imperialism - Free Enterprise, a phrase too many Americans hear and stop
thinking thereafter, that encompasses blackmail and flim-flam and plying
entire nations with temptations that natural greed and laziness makes

their
voters ripe for - that's why kids everywhere want to be American, not
because they love the thought of freedom - they don't even know what it
means - but because they do little but watch mindless American TV that
tempts them in the name of selling them stuff. Like the way advertisers
increasingly target children because they'll nag the parents.

If you think 'whatever you can get away with' is therefore justified, you
*are* in league with the devil like various people think! I mean, the

Middle
East has a very, very strong case, which it's unthinking hotheads, just

like
everyone else's, go and ruin. Just because the gangster (like your old
friend Saddam) in charge is happy to 'give' his people's property to the

US
whether they like it or not, in exchange for expensive toys and status
symbols akin to the bigger dick American spammers hope to sell us, because
*he* is a megalomaniac, doesn't make it okay, but that would appear to be
exactly what supporters of peacetime US Foreign Policy think. It makes it
look as if Organised Crime is so successful in the US because the US is

run
and supported by people without morals; that the way the Mafia runs *is*

The
American Way.

You know what amazes me, increasingly (as I get older)? How recent history
is. By which I mean how much was metaphorically 'just yesterday'. Along

with
the assertion that 'history repeats itself' - which doesn't mean what it

is
taken to mean, because we are always at somewhere new, because the
technology is so advanced on a generation previous and there are subtle
differences in what we now want. I'm still only middle-aged. I was born as
the Space Age began and the Jet Age took off (pun not intended). Look at
where we are today? World War II seemed a lifetime ago when I was a kid,

but
more time has passed now since I rode a Jota than between the end of
hostilities and my coming into the mix!

Look where we were a century ago. Less than a century! I've been telling

my
sister about the Tuskogee Airmen recently. I was actually alive when
Americans you'd respect for fighting in Viet Nam, or Eric would allow to
have a gun *and* bullets until proven unfit, were pulling coloureds up

into
the trees by the neck! It's not that long ago, is it. A lot of those
Americans are still alive - and voting. You think you deserve to tell the
world what to do? You still haven't meaningfully compensated the Native
Americans! Or do the whites tell themselves they're happy running their
casinos so everything's okay?

Almost nobody has an open mind. Not just American, all nationalities.

That's
part of being human, just like normal perception misses so very much

because
the point of it is to help us survive rather than to help us have fun. But
we're not animals - or if we are, if it's each person for themselves, then
I've got a few people to kill before they get me. You know? I'm sure you

do;
if you were in Viet Nam you must know what people are really like. I mean,
unless it traumatised you so much you're in denial now.

About Viet Nam, I liked the movie with Eric Roberts - To Heal A Nation -
about the Memorial. The attitude that movie advances is the right one,

imo.
If you didn't like that movie I would consider you just too angry to think
straight, but I really hope you liked that movie.

Do you think Kent State was justifiable? If you do, you justify the
protests, at least from your opponent's pov. It doesn't matter which came
first, because what came first was the willingness to shoot unarmed
protesters, and *that's* really what the protests were about (just not on
the surface where most people's minds remain). But all mass movements are
dominated by the unthinking, left or right. There is no actual difference
when you come down to it. Like left wing dictatorships and right wing
dictatorships are the same thing, people who murder and imprison political
opponents and treat the rest of us as valueless beyond as cheap labour or
other means to an end. Labelling them 'Left Wing' or 'Right Wing' rather
misses the point.

People who vote for whoever their parents voted for, never having really
thought about switching. People who think that changing your mind is a

sign
of fickleness. Authoritarians are the ones who just do what they're told,
even if its murder; even if its mass murder. It is alarming that

mainstream
political groups still encourage authoritarianism and do things like 'play
the Race card', it implys that those vying for power don't care about
'collateral damage' - such as encouraging genocide elsewhere - but is
entirely consistent with the current notion of politics as a career rather
than a public service, in other words too often it doesn't seem to be the
public that comes first, its the politician - and sometimes only the
politician. Short-termism is widely recognised as the problem of the Human
Race.

