Temperature at which the brain begins to die

So it is right that some Americans who are "pissed off" as you say make those statements. You don't see any difference then?

Why? Is a muslim not allowed to be "pissed off" then? Should they just shut up and swallow everything you feed them, under the guise of "it's good for you" or otherwise?

You see nothing wrong with that picture?

Before you say "they caused 3000 of our people to die so we're in every right to feel pissed off", imagine that they suffered an equal amount of casualties throughout the years in the various wars and struggles. Not all of them are terrorists, not all of them are even fundamentalists but their ranks are growing lately because, like you americans, they are pissed off about what is done to them.

Don't they have a right to be pissed off as well?

Blind partisanship, bland generalisations, blinkered black-and-white thinking and the inherent need to have simple facts to digest makes many Americans worryingly simple folk in the eyes of the rest of the world. The fact that they don't care and assume that they are right in every respect enhances the worry.

Again: you don't see anything wrong with that picture?

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Originally posted by Wally Pipp
Before you say "they caused 3000 of our people to die so we're in every right to feel pissed off", imagine that they suffered an equal amount of casualties throughout the years in the various wars and struggles. Not all of them are terrorists, not all of them are even fundamentalists but their ranks are growing lately because, like you americans, they are pissed off about what is done to them.

Don't they have a right to be pissed off as well?

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They can blame their dictator for that. And they didn't like their dictator by the way. They lived in fear. They were gassed. They were publicly (sp) executed. They were murdered, raped, etc. America didn't do that to them. Their dictator did.

And yes we are furious about 9/11. But our president does something about it.

Remind me: who supported Bin Laden against Russia? Who supported Saddam Hussein against Iran? Who support(ed)(s) Israel? No, don't answer that because deep in your heart you know the US isn't entirely innocent ...

But still, muslims don't have a right to be angry at the US and the world eh ... good, you've just proven my point. :thumb:

Maybe you are too young to believe in shades of grey. That is entirely possible.
Just don't expect me to believe your evangelical-like innocent conviction, it no longer works on a sceptical European. We've done the same things in the past, we've done it longer, more ruthless and better and in the end it cost us over 50 million lives.
I'd say we learnt our lesson in the 60 years after. Perhaps it's time you lot do the same.

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Originally posted by Wally Pipp
Remind me: who supported Bin Laden against Russia? Who supported Saddam Hussein against Iran? Who support(ed)(s) Israel? No, don't answer that because deep in your heart you know the US isn't entirely innocent ...

But still, muslims don't have a right to be angry at the US and the world eh ... good, you've just proven my point. :thumb:

Maybe you are too young to believe in shades of grey. That is entirely possible.
Just don't expect me to believe your evangelical-like innocent conviction, it no longer works on a sceptical European. We've done the same things in the past, we've done it longer, more ruthless and better and in the end it cost us over 50 million lives.
I'd say we learnt our lesson in the 60 years after. Perhaps it's time you lot do the same.

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They can blame their dictator for that.

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Our president didn't run a plane into the buildings~ Nor did he ignore 17 UN resolutions and ignore to diplomatically solve anything.

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Remind me: who supported Bin Laden against Russia? Who supported Saddam Hussein against Iran? Who support(ed)(s) Israel? No, don't answer that because deep in your heart you know the US isn't entirely innocent ...

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bleh..I can't come up with any sources....Tired.....Till tomorrow~ night:lol:

I'm agreeing with Wally Pipp here. You're really thinking black and white. No wonder you're a bad programmer! A programmer should consider ALL possibilities, not just get stuck on one solution or not be able to resolve a problem because it doesn't fit your skills (= way of thinking if you want a mirror to what I mean on discussion level). I've found my way to the world of grey thinking... it is pretty complicated at times, but it is definatenaly an area you can get better in.

I think this kind of discussion, on the view of life and way of thinking, is good. I'm quite tired seeing so much black and white way of thinking on forums with US people talking about the issue - or some other stuff as well, not mentioning what as they're not a topic here. It is easy to picture someone as an enemy, but when you start thinking how you yourself behave and workaround, you notice pretty much everyone have some of the basic ways of living and behaving in different forms. This same thing works to the people you don't know, people you think are your enemies.

Enemies should be made and pictured only on personal level. And on that level: I have no enemies. If you want enemies, play games.



Also, one way out of the pipe thinking is to take out "our president" "their dictator" - think the normal people. Not the odds in the media.

