Feelings...
John Dilick
how much anger I have.
I've got a sister-in-law who lives in Manhattan and who, until 2
months ago, worked in the WTC North Tower (who is just fine,
thankfully). I've got a son who was born on 9/11/91 who now has this
tragedy indelibly linked to the first major birthday milestone in his
life. I've got $100 in pennies sitting here as a visual aid for him
because he couldn't visualize 10,000 of anything, let alone deaths.
Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
*anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
terrorist attack, but *us*.
I fear the attitude espoused all over the 'Net, the airwaves, and my
workplace today, calling for bin Laden's death, by torture if
possible. I fear for the troops we are going to send out once we
identify the culprit. I fear for the freedom that is about to be lost
in the political dithering that is sure to follow. Most of all, I
fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
color.
I have no real point -- I just needed to vent. I'm off to donate
blood and to try to calm down. Here's hoping that all of you are safe
and secure in the wake of these terrorist acts.
--
John Dilick
dili...@home.com
No tagline -- I'm not in the mood to be amusing.
Kate Nepveu
> Well, as the shock of the events of the day wears off, I'm discovering
> how much anger I have.
[...]
> *anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
> terrorist attack, but *us*.
[...]
> I have no real point -- I just needed to vent.
I vented too, but on my book log because, well, I'm not sure why. Because
enough people were venting on Usenet.
> I'm off to donate
> blood and to try to calm down. Here's hoping that all of you are safe
> and secure in the wake of these terrorist acts.
Everyone who can, hug your families and loved ones and be glad that they
are with you and safe.
Kate
--
http://www.steelypips.org/elsewhere.html -- kate....@yale.edu
Paired Reading Page; Book Reviews; Outside of a Dog: A Book Log
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
--Coco Chanel
Mike Kozlowski
John Dilick <dili...@home.com> wrote:
>*anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
>terrorist attack, but *us*.
>
>I fear the attitude espoused all over the 'Net, the airwaves, and my
>workplace today, calling for bin Laden's death, by torture if
>possible. I fear for the troops we are going to send out once we
>identify the culprit. I fear for the freedom that is about to be lost
>in the political dithering that is sure to follow. Most of all, I
>fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
>assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
>color.
Even more than that, what's bothering me is the desire people seem to have
for a great crusade. The language that's being bandied about, not only on
Usenet, but in the media, deliberately recalls World War II: analogies to
Pearl Harbor, allusions to "a day which will live in infamy", and even
calls to turn this tragedy into "our finest hour." There seems to be a
horrible latent desire for this to be a defining event, something that
will fundamentally alter the nature of international diplomacy, turning
our age of ambiguity and uncertainty into one of certainty and fierce
resolve. "Everything's different now," the headlines proclaim.
But what's most striking is how much things remain the same. The United
States has always been vulnerable to a horrible act of terrorism, and
we've always known this was the case -- all those people talking about
suitcase nukes in discussions about Bush's missile shield understood that
this was possible -- and, no matter what happens in the near term, we will
always be vulnerable to terrorism, and we will always need to be aware of
it. Neither has the ambiguity of post-Cold War diplomacy suddenly yielded
to certainty; we know little about the perpetrators of this attack, and
are in a position even less certain than before.
Today's tragedy is not a turning point, it's not the start of an era of
moral certainty and clear enemies; it is, simply and frighteningly, an
event representative of our times. That's scary enough; I don't want to
imagine how bad things can get if we deny this truth, and march forth with
blazing swords and righteous wrath in a misguided effort to return the
nation to a mythical state of safety.
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/
Aaron Bergman
> Most of all, I
> fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
> assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
> color.
I'll tell you what. This is just a gut feeling, but I'm guessing there
will be remarkably few ethnic violence incidents in the next few days.
There will be some drunk assholes, maybe, but not more than that.
Or maybe this gut feeling is just what I want to be true.
Aaron
Aaron Bergman
wrote:
> But what's most striking is how much things remain the same.
I think you underestimate the power of symbols. This is unlike any
terrorism attack that has gone before.