I believed what I heard about global warning as a kid, and watched as

people
discredited, with no justification beyond that doing anything about it

would
be bad for their particular business, the scientists who warned about it.
Ah, but you're an American, you'll be deluding yourself because the

American
way of life depends on burning all that - our - fossil fuel - so we all
choke for you.

What I believe in is acting honourably. You do too, don't you, Norman?

And,
as an example, you don't think villages burnt and farmers machine-gunned

was
excusable do you? I'd rather you thought the people responsible should

have
done hard time, that it brought shame upon the US. I found it reassuring
that there were prosecutions, though wasn't the soldier convicted then
released? True he was probably a scapegoat - like Lindy or whatever her

name
is. England? - who actually I feel kind of sorry for. Certainly in the UK
murder or torture while in uniform (or, indeed, plain clothes) gets tacit
approval by virtue of lack of consequences.

But if Viet Nam was so Just, how come the North won and yet Viet Nam is a
pretty good country now? And why would you expect the Soviet Union to have
shrugged it's shoulders and moved on when the US developed the A-bomb and
kept it to themselves? I'll grant that there were valid reasons for so
doing, but like hawks everywhere you seem to blame your enemy for acting
exactly as you would were the positions reversed. In other words you don't
appear to step back and look at yourself - which is required except for
being a hothead.

You probably thought Oliver North was a hero? But how can the US expect
respect from the Middle East (or anywhere not already in it's pocket like
the UK) when it deals with total hypocrisy? Its like the supporters of

such
enterprises think no-one else is smart enough to see the inconsistences.

You
don't deal with terrorists. You don't appease dictatorships. Unless all

its
really about is business. Do you think supporting death squads in Central
America was a good thing? What is Law for? Just something to keep your own
people under control - along with that 'opium of the masses' known as
television? If that's what it's about, there's no Democracy there, it's

just
a way to be totalitarian by stealth. But isn't Democracy what you fought
for? Maybe you confused 'Democracy' with 'America'.

Anyway, this was a series of posts taken out of context and I don't want

to
spend the rest of my life on the computer. I believe we're going to hell

in
a handcart because of partisanship, because almost no-one thinks 'one step
beyond'.

I don't kid myself, or not for long. Ceasing it requires admitting you

*can*
kid yourself, instead of believing yourself infallible. My contribution to
the world, if ever I convince anyone at all, will be to make them really
beware of self deception, not think that because they gave the issue five
minutes thought as a teenager they've been immune ever since. But as long

as
people believe what they want to believe, big business - and their
politician partners - will kill us for short term profit.

Shane





Shane wrote:
Surprised that one got through. 7th:

We do have it pretty good with our National Healthcare System.....so
don't complain. And I do believe ours is better than the UK. Had a
lot of time to investigate that one.


Yes. Probably wasn't until recently, but I almost died because of
what ours has become (under Thatcher, Major and Blair. Must figure
out some time how to sue the f**ker for it!).

Off to bed.....getting as bad as Shane and Mike!!

Night.....Figgs


Hope you haven't slept all this time, Figgs!


Shane



Shane wrote:
6th paragraph:

However, here we're seeing the consequences of a politician banning
handguns. Whether he started out meaning well or was always a
megalomaniac is moot, the point is *we* need weapons to protect
against tyrannical government! Our freedoms are being removed piece
by piece, relentlessly, and a police state being established. Someone
wrote a letter (to the Independent?) recently asking (something like)
if when Blair is no longer PM, will he continue to work for the
Republican Party? That is not really a joke.




Shane wrote:
Hmm again. Not only has every thing but the first paragraph got
through so far, I just e-mailed the post to myself, so it wouldn't
have got through if it was, say, the British Government doing the
censoring.
Next paragraph:

Yes, the psychopaths and organised crime have so many guns that it
makes sense for anyone who doesn't think there'll always be a
policeman to protect you to have one to, but mostly they'll only
shoot you if you interfere with business. The crazies are, imo, a
better argument for having a gun yourself (if you're in the US. That
isn't really an issue here, nor presumably in Canada?).




