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http://brasscheck.com/videos/middleeast/me5.html
TV news from outside the US.
have you seen this? on DU.
http://www.bushflash.com/pl_lo.html
not a pleasant sight
something we are responsible for.
Not many public figures will speak so forcefully and truthfully. perhaps that is why he stands out. and it is difficult to imagine a US television program allowing so much dissenting speech...
we have seen the art of debate turn into the art of hype, sales pitch, advertising and sound bites.
no one can make speeches in that media forum here.
you have to go to independent forums on the web, or any other "marginal" media access points.
So, I am glad that someone like Galloway can speak his mind, and speak it well.
but you know what I mean, when I say that thare are damned few of these public people.
http://news.sky.com/shared/videoasx/0,,galloway_060806-31200-bb,00.asx
good interview. amazing that this is publicly shown. in England, of course. strong stuff.
broadband needed.
Howdy Mark.
hope all is well with you.
http://news.sky.com/shared/videoasx/0,,galloway_060806-31200-bb,00.asx
good interview. amazing that this is publicly shown. in England, of course.
bulldzr
don't be so hard on yourself.
although I surely understand why you feel the way you do.
Saying what you say does not impugn your integrity.
or your honesty.
of the many characters here on the boards, yours is definitely beyond a cardboard cutout.
my best regards
good one.
thanks
For your weekend backup:
http://www.sitening.com/blog/2006/05/23/how-to-backup-your-mac-intelligently/
You're welcome.
excellent and thorough look at what appears to be a cyclical fundamentalism, aimed particularly at women, but affecting all of us.
I can only hope that the elections of 2006 bring sanity back to our public discourse, but a part of the cynic in me says we are not through with this "lies are truth" era.
thanks for your efforts to put together a cogent argument.
Well said, only idiots with nothing better keep looking at the Naz every 3 seconds, then again they have nothing worthwhile to do. off to look at some real estate.
ams
what a realist!
F6,
just wondering what your take is on the presidential position that easy FISA wiretap approval notwithstanding,domestic surveillance is an administration prerogative based in war powers granted by the Congress (which many congressional members deny).
the legality is an open question, supported by the adinistration's Justice Department, but disputed by many legal scholars.
Does this need to be resolved by the SCOTUS? or is this the purview of Congress (should they ever take up their responsibilities seriously)?
Glad to see you are back.
missed your posting.
hope all is well with you.
'bout time for F6 to show back up!!!!
Cripes in my activist days i would want to puke at crowds gathered to sing "Give Peace a Chance" and giving the peace sign.
While i supported the sentiment fully i was aghast that those participating actually believed that those gatherings would transform the world.
just curious as to what your activist days consisted of?
if you care to share...
Not a typo
I'm disappointed.
cute, but not worthy...Take a break and go over to Atomic Boobs for a while.
i will just assume it was an honest typo.
agree!
the substance of Bulldzr's most recent posts still stand.
unrefuted, unanswered.
intelligent people will make up their own minds about who makes important contributions to this forum.
WL
I thank you for your recommendations: I am way behind in my movie viewing.
I value your opinions, especially your "political" views.
I believe that few people who have experienced war at ground level glorify or want the experince repeated...
and yet, it seems to be such an integral part of human history.
now THERE was a WAR!
a WAR to END all WARS!
and as I recall, if you were male, European, poor...you damn right "served" in that war!
as CANNON and MACHINEGUN and CHEMICAL WARFARE FODDER!
"served"! sorry, just couldn't NOT comment!
not that I see any war as "productive", but WW I.
that had to be one of the STUPIDEST WARS EVER!!!
sorry.
just had to let it out.
won't do it again.
promise.
part one of the "big heist" was iraq.
then, opportunity knocks when Katrina rolled into town.
who can honestly say that these guys are not ready?
they were there to loot the treasury of hundreds of billions of dollars then, and they are ready to do it again NOW.
can you say heist on two fronts at the same time?
I mean, all of the same players are there and here.
for shame. they limit the wages of the workers to the lowest levels possible, but not one word about limiting profits of the military-industrial complex mega corporations.
just so we are clear about who is who and what is what.
WL, have you had a chance to look at Zinn's People's History of the United States?
like preaching to the choir, but, so much of our history has been "forgotten".
like never taught.
imagine. i grew up thinking that propaganda was something only evil empires used to brainwash their citizenry...like the rooshians, or nazis.
god help us.
because we sure can't seem to help ourselves.
