-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 R.A. Hettinga:
You're gonna love this one: You can't have "terrorism" without state sponsors.
Nonsense! Are you in junior high?
We take out (by whatever means at hand...) state sponsors of terrorism, and, hey, presto, no terrorism. Iraq. Syria. Iran. Libya. Doesn't look so hard to me. Oh. That's right. Libya rolled over.
Americans -- actually westerners in general -- may win ugly, Peter, but, so far, they win.
This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those are inequalities and injustice anywhere. As long as the most powerful nations of the world continues to exploit the earth's resources without taking appropriate considerations to other nations the wrath and dismay of people elsewhere will always persist. Not understanding this or simply neglecting it will further add to the negative feelings and opinions and fuel extremism. The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all the problem that leads to. Continuing being arrogant and policing the world without listening to the oppressed people in the middle east and elsewhere will never ever eradicate terrorism. You may may or may not be able to reasonable confidently hinder most terror deeds (but only after having turned also the western civilization into police states) but you cannot stop the oppressed man from growing the hatred i his mind. If you do not understand this you are not only unintelligent IMNSHO but also part of the problem itself. You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. (Malcolm X) Johnny Doelittle -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Tom Ridge Special v1.01 iQA/AwUBQYicHzVaKWz2Ji/mEQJ/KgCeJaL0A7KEtXrdg6DmER5yGHwhJWEAoNA/ 96lJo2JRLf4zWoOTjELrPQB4 =Uq+t -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
The US has not won since WW2. Rebellions, now called terrorist wars, have been far more successful. If you want to be a winner do not enlist in military forces of states, rather get a spin contract far from danger, arguing the virtues of mightily fearsome hardware and sacrificial patriotism. The US, a hidebound state, engages in limited combat, dithers, gets youngsters killed, parades the funerals and heroes, eventually pulls out, and the apologists for warmongering do their dirty. Still, it can be said of US military might: more servicemen die of military and civilian accidents, ill health, murders and suicide than in combat. Worse, deaths and maimings from friendly fire and bad medical care, not to say military justice, remain a high hazard of high technology and a natsec/military policy of acceptance and/or denial of responsibility for self- caused casualties and homicidal behavior in abused and abandoned service members -- Tim McVeigh one of tens of thousands who attack at home due to momentum rigged by inept military training and ethics. Bob Hettinga is just baiting by putting up flimsy arguments for western supremacy, evangelizing brand USA. Hoovering the yokels who cannot not believe their kind are chosen people. Standard fare of US (Western, all) state-sponsored education and religion and, oh my god, journalism. Quote of the day from the NY Times: "every journalist should spend a month in jail to appreciate the freedom of the press." This from a reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Report, to be closed shortly by Dow Jones.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 7:33 AM -0800 11/3/04, John Young wrote:
The US has not won since WW2.
Nope. Not at all. 1. Korea we lost by shoving the commies all the way up to the Yalu river. And then leaving them to fester behind a still-extant DMZ until they're almost enough of a "nuisance", to lots of people, including the now-almost-former-communist Chinese to worry over. 2. Vietnam we lost by kicking their asses so badly that our campuses "revolted", at the behest of a bunch of marxists. Whereupon we packed up, partied for about 15 years, and killed their communist sugar daddies in Moscow with just the *possibility* we could invent something strategic missile defense, they couldn't copy fast enough. The Cold War we lost by... Wait a minute. We didn't lose. See 1., and 2., above. That leaves us, what, John? Grenada? Panama? Hell, Columbia? Oh. Right. Lebanon. Tell ya what. Let's start the clock on this war at, say, the assasination of Bobby Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan, include the Beiruit truck bombing by reference as a battle, and see how we stand in a decade or so, shall we? C'mon, John. Think faster, or something. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYjzo8PxH8jf3ohaEQLrKACgpPVvDmuAS+ZE/9OAwZBAneLGztIAn2TK eVqIGmJf1iLvKLe55TuIgQYf =SOlw -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Bob, But your defenses of the fatherland are hollow formulas. There has been no war to win, a war the US is forever stealing from the citizenry to prepare for, and then fucking up with the minor skirmishes by having no doctrine or training to apply its mythical might, except, as always, to explain away abject failure with fairy tales like you're telling. Deterence is bullshit, but it worked to keep the Soviet and US militarists and their supplies in top level comfort. Now, the US has no complicit partner in raiding the public till, so it fabricates the terrorist threat, and lockstepping right along comes Russia, the UK and all the natsec bullshitters (slanted intelligence addicts) to march to the beat of bucks aflowing imperially. Dig deeper, middle-aged spinner, your history seems to have been framed by the Cold War and its bastard mini-me terrorism racket here lately. Do you by any chance have a contract with the tomfoolers? Or is it just natural to believe sugar daddy's tales of conquest and invulnerability? And, what is this shit about needing to kill as many of the varmints as possible? Have you ever tried to do that, these mean sumbitches are not birds and rabbits and women and children. Beware the May/Donald megadeath syndrome which always indicates a yellow stripe down the back of those who love to advocate others dying for their comfort and safety -- in large numbers, as if big bragging makes it braver. Weenies do that.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 12:50 PM +0100 11/3/04, Nomen Nescio wrote:
Nonsense! Are you in junior high?
Are you high, junior? Or is it just your politics that sound so... sophomoric? :-)
This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those are inequalities and injustice anywhere.
Ah. That's right. Inequality, instead of causing progress, causes damnation. Where's Robespierre when we really need him? Another useful idiot for "equality".
As long as the most powerful nations of the world continues to exploit the earth's resources without taking appropriate considerations to other nations the wrath and dismay of people elsewhere will always persist.
