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At 1/10/06 11:08 AM, SIMPLYB wrote: Pat Robertson is way crazyer than Ann Coulter. He is no different from Oasama except that in this county we are able for the most part to keep our religious extremest under control.

Ann Coulter poses no real danger to America, and its funny to see her get pies tossed at her.

What's worse about Robertson, is that he was a serious contender for the presidency of the U.S. at one time--he got something like 35% of the votes for the primary, I think it was, and the reason it was that low is that the big PTL scandal, involving Jim and Tammy Baker, had just broke at the time, making right wing evangelicals look very sleazy. It's scary that we actually almost had him as a president. But what's even scarrier, is that Bush is of the exact same neo-conservative, right wing Christian evangelical ilk as Robertson!

At 1/4/06 05:34 PM, mackid wrote: Oh my god!!! That sucks! He's a good guy, even though he gave the Arabs land. The middle east is not looking good and especially with Palestinian terror, this might be percieved as a sign of weakness. Not good.

Good guy? I hope you're joking! Perhaps his heart gave out due to all the evil clogging it up from his terrorizing Palestinians. /HD

Not to seem like a moral relativist, but merely ethically responsible. /HD

At 12/31/05 09:23 PM, arz756 wrote: Only if it is to survive. War was orginally created as a way for some groups of people to survive. Say one group of people didn't have a good harvest because of weather, crappy land, or whatever. People are starving and whatnot. Then another group have food. In an effort to survive it is justifiable to attack the other country. Now when it comes to recent issues, such as Terrorism and security, it is moral because as a human you have the right to defend yourself as well. Its not moral to read a book a thousand times and just because it says god wants you to spread your religion to go around and blow your self up to scare people.

This is a good point, I think. But it depends upon what you define as survival. For example, for the state of Israel to ensure the survival of large parts of their "homeland," they feel justified in making war on innocent civilian Palestinians, as well as Palestinian fighters and terrorists. For the Palestinian homeland and culture to survive, it seems justified that Palestinians defend themselves against Israeli aggression by any means at their disposal, particularly given the uneven balance of power in that region. So which side is waging the "just war?" Further, if a fascist state is to survive, today, it pretty much has to make war on its own people and probably eventually on most of the rest of the world. So would the fascist state be justified in fighting for its survival? Now, in the case of the U.S. war on terror, the enemy is so ambiguous ("terror" itself, whatever that is) that the war can never really end, and the "enemy," in the black-and-white, good-vs-evil world of the Bush administration, really becomes anybody who is not defined as "good," or those who basically espouse American morals and values. And the shape of those morals and values, under George W. Bush, are heavily influenced by evangelical Christian right movement and neo-capitalist and neo-liberal principles of "the good life." Anyone of another ethnic, religious, family, gender, or ideological background (i.e., most people in the world) are therefore at least under suspicion of being "evil." Because of the incredible global power of the U.S., many groups who don't want to be assimilated by the American/neo-capitalist way of life (i.e. devout non-Christian religious groups who see life as more spiritually centred than economically centred, even in regards to governmental politics) perhaps feel justified in attacking the U.S. by the means at their disposal in order to ensure their own cultural and spiritual survival in a heavily American-influenced (both economically and militarily) global order. Many Arabs, for example, tend to equate Israeli aggression against Palestinians and the violent U.S. presence in Iraq, particularly since, as it turns out, there really was no justification for the U.S. war in Iraq, nor any evidence that the U.S. government should have ever assumed that their would be any evidence. So why did they invade? Saddam was never linked to terrorism, except the terrorism he committed against his own people, including the genocide of Kurds--a genocide that was occuring even when the U.S. was backing Saddam, in fact supporting him militarily against Iran. Are any of these conflicts "justified" on the basis of survival? Again, that seems to depend ultimately on whose survival we are talking about at the time. /HD

At 1/1/06 05:13 AM, WolvenBear wrote:

At 12/21/05 08:59 PM, H-Dawg wrote:

Actually, "terror" and "terrorism" are pretty well defined terms. Terrorism is the purposeful targeting of innocent civilians or non-combatants to cause fear, and panic, destruction, and death to advance one's agenda. Sorry bud but one person's freedom fighter is NOT anothers terrorist. You're dead wrong here. Freedom fighters don't intentionally target non-combatants, innocent women and children. They don't take innocent hostages and execute them when their demands aren't met. As for Chomsky, he's another pathetic "blame America" type. You know what...We don't participate in terrorism. Gee what a surprise. "Moral equivalency" is a bullshit made up term by cowards and traitors and fools.

