Tim

So you are willing to be apologetic with Northern Ireland and say the situation is complicated, but not with the Middle East. I think the following rings very true: As for [the Middles East]......I have a dfferent POV.......the vast majority of people in [the Middle East]......have absolutely no desire to be embroiled in conflict....the vast majority of the trouble is and was caused once again by fundamentalists....with varying agenda.......and believe me.....the vast majority of it was 'criminal' in nature and not political.....there was a constant campaign amongst factions to determine just who was entitled to the reins when the vacuum was created by the Brits leaving [the Middle East].......believe me it goes a lot deeper than just politics....! The US should kick some ass in the Middle East. Someone should send Hezbollah back to Iran, lock the PLO and Israel into a room, and not open the door until they have an agreement signed. Then the UN should go in there, supported by the entire world, and enforce the agreement. The Saudi's can squish all the money needed into the Palestinian nation (we are paying for it anyhow at the pump) and the US can take care of Israel (we are paying for it anyhow with taxes). That one act all on its own would repair 80% of the problems going on now. The last 20% would be Iran and that would be a very difficult situation for the US to resolve since it is the Sunni that need to figure out how to live with the Shi'a. -T

I do ascribe to that view. And you have an example right in your own homeland of the same forces at work as those suffered in the Middle East. Northern Ireland. While certainly there had been a great deal of tension in Northern Ireland since the Plantation of Ulster, it didn't harden until all the mucking around with nations that occurred at the end of WWI. No, the industrialized world has never had any problems like what those the ignorant Muslims have created with their cretinish religion.... Christianity would never cause such strife. -T

I also have very little use for most of what constitutes religion in this day and age. Joseph Campbell probably said it best: Give me that old time religion And that's good enough for me We will pray to Aphrodite Even tho' she's rather flighty And they say she wears no nightie And that's good enough for me We will pray with those Egyptians Build pyramids to put our crypts in Cover subways with inscriptions And that's good enough for me O-old Odin we will follow And in fighting we will wallow Til we wind up in Valhalla And that's good enough for me Let me follow dear old Buddha For there is nobody cuter He comes in plaster, wood or pewter And that's good enough for me We will pray with Zarathustra Pray just like we useta I'm a Zarathustra booster And that's good enough for me We will pray with those old Druids They drink fermented fluids Waltzing naked thru the woo-ids And that's good enough for me Hare Krishna gets a laugh on When he sees me dressed in saffron With my hair that's only half on And that's good enough for me I'll arise at early morning When the sun gives me the warning That the solar age is dawning And that's good enough for me Salon.com had a good write up just yesterday about the whole Islam question. My point is that it does not accomplish anything by painting all of Islam with the same brush used by an exceedingly small minority. I happen to ascribe to the latter view of the following. Anyone who has studied the war of ideas over the causes of 9/11, Bush's response to it, and his "war on terror" knows that there are essentially two opposed sides in the debate. On the one hand, there are the "essentialists," who argue that Arab/Muslim rage against the West is pathological and peculiar to Islam. It is driven not by real political grievances, which they see as trumped up, but by humiliation at the failure of Islam to keep up with the West, the sickness of Arab civil society, a festering hatred of Western liberalism, democracy and secularism, and the desire to establish a universal Muslim state throughout the world, one that would surpass the glorious days of the Caliphate. Islamist terrorism is simply evil, full stop, and must be destroyed. Any attempts to ameliorate it by political or economic moves are naive at best and appeasement at worst. The intellectual father of this position is the eminent Princeton Arabist Bernard Lewis, and some of its prominent advocates include Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol and (with some differences) the admin Friedman. Usually combined with Wilsonian rhetoric about bringing freedom and democracy to benighted Arab states, this is the neoconservative view of Islam and the "war on terror." It dominated the Bush administration and was shared by virtually every public intellectual who supported Bush's war on Iraq. Many of those who hold it are strongly pro-Israel. The opposing side could be called the "historical analysts." Those who hold it -- virtually all of whom opposed Bush's war against Iraq -- argue that Arab/Muslim rage against the West is in large part driven by specific historic injustices, most of which originated in the Western colonialist carving-up of the former Ottoman Empire after World War I. The West, in particular England, France and the United States, raised and then betrayed Arab hopes for independence, undermined fledgling democratic movements, and mouthed hypocritical pieties about "freedom," while it installed or supported dictators to protect Western political, military and economic interests. The overriding grievance, not just for Arabs but for Muslims throughout the world, remains Palestine. Arabs and Muslims throughout the world view the settling of Palestinian land by European Jews, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians after Israel's 1948 war of independence and Israel's subsequent refusal to allow the refugees to return to their native land, as the West's ur-sin against the Arab and Muslim people. The U.S.'s one-sided support for Israel has poisoned the attitudes of the Arab/Muslim world against it. Those who hold this position do not claim that Osama bin Laden was justified in launching his jihad against the West, or even that the Palestinian issue was his foremost grievance. (The presence of infidel Americans on holy Saudi soil was.) And they are prepared to agree with the essentialists that the Arab and Muslim world is plagued by corruption, despotism, stasis and desperately needs to reform to move into the modern world. However, they insist that jihadist rage must be understood in a broad historical context, and that Bush's "war on terror" is simplistic and counterproductive. Above all, they argue that until we drain the swamp by addressing root causes, terrorism will continue to bubble upward like a poison gas. To fight Islamist terror, it is necessary for the West in general and America in particular to win Arab hearts and minds by resolving historical grievances, of which the most pressing is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is nothing particularly radical about this position -- it is held by virtually every country in the world, and was recently espoused by the ultra-establishment Iraq Study Group. -T