Shane wrote:
4th paragraph:

Meanwhile the US of course has the right to bear arms in the
constitution, a fact that has frequently been cited as the reason
they must be allowed to do so - to defend against tyranny from
their own government. Unfortunately the only ones who use that
argument I ever saw who would bear arms against the government -
as opposed to just letting freedom be encroached on out of
existence - are the crazies who do basically want to shoot the
weak and anyone who tries to protect them. The rest are just like
the British citizens, who can't help defining what is right as
whatever the government of the day tells them it is.

Shane wrote:
Hmm. 3rd paragraph:

Anyway, I say yes to gun control. Because we're not living on the
frontier - or most of us aren't anyway. Maybe those in the rural
mid-west should just lobby to leave the Union - or stop pretending
to care about Americans rather than just America. However,
handguns are a fact of life. I say better to live with it,
responsibly, than to pretend they don't exist. They're like the
atomic bomb, it would be nicer if the technology had never been
dreamt of, but it was and they're here to stay.


Shane wrote:
2nd paragraph:

But the world over, people are lazy thinkers and don't look
beyond the first conclusion. So its like we're living in a world
ruled by children. And the politicians pander to them, of course.

There are Pro-gun lobbyists who deny irrefutable fact the way
some deny the Holocaust (another parallel!). Now, say they were
at a dance - and the polite thing to do was hand your firearm in
at the cloakroom. Handing it back at the end of the evening
would be akin, responsibility-wise, to giving back a drunk their
car keys (I'm drowning in parallels here!). There are certain
rights that conflict with other people's rights, aren't there.
But those Pro-gun supporters think theirs always comes first.
Maybe that comes in growing up in the mid-West, miles from
anyone else and they do still think they're on their own on the
frontier. Shane wrote:
I'll send paragraph by paragraph and see which do and don't get
through.


Shane wrote:
I've sent three posts this morning - a response to Job, an
inserted oar to Patc, and the response I promised Figgs (in
which I now see I repeat quite a lot and its not quite as
incisive as I originally meant). The first two got through, the
last hasn't (I've reset the group twice). The last one gives my
reasons for no longer believing in a law passed here some years
ago now, allusions to which I've made before. The question is:
who would censor it? Because these days it wouldn't necessarily
be MS and such is precisely why I justified my current position
on the emotive subject. If this gets through and *it* hasn't
I'll repost it in various forms.





  #19  
Old January 23rd 07, 10:53 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Eric
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 216
Default Recent subjects I brought up


"Shane" wrote in message
...
Quite apart from the fact those posts are a different one broken down into
paragraphs in order to try to discover why the original failed to make it
to the servers, and Heather's paragraphs were mostly removed for that
purpose and so it will obviously be taken out of context...and which,
having completed the exercise I 'cancelled', so they weren't supposed to
still be there to argue about anyway...and apart from the fact that one
does not intend to unblock a particular poster who appears to have a habit
of not merely misunderstanding one's words - which is fair enough, I'm not
especially eloquent - but embellishing them, which isn't...

...nonetheless I'll say this: it is irresponsible to give a drunk his car
keys. Is it not then irresponsible to give the same man (or woman) - who
wants to drive, drunk - a handgun?

Wanting to drive, drunk, is adopting the position that your pleasure or
convenience is more important than, say, a child's life. But it'd be okay
to give them their gun back? Or doesn't anyone who owns a handgun drink
too much? Do only responsible people own guns? This is what I mean by
rights clashing and gun advocates who put theirs first.


No, drunks should not be allowed to operate vehicles, or to possess loaded
weapons.
No one should be allowed to endanger a child's life. I've even heard
recently of a local lawmaker considering banning smoking in vehicles with
children in them.

There were many interesting points in the rest of that I would love to
respond to but I don't have time for right now.
Let me just make a few quick points for anyone who thinks the British have a
right to criticize the US.
The British sent troops to American soil. Those troops killed many natives.
The British sent troops to fight for control over Americans and lost.
Need we discuss the British attempts at colonizing Africa and Australia?


  #20  
Old January 24th 07, 01:21 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Shane
External Usenet User
 
Posts: 480
Default Recent subjects I brought up

Thanks Harry. I think self deception is the no. one problem facing the race,
but the amount of people I could convince you can count on one hand. After a
grenade goes off while holding it. It's the last thing people want to admit
to. It's easy to prove - all you have to do is have been head-over-heels in
love with someone you eventually broke up with.