The Iraqi campaign is pathetic and if we are to believe that we are "AT WAR", then we should have vaporized Falusia when all the "subhuman-scum-cowards" were all in one place!
this is what Libertarians believe?
or is this meant as a snarky reply to "if we are to believe..." statement?
at any rate, i am hoping it is the latter...
Olaf Stapledon was a great writer, with eccentric, interesting visions of humanity.
It has been so many years since I read him.
and as I was reflecting a few days ago, even though I have been shaped by so many authors I have read in the past, so little detail stays with me. I should dedicate a decade or so to rereading those who have so deeply affected my thinking.
I am agnostic as a matter of practicality.
This is definitely so in terms of any organized religion, though my spiritual interests range from Phillip K Dick to T'ai Chi Chuan.
a wasted mind is a terrible thing to lose.
and, when it is all over, I'll find out if it is over or the turn of the worm.
Thanks for the cheery Stapledon prognostication.
maybe you just can't get there from here.
not intending to get between the contestants...
this is not the board to settle this dispute.
Please take it back to the turnip board.
you are making a mockery of the FC board.
I hope if you each took a step back, you would see that there is no solution to your dispute short of terminal bloodshed.
thanks.
WL,
I am in strong agreement with your analysis of China, Japan, and the Far East.
China's internal problems are enormous, such a massive number of farmers, farm laborers, industrial laborers who are not even beginning to see the "rising tide that lifts all boats". that will ultimately have to be reconciled, and hopefully not with maoist type purges...
politically:
I am pleased to see that one single person, Cindy Sheehan, can be such a force on the conscience of this country.
if any event can turn this country around, her simple and honest demands of the CIC can do it.
Of course, while the stars line up to create the conditions for the fall of the Bush House, cynical thoughts creep back into my cortex, wherein the players are changed, but the game remains essentially the sam.
ecologically, lifeboat earth is no longer willing or able to sustain the growth of the human family and the baggage we bring.
you have seen the reports of the global warming "tipping point" events, such as the thawing of the tundras of the north?
well, stand by for change...vast, unpredictable, unknowable, and drastic.
god help our children and grandchildren.
The Battle for Your Mind
Persuasion and Brainwashing Techniques Being Used On The Public Today
by Dick Sutphen
good article.
one that any thinking person should read and understand the perils therein.
thanks for the post.
thanks.
I read a lot, and have a lot to digest.
This is one of the finer message boards I have run across: there is a variety of international analysis of political, military, and social events.
It also does not seem to have the bitter, divisive stamp of most political discourse that has such currency.
my sincere appreciation to the posters on this board.
I will contribute what and when I can.
WL,
Powerful labor organization bosses have always gravitated toward those in political power, and viewed themselves as an integral part of that power structure.
along with all of the corruption perks that seem to accompany these power groups, labor bosses have historically (not always) seemed to side with the plutocracy against their natural constituency.
It seems to me that if there is no constant renewal in organized labor, that is the trend that is unavoidable.
I am glad to see that Andrew Stern is forcing the renewal issue within the labor movement, although we do not yet fully understand what thee ramifications of this move will be.
This was not an easy or happy decision, said Service Employees International leader Andrew Stern, once a Sweeney protege.
“Our world has changed, our economy has changed, employers have changed,” Stern said. “But the AFL-CIO is not willing to make fundamental changes as well. By contrast, SEIU has changed.”
He is so right, that fundamental changes have occurred, and that unionism has fallen radically in numbers under the AFL-CIO regime in recent times.
This is not just an american issue, but a global one, especially in the context of global trading alliances and treaties that leave workers much in the role of serfs who werer bound to the land in the medieval era.
we must organize and recognize that the only way to compete with global business entities, is with international solidarity of working people.
That will take great vision and determination on the part of labor leaders, and Sweeney has not demonstrated that spark in a long time.
I also believe that others will follow the SEIU and the Teamsters. The AFSCME, has, along with the SEIU, taken a strong anti-war stance as well.
never was easy to build strong labor movements with the forces aligned against us, but it seems especially difficult today, with today's workers perched on the shoulders of those who sacrificed so much in union battles of the past. as they say, born on third base, and thinking they have hit a triple.
those who do not learn their history, are the most ignorant of all.