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Originally posted by DavidProgrammer
Our president didn't run a plane into the buildings~ Nor did he ignore 17 UN resolutions and ignore to diplomatically solve anything.



bleh..I can't come up with any sources....Tired.....Till tomorrow~ night:lol:

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Remind me:

- How many times did the US veto a resolution on Israel? How many resolutions has Israel blatantly ignored?

- Saddam didn't nuke Hiroshima or any other place on earth.

Why do we even support Israel? I think they suck balls.

their religion, like all religions is garbage, but they are like into extreme religion or something :sick:

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Originally posted by Ex-FB
Really! This is quite a warped view of the world you seem to hold. You appear to be forming opinion based on your hatred for a small group of people and amplifying it out into a whole section of the world. I have know lots of Muslims, they were just as shocked as the next person.

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You are right the majority of Muslims across the world are NOT terrorist. However the problem is the majority has been silent in not stepping forward to condemn these acts. The small minority is speaking for the majority, such was the case in Germany in WWII, the majority of Germans were not Nazi's however look what happened. It is the majority of Muslims that need to be heard today, but sadly there is quiet acceptance of what is going on.

X

[deleted]

second time I see [deleted] in a post of yours. Que pasa?

Too extreme for normal viewing.

Or: the complete wrong end of the stick (much more normal)

YOu did ask!!

ah right, I thought you were Bradalised :)

Not likely. I have a strong opinion

Man, you take an afternoon off, and you're two pages out of the conversation.

David, I don't necessarily agree with you, but I think you have a good head on your shoulders, keep using it. In response to your last response to me, I was trying to make an ironic joke with that bit about the terrorists standing up. I could just picture a bunch of terrorists crawling around Iraq, kind of humorous really.

I suspect that I do meet the right people for the racism bit, and you are right on the money about ruralism, though I have met relatively few racists in this state (nobody look at what state, since we are known for being the place the white supremesists run away to when they are kicked out of other places). My views on poverty don't come with race, but instead they come from working with poor folks. As studies have shown (can't remember the title or author, I really want to read it), growing up poor gives you a different attitude towards money. When we in the middle class complain about why they don't just pull themselves up, we are assuming that they see the world as we do. They don't.

I got to hire many competent people who couldn't advance themselves beyond poverty because they just couldn't picture it. You couldn't MAKE them believe that they were capable, and they wouldn't try. Poverty was their lot in life. It was what they believed life was, and couldn't comprehend any other option. This was true for the majority, not the minority. To break the cycle of poverty, you must first convince them that it is not inevitable. Remove welfare, and you don't remove their will to live, you remove their means to do so legally. We will all pay for that.

There are some who have been brought down by drugs and/or mental illness....or other illness for that matter, but those people should not be lumped in with those who are poor largely because they cannot see a future.

On the subject of terrorists, I think those who talk about Islam have their heads in a convenient space. We should all remember that religeous terrorism is alive and well in the US and many other countries. Islam has managed one large attack, but they may not even be the most dangerous group to the US. Frankly, they don't scare me. There is another group within the US that I fear more than Osama. Going after foreign terrorists is both convenient and xenophobic.

Let me mangle a bibilical quotation (someone more religeous can fix it):
"Why complain about the mote in your neighbors eye when you cannot see the beam in your own."

Most terrorist attacks committed against the US have been from US citizens. If all the Islamic fundamentalists stopped attacking us, the number of attacks would not significantly drop in this country, and the likelyhood of dying at the hands of a terrorist would not change much.

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Originally posted by Wally Pipp
Remind me:

- How many times did the US veto a resolution on Israel? How many resolutions has Israel blatantly ignored?

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The United States did not cast its first veto until 1972, on a Syrian-Lebanese complaint against Israel. From 1967-72, the U.S. supported or abstained on 24 resolutions, most critical of Israel. From 1973-2003, the Security Council adopted approximately 100 resolutions on the Middle East, again, most critical of Israel. The U.S. vetoed a total of 37 resolutions and, hence, supported the Council's criticism of Israel by its vote of support or abstaining roughly two-thirds of the time.

So since 1967 it looks like the US has vetoed about 30% of the proposed resolutions against Israel and supported (both directly and indirectly with abstention) about 70%. So even though some resolutions brought against Israel are from Anti-Semitic Arab Nations, third world despots, and dictators who have a worse human rights record than Israel the US has supported 70% of them.