It impacts on the survival of the race because it serves a species that
hasn't evolved since the savannah and is no more capable of conceiving of
destroying life on Earth than it is of picturing 5000 bottles of beer. Which
calls for a drink!

Shane


webster72n wrote:
You deserve a medal, Shane, or a doctorate at least, for Philosophy.
Your reasoning is totally realistic and it offers workable solutions.
Hope Eric gets a glimpse of this.
My only wish, your wisdom could spread far beyond the borders of this
forum, but there doens't lie much promise in that, does it?
Thanks for your *eye-opening* contribution.

Harry.


"Shane" wrote in message
...
Quite apart from the fact those posts are a different one broken
down into paragraphs in order to try to discover why the original
failed to make it to the servers, and Heather's paragraphs were
mostly removed for that purpose and so it will obviously be taken
out of context...and which, having completed the exercise I
'cancelled', so they weren't supposed to still be there to argue
about anyway...and apart from the fact that one does not intend to
unblock a particular poster who appears to have a habit of not
merely misunderstanding one's words - which is fair enough, I'm not
especially eloquent - but embellishing them, which isn't...

...nonetheless I'll say this: it is irresponsible to give a drunk
his car keys. Is it not then irresponsible to give the same man (or
woman) - who wants to drive, drunk - a handgun?

Wanting to drive, drunk, is adopting the position that your pleasure
or convenience is more important than, say, a child's life. But it'd
be okay to give them their gun back? Or doesn't anyone who owns a
handgun drink too much? Do only responsible people own guns? This is
what I mean by rights clashing and gun advocates who put theirs
first.

Actually - reading about Job's Ruger - I read about key locks for
the hammer mechanism which, because I've been out of the loop so
long, I was unaware of. What a good idea! As a gun advocate, I'm all
for those (I don't like the idea of weapons that can only be fired
by the owner though). Not that either stop an irresponsible gun
owner causing the death of a third party.

Democracy - quite apart from the fact I doubt true democracy exists
anywhere - has nothing to do with taking legislator's words for what
is right or wrong. That's laziness or craven cowardice and probably
both. You make your own mind up about ethics - that's what democracy
is about. That's (part of) what Consciousness is about. And growing
up.

Waiting until the next election to change what's morally wrong
doesn't work, or nowhere near reliably enough, because doing nothing
until then sends the signal that you'll accept what ever it is
actually you'd rather not accept (such as, here, the Poll Tax) - so
even the opposition will likely adopt the contentious issue, for
expediency; but also who is voted in or out will come down to more
than just one issue. If society seems to be working otherwise,
likely the Government will be re-elected. What do you do now, wait
until the *next* election? You already waited for one. What most
people would do is just forget about it, and so society evolves
unchallenged for the worse.

The People decide. It doesn't mean if neither serious contender for
office understands ethics then it must be *you* who 'fails to get
it'. They're supposed to represent you, not manipulate you. If they
say black is white, they're wrong, full stop.

The political classes of the Western World today are dominated by
professional liars - mostly lawyers. To know that and continue to
trust them even to the extent of telling one what to think is that
kind of irresponsibility that 'The Right To Bear Arms' precludes. If
you let them tell you what to think then of course you will never,
ever bear arms against them when they go too far! You'll believe the
lies. That's what the lies are for.

Stanley Milgram already demonstrated all you need to know, decades
ago. But he's far from the only one.

Norman. I expect - if I was looking for an argument - I could argue
with you until natural causes intervened. The rest of the world
disagrees with the US, much of the time. In part that relates to
Americans who don't think we have the right to - which is only
satisfactorily explained by the 'bully syndrome' by which Might
equals Right. At which times your having the bomb is frightening. I
have more sympathy with the French independent nuclear deterrence
than our own 'at-the-beck-and-call-of-the-US' version (though not
doing atmospheric testing until the 90's! That was crass, much as,
in some ways, I'd love to see one).

Meanwhile, we began what ended up as Trinity and we designed and
built our own A- and then H-bombs and the only reason we didn't end
up producing them to this day is (likely that) you blackmailed us as
part payment for supplying us when we were the only ones standing
against Hitler. Like a bank foreclosing on you home.