I highly recommend Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States for a good look at ourselves in history.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn
http://www.workinglife.org/Cake.htm
Jonathan Tasini.
yes, but...
we are now, more than during the darkest days of the "cold war", on the brink of a nuclear disaster.
the form the disaster will take is yet unknown, but the proliferation of nuclear weapons among highly unstable political units, as well as in the hands of our military, which is run by an extremely unstable political unit at this moment, can cascade into confrontations, counter-blows, and ultimately, a defeat of humanity, which will struggle to survive.
if this were a war of ideologies, opinions, and so forth, and nuclear arms were not in the picture, optimism could be found, even by cynical bears like me.
but I am afraid that while our erstwhile leaders were raiding the cookie jar, much serious business in the real world was left undone.
Nonproliferation treaties, decommissioning of warheads when there was a chance that financial rewards could work, well, you get the drift.
I saw huge demonstrations by people all over the world before the adventurism in Iraq have no effect at all, seemingly voices shouting into the great wind: unheard, unheeded.
interesting times, indeed.
this was the business we were to have fixed, for our children, and their children.
I see it as utter failure and futility.
but I am encouraged by voices like yours, who continue the good fight, and encourage me to do so as well.
Mark
I appreciate all that you do here.
It is refreshing to see someone with an open, inquisitive mind about the political situation in the world and in our own country.
most recently, the reenactment of the USA PATRIOT Act by the House has completely demoralized me.
we have managed to shred the bill of rights, our inheritance,a nd our future.
without it we are are a tin horn dictatorship or plutocracy, or worse.
as a people who should be devoted to "justice", so many choose personal aggrandisement of wealth and power, never understanding, that without justice, there can be no freedom.
so much of what we face is the naked grab at power (oil) which dilutes the blood of those who have sacrificed their lives at the altar of "freedom".
This is Not the America I was raised to believe in, and my heart aches.
what can we do?
is the current labor situation in China any different from the labor situation of the US in the 1880's?
or of the industrialized world's labor/capital problems anywhere before labor unionized?
it is the struggle between capital (seems so ironic that this is in a communist China) and labor, and until labor recognizes their enemy, nothing will be accomplished.
It is the corporate greed of the the wealthy who take advantage of the worker who is trying to just survive. whatever markets the capitalists serve is indifferent to the struggles that labor in China will have to face to gain decently paid jobs with reasonable working hours and conditions.
the struggle may be long, it may be bloody, and it may not succeed!
have you deloused your computer recently?
a little reality check on ADA
http://www.newstarget.com/001110.html
http://www.newstarget.com/008164.html
This may be the only thing that will rouse the populace.
we must give a thought to the implementation of the draft.
these guys may be criminals, but they are not fools.
I believe that the draft will be much different from the draft we saw for the Vietnam debacle.
remember: divide and conquer.
Redhot,
thanks for this article.
Friedman has shown his true colors, especially over the Bush administrations Iraq policy.
His analyses of current events seem to be so vacuous and out of actual context.
I feel that he sold his soul a while ago.
Steph.
I certainly intended no slur on you for posting the article.
It just jumped out at me, and I felt compelled to comment.
I "enjoy" the articles you bring to the table as well as your commentary.
As a rule, I find this FC discussion group to be the most eclectic and broadly ranging discussion group.
I would like to thank all who post here, especially the board moderator, and voice my appreciation for the high level of information and discourse here. (by the way, I also wanted to thank WL and Amaunet for their kind words about me, little deserved though they were...)
It is difficult to participate in these discussions for me because of my schedule, but i read every post on this board.
Over the last five years, President Bush has done an excellent job in managing relations with China - it's one of his very few successes in foreign policy - but lately he has engaged in protectionism. This month he reimposed quotas on certain Chinese textiles, and the Treasury warned China that it had better adjust its exchange rate or else.
Mr. Bush abandoned his principles because he was under attack from Democrats waving the bloody shirt of lost jobs. Sure, China's cheap yuan has cost us manufacturing jobs - but it has also led to a flood of Chinese capital to America, keeping interest rates low. If we blame China for lost American jobs in making shirts, we should credit it for new American jobs in banking and construction.
am I reading this right?
Mr. Bush abandoned his most excellent job of managing relations with China because of attacks by some Democrats?
Where does Kristoff take his Kool-Aid?
