Re: Foreign adventures and economic imperialism
Tyler Durden wrote: As far as I can tell, we've been actively meddling in foreign governments since the early 1950s. I haven't been; have you? If not, then you shouldn't use the term we. One of the mind games that state worshippers play on the populace is to get them to identify with the state -- and so emotionally defend its foreign adventures -- through the misuse of we when they really mean the government.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
Harmon Seaver wrote: Translate/transliterate is irrelevant -- you don't change people's names, Ever hear of King Ferdinand of Spain? His real name was, of course, Fernando -- Ferdinand is merely the English equivalent. Likewise, English and Spanish speakers use different names for the same explorer -- Christopher Columbus vs. Cristobal Colon. We have the Greek Odysseus, who the Romans called Ulysses, and the Greek god Zeus, who the Romans called Jupiter. In modern times we have the names of Chinese people and cities changing as different methods of transcribing Chines to English gain favor -- Peking became Beijing, and Mao Tse Tung became Mao Zedong.
Re: Batter Up! (Was Re: Ex-Intel VP Fights for Detainee)
Joseph Ashwood wrote: The priority oil is not a current problem but with the world oil supply quickly becoming depleted (some estimates put us at only 30 years left) Which is what they were saying 30 years ago...
Re: Chomsky: Iraq is a trial run
Tyler Durden wrote: This should be seen as a trial run. Iraq is seen as an extremely easy and totally defenceless target. I beg to differ. Haiti and Yugoslavia were the trial runs; but since they happened under a Democratic president, the left didn't make a fuss.
Re: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
Neil Johnson wrote: When your choice is 1) sending THOUSANDS of troops to their death trying invade the Japanese home islands or 2) Trying out two new, not fully reliable, not fully understood weapons that, however, if they work, will save you from doing 1). I think I know what my ethical choice a the time would have been. But there was another choice: 3) Accept a conditional surrender from the Japanese. Unfortunately, like Roosevelt before him, Truman insisted on unconditional surrender as the only thing he would accept. The Japanese were trying to negotiate a surrender, but wished to ensure that their emperor would retain his title as head of state (even if he had little actual power). Truman insisted there be no conditions whatsoever, and killed hundreds of thousands of noncombatants to get his way. The real irony is that the U.S. ended up granting the desired condition afterwards anyway.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
Harmon Seaver wrote: If you read the history, there were just as many christer theologists and ministers arguing *for* slavery as there were against. Their religion was not the cause of their support for slavery; self-interest was. On the other hand, many, many abolitionists became devoted to the cause of ending slavery because of a religious conviction that slavery was evil. A significant number of these, especially among the Quaker faith, exposed themselves to great personal risk in aiding slaves to escape. Granted, but the entire christer establishment is behind the War On Some Drugs. Christer establishment? Are you out of your mind? We're talking about a country where a big stink was raised just because someone found the word god on a spelling list, and a student was suspended for giving classmates candy canes with a short religious note attached. And I don't think you'll find any historical evidence that the churches led the drive to impose the WOSD; law enforcement agents in danger of losing their jobs or budgets after the repeal of prohibition had a lot to do with that war. By definition persecutorial is bullshit. How so? If there is only one god and one way, then all others are wrong, and need to be stamped out. You're getting hysterical here. Need to be stamped out does not follow from only one way. There is only one correct answer to any given arithmetic problem, but that does not obligate accountants or mathematicians to go hunting down innumerate idiots who might insist that such matters are culturally relative. And I know of several Christian denominations whose doctrines explicitly prohibit forceful imposition of religion. Christer proselytizing and missions are by definition persecution of others. To paraphrase Inigo Montoya from _The Princess Bride_: By definition -- you keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means. You're so steeped in hyperbole that you can't even have a rational discussion. According to my dictionary, proselytizing is, by definition, to try to persuade someone to change their religious or political beliefs or their way of living to your own. Nary a word about persecution there, which is rarely effective in causing someone to adopt your *beliefs* I was a fundamentalist for a good many years, member in good standing (probably still am, for that matter, AFAIK) of the Assembly of God church. What makes you think fundamentalists are typical of Christianity as a whole? I suspect that your experience has given you a skewed perspective of Christianity. One good thing that Christianity and other religions do is instill a sense of right and wrong in people and thereby promote adherence to basic standards of conduct. Baaahhhhhhaaa ROFL In other words, you can't formulate a cogent argument against this point. Ever heard of the Ten Commandments? Most of these deal with treating others well. I can't speak for how they do things in the A of G, but my own religious upbringing taught me to view it as a deeply shameful thing to lie, steal, strike a woman, etc. You simply couldn't do these things and still feel good about yourself. This kind of endogenous aversion to antisocial behavior is sorely lacking in post-Christian America. As Christianity (and religion in general) has waned in America, no adequate replacement for this function has emerged. Perhaps as a result, American culture no longer values honor and honesty. It never did. The ultra-religious christers who landed at Plymouth Rock had no compunction against robbing and murdering native americans, This is a problem endemic to humanity: a failure to apply moral laws to those outside of the tribe. It is not exclusive to Christians. The Yanamato Indians, for example, view anyone outside of their tribe as non-human, no better than animals, and killing such bipedal beasts is no more immoral than stepping on a cockroach. *** I will conclude by saying that you retain all the trappings of a True Believer. The specific beliefs may have changed, but the extremism, closing of one's mind to all contrary evidence, the zealotry, the need to evangelize, and the need to demonize contrary beliefs are all still there.