We began almost everything. The jet, of course (though the Germans
may have independently come up with that one) which we then gave you
and then our government sabotaged our own efforts to break the Sound
Barrier by forcing Miles (iirc) to give you our designs in the sort
of sharing that only goes one way - then forcing Miles to give up
pursuing it. Almost as if strong hints that the US wanted to be
first had been given.

Our brilliant Lightning interceptor didn't get sold to Germany
because our government secretly briefed the Germans against it in
favour of the iconic-but-generally-agreed-to-be-otherwise-awful
Phantom. The only reasonable explanation for that - because it
happened almost everywhere else in Defence and Technology arenas too
- is we were blackmailed by the US following WWII.

It is extremely tempting to believe that the prevailing view of
Americans pre-war was that they'd happily have done business with
Nazi Germany if we were destroyed. There are Americans I have
tremendous respect for, and Americans I am profoundly grateful for,
and FDR is one of them.

We may not have started colonialism but we certainly made it ours!
And one way or another we gave up or lost the Empire. And that is
good, because it was morally wrong. Invading other nations is wrong.
Justifying it because they were naive enough to 'sell' us vast
tracts of land for beads does not make it alright, it makes it about
as honourable as 'stealing candy from a child'. Justifying it
because we gave them a lifestyle more like our own is at best
questionable. Yet this is what US foreign policy is - Cultural
Imperialism - Free Enterprise, a phrase too many Americans hear and
stop thinking thereafter, that encompasses blackmail and flim-flam
and plying entire nations with temptations that natural greed and
laziness makes their voters ripe for - that's why kids everywhere
want to be American, not because they love the thought of freedom -
they don't even know what it means - but because they do little but
watch mindless American TV that tempts them in the name of selling
them stuff. Like the way advertisers increasingly target children
because they'll nag the parents.

If you think 'whatever you can get away with' is therefore
justified, you *are* in league with the devil like various people
think! I mean, the Middle East has a very, very strong case, which
it's unthinking hotheads, just like everyone else's, go and ruin.
Just because the gangster (like your old friend Saddam) in charge is
happy to 'give' his people's property to the US whether they like it
or not, in exchange for expensive toys and status symbols akin to
the bigger dick American spammers hope to sell us, because *he* is a
megalomaniac, doesn't make it okay, but that would appear to be
exactly what supporters of peacetime US Foreign Policy think. It
makes it look as if Organised Crime is so successful in the US
because the US is run and supported by people without morals; that
the way the Mafia runs *is* The American Way.

You know what amazes me, increasingly (as I get older)? How recent
history is. By which I mean how much was metaphorically 'just
yesterday'. Along with the assertion that 'history repeats itself' -
which doesn't mean what it is taken to mean, because we are always
at somewhere new, because the technology is so advanced on a
generation previous and there are subtle differences in what we now
want. I'm still only middle-aged. I was born as the Space Age began
and the Jet Age took off (pun not intended). Look at where we are
today? World War II seemed a lifetime ago when I was a kid, but more
time has passed now since I rode a Jota than between the end of
hostilities and my coming into the mix!

Look where we were a century ago. Less than a century! I've been
telling my sister about the Tuskogee Airmen recently. I was actually
alive when Americans you'd respect for fighting in Viet Nam, or Eric
would allow to have a gun *and* bullets until proven unfit, were
pulling coloureds up into the trees by the neck! It's not that long
ago, is it. A lot of those Americans are still alive - and voting.
You think you deserve to tell the world what to do? You still
haven't meaningfully compensated the Native Americans! Or do the
whites tell themselves they're happy running their casinos so
everything's okay?

Almost nobody has an open mind. Not just American, all
nationalities. That's part of being human, just like normal
perception misses so very much because the point of it is to help us
survive rather than to help us have fun. But we're not animals - or
if we are, if it's each person for themselves, then I've got a few
people to kill before they get me. You know? I'm sure you do; if you
were in Viet Nam you must know what people are really like. I mean,
unless it traumatised you so much you're in denial now.