His analysis of the current and developed relations with China bears almost no resemblance to reality.
The whacked trade imbalance between the US and China, and China's strategic advantage as a result of that trade imbalance, are what led the President to make his "decision".
and as a friendly reminder to Nick, he should spend some time reviewing the recently managed relations of the US and the rest of the Universe,
where we have lost the "managing relations" part and opted for the "Empire Strikes Back" style of governance.
Already, China is creating alliances within our vaunted "sphere of influence", in our own "backyard".
Economic warfare against the rest of the world will be impossible to sustain, or justify. a draft in this country will finally arouse the comatose public, but it may by then be far too late.
Kristoff is no political analyst.
he needs to leave this sandbox entirely.
Amy,
this guy was going to produce the "smoking gun" on 9/11.
did I miss something?
took off from work early today...
my first contact with Dawkins was the Selfish Gene.
if that does not lay down the gauntlet, nothing does.
I struggle with the notion that all of this world's beauty, complexity, is just so much "soup".
on the other hand, it is what it is, I can enjoy it, or hate it, and that is liberating in its own way.
realizing that for so many people in the world, this is truly a "vale of tears".
yah, I would say he gives me pause, and room for perspective, to say the least.
are you feeling optimistic about IDCC's chances in the arbitration?
getting close to the May 31st date sure can make one a little nervous...
good 'talking' with you. and I appreciate your perspective.
F6,
"It is a very slow, creeping decay. When the sun is shining, as it has on Europe
for so long since the war, people feel they don't need God," explained Roehmel.
[F6 comment -- well then, dear Vatican, get busy and do your best to aid and abet
yet another cycle of war and pestilence so people will flock back to your churches (. . .)
good observation.
i have to wonder what unholy alliances will be formed to meet that particular need.
I just read through the Dawkins interview below.
Perhaps your article is a cause for celebration...and hope.
The atheist
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explains why God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gordy Slack
April 28, 2005 / Richard Dawkins is the world's most famous out-of-the-closet living atheist. He is also the world's most controversial evolutionary biologist. Publication of his 1976 book, "The Selfish Gene," thrust Dawkins into the limelight as the handsome, irascible, human face of scientific reductionism. The book provoked everything from outrage to glee by arguing that natural selection worked its creative powers only through genes, not species or individuals. Humans are merely "gene survival machines," he asserted in the book.
Dawkins stuck to his theme but expanded his territory in such subsequent books as "The Blind Watchmaker," "Unweaving the Rainbow" and "Climbing Mount Improbable." His recent work, "The Ancestor's Tale," traces human lineage back through time, stopping to ponder important forks in the evolutionary road.
Given his outspoken defense of Darwin, and natural selection as the force of life, Dawkins has assumed a new role: the religious right's Public Enemy No. 1. Yet Dawkins doesn't shy from controversy, nor does he suffer fools gladly. He recently met a minister who was on the opposite side of a British political debate. When the minister put out his hand, Dawkins kept his hands at his side and said, "You, sir, are an ignorant bigot."
Currently, Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position created for him in 1995 by Charles Simonyi, a Microsoft millionaire. Earlier this year, Dawkins signed an agreement with British television to make a documentary about the destructive role of religion in modern history, tentatively titled "The Root of All Evil."
I met Dawkins in late March at the Atheist Alliance International annual conference in Los Angeles, where he presented the alliance's top honor, the Richard Dawkins Prize, to magicians Penn and Teller. During our conversation in my hotel room, Dawkins was as gracious as he was punctiliously dressed in a crisp white shirt and soft blazer.
Once again, evolution is under attack. Are there any questions at all about its validity?
It's often said that because evolution happened in the past, and we didn't see it happen, there is no direct evidence for it. That, of course, is nonsense. It's rather like a detective coming on the scene of a crime, obviously after the crime has been committed, and working out what must have happened by looking at the clues that remain. In the story of evolution, the clues are a billionfold.
There are clues from the distribution of DNA codes throughout the animal and plant kingdoms, of protein sequences, of morphological characters that have been analyzed in great detail. Everything fits with the idea that we have here a simple branching tree. The distribution of species on islands and continents throughout the world is exactly what you'd expect if evolution was a fact. The distribution of fossils in space and in time are exactly what you would expect if evolution were a fact. There are millions of facts all pointing in the same direction and no facts pointing in the wrong direction.