Re: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
Damian Gerow wrote: I can only see two reasons for bombing with nuclear weapons: hate and stupidity. That being said, you'd have to *really* hate someone (or an entire country) to actually /use/ a nuclear weapon. That's nonsense. I can think of several entirely ethical uses of nuclear weapons, with the usage not motivated by hate but simple utility: 1. You have a large invading fleet approaching your nation. A few nukes out in the middle of the ocean could handily take out the fleet without getting any innocent bystanders. (This scenario occurs in one of Poul Anderson's novels.) 2. You have a large invading army crossing an uninhabited wasteland. Again, tactical nukes would be useful and ethical here. Use airbursts, though, to avoid producing a lot of fallout. 3. Power generation. One scheme I once read about for a fusion reactor involved digging a deep cavern, exploding a nuke within it every once in a while, and having the resulting heat drive your electrical generators. 4. Interplanetary transportation of a massive payload. Project Orion, anyone?
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
Harmon Seaver wrote: No, they weren't christian -- they were followers of Rabbi Yeshua ben Yoseph ha Natzri, later called Mesheach ha Israel. [...] Jesus and Christ and christianity were something invented by the europeans [...] [Marcion] took a scissors and cut out anything that was at all favorable to the jews and burned it [...] the council at nicea where they excommunicated all the Palistinian, etc. followers of the Rabbi [...] as soon as they were made the official church, they went about destroying the old religion's temples, sacred texts, etc and persecuting the followers. These are some interesting assertions; oddly enough, they sound similar to the Mormon doctrine of a Great Apostasy. Can you give some references? I like to dabble in history from time to time, and this sounds like something interesting, if true.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
Harmon Seaver wrote: And what makes you think things would have been any better in the absence of Christianity? You've heard of the Inquistion perhaps? The Catholic Church (which carried out the Inquisition, in cooperation with various governments) is not the whole of Christianity. There are also the Orthodox churches, the Protestant denominations, and various other branches. Furthermore, you haven't given any evidence that what happened in Europe was any worse than what has happened under countless tyrants the world over. Nor do you account for the crucial role the Christian religion played in abolishing slavery. Or the War On Some Drugs, the modern inquisition? You won't find a prohibition against using drugs, nor a requirement to persecute those who use them, anywhere in the Christian scriptures. Any monotheistic religion is by definition exclusive Exclusive as to what they consider proper object of worship, yes. persecutorial of others. By definition persecutorial is bullshit. I am no longer a religious person of any sort myself, but I know from personal experience what real-life Christians are like, as opposed to the cartoon caricature you seem to carry in your head. I've experienced both the good and the bad. Do you have any real experience with Christians, as opposed to the stereotypes promulgated on TV and in the movies by bigoted screenwriters and producers? One good thing that Christianity and other religions do is instill a sense of right and wrong in people and thereby promote adherence to basic standards of conduct. As Christianity (and religion in general) has waned in America, no adequate replacement for this function has emerged. Perhaps as a result, American culture no longer values honor and honesty. The protagonists in popular movies, TV series, and books have not the slightest moral scruples about lying, nor, in many cases, about stealing. There is no longer any shame attached to failing to keep your word. There is no longer any shame attached to sponging off of others instead of pulling your own weight. I'd like to think that we don't have to resort to superstitions to promote these moral standards, but the experience to date in America is not encouraging.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
Harmon Seaver wrote: But of course, the problems really pre-date all that, going back to when the christer Romans came and killed off the Druids and Wiccans who wouldn't bend the knee to conversion, as they did in the rest of Europe. You are completely and utterly wrong here. The Romans never conquered Ireland; furthermore, the conversion to Christianity was entirely voluntary and peaceful in Ireland. For quite some time there was an independent Irish Christian church that was independent of Rome. Don't assume that what held true in other parts of Europe necessarily held true in Ireland.