You toss out this idiocy such as "this is proof we have already lost", and "we made a collosial mistake", and I'm sure if I called you to state your evidence it would be something on the line of "Bush is a nazi". That's much of your post, blah blah blah. Al Qaeda took two planes into the World Trade Center, killing 3000 people. Means very little? They are the major group responsible for the deaths of our soldiers. Means very little? They bomb cities all over the world and kill untold amounts of people. Means very little? You are just parroting random talking points from hither thither and yon, without actually knowing what you're talking about. Go do five seconds of research. Type in terrorism in wikipidia. And stop spouting shit from both ends.

Whoa! I guess I ruffled your feathers. Good! But you're still wrong. And I think citing Wikipidia as your research source reflects badly on the strength of your, not my, research. But back to the argument... You say terror and terrorism are well defined terms? That's just not true. A good primer on Terrorism is Charles Townshend's _Terrorism_, which goes into some of its profound definitional problems. One problem is the issue of "innocents," which your deceptively simplistic definition takes forgranted as common sense. As Townsend explains, when it comes to civilians, "these may not be 'the innocent' necessarily: the attempt to transfer the notion fo 'innocent civilians' from teh international law of war to the study of terrorism has foundered on the realization that innocence is another relative, unstable property" (7). One example is the widely publicized secret prisons for terrorist suspects set up across the world, which includes the more famous examples of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, in which, in any legal sense, "innocent citizens," merely assumed by the U.S. government to be terrorist suspects, were taken prisoner and, as is now well known, often tortured--terrorized in fact--against any international law of war or the geneva convention. So, by your own definition, legally speaking, those prisons are examples of U.S. terrorism against innocent civilians. I recently saw a documentary film, called _Persons of Interest- (Icarus Films, 2004), which interviewed a number of the detainees held in American prisons under the Homeland Security provisions. And of the more than 5000 people--all immigrants or of visible minorities--detained, not one has ever been convicted of anything. Not one. So yes, Al Qaeda means very little, mostly because the U.S. government, because of their disastrous foreign policy in regards to the War on Terror and its international scare tactics, have emptied the actual facts of the 9/11 tragedy of any meaning as a justification for the War on Terror or U.S. "homeland security." And if you think the U.S. hasn't committed random acts of violence against innocent civilians, what do you call hiroshima? Or the fire-bombing of Dresden? Get off the internet and do some real research. /HD out.

At 12/28/05 10:30 PM, jlwelch wrote: You are forgetting a major flaw in your argument. The Bible also tells of the Wall of Jericho and how God commanded Joshua to kill EVERYONE inside the walls of the promised land.

http://www.christian../q-abr/abr-a011.html

http://biblia.com/jesusbible/joshua3d.htm

It is simply not logical to say "All war is immoral" or "All war is ..." because in some cases it is and in others it is not.

Maybe the Christian god is just a way that certain powerful people justify their own cause beyond question, or "divinely authorize" themselves to commit war. God acts as a kind of heavenly surplus value put in trust for those killed fighting those very earthly wars. God doesn't stand as an argument for just war. The bible is contradictory on this point: there is a commandment not to kill, but then there are divine exceptions to God's own rules, as you pointed out. Not only that, but the supreme example of morality given in the bible, which is the story of Abraham and Isaac in which Abraham is going to kill his son for God before the angel intervenes at the last moment, is perverse in the extreme. The person who, according to him, was told by "God" to kill his own son, Jihad style--knife to the throat, but then was ordered not to by those same voices in his head, is supposedly the same person who goes back to his village and teaches them morality!! If that happened today, it would be clear the guy was insane, and by any standard of justice, should be thrown in prison for attempted murder and the key thrown away!! And you are using this same bible to justify war?! Read the book again a bit more carefully. HD out.