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- Saddam didn't nuke Hiroshima or any other place on earth.

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That’s only because Israel bombed the nuclear reactor that France gave Saddam or they might have.

X

Merri, Have you read this post? I am merely providing an argument.

I have been corrected on a few of the statements in that post. I'd like to change the statement:

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I like Bush~ and I agree with his decision to go to war. Saddam needed to be yanked.

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I think he did need to be yanked. I think we did need to go to war. But I don't think now was the best time.

Man Xanith, I was just thinking about that bombing this morning, though I can't remember why. When was that? Long time ago, early 80's or something, but I don't recall the year.

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Originally posted by Xanith
That’s only because Israel bombed the nuclear reactor that France gave Saddam or they might have.

X

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Oh right, Mr. Rightwing Neocon spin doctor has popped up again. Who turned your rock over then?

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Originally posted by Wally Pipp
Oh right, Mr. Rightwing Neocon spin doctor has popped up again. Who turned your rock over then?

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Are you talking about me?

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Originally posted by Wally Pipp
Oh right, Mr. Rightwing Neocon spin doctor has popped up again. Who turned your rock over then?

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:p

X

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Originally posted by Shaggy Hiker
Man Xanith, I was just thinking about that bombing this morning, though I can't remember why. When was that? Long time ago, early 80's or something, but I don't recall the year.

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It was 1981 I believe.

X

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Originally posted by DavidProgrammer
Are you talking about me?

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No, he was talking about Xanith, who is a regular, and is regularly consistent in his views. That ol' boy regularly anchors the right side of the debate.

1981....that was a looooong time ago. I was in HS back then.

Who cares. We are all going to die anyways~

The End of the World

Check this out. It's the presidents state of the union address.

State of the Union Address

Ok back on subject. I'll be serious now. Those are really funny though. Just thought we could have used a break from the debate and "personal attacks".

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Originally posted by Ex-FB
Bush is actively persuing a Battlefield nuclear bomb

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I think we already had those before Bush was pres.

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Originally posted by CORONA BEER
I think we already had those before Bush was pres.

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nah - Apprently he's pushing for some small battlefield size nuke to be developed for taking out battalions of tanks etc.

I'll look up some data tomoorrow, gotta go cut down mother nature ready for the winter.... ;)

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Originally posted by Ex-FB
nah - Apprently he's pushing for some small battlefield size nuke to be developed for taking out battalions of tanks etc.

I'll look up some data tomoorrow, gotta go cut down mother nature ready for the winter.... ;)

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Apparently we have had them in the past which means we still have them, but as part of the Bush administrations beefing up on defense we starting to develop different types. Such as bunker buster nukes. I know for a fact we had tactical warheads before Bush, but like you said, he is calling for more.
not really him but his defense staff is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2830933.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2006329.stm

Ah - deforrested part of Alberta. That'll teach those filthy stinkin' trees for sucking up our CO.

As for nukes, I think it's a bit wrong for us to argue that no-other country should have nukes (apart from those that already do), but we then keep going on refining and refining them. It's the height of hypocracy. We're basically saying, no, you can't have nukes, and we won't use them against you..... yet. But when we develop our funky little nukes then we will have a nuclear weapon in our arsenal that we can use, but hey, you still can't have them because you'r not allowed any nuclear weapons. It'd be in any countries (that has been marked by Bush) best interest to develop their own nukes to defend themselves.

We have tactical battlefield nukes, but the bunker buster is a new thing. I understand that it is a very small yield nuke that is really just designed to take out buried/hardened bunkers that conventional explosives wouldn't get.


Just heard a talk by one of the lead weapons inspectors from Lawrence Livermoore labs (US weapons research). He was one of the folks who talked about WMD in Iraq pre-invasion. He was asked what happened to the chem weapons. His response was like this:

We made one small mistake, only a handful of countries (basically the lead beligerents in WWII) ever learned to make stable chem weapons. Iraq didn't have this technology, so the weapons they had would degrade over time.

He went on to state that he figured that when the existing stockpile degraded (he figured it would have been junk by the mid-nineties), it was simply thrown out. With the inspections going on post Gulf War I, Saddam couldn't manufacture new weapons to replace the old, so there were no weapons by the time of Gulf War II. However, as the post-war weapons inspectors stated, Saddam intended to re-arm once sanctions were lifted.

That's the most rational assesment of the situation that I have ever heard. I didn't realize those things degraded like that.