....more neo-con crap. -T

What neo-con drivel! Why reference this crap which attempts to vilify all of Islam. These attitudes are what got the US into Iraq. -T

Everyone else is going to be responding to many of the arguments specifically dealing with guns. I saw this bit though and had to say something. What exactly do you consider a degenerate? I see broad swaths of degenerates whenever I drive through the suburbs and small towns in America. I have a feeling you see the exact opposite--on many issues. -T

Oh wow, you're crazy. Everyone in Iraq today has guns. Guns, munitions, and RPGs; the place is swimming in armament. Every weapon that was in the Iraqi armed forces is now in the hands of the general populace. Taking them away is an ineffectual policy simply because there ARE so many weapons. You can go to the local town bazaar and buy a Kalashnikov with $500 no questions asked. -T

Hypocrite! But seriously, I don't think anyone believes there is a moral dilemma involved in working for the establishment that exists for the defense of a nation. The only thing that I am conflicted about is the Eisenhower cited military-industrial industry. When there is a profit involved in devising ways to more efficiently kill people, nothing good can result. Liar, I saw you step on that ant last summer. -T

The well defended populace was in jest. But you really don't have any idea how many deer are in the US do you? You ever seen what a deer does to a car? I see it, a lot because there are so many. Since all their natural predators have been removed they breed like hoofed rabbits. -T

What then about the thought that "A Well-armed Populace Is The Best Defense Against Tyranny"? Besides that, you've never seen how many deer live in the US have you? There should be no problem with shotguns and rifles. Hand guns and assult weapons ought to be very tightly controlled in my mind. There is no need to go hunting..... with a hand gun or an AR-15. -T -T

Wow. Who says Neil doesn't have any opinions! -T

Where did you hear that? They are actually refusing to identify the guy other than saying he was a male of Asian decent. -T

They have it plastered all over the news in the tri-state area pretty much all day. That is almost traumatizing in itself. One would like to say that all the guns we have sloshing around in the country has something to do with these events. But I've read studies that show that there are other countries where firearms are just as widely owned which do not have these problems. I remember from one of the reports specifically comparing Canada, which has a very low rate of gun violence, to the US even though the percentage of gun owners is about the same. So it is a puzzle why these things seem to happen in the US. I personally think that all the violence we have in our media has a bearing on the problem. Showing sex or bare bodies does terrible damage to society but all the violence portrayed in media is fine. What speaks against this though is that we export all the crap movies and other media to other countries and they don't seem to have the same results. It really is a puzzle. -T

I don't quite know what you are accomplishing by this comment or the annonymiser. Is the annoymiser supposed to prevent the web address from being searchable? It doesn't. If it is supposed to help prevent TZ seeing the original address the click through originated from that doesn't work either since the referring Web page needs to execute a url identify the source web page. The Web address link simply open a new window and prefillls the information for the target Web page. So not sure what you are trying to accomplish.... Simple solution. If you are not interested in reading about the situation any further, skip the thread. I didn't force you to click on the topic. I have every right to talk about it all I want to and you have every right to ignore it all you want to. :yucky: -T

I was under the impression that the only DJ that would accept a gen dial is an MBW. /Tim