Perhaps you're right. Of course you're right--war is a part of humanity, and makes "peace," "love," and such things possible by serving as their orienting opposites. But maybe its also important to think idealistically, maybe even utopically, and completely reject (and thereby really embrace) such things, in such a way that by not accepting them as truly human--instead showing them to be what they are: merely the arbitrary binary opposites of our equally flawed and screwed up concepts of peace and freedom--that we might truly change democratic and humanistic thinking for the better. This will probably involve throwing out our flawed, outdated ideas about "freedom" and "democracy," even "humanity," because they obviously are really linked with perpetual war and evil. For example, George Bush's concept of "freedom" translates into the bombing of innocent Iraqi citizens and families, and the animalization/dehumanization of those even suspected of terrorism, whatever that means. This is all part of humanity, and democracy as we know it. So "democracy" and "humanity" are really code-words for Western hegemony and violent control: in other words, those who don't conform to "democratic principles," or fall within a narrowly U.S. defined concept of acceptable "humanity" (and religions that don't conform to basic evangelical Christian values don't fit this criteria, nor do homosexuals, women who want to have voluntary abortions, non-U.S. friendly "freedom fighters"--all of these are essentially not a part of acceptable humanity, or livable life, according to George Bush). No universal concept like "humanity" really characterizes any of its members accurately. How could it? Every individual is, well, individual, and their singular "humanity" exists really to the extent that they are not a part of any general classification or universalized concept that would rob them of their individuality. Maybe the horrors of war are a result of the limitations and paradoxes of what we call "peace" and "humanity." /HD

At 12/21/05 05:58 PM, deathofself wrote: War is an inevitable thing. People will always have something to fight about, and if that person has enough power, wars will be started. You don't even have to leave the country to find wars, there are rival gangs that kill each other, Mafia territory fights, drug wars, etc. War is just another part of human existance, and it has to be dealt with as such. I'm not trying to say it's a good thing, but it's something that won't change.

That sounds pathetically synical. Would the world be less "human" without slaughter, carnage and violent arrogance? I think war could be meaningfully outlawed, or kept drastically in check, except that governments see too much profit in it to stop it, which is stupid. We as a species need an ethical overhaul that doesn't accept a cold, calculated neoliberal, neocapitalist "realism"--the bottom-line $ or death--as the "unseen hand" "naturally" guiding human affairs. Lets pick some better founding principles. I'd rather watch war in the movies, then come home to a comfortable bed and my family still alive and intact, thank-you. /H-D out.

Well, that was enlightened. So, tell me. We're killing and capturing al Quida members (and al Quida was the one that did 9/11), so tell me how we're not doing exactly what you said. Al Quida is heavy in both Iraq and Afghanistan, but whatever.

I'll tell ya: Bush's war is against "terrorism" in general, and "terrorists" in particular. How exactly do we define "terror" or "terrorists?" Nobody can: those terms are too emotionally loaded, and don't really mean anything in the end. An old adage: one person's terrorist is another person's freedom-fighter, or even another person's legitimate state-backed soldier. Take for example the U.S. This is the only nation in the world--and this is well documented and nothing new--that has been convicted by the World Court for terrorism against another nation. That was when the U.S. went against international law and invaded Nicaragua. The war in Iraq is also against International law, by the way. Noam Chomsky has made the point in several articles and books, most recently in _Power and Terror_, that the best way for the U.S. to stop terrorism is to stop participating in it. That may seem shocking, but think about all the innocent civilians that were bombed and killed in the U.S. led wars on Afghanistan, not to mention the unfolding disaster, both for Iraqi citizens and American soldiers, in Iraq. (Forget, for a moment, that Osama Bin Laden was for years funded and armed by the U.S., as was Saddam Houssein. Those two were created by the U.S.--kinda ironic, eh?) "Al Qaeda" as a group really means very little--anyone could throw a malotov cocktail and no one would even notice, but if they call themselves a member of Al Qaeda, every God-fearing U.S. citizen freaks out, and calls for an "orange alert." Come on, lets get over it! The war on terror is just a freak show which helped George Bush, a collosal disaster as a president and an evangelical nut, get elected for a second term by scarring the U.S. public into submission. The fact that the U.S. made the collosal mistake of going to "war" over it (whatever the hell IT is) just shows that the terrorists really won--we're all so terrified we can't see that the emperor (Bush--who really is the leader of a global Empire) doesn't have any clothes on, or any brains, or heart... /H-D out.