Communism, Fuck Yeah!!! States are People Too!!!! Please. Take the towel out from under the dorm-room door and quit regurgitating what you learned passing the bong around. "Groups" are not people. They don't have rights, for instance. Only people have rights. Nation-states are not people either. More the point, they aren't people in a dialectical struggle to free themselves from the Oppressive Industrial West, any more than "the workers" are in a dialectical struggle to free themselves from some guy in a top-hat and spats. If you'd learned any history, you'd know that the first argument is the result of the complete failure of the *premises* of the first to happen at all, and that both arguments have been demonstrated wrong in the face of *evidence*: the explosion of the "bourgeoisie" in the West (that's "middle-class" to those of us with a state-school education; the group including *you*, bunky, unless your name is Bush or "Kerry" [really Forbes or Cohn, take your pick] and you went to say, Andover and Yale), and the explosion of gross domestic product in the very countries you now claim the west exploits. If you don't believe that, ask that Sidekick-wearing software engineer in Bangalore the next time you're talking to a help-desk sometime about how Nehru, the great Indian Leveller, was such a wonderful guy that millions of his own countrymen starved during his tenure as the Indian more equal than all the others. It wasn't until Indians actually started to free their markets that people stopped starving in the streets. Our culture -- yours, too, bunky, since I bet you don't shit into a hole in the floor and pray 5 times a day for, as Hanson appropriately calls it, a nuclear caliphate --- has figured out a way to make more new stuff cheaper, and to continually do it for the last 2500 years or so. And, guess what? As a result, we can kill more people cheaper, too. That means we win wars. That means we'll win this one, too. Because, if you hadn't noticed, they have to use *our* stuff to fight *us*. Some around here see that as a bug, of course, but I see that much more as a feature: I'll see that "bug", raise you a couple of MOABs, and call the bet.
Not understanding this or simply neglecting it will further add to the negative feelings and opinions and fuel extremism.
Ah. That's right. I'm not "nuanced" enough. It's too *complicated* for anyone who didn't take your sophomore (cryptomarxist) "History Studies" class, or whatever. Please.
The only way to move towards a more friendly world is to make people feel they are able to share the wealth and prosperity of the world. As long as there is one single person anywhere in the world hungering to death there is still a basis for fundamentalism and all the problem that leads to.
"If we would all just get along", the lion would still eat the lamb for a mid-afternoon snack, bunky, and then lie down for a nap. Singing "Kumbaya" in Arabic won't make it happen any different. More to the point, some mook in chi-pants marching in a black-block in Seattle advocating the confiscation of what someone *earns* by *working* is not going to make some *other* islamist mook, who also got his way paid through college by *his* daddy, to stop building bombs and crashing airplanes into skyscrapers. What *will* stop mooks of the latter persuasion is to kill as many of them as possible, and as quickly as possible. Maybe their parents, too, for raising an entire generation of ignorant superstitious children. It was ever thus, however. The Meijii Japanese could *copy*, even perfect, aircraft and aircraft carriers, but they couldn't *invent* new stuff, like, say, atom bombs. Only markets can do that, bunky. More to the point, only markets full of free people arguing their heads off about what's right and wrong can do that.
Continuing being arrogant and policing the world without listening to the oppressed people in the middle east and elsewhere will never ever eradicate terrorism. You may may or may not be able to reasonable confidently hinder most terror deeds (but only after having turned also the western civilization into police states) but you cannot stop the oppressed man from growing the hatred i his mind.
Hint: "policing" the world is what happens when, after 30 years of attacks we actually *ignore* because we're too busy to care, someone kills enough people to get our attention. Then we kill them back. A lot.
If you do not understand this you are not only unintelligent IMNSHO but also part of the problem itself.
Ah. Stupid me. I should have been in the dorm room that day. Do you have notes? Dude, I was *in* that dorm room, once. Then something marvellous happened maybe 10 years later. I grew up.
You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. (Malcolm X)
There we go. Wisdom from a thug. How about this thug, instead, kid, quoted just about as much out of context as you have yours: "When the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality, the lions replied, "Where are your claws and teeth?" -- attributed to Antisthenes in Aristotle, 'Politics', 3.7.2 Oh. That's right. One shouldn't read Aristotle. He was a White Male Oppressor...
Johnny Doelittle
Little Johnny Doe? Stand in the headlights, dude. It's waaay brighter over there... Sheesh. When will September ever end? Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQYjv5cPxH8jf3ohaEQIu9gCfTG/jokeSyqyQtB62bWVynThGgIIAnirf HxrqsKmF2LmkIgZZRtlC2ddZ =6Irp -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "When the hares made speeches in the assembly and demanded that all should have equality, the lions replied, "Where are your claws and teeth?" -- attributed to Antisthenes in Aristotle, 'Politics', 3.7.2
ObPedantry: At 9:49 AM -0500 11/3/04, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
If you'd learned any history, you'd know that the first argument is xxxxx second the result of the complete failure of the *premises* of the first to happen at all
-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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This post gave me a big laugh. So naive. There are a few basic forces feeding extremism and terrorism around the world and those are inequalities and injustice anywhere.
You are quite right, it is unjust that people like Bin Laden are so immensely rich with oil wealth. To remedy this problem, Bush should confiscate the Middle Eastern oil reserves. You are using stale old communist rhetoric - but today's terrorists no longer not even pretend to fight on behalf of the poor and oppressed. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG hB70Rn/r/Izz2zUYn/rVfOyEDZVqu1UUzdNLVJJe 4inRuB429RCVLG1VVfP9Z5CBGfL+mE/dNmP+GZvcb
participants (4)
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James A. Donald -
John Young -
Nomen Nescio -
R.A. Hettinga