Re: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
John Kelsey wrote: I think there was some complicated argument about the Taliban not being a legitimate government, What's a legitimate government? One with enough firepower to make its rule stick?
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
Harmon Seaver wrote: Encouraging the imperial persecution of a religious minority? Well, it looks at this point that it would have been a reasonable trade-off, given the millions who have been tortured and murdered in Europe and the Americas since the Council of Nicea in 425 by the offspring of those surviving christers. And what makes you think things would have been any better in the absence of Christianity?
Re: COWed news networks not showing Baghdad market dead
James A. Donald wrote: Indeed, this He said, she said approach, which treats US reports and Iraqi reports as equally credible, seems to me like Baathist propaganda, like anti western bias. Lying is as natural to governments as breathing is to normal, healthy people. What makes you think the band of thugs and cutthroats based in Washington, D.C. is any more truthful than the band of thugs and cutthroats based in Baghdad?
Re: Give cheese to france?
Tyler Durden wrote: Actually, I am dimly aware of this. From the little I've been able to glean, there is a very slow, steady progress in the 'science' of economics/econometrics. By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; in particular, it has been applied to investment analysis and portfolio theory, resulting in significant improvements in investment performance.
Re: The Anarcho/libertarian world and corporations
Major Variola (ret) wrote: I just realized this morning that corporations can't exiest in an anarchy, they are whole a fiction of the state. In the sense of a govt-recognized, protected entity, granted. But not in terms of voluntary associations. Not all companies are corporations. Corporations are a particular kind of company chartered by the state in order to absolve certain people of responsibility for their actions. There is a business form, whose name I forget but which used to be called a Massachusetts corporation when Massachusetts didn't allow actual corporations, that achieves many of the legitimate benefits of a corporation through entirely contractual means. The basic idea is that the company has trustees who make all the operating decisions for the company, and are personally responsible for their actions. Investors have partial ownership, but no control over the operation of the company (other than selection of trustees) and hence have no liability beyond their investment. Contracts include boiler-plate wordage that states that liability shall be limited to the assets of the company (and trustees, perhaps; I'm not sure on this). This allows one the advantages of pooling resources without absolving decision-makers of responsibility for their actions.
Re: Monocultures, Choice, and Access to Food Must Be Equal!
Tim May wrote: More time-consuming than I am prepared to commit to for an article which maybe 5 people will read!) Ah, you're too modest, Tim. In spite of the fact that you're a bigoted, misanthropic curmudgeon, at least you're an INTERESTING bigoted, misanthropic curmudgeon. :-)
Re: Fw: Drunk driver detector that radios police
david wrote: But you wouldn't mind if insurance companies required the device in order for you to get a policy (whether or not it called the police or just the insurance company) ? Right ? If I did mind, I'd just find a different insurance company. It's a little bit harder for me to say, I don't like government X; I choose to be governed by Y instead while continuing to live in the same spot.
Re: Give cheese to france?
R. A. Hettinga wrote: By the way, one piece of evidence that economics is maturing into a real science is that it is becoming usable by engineers; Well, finance, anyway, where it is possible to calculate some risk. You can't calculate prices, though. You discover them. For commodities, if you could somehow discover the demand and supply curves and predict how they were going to move, you could in fact calculate what prices were going to be. The problem is that you can only observe exactly one point on the demand or supply curve -- where it crosses the other curve. You can't observe any other point until at least one of the two curves moves. It's conceivable (although I'm not aware of anyone even attempting this) that if you had some (perhaps probabilistic) model for both curves as a function of some exogenous variables, that you might get some useful predictive information about prices.