At 12/21/05 09:11 AM, Jinzoa wrote: ...paragraphs please>.<

"War is never right in most cases but come on, [...]":

Whoa! Get some grammar lessons QUICK!!

:" you could sit back and retain your morals while your little sister is being raped three ways infront of you and to others in the world by this force, or you can fucking take to arms and join other countries to prevent it from happening to more and your families"

Sounds like someone was having a bit of a fantasy moment about their sister, which stirred them into a bit of a sexual frenzy of desire for war against the oppressors. Calm down!! Wars are never fought by the people who started them, so retaliation in the form of war, no matter how "justified" it might seem, always has an unjustifiable human cost. I think its much "stronger" to not retaliate, for example against terrorists in the form of wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead do the much less sexy thing (but perhaps more JUST thing) and track down the people who actually perpetuated the crimes, by legal means, and prosecute them, with the full cooperation of the International community. I personally think George W. Bush is far less interested in strengthening the World community's commitment to "justice" than using tanks and weapons as his own personal masturbation devises, which is sort of like a rape, since he's ejaculating on countries and people who have no interest in consenting to his advances. Just to put the whole debate in metaphorical terms. Best, h-d

Here's the latest from Harper's weekly on the subject: "A middle school in
Boulder, Colorado, banned hugging, suggesting that
students high-five instead, and a high school in
Pennsylvania prohibited students from carrying any kind of
bag aside from lunch bags, which will be inspected. The
Clovis, New Mexico, police locked down a middle school,
closed off several streets, and placed officers on
rooftops before discovering that what they thought was a
weapon carried by a student was actually a thirty-inch
burrito" (Harper's Weekly May 3, 2005). Y'know, those burritos can be really really deadly - perhaps we should get the Dept. of homeland security on that ASAP! My question: are schools more dangerous, and thus need to be militarized, or is the militarization of schools really the cause of this paranoia, as well as news media such as CNN and their sensationalization of the worst school violence? Do students really need to be policed so heavy-handedly? Are our public schools just another Afghanistan or Iraq, to be "preemptively" shaken down for "possible" terrorists?

At 4/17/05 12:10 AM, Cahenn wrote:

For the Record, when our army first came to Lebbanon, you cheered. What happened after that is an unfortunate chein of events, but for the record, we never invaded lebbanon for territory, we did so to prevent a violent military takeover by the palastinians, it didn't turn out well but our intentions were good to start with,

It seems impossible to me to speak for an entire Israeli "people" and their collective "intentions," without making fundamental, racial (and racist) assumptions about the collective psychi and attributes of one race over another. Otherwise, all of this quibbling about legalities, "homelands," and borders really comes down to the racist assumption that Palestinians and Israelis are not equal members of the human species, and thus cannot occupy or intermingle within the same geographical space. If all the collective memories of Jewish and Palestinian identity and affiliation were erased magically tomorrow, no one could tell who was who and you would be one nation.

At 4/12/05 08:14 PM, osamahunter1 wrote: well, most college professors are just hippie leftovers from the sixties. They spent too much time and money doing blow that they wasted any opportunity to go to a real college and get a real education. For instance, that dude in colorado who sez that 9/11 victims are nazis. He teachs a class called "american indian studies." I'm sorry if I'm about to offend any Native Americans out there, but that class is a bullshit class. You want to study the ways of the natives? Take ANTHROPLOGY. The only reason "indian studies" was invented was because enough indians felt disenfranchized and started bitching about how they don't get their own branch of science. So, people like this Coloradan guy take his spot up because they don't really need to teach anything and they can just go on a political rant all day.