They are still carrying on over at TZ about the fake BBs. TZ BB Fakies I've seen that red sweater around somewhere... Of interesting note is a specific comment from JC Bi-valve himself: thanks God it will still take time till they can copy a full ceramic Big Bang, or a Gold, Platinum or Tantalum one! It's a crime and we will organize from tomorrow on a strategy with the Swiss Watch Federation and our specialised lawyers. Hummmm. Me thinks the man has no sense of humor. Little does he know about how throughly the BB has been faked at this point.... -T

Understand that I am just carrying on this discussion because it is interesting and I am not trying to be contrary. Never said there was a law concerning the WTC scrap. It was an ethics issue and ethics are not necessarily legally enforceable. Although in both cases, I think there is some question as to the legality of the situation. With the WTC scrap, it actually belonged to the city of New York and they paid some scrap companies to haul it away -- to India of all places -- for recycling. But then there is the question of once the scrap was sold for recycling if NYC could assert a legal claim to the scrap as still being their property. Who knows. I personally would not want to stand in front of a jury however trying to prove that legal issue. You'd most likely be publically drawn and quartered in Times Square. For the Titanic, it is an International Treaty and I do not know the ramifications of a private citizen breaking the terms of a treaty signed by the country of their citzenship. It would seem certain to me that there has got to be some sort of legal issues involved. But there are just four countries that are signatories to the treaty, and I would think it very likely that Titanic memorabilia would be a banned product just like ivory, conflict diamonds, and skins of endangered species. -T

What they hauled away was scrap metal which they picked through to find as many bits as possible. They can take that metal, melt it down and make a pot out of it no problem. You take that same piece of metal, make a tchotchke out of it, say it's a hunk of the WTC thereby profiting off of the tragedy, and that is ethically wrong. And in fact this happened. The Commissioner of the New York City Department of Design and Construction had to write a letter to three scrap companies telling them to stop this very activity stating that "It is unacceptable for manufacturers of medallions and other items to profit from that tragedy." Good grief splitting hairs here. Is it that hard a concept to appreciate? -T

...oh and what rep are you wearing to the ceremony? Enjoy the re-wedding. Can your guests re-gift as well? -T

Eloped did ya? You might wish you did again! But I hope it is not a true white wedding.... -T

So which is it Mr. Spock, do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one? My ethical objection is to profit in such a situation. None of the situations cited involve profiting of off the death/suffering of another. If those five people PAID you to flip the switch or push the man, that would be wrong in either situation, yes? No dilemma involved at all. Oh and if you did happen to flip that switch or push the man, expect the man's estate and family to sue the pants off of you for wrongful death. How is that for trying to help? -T

Again, the principle involved is profiting off of the death/suffering of others. It would be totally appropriate to present an artifact to a descendant of one of the Titanic passengers. It would also be totally appropriate to maintain artifacts in a museum or a memorial. WTC mementos sold for profit are equally ghoulish and tacky. -T

Trade you that for the Cherry Blossoms in Washington. At least you can go passive aggressive and squirt a tourist or two at your event. -T

Ethically it is all the same. The principle in question is profiting off the death and/or suffering of others. It is always inappropriate. My opinion. Others are always entitled to their opinion. However in the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom you would be violating the law since: U.S. Department of State Media Note June 18, 2004 U.S. Signs Agreement to Protect RMS Titanic Wreck Site Today the United States signed an international agreement that will lead to increased protection of the RMS Titanic wreck site. The four nations most closely associated with the Titanic -- Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S. -- negotiated the agreement, beginning in 1997. Concerted action by these countries would effectively foreclose financing for and the technical ability to conduct unregulated salvage and other potentially harmful activities. Though it rests 12,000 feet deep, the Titanic continues to capture the attention of people around the globe. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) recently sponsored a scientific expedition to the wreck that included explorer Robert D. Ballard, the man who discovered it in 1985. He attributed newfound damage to the wreck to submarines landing on the deck for salvage operations, filming, and tourism. Under the agreement, the Titanic is designated as an international maritime memorial, recognizing the men, women and children who perished and whose remains should be given appropriate respect. Parties will also protect the scientific, cultural and historical significance of the wreck site by regulating, within their jurisdiction, dives to the Titanic shipwreck, including the hull, cargo and other artifacts at the wreck site. The Swiss are not signatories to the agreement so, I guess profit is always more important to their culture or lack thereof. -T