About Viet Nam, I liked the movie with Eric Roberts - To Heal A
Nation - about the Memorial. The attitude that movie advances is the
right one, imo. If you didn't like that movie I would consider you
just too angry to think straight, but I really hope you liked that
movie.

Do you think Kent State was justifiable? If you do, you justify the
protests, at least from your opponent's pov. It doesn't matter which
came first, because what came first was the willingness to shoot
unarmed protesters, and *that's* really what the protests were about
(just not on the surface where most people's minds remain). But all
mass movements are dominated by the unthinking, left or right. There
is no actual difference when you come down to it. Like left wing
dictatorships and right wing dictatorships are the same thing,
people who murder and imprison political opponents and treat the
rest of us as valueless beyond as cheap labour or other means to an
end. Labelling them 'Left Wing' or 'Right Wing' rather misses the
point.

People who vote for whoever their parents voted for, never having
really thought about switching. People who think that changing your
mind is a sign of fickleness. Authoritarians are the ones who just
do what they're told, even if its murder; even if its mass murder.
It is alarming that mainstream political groups still encourage
authoritarianism and do things like 'play the Race card', it implys
that those vying for power don't care about 'collateral damage' -
such as encouraging genocide elsewhere - but is entirely consistent
with the current notion of politics as a career rather than a public
service, in other words too often it doesn't seem to be the public
that comes first, its the politician - and sometimes only the
politician. Short-termism is widely recognised as the problem of the
Human Race.

I believed what I heard about global warning as a kid, and watched
as people discredited, with no justification beyond that doing
anything about it would be bad for their particular business, the
scientists who warned about it. Ah, but you're an American, you'll
be deluding yourself because the American way of life depends on
burning all that - our - fossil fuel - so we all choke for you.

What I believe in is acting honourably. You do too, don't you,
Norman? And, as an example, you don't think villages burnt and
farmers machine-gunned was excusable do you? I'd rather you thought
the people responsible should have done hard time, that it brought
shame upon the US. I found it reassuring that there were
prosecutions, though wasn't the soldier convicted then released?
True he was probably a scapegoat - like Lindy or whatever her name
is. England? - who actually I feel kind of sorry for. Certainly in
the UK murder or torture while in uniform (or, indeed, plain
clothes) gets tacit approval by virtue of lack of consequences.

But if Viet Nam was so Just, how come the North won and yet Viet Nam
is a pretty good country now? And why would you expect the Soviet
Union to have shrugged it's shoulders and moved on when the US
developed the A-bomb and kept it to themselves? I'll grant that
there were valid reasons for so doing, but like hawks everywhere you
seem to blame your enemy for acting exactly as you would were the
positions reversed. In other words you don't appear to step back and
look at yourself - which is required except for being a hothead.

You probably thought Oliver North was a hero? But how can the US
expect respect from the Middle East (or anywhere not already in it's
pocket like the UK) when it deals with total hypocrisy? Its like the
supporters of such enterprises think no-one else is smart enough to
see the inconsistences. You don't deal with terrorists. You don't
appease dictatorships. Unless all its really about is business. Do
you think supporting death squads in Central America was a good
thing? What is Law for? Just something to keep your own people under
control - along with that 'opium of the masses' known as television?
If that's what it's about, there's no Democracy there, it's just a
way to be totalitarian by stealth. But isn't Democracy what you
fought for? Maybe you confused 'Democracy' with 'America'.

Anyway, this was a series of posts taken out of context and I don't
want to spend the rest of my life on the computer. I believe we're
going to hell in a handcart because of partisanship, because almost
no-one thinks 'one step beyond'.

I don't kid myself, or not for long. Ceasing it requires admitting
you *can* kid yourself, instead of believing yourself infallible. My
contribution to the world, if ever I convince anyone at all, will be
to make them really beware of self deception, not think that because
they gave the issue five minutes thought as a teenager they've been
immune ever since. But as long as people believe what they want to
believe, big business - and their politician partners - will kill us
for short term profit.

Shane





Shane wrote:
Surprised that one got through. 7th:

We do have it pretty good with our National Healthcare
System.....so don't complain. And I do believe ours is better
than the UK. Had a lot of time to investigate that one.