I'm really sorry if I offended anyone, but hey, It's a rough world. I have nothing against any race. Keep in mind that people have the right to free speech, not the right to not be offended.

I think you're totally wrong. I think the reason most college profs are on the left (except for those conservative hacks from Harvard) is because THEY ARE EDUCATED. It's kinda hard to be on the right when you open your eyes, read a little, and come to the realization that the right are totally fucked, selfish, capitalist, neoliberal morons. But, I hope I didn't offend anyone. Schooly, ovrnout.

At 4/12/05 06:15 PM, Draconias wrote:

At 4/12/05 05:01 PM, H-Dawg wrote: Would this kind of incident be as "thinkable" if our country weren't in the political/militarized/hyper-terrorized state it is in today?

Most definately. This appears to be part of a standard procedure that has been around and essentially unchanged for decades. This has absolutely nothing to do with your perceptions of the current state of the country, but rather with standard police training. If you receive reports of a possible murder-attempt and the suspect must be stopped with force, police are required to pull out their guns in most areas, and this wasn't a new law.

Again, this has to do with police training and traditional standard responses, not whatever you imagine the current state of the country to be.

Nonetheless, standard proceedure or not, public institutions like police forces (which have gone through major issues with corruption, race discrimination, the like, long before 9/11) are very susceptible to public opinion - if the public raises an outcry or deems certain behaviour unacceptable, the mayor MAKES the police tow the line. I mean, everything, in the end, is a negotiation and a judgment call regarding whether or not to use the full force of law in any given situation. So as far as I'm concerned, its not as cut and dried as "standard proceedure" as much as how far the public is willing to tolerate over-use of the force of law without appropriate judgment being used. In short, using human judgment and restraint as opposed to the devil quoting scriptures (i.e. the law) at gunpoint. Now, I'm overstating my case to make a point, but we are talking about degrees here. The law, or "standard proceedures," are there as guidelines, and cannot be coldly enforced verbatim in every situation. Its just there so the officer, whom we trust to do the right thing, has the authority to use their discretion appropriately and with enough force when required. This obviously was NOT a case in which such force was required. The question, therefore, is: how did the context, or "climate of fear" that the U.S. police state has produced, influence those officers to use obviously inappropriate force, even though they have been entrusted with such force to use at their appropriate discretion?

At 4/12/05 10:09 AM, Maus wrote:

At 4/12/05 09:59 AM, H-Dawg wrote:

:: It's already been established that the drawn guns were a safety measure. Not 'needless.' How about the lady that reported a baby thrown froma car in FL, only to find it was actually her that abandoned her baby? Or the woman yesterday that held a child hostage for hours? The point is, that police have to make real time decisions in scary situations. Sometimes, they're wrong. But hardly 'trigger-happy.'

You miss my point entirely if your argument hinges on what those individual police officers had to do "in [that particular] scary situation." Again, I'm not talking about the individual police-person (I agree with you within that small, isolated context), but about the much larger, pervasive social conditions that created the situation in the first place. It's difficult, but try to look beyond a "common sense" assessment based on "individual" blame for a minute, and ask the question - like me: Would this kind of incident be as "thinkable" if our country weren't in the political/militarized/hyper-terrorized state it is in today? Perhaps this incident might still have happened, but maybe not. Maybe it wouldn't have gone down in the particular way it did. I'm almost certain about that. The point is, are we too willing to find ourselves in the same situation as that woman just because that is the way our country operates right now? Draw first, ask questions later?

At 4/5/05 07:35 AM, ReiperX wrote: the police did their job, they did it well. Someone calling in to 911 about the child window thing is the only thing that escalated the problem at all, if not for that the woman would have probally made it to the hosptital just fine.