British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what would constitute evidence against evolution, famously said, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian." They've never been found. Nothing like that has ever been found. Evolution could be disproved by such facts. But all the fossils that have been found are in the right place. Of course there are plenty of gaps in the fossil record. There's nothing wrong with that. Why shouldn't there be? We're lucky to have fossils at all. But no fossils have been found in the wrong place, such as to disprove the fact of evolution. Evolution is a fact.
Still, so many people resist believing in evolution. Where does the resistance come from?
It comes, I'm sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won't find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in Britain, but in the United States.
My American friends tell me that you are slipping towards a theocratic Dark Age. Which is very disagreeable for the very large number of educated, intelligent and right-thinking people in America. Unfortunately, at present, it's slightly outnumbered by the ignorant, uneducated people who voted Bush in.
But the broad direction of history is toward enlightenment, and so I think that what America is going through at the moment will prove to be a temporary reverse. I think there is great hope for the future. My advice would be, Don't despair, these things pass.
You delve into agnosticism in "The Ancestor's Tale." How does it differ from atheism?
It's said that the only rational stance is agnosticism because you can neither prove nor disprove the existence of the supernatural creator. I find that a weak position. It is true that you can't disprove anything but you can put a probability value on it. There's an infinite number of things that you can't disprove: unicorns, werewolves, and teapots in orbit around Mars. But we don't pay any heed to them unless there is some positive reason to think that they do exist.
Believing in God is like believing in a teapot orbiting Mars?
Yes. For a long time it seemed clear to just about everybody that the beauty and elegance of the world seemed to be prima facie evidence for a divine creator. But the philosopher David Hume already realized three centuries ago that this was a bad argument. It leads to an infinite regression. You can't statistically explain improbable things like living creatures by saying that they must have been designed because you're still left to explain the designer, who must be, if anything, an even more statistically improbable and elegant thing. Design can never be an ultimate explanation for anything. It can only be a proximate explanation. A plane or a car is explained by a designer but that's because the designer himself, the engineer, is explained by natural selection.
Those who embrace "intelligent design" -- the idea that living cells are too complex to have been created by nature alone -- say evolution isn't incompatible with the existence of God.
There is just no evidence for the existence of God. Evolution by natural selection is a process that works up from simple beginnings, and simple beginnings are easy to explain. The engineer or any other living thing is difficult to explain -- but it is explicable by evolution by natural selection. So the relevance of evolutionary biology to atheism is that evolutionary biology gives us the only known mechanism whereby the illusion of design, or apparent design, could ever come into the universe anywhere.
So why do we insist on believing in God?
From a biological point of view, there are lots of different theories about why we have this extraordinary predisposition to believe in supernatural things. One suggestion is that the child mind is, for very good Darwinian reasons, susceptible to infection the same way a computer is. In order to be useful, a computer has to be programmable, to obey whatever it's told to do. That automatically makes it vulnerable to computer viruses, which are programs that say, "Spread me, copy me, pass me on." Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it.
Similarly, the child brain is preprogrammed by natural selection to obey and believe what parents and other adults tell it. In general, it's a good thing that child brains should be susceptible to being taught what to do and what to believe by adults. But this necessarily carries the down side that bad ideas, useless ideas, waste of time ideas like rain dances and other religious customs, will also be passed down the generations. The child brain is very susceptible to this kind of infection. And it also spreads sideways by cross infection when a charismatic preacher goes around infecting new minds that were previously uninfected.
You've said that raising children in a religious tradition may even be a form of abuse.
What I think may be abuse is labeling children with religious labels like Catholic child and Muslim child. I find it very odd that in our civilization we're quite happy to speak of a Catholic child that is 4 years old or a Muslim of child that is 4, when these children are much too young to know what they think about the cosmos, life and morality. We wouldn't dream of speaking of a Keynesian child or a Marxist child. And yet, for some reason we make a privileged exception of religion. And, by the way, I think it would also be abuse to talk about an atheist child.
Next page / The God delusion, 9/11 and environmental apocalypse
1, 2, 3
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index_np.html
WL:
only if it includes his masters as well.
Cheney, while not stark raving mad, is as dangerous, if not more so.
my prediction: there will be no impeachment, the middle class will continue to shrink, the constitution will be rewritten.
dmiller:
your "self-restraint" is legendary