And just for you right-wing folks, he was also pretty critical (he wasn't highly complementary or critical of anything) of the current administrations actions in Iraq. He was death on WMD, but he appeared to think that this could have been better thought out.

That makes sense but what's your point? :confused: Are you saying we should have nukes....or shouldn't .....or are you just explaining what was going on....I'm so lost. :lol:

we only made ours with the intention of using it under some condition, and we did. if we can detect who makes them, then i think that we should ensure that they don't. we don't want anyone waging nuclear war on anybody else.
I think that small n.w. are a mistake, also.

Is it just me? Would anybody else be kinda scared if Iran had nukes? Especially N. Korea....N. Korea is brutal...Would anyone else be scared?

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Originally posted by DavidProgrammer
Is it just me? Would anybody else be kinda scared if Iran had nukes? Especially N. Korea....N. Korea is brutal...Would anyone else be scared?

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Can you reverse the very situation you describe here? Imagine you live in one of the abovementioned nations. Would you be scared if others had nukes?

The situation being described here is a problem. Even if everyone agreed to have all nukes abolished, the technology is there - so someone would always aquire it.

Is it a deterrent? No! It induces fear into all those who worry about the govts actions who have the nukes. Is fear a deterrent?

Can they be made into effective battlefield weapons? Yes they can using all sorts of weird heavyisotopes to limit their effectiveness.

Should anyone continue to develop these weapons? Someone, it must be said, always will - it's like the playground at school - if someone has it everybody wants it. The techonology has already been developed someone will want it, and will eventually acquire it.

GWB, in my opinion, is right to continue to develop nukes which have a far less effective area.

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Originally posted by yrwyddfa
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GWB, in my opinion, is right to continue to develop nukes which have a far less effective area.

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Were would these small nuclear weapons be used. It's quite apparent that they'd never be used against any of the existing nuclear powers, so it stands to reason that they are for use against middle eastern countries.

Now, on one hand we are saying to these countries "you have no reason to develop nuclear weapons. So we will use international law to make sure you don't.", but on the other hand we're developing weapons which look like they're specifically suited to Iraq type wars.

Very quickly we lose the moral high ground where we say countries can't have nuclear weapons. Now, why should Iran (in their eyes) not have nuclear weapons? It's quickly looking like it will be the only way to stop the US from attacking again once they're out of Iraq.... I don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but I 100% agree with their reasoning and think they'd be insane not to be persuing them.

I don't think we have any moral ground to stand on in the first place (and btw there are more non-nuclear states than just the ones in the middle-east)

The West are just good at disguising imperialism. What I mean by this is the axiom: democracy is good - we will enforce it upon you all; which, I think is the ultimate pretext for the majority of the West's govts.

Which to me is immoral.

I agree with what Ex-FB and yrwwydddff (blood vessel pops) have said, but I think we should keep in mind that 'morals' keep changing to fit in with the necessities of that time period. They change because we make them change.

100 years from now, today's actions will either be looked upon as barbaric or justified.

Wow....You guys are great at making points about where you stand...lol....I need to get better at it. Um...I do agree with Ex-FB and Mendhak on sever issues.

You see. Here is what I thinking. If we go over and enforce our way of government on them then it is much like communism. BUT we are not staying and they are making their own laws and constitutions. So it isn't entirely like communism. We do want to help them. But I do not think it is our role to help them. Maybe......(who else would help them?)

On the flip side of that argument. Iran and N. Korea would be developing nukes anyways. If the technology is there, someone is bound to get it eventually. You say "can you blame Iran for wanting nukes" ( Which I agree with your reasoning ) but USA wouldn't want them to because then it makes our job harder and more US soldiers die. I can almost 100% guarantee you we will be butting heads with Iran just as we did Iraq, unless they listen to our demands and do what we tell them.

ALSO! Why would we go to Iran and make them the new Iraq of our news stations? Because they want to protect themselves from us? Good reason to go and tell them not to build nukes but it does make sense that they want to. It's like someone said earlier. A kid on a playground has a toy and everyone wants it. I don't think its the USA not wanting anyone to have nukes as much as it is USA not wanting the wrong people with nukes.

On a seperate note: I agree with the liberation of Iraq. The people were abused. It is a sick way of life to be living over there. More than half of Iraq loves USA for freeing them. I wont go through all the things that were done over in Iraq. You probably already know anyways.