This is a good point, and sort of speaks to the issue in a more "symptomatic" way. Sure, the police probably had no "individual" choice in the matter, particularly if someone misinterpreted the situation over the 911 call. However, neoliberal, militarized states like the US tend to put things down to "individuals" and their individual blame/credit, while ignoring the larger historical and social symptoms that have caused the so-called individuals to act in the ways that they do. If we weren't so hyper-militarized after 911, would the police be as conditioned to act so often with force and hyper-aggression as they do? Would we be as quick to see the worst-case scenario and pull our proverbial guns as we do right now? It is not so much the "individuals" as the "climate" of fear and militarization that I am concerned with, and that I see this case as symptomatic of. I appreciate that the police have a tough job, but your far more likely to see a police officer fire off their gun in a "war zone" (which homeland security has turned the U.S. into) than in the easy-going America of the Andy Griffiths show (I don't think Andy ever pulled his gun once - correct me if I'm wrong). And as far as child endangerment, wasn't the child put in much MORE danger because all those guns were needlessly drawn due to the climate of fear that the 911 caller (and not just that caller, but our times) caused?

At 4/1/05 09:21 PM, -LazyDrunk- wrote:

At 4/1/05 09:11 PM, Wylo wrote:

At 4/1/05 08:17 PM, Empanado wrote: The problem, as always, is: People are stupid.

I don't think that the police were stupid. They just had . . .

I think Empanado was referring to either the person who called 911 reporting a woman hanging a baby out of a van window, or the topic starter.

I also don't see any problem with what happened there. What would you have the police do in a legitimate child-endangerment situation?

Well, I must admit, I don't speak from the position of having "been there" to witness the events first hand. However, my negative spin against the police in this instance is that just because there is child endangerment possibly involved (and yes, a child was in danger), if this were a simpler, less "armed" and "militarized" time, you wouldn't be pulling your gun first, as opposed to getting a bit better assessment of the situation. I think, particularly after 9/11, we are all a bit too willing to have guns pulled on us and our basic right to the benefit of the doubt taken away just because of police/government preference for a militarization of the public and private worlds we live in every day. It's just not necessary. You've gotta wonder - was that mix-up preventable? Particularly given that poor woman's circumstances? Or do all dire situations automatically involve guns these days?! I guess it depends on what kind of world you are comfortable living in - I can't BELIEVE more people aren't a bit outraged about something like this happening! Are we all living in a G.I.Joe cartoon or something?!?

At 4/1/05 07:24 PM, 1Shot-Paddy wrote: banks own the United States corporation because it was declared bankrupt during the great depression. There hasn't been an American government since then.

This sounds as right as anything else. Anyways, does democracy really exist anyways? The problem is that for politics to exist - and you can read Georgio Agamben on this, just look it up - there has to be a limit set as to who qualifies as a political subject, or citizen, and what falls outside of that definition. And it is always the sovereign who has the right of exception over this definition. The best example of this is the case of Guantanamo Bay prisoners - they really don't qualify as citizens, combatants, even humans, because they don't have any rights. The sovereign exception over their status was decided by George Bush, who took away their status as recognizable humans with rights. So who cares about democracy if you can, at the whim of George Bush, have your status as subject of democracy revoked at any moment?

You all may have seen this, but I'll let this rediculous example of our trigger-happy, overly militarized police state speak for itself:

Woman gives birth in her car before confused police pull her over at gunpoint
31/03/2005 7:52:00 AM

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KETTERING, Ohio (AP) - A woman rushing to a hospital to give birth hit a few stops along the way - first at a gas station where she delivered the baby herself, then when confused police ordered her out of the car at gunpoint.

Debbie Coleman, whose three-and four-year-old daughters were asleep in the back seat, pulled over at a gas station just after midnight Tuesday.

"I asked if she needed help, and she just leaned back in the seat, hollered a little, and I looked down and there was the baby's head," said station co-owner Lloyd Goff, who was alerted to the emergency at pump No. 7 by a customer.

Goff said Coleman "threw her leg over the steering wheel, groaned once, and the rest of the baby came out.

"She caught that baby, put it to her chest, gave me a look, like, 'I gotta go,' closed the door, put the van in gear and away she went."

A customer at the gas station in suburban Dayton tried to give police a heads-up about Coleman's situation, but a mix-up involving the license plate number had them thinking the van was stolen.