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Steve Thompson wrote: Logical actors dominate in the economy because those prone to excessive irrationality end up with little money to play with. Perhaps you aren't joking... I would be forced to agree with you is you defined `logical' in this context to mean actors following the logic of the current economic status quo. I mean logical in the sense of being able to do a reasonable job of making choices that further one's own self interest. The above is a standard justification for the rational man assumption of economics. It has nothing to do with whether the big picture is logical by some standard, only with whether an individual's choices make sense in furthering his/her self-interest, given that he/she can only control his/her own actions and not those of others. Now one could suppose that some people place such a high value on nurturing their own bigotry that they value it more than wealth, so that they are still acting logically when they sacrifice wealth in order to maintain their bigotry, but such people will also have minimal economic impact because they will have minimal wealth. For of how money trumps bigotry, look at the history of Citibank. They used to tell their recruiters to go to the top business schools and recruit the top MALE graduates. At some point in the early 70's their recruiters began to report that increasing numbers of the top graduates were female. Citibank management decided that making money was more important than humoring their own prejudices, and instructed their recruiters to go after these women. Peter Drucker ascribes a large part of Citibank's success to this choice, as for a period of time they had exclusive access to a pool of talent nobody else was tapping... until their competitors finally caught on. Obviously, our present economic order resists (strongly!) fundamental change; Don't you mean our present political order? There have been pretty drastic changes in the economy over the last twenty-five years, far dwarfing any political changes. (Hint: microcomputer revolution, the Internet, the effect of quicksilver capital, etc.) What in the world is overall social fabric supposed to mean? I suppose I could have merely said `social fabric' and it would have been better English, You still haven't told me what you mean by social fabric. I don't like to be rude, but I am highly suspicious of terms such as social fabric; it's one of those vague, often semantically vacuous terms that obscure more than enlighten. You won't find any trace of any notion of equality in the commons -- whatever the phrase is supposed to mean -- in the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, nor any of the discussions involved in the drafting and ratification of these documents. I would think that the idea of `equality in the commons' is implicit in the motivation for such documents, whether or not it is stated in so many words. Opinions count for nothing; facts do. We have the actual documents. We also have a pretty thorough record of the discussions that went on in the Constitutional Convention and the debates during ratification, and we have a wealth of original writings from the time indicating what the political thought of the day was. None of these, to my knowledge, contain any trace of a notion of equality of the commons. The only notion of equality that I am aware of appearing in these is equality before the law.
Re: Give cheese to france?
Harmon Seaver wrote: The better way to frame the question: May a private property owner legally exclude people from it? Seems to me the answer should be, as a general rule, yes Absolutely yes, except for the fact that malls have invited the public in, Are you saying that if I invite people to a party, I cannot then throw them off my property when and if they become abusive or offensive? so once you've done that, it's pretty hard to exclude some portion of it. No, it's not hard at all. Sir, I'll have to ask you to leave the premises. That's all it takes. Plus the whole other issue of whether the malls aren't partially owned by the public. There is no public, only individuals who sometimes, temporarily and in limited ways, work together. If they've used eminent domain then they are accomplices to armed robbery, and the property seized should be returned to its rightful owners, who may then exclude anyone they damn well please. It would probably be best for society as a whole Forget about society; only actual, individual people live, think, suffer, enjoy, have rights, etc. There's also the issue of corporations not having any civil rights in the first place Their owners certainly have property rights. These rights stem from their nature as human beings (or from God, if you are so inclined); they are not granted by nor subject to the approval of any government.
Re: Someone explain...Give cheese to france?
Tyler Durden wrote: Let's take one of my famous extreme examples. Let's say a section of the New Jersey Turnpike gets turned over to a private company, which now owns and operates this section. So...now let's say I'm black. NO! Let's say I'm blond-haired and blue eyed, and the asshole in the squad car doesn't like that, because his wife's been bangin' a surfer. So...he should be able to toss me off the freeway just because of the way I look? (Or the way I'm dressed or the car I drive or whatever.) Not if he wants to keep his job. This is supposed to be a profit-making operation, remember? Pissing off or outright throwing out paying customers is a good way to make the company lose money, which is bound to get the owners quite upset. Let's suppose, however, that the owners are such extreme bigots that they prefer nursing their prejudices over making money. Should the owners be able to arbitrarily deny certain people access to their property? In the absence of a valid contract to the contrary, OF COURSE. Anybody for whom this is not blindingly obvious still hasn't grasped the fundamental concept that most children acquire by the age of three or four: the difference between MINE and YOURS. The way I see it is there's private property, there's public property, and then there's reality with lots of stuff in between. No, there's private property, there are unowned (unclaimed) resources, and that's it. I don't consider the State to have any valid property rights at all, as everything which it claims as its property was obtained by theft, violence, or both. Your stuff in between is just a bunch of hooey invented in order to justify violations of property rights. Sort of like this compelling state interest test invented by the frauds in the Supreme Court to weasel their way past the clear and unambiguous wording of the First Amendment; no trace of the concept exists in the Constitution.