Yes. Probably wasn't until recently, but I almost died because of
what ours has become (under Thatcher, Major and Blair. Must figure
out some time how to sue the f**ker for it!).

Off to bed.....getting as bad as Shane and Mike!!

Night.....Figgs

Hope you haven't slept all this time, Figgs!


Shane



Shane wrote:
6th paragraph:

However, here we're seeing the consequences of a politician banning
handguns. Whether he started out meaning well or was always a
megalomaniac is moot, the point is *we* need weapons to protect
against tyrannical government! Our freedoms are being removed piece
by piece, relentlessly, and a police state being established.
Someone wrote a letter (to the Independent?) recently asking
(something like) if when Blair is no longer PM, will he continue
to work for the Republican Party? That is not really a joke.




Shane wrote:
Hmm again. Not only has every thing but the first paragraph got
through so far, I just e-mailed the post to myself, so it wouldn't
have got through if it was, say, the British Government doing the
censoring.
Next paragraph:

Yes, the psychopaths and organised crime have so many guns that it
makes sense for anyone who doesn't think there'll always be a
policeman to protect you to have one to, but mostly they'll only
shoot you if you interfere with business. The crazies are, imo, a
better argument for having a gun yourself (if you're in the US.
That isn't really an issue here, nor presumably in Canada?).




Shane wrote:
4th paragraph:

Meanwhile the US of course has the right to bear arms in the
constitution, a fact that has frequently been cited as the reason
they must be allowed to do so - to defend against tyranny from
their own government. Unfortunately the only ones who use that
argument I ever saw who would bear arms against the government -
as opposed to just letting freedom be encroached on out of
existence - are the crazies who do basically want to shoot the
weak and anyone who tries to protect them. The rest are just like
the British citizens, who can't help defining what is right as
whatever the government of the day tells them it is.

Shane wrote:
Hmm. 3rd paragraph:

Anyway, I say yes to gun control. Because we're not living on
the frontier - or most of us aren't anyway. Maybe those in the
rural mid-west should just lobby to leave the Union - or stop
pretending to care about Americans rather than just America.
However, handguns are a fact of life. I say better to live with
it, responsibly, than to pretend they don't exist. They're like
the atomic bomb, it would be nicer if the technology had never
been dreamt of, but it was and they're here to stay.


Shane wrote:
2nd paragraph:

But the world over, people are lazy thinkers and don't look
beyond the first conclusion. So its like we're living in a
world ruled by children. And the politicians pander to them,
of course.

There are Pro-gun lobbyists who deny irrefutable fact the way
some deny the Holocaust (another parallel!). Now, say they were
at a dance - and the polite thing to do was hand your firearm
in at the cloakroom. Handing it back at the end of the evening
would be akin, responsibility-wise, to giving back a drunk
their car keys (I'm drowning in parallels here!). There are
certain rights that conflict with other people's rights,
aren't there. But those Pro-gun supporters think theirs always
comes first. Maybe that comes in growing up in the mid-West,
miles from anyone else and they do still think they're on
their own on the frontier. Shane wrote:
I'll send paragraph by paragraph and see which do and don't
get through.


Shane wrote:
I've sent three posts this morning - a response to Job, an
inserted oar to Patc, and the response I promised Figgs (in
which I now see I repeat quite a lot and its not quite as
incisive as I originally meant). The first two got through,
the last hasn't (I've reset the group twice). The last one
gives my reasons for no longer believing in a law passed
here some years ago now, allusions to which I've made
before. The question is: who would censor it? Because these
days it wouldn't necessarily be MS and such is precisely why
I justified my current position on the emotive subject. If
this gets through and *it* hasn't I'll repost it in various
forms.



 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
'tweaking' placesbar in tweakui :-) (history vs recent) [email protected] General 0 November 10th 05 04:31 PM
Recent installation of System Recovery of ME christina General 1 September 1st 05 04:46 AM
Recent "Blue Screen" problems TomYoung General 7 March 21st 05 06:46 AM
Delete from recent docs list and it no longer holds 15 items jersie0 General 1 June 24th 04 05:24 PM
Protection Error after download recent security patches willis smith General 1 June 3rd 04 09:33 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 02:22 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 Win98banter.
The comments are property of their posters.