As officers went looking for her, Coleman headed for the hospital, naked below the waist and with the baby boy in her arm. His umbilical cord was still attached.

"I kept pulling over, making sure (the baby) was all right, breathing," she said.

Meanwhile, police had straightened out the license plate issue. But another caller mistakenly reported someone trying to throw a baby from a van.

Coleman said she noticed several cruisers following her before one cut her off. With guns drawn, officers ordered her out of the van with her hands up.

"I opened the door and said, 'I just had a baby' and just let them see everything," she said.

Officers sent Coleman on and let the hospital know she was coming.

Coleman was discharged Wednesday. Her six-pound, eight-ounce son, Richard Lee Coleman Jr., remained in intensive care.

Many people are ageist. The fact that we do not honour and value our elderly in this day and age is a prime example. We should be hearing the wisdom that the elderly have to give to us, obtained through their life.

But this is not the only problem with age-ism. Foremost, ageism is when people make generalizations and presuppositions about what people of a certain age are like, and treat them accordingly. Certainly, there are age-gaps that make one group in general inaccessable to another, but that's about the end of it. To say that all 70 year olds have the same opinions, or prejudices, or want the same things is just wrong. Likewise with teens or "middle-aged" people. Secondly, in the U.S. in particular, there is a general attack going on by the federal government on youth in general, in the form of badly funded schools, the militarization of the public sphere (eg police patrols in schools, schools turned in to "secured zones" with metal detectors, raids), and increasingly sending kids to jail. This is lately justified as part of post-9/11 security, but is in actuality part of a much older neo-liberalization of the U.S., a corporate culture that is basically turning kids/youth into policed, managed, corporate prisoners in their own streets and schools.

At 4/21/04 02:39 PM, arrow wrote: what makes you think that anyone gives a fuck about you???

Let's theorize about this, shall we? Actually, the mistake you make here is putting forward an argument about theory based on an ad-hominum argument about skunk's popularity - which has nothing to do with theory at all. Second mistake, just because you don't care about something has little or no relevance regarding the importance or "coolness" of said thing. Of course, these are all theoretical, abstract conjectures, so you need not take anything personally here. Well, maybe just as a theoretical model of how your thought process MAY be playing out, or petering out, whatever...Just a theory.

At 4/20/04 07:59 PM, Dr_Arbitrary wrote: Don't read Kant, it will make you retarded. Really, I'm serious.

bbbllleewha wz dat you said? (Dawg drools into his computer, causing it to explode and end his transmissio......

At 4/20/04 06:37 PM, H-Dawg wrote:

At 4/20/04 04:46 PM, Dr_Arbitrary wrote:

We can speculate all we want as to how the world came into existence, but we don't actually know for sure. So who are we to say one person's interpretation is true and another person's interpretation is false?

If one person's interpretation is not logically self consistent then it is false.

That assumes that "logic" is a self-referential truth outside of which there are no possible variables that might be working unbeknownced to said metaphysical "Truth." In that case, everything that Newton said was just wrong, or mathematics for that matter, based on Einstein's general theory of relativity that screwed up the "logical" solidity of a linear concept of time.

And furthermore, just because some theory is _internally_ self-consistent, doesn't mean it's true or "logical." Kant's concept of "reason" only works because it is internally self-consistent, or teleological, to the exclusion of all other moral or logical possibilities outside his system. This is a form of racism, since Kant was implying that Enlightenment era Germany was on its way to "perfection." Hegel, a few years later, decides Germany HAS reached perfection, so he writes a comprehensive explanation of how and why they had reached "Zeit Geist," or the Sprit of the time - the "end" of history.

At 4/20/04 04:46 PM, Dr_Arbitrary wrote:

We can speculate all we want as to how the world came into existence, but we don't actually know for sure. So who are we to say one person's interpretation is true and another person's interpretation is false?

If one person's interpretation is not logically self consistent then it is false.

That assumes that "logic" is a self-referential truth outside of which there are no possible variables that might be working unbeknownced to said metaphysical "Truth." In that case, everything that Newton said was just wrong, or mathematics for that matter, based on Einstein's general theory of relativity that screwed up the "logical" solidity of a linear concept of time.