Re: Ethnomathematics
Anonymous wrote: Ethnomathematics Good lord, this sounds like it was practically designed to sabotage the prospects for minorities to excel in mathematics, by encouraging them to waste their efforts on nonsense and useless trivia.
Re: One Man Against the World
I've been reading DiLorenzo's book, _The Real Lincoln_, and this description is a pretty close fit to Abraham Lincoln, too. Eric Cordian wrote: --- A great, civilized nation democratically elected a fanatic demagogue, who preached war. Actually, he did not really receive the majority of votes, but, somehow, his ascent to power was arranged nevertheless. Lincoln only got 40% of the popular vote. At the time he was elected, it was generally assumed, and had been since the founding, that secession was a fundamental right of the states. The idea that the Federal Government could go to war to prevent states from leaving the union was unheard of. --- Soon after assuming power, he manipulated a dramatic incident in order to tighten his grip upon the country Fort Sumter. and prepare for attack on smaller nations. Such as the Confederacy and various Amerind nations. An immense propaganda machine turned enemies into devils, the incarnation of evil. An important part of Lincoln's propaganda machine was simply to imprison anyone who criticized him. He imprisoned any newspaper editor who had the gall to criticize him. Other newspapers he put out of business by instructing the Post Office not to deliver their publications (mail was the most common means of receiving the paper at the time). He had a Congressman arrested and deported for criticizing the war. He arrested a large portion of the Maryland legislature to prevent a debate on whether or not Maryland should support the war. --- The call for war enabled him to unite the whole people behind him, to silence all opposition, gradually abridge human rights, See above. Also, Lincoln illegally suspended the right of habeas corpus. (The Constitution allows its suspension in times of insurrection, but universal legal opinion of the day was that this required an act of Congress.) overcome the economic crisis and embark upon a voyage towards world dominion. The departure of the Southern states, which paid something like 80% of the expenses of the Federal Government, was indeed a great economic crisis for the Federal Government. DiLorenzo also argues that Lincoln's conquest of the south was the beginning of U.S. imperialism. --- He loved being photographed in uniform, walking along lines of soldiers, pretending to be a great military leader --- It's well-known that Lincoln micromanaged the war. I mean, of course, Adolf Hitler.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tim May wrote: It goes beyond just the black leaders thing--it's also about black pride. My eye-opening experience was my arrival in college (as Brits would say, at university) in 1970. Well, this post explains a lot about Tim's attitude. Myself, I never ran into this kind of crap in college. I attended college 10 years later, in a conservative state (Utah). The few blacks I've encountered personally have mostly seemed to be decent people.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tim May wrote: Swahili was the language they took to meet the minimal foreign language requirements. This sounds like the one worthwhile course in the bunch. One may learn a foreign language in order to be able to read important literary, historical, philosophical, or scientific works in other languages, in which case Latin, Greek, German, and French are good languages; in order to be able to communicate well with a wider group of people, in which case Spanish is a good language for Americans to learn; or just to broaden one's horizons, in which case I am told that Swahili is a good choice, as it is structurally so different from Indo-European languages.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tim May wrote: In the past fifteen years I have come to realize that crypto anarchy will probably change all this, as it makes for a system where only a competent elite does well. Probably fifty million marginal Americans, including nearly all of the so-called peoples of color, will, one hopes, fade away. I guess I'm more optimistic about human nature than you, Tim. If and when the day of reckoning comes, this is what I expect: 1. Great wailing and gnashing of teeth. 2. Probably a good deal of violence by some who have come to view parasitism as their right. 3. But once it becomes clear that the parasitic lifestyle is no longer viable, most will do what they have to do to survive: stop whining, stop looking for handouts, and learn to stand on their own two feet and make their own fortune.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tyler Durden wrote: Was this black people's fault? Nah. It's all of our fault. Bullshit. I had nothing to do with it. Collective guilt only dilutes responsibility and ensures that pathological behavior continues. Let me suggest some specific groups of people who are responsible: - The education establishment. Their purpose from day one has been, not education, but the production of pliable citizen-serfs. Read John Taylor Gatto's _The Underground History of American Education_ for details. (Gatto taught in the New York school system for decades, and received New York City and New York State teacher of the year awards.) - The welfare-state bureaucrats who labored so long and hard to erase the stigma associated with living on the dole. As long as it made their own jobs secure and expanded their own little empires, why should they care that their system was eroding the morals, independence, and self-respect of one generation after another? - The victimology pushers and race baiters. These people have worked hard to focus minorities on the actions of other people (which they can't control) and away from their own actions (which they *can* control). They have created a culture where education, deferred gratification, all the traditional means of raising oneself up out of poverty, are reviled and disdained as the white man's way.
