On Sep 8, 2006, at 2:50 PM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote:
Jonathan Gibson wrote:
Who's arguing absolute pacifism?
I operate on the Fight end of the Spectrum and not Fear, but that
doesn't mean I need to reduce everything to fisticuffs. I simply face
my fears head on. It's the only way that works for me.
I don't understand your ref to atomic material...
Because the USA may be the target of nuclear terrorism. OTOH,
nuclear terrorists might explode a bomb anywhere they can, just
to show they have it.
OK.
How does this make any difference? We faced nuclear megadeath of
enormous proportions for decades w/o erosion of our rights - well,
actually we have, but that's another topic - or, at least the ones we
curtailed are a "comfortable pain" we are already long familiar with.
I fail to see what scale of boogeyman is acceptable when North Korea
has become a growing and real nuclear threat, while GwB and that crowd
chase snipes they damn well knew weren't real. I followed the debriefs
of Saddam's defecting in-laws and follow-on UN reports which all track
a reality that BushCo denied in order to make a case for their
pet-projects. This was a world-class canard although I did expect to
find a few nerve and gas casings as we went in. I never thought Saddam
would deploy them on our troops as our retribution would have been
mighty & righteous.
do you still believe
Saddam had nukes or even anywhere near to this?!?
I believe that this is irrelevant. We _know_ now that Saddam had no
nukes _then_. We know that Saddam wanted to have nukes - he
would buy nuclear stuff from anyone.
As would others, but this was true BEFORE the fall of the Soviets.
Following more than Fox News and AEI/Heritage flacks will remove a lot
of the mystery from world politics.
I fail to see how "everything changed" as people like to proffer as
some sort of newthink incantation. This is just cage-rattling to keep
our emotions on edge and our frontal lobes from operating at
full-speed.
BushCo would be touting the rad-counts and beakers-residues high and
low if they could find any. Apparently, your willing to throw your
own family {maybe a better way to phrase this is, you are willing to
sacrifice Somebody Else's family} on a sacrificial alter at the mere
mention of skeery-monster boogeyman of nuclear fire without rationally
assessing facts. I don't even have to raise this issue since you
think
a Drug War is justification enough to lose your family to local
crossfire.
Life is cheap{er}, for some, apparently.
I didn't say that - I said that my family _is right now_ in the
crossfire
of a drug war. I also said that your family is right now in the
crossfire
of another war.
I'd call it something other than a war.
To me it looks more like a provocative set of actions to make
mountains out of mole-hills. It's designed to make our defense
industry an Immovable Object to bill against the Irresistible Force of
the brownskins, well, everywhere... These hind-brain dinosaurs we call
a defense industry need to lean against something or they can't stand
up and w/o a Cold War, etc, they seek justification for the megabucks
they seek.
I've been a US Defense Contractor and know what I speak of.
What if this nice round conceptually dead-simple number of
100K isn't enough dead and the battles continue decades,
and numbers reach millions? When is enough dead enough?
When all you and yours lay at your feet? Are you prepared
for that, because this is a logical {and time-tested!}
course of action your apparently willing to embrace.
Obviously, there's a limit to how many people should die
to prevent a tyrant to have his wishes. It would be wrong
to start a nuclear war to prevent a nuclear war.
So, still no quantification? What exactly is your measure for success
of this effort?
Ok, you want numbers. How many people could die to prevent how
many deaths? How many (precious-to-me) lives could die to
prevent (not-precious-to-me) deaths?
On a first estimation, I don't care how many supporters-of-a-tyranny
die if their deaths prevent just a single innocent death. Call me
callous, but people who chose to support a tyrant have no sympathy.
OTOH, if once far-away innocent person must die to prevent one
friendly person, I will accept this equation - I am no hypocrite that
will say that "all lives are equally precious to me".
Now, let's make the inverse count. How many precious-to-me
lives I would sacrifice to save strangers? I don't know, but
here the count is certainly not 1:1!
I fail to see why the criminal elements would pursue ever-more violent
crimes in the face of these profit drains... seems like it's when the
profits soar that they break out weapons.
Is there some study of the Dutch aftermath you are aware of and can
share?
No, there's no such study. I am just extrapolating from the behaviour
of criminals in my home city. When one profitable way is cut down,
they switch to another kind of crime. If suddenly they would lose
the huge profit from drug trade, they might use their formidable
arsenal to rob homes or mass kidnapping.
Thanks, I wanted some thoughts on this to try and get past the handy
labels and notions that get bandied. I don't think there is anything
to resolve here as your opinion rates casual life-taking too cavalierly
for my notions of a stable solution... I am reminded of the callous
adolescent writings of Aynn Rand where she gladly smites innocent
children if they've been fed the honey corrupt parents bring home.
I am not trying to paint you this way, Alberto, but this conversation
hangs in my mind as an echo of Atlas Shrugged.
- Jonathan -
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