At 4/19/04 03:10 PM, Dr_Arbitrary wrote: That is a good way of differentiating theory and reality, however, it's not exactly the scientific definition as science is pretty much concerned with taking reality and finding theories that fit it.

Well, I think the problem, particularly in science, is not recognizing that theories also change reality, in that they effect the way we see things, which makes us treat "reality" differently, and thus change reality based on our "theoretical" assumptions. In the enlightenment period in Europe, for example, people started taking scientific knowledge for "gospel truth," which led to all sorts of social problems like scientists measuring the size of people's skulls to judge intelligence, or looking at racial characteristics to judge the "human development" of one group over another, and making racist assumptions about, basically, white supremacy over blacks. Among other scientific assumptions about "Facts" and "Truth" that ended up having alot to do with cultural perspective, political ideologies of the scientist, the assumptions he used to come up with "His" hypothesis to begin with, etc. etc....

At 4/19/04 02:00 PM, CrassClock wrote: I think that the term "segregation" has much more racist connotations than your working definition here with the example of the Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Personaly I always thought that segregation was forced upon a certain group by another, not a higher neutral authority.

Certainly, one definition of segregation is "apartheid" which directly refers to race, but segregating something or someone apart from other things or people doesn't necessarily have any meaning at all, except for the action of moving it apart. Segregation (such as in chemistry) can be purely an action - even if the word does evoke certain emotional connotations based on racial politics.

That said, I do think that (racial/ethnic) segregation in schools is most definitely racist, and even if it might be "practical" on one level, it totally defeats the social function of a school as far as I'm concerned, which is to instill certain civic ethics, like getting along with your neighbor or not practicing apartheid.

Perhaps a good way of understanding "theory" that includes all of the disciplines is the way it is often seen as the opposite of "practice." Theory is likewise often seen as an abstraction, or a complex (but not necessarily "real") rendering of a problem, where "practice" is the actual doing of an action, with specific consequences that can be theoretically analysed. For example, you can theorize about how much force it would take, given the mass and weight of your hand, the dimentions of the knuckles, fingers, bones, etc. to break an opponents nose in a fight, or you can just walk up to him and smack him in the face and find out.

At 4/18/04 09:19 PM, Locke666 wrote:

At 4/18/04 03:11 AM, Ruination wrote: It seems to me that in this day and age, many core morals and values seem to become "outdated". Where will society draw the line?

What is right and wrong in today's society? Where do we turn to establish proper behavioral standards? People are turning their backs on religion, government or any form of structure in general, so what do we have left to turn to? I could go on a tyrade, debating that what feels good isn't necessarily right. We need to keep at least SOME norms of social behavior for crying out loud..

It's called progress ruination. You may have heard of it.

I agree with your statement about going too far in getting rid of structures of any kind - kind of like hyper-poststructuralism that Jean Baudrillard calls "simulacra," or surface without depth. But I do think its important to retain the idea that structures, while useful for "doing" things (and really inescapable), are never "originary," "right or wrong," and are always subject to change. And ethics is one such structure, in that our ethical understanding of things is a cultural negotiation - an important one - and therefore we can't rely on older or static ideas of what is "right" or "wrong" in order to judge the usefulness or debaseness of other social structures, like marriage, governments, human rights, etc. But we do have to make decisions and judgments.

At 4/18/04 04:46 PM, H-Dawg wrote:

At 4/18/04 04:22 PM, Jimsween wrote: Umm, ok sure. But ifs and sometimes don't mean much in the end.

I hear ya. But I wonder if that's just something we have to accept: that there never will be any certainty, only "if"s and "maybe"s.

(Hummms that old Rodger Whittiker tune:) "Oh I don't believe in If, anymore..."

One time, back in '48 I reckon, our outhouse ran outta pages from the Sears catalogue, so we had 'ta use the bible for toilet paper. It was much better, all that ultra-thin waxy paper, 'stead a that hard ol' Sears catalogue. That was some good wipin', boy.