Re: Police state, plainclothes pigs need to die
Major Variola (ret) wrote: Girl driving in car is attacked by men in car and tries to escape the attack. The men are pigs (DEA, of course) out of uniform in unmarked car. She is shot in head. Pigs will get away with this, of course. She was Mexican, lower class, in Texas, so expendable. Donald Scott was lily-white, upper-class (millionaire), and lived in Malibu. He was expendable, too. Nowadays, the uniformed thugs can get away with killing *anybody* who doesn't have good political connections. The motto of the DOJ ought to be State-sanctioned murder: it's not just for minorities anymore.
Re: The burn-off of twenty million useless eaters and minorities
Tyler Durden wrote: Black leadership is one potential issue here, but the other ethnic groups that do so well in the US have no identifiable leaders here. Which is precisely why those ethnic groups do so well, while U.S. blacks do not. The value of leaders is vastly overrated in American society. The only kind of leader worth having is one who isn't trying to be a leader at all, but whose admirable conduct inspires others to emulate him/her.
Re: Gullible Journalists
Tyler Durden wrote: For some reason I've never been able to fathom, many journalists seem to be remarkably gullable, when they're told something from the right kind of source, especially a government agency or other official source. Chomsky (dig around on http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm) and others have commented on this quite a bit. If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, I suggest you read some of Vin Suprynowicz's columns, or his book, _Send In The Waco Killers_. He's been a working journalist for decades, and so can describe first-hand how this process of co-opting journalists works.
Re: Fresh Hell
Morlock Elloi wrote: Funny, but I can't seem to find the passage in the Bible where it talks about cloning. In fact, I can't find any passage that even remotely impinges on the subject [...] wasn't there something about exclusivity of conceiving without fucking ? As a former believer and student of the Bible, I can assure you that there is no passage in the Bible that says that Jesus was, will be, our should be the *only* person conceived without the benefit of sexual intercourse. And what do you think in vitro fertilization is, anyway? Many / most American Christians stress that they rely on the Bible as their one and only source of religious truth. If so, they have absolutely no *religious* basis for objecting to cloning.
Re: Fresh Hell
Morlock Elloi wrote: What would be the valid reason for the government to claim power to regulate her egg, her skin DNA, and her uterus? 1) Fucks up the prevailing religion doctrine. Funny, but I can't seem to find the passage in the Bible where it talks about cloning. In fact, I can't find any passage that even remotely impinges on the subject.
Re: Petro's catch-22 incorrect (Re: citizens can be named as enemy combatants)
John Kelsey wrote: No policy toward anyone isn't possible once there's any kind of contact. There are terrorists who'd want to do nasty things to us for simply allowing global trade, or for allowing trade with repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia or Nigeria, or for selling weapons to countries with bad human rights records. Osama Bin Laden might not hate us, but *someone* would. Baloney. The terrorists have made it pretty clear what their gripe with the U.S. Government is, and it has nothing to do with trade, the American lifestyle, or the elusive freedoms that Americans supposedly enjoy. It has everything to do with US troops stationed in nearly every country in the world (specifically, Saudi Arabia), meddling in Middle Eastern conflicts (the never-ending Israeli-Arab feud), and the steady stream of Arab corpses that Clinton and the Bushes have produced over the last ten years or so (thousands of Afghani civilians killed by US bombs in the last year or so; the bombing of Iraq that has stretch uninterrupted from the beginning of the Persian Gulf War to the present day). Neutrality and noninterventionism work spectacularly well as a foreign policy. Just take a look at Switzerland: seven centuries of peace and freedom, with the exception of a few years during the Napoleanic era, and never a problem with terrorists. Even if we were just an economic giant with little foreign policy, we'd still have an impact by which countries we chose to trade with How about Friendship and free trade with all, entangling alliances with none, to quote Thomas Jefferson? A trade policy that doesn't choose favorites avoids any problem of others wishing to influence U.S. trade policy.
Question on Mixmaster
I've known about Mixmaster for years, but only just now finally downloaded and installed it (Mixmaster 2.9.0). Does anyone know where I can find documentation on how to actually use it? The distribution (from Sourceforge) contains no documentation whatsoever beyond a *very* terse man page that has no information at all on the interactive interface, and only has one-line summaries of each command-line option.