At the absolute least, there will be vast more ammounts of humint
deployed in the near future as a result of this.
But a more telling point will be to contrast with the response to Pan-Am
flight 103. It was only just recently that the two people suspected for
that act were extradicted from Libya. If things have truly changed, then
that will be reflected in if we will allow such temporization to occur.
You can see the shift, atleast now, however, in calling this an act of
war, rather than a criminal act. The national review
<http://www.nationalreview.com> has various articles supporting this
view. But, more importantly, even the Washington Post, admittedly in the
heat of anger, but definitely not a bastion of conservatism has this
editorial:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12425-2001Sep11.html>
Remember, all it takes for things to change is to have enough people
believe that things have changed.
Aaron
Xelloss
Right now, all over the USA and beyond, people are scared, angry,
everything in between, and lots of combinations thereof.
There is something I'll all but guarantee: there are _way_ more than a
mojority of those people who think that, no matter what race, what
creed, what religion, what philosophy, or what nationality the ones
responsible for this act are, they must be punished. As soon as
possible.
And the more people focus on the little festering sores on the skin of
humanity, the less they care about the difference between each other.
Strange, and simultaneously disturbing and comforting, is the extent to
which tragedy brings unity.
--
-XM
Walking advertisement for Prozac, and proud of it.
(To reply, remove "spamblock" from the address.)
"Noooo! They're firing Otaku at us! Get the SOAP!" -James 'Tengu' King
Jeff Huo
Mike Kozlowski wrote:
> But what's most striking is how much things remain the same. The United
> States has always been vulnerable to a horrible act of terrorism, and
> we've always known this was the case -- all those people talking about
> suitcase nukes in discussions about Bush's missile shield understood that
> this was possible -- and, no matter what happens in the near term, we will
> always be vulnerable to terrorism, and we will always need to be aware of
> it. Neither has the ambiguity of post-Cold War diplomacy suddenly yielded
> to certainty; we know little about the perpetrators of this attack, and
> are in a position even less certain than before.
>
> Today's tragedy is not a turning point, it's not the start of an era of
> moral certainty and clear enemies; it is, simply and frighteningly, an
> event representative of our times. That's scary enough; I don't want to
> imagine how bad things can get if we deny this truth, and march forth with
> blazing swords and righteous wrath in a misguided effort to return the
> nation to a mythical state of safety.
It cuts both ways, I think, Mike. We are in fact the
same nation we were yesterday, both just as
vulnerable...and just as strong. As has been best
summarized in another thread here, the mail still
comes.
Ultimately, we are still what we always have been,
I think-- a nation of individuals whose freedom lies
in each other's hands. No state is invunerable to
terrorism, and never will be; what defines us as a
people is what we do when we are struck. I agree
with you Mike, that this only becomes a turning
point if we proceed from here to turn on ourselves...
We did that, once. Places like Mazanar, Minidoka and
Heart Mountain remain to remind us. As does
the legacy of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Noone on this group, I think, needs reminding, but
perhaps our friends and colleagues may, in the days
ahead.
-Jeff
--
Jeff Huo | je...@spundreams.net.nospam (remove nospam)
U. Michigan Med | http://www.spundreams.net/~jeff
New to the group? Welcome! Please read
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/sf/robert-jordan-faq/
http://www.spundreams.net/~jeff/rasfwrjians2.html
John S. Novak, III
> Well, as the shock of the events of the day wears off, I'm discovering
> how much anger I have.
> Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
> together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
> incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
> *anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
> terrorist attack, but *us*.
>
> I fear the attitude espoused all over the 'Net, the airwaves, and my
> workplace today, calling for bin Laden's death, by torture if
> possible. I fear for the troops we are going to send out once we
> identify the culprit. I fear for the freedom that is about to be lost
> in the political dithering that is sure to follow. Most of all, I
> fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
> assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
> color.
I know what you mean.
There was more than one person in the office today espousing the
nuclear option (generally directed at Afghanistan) in response for
today. And it's hard to be sure in extreme situation, but I think
these people were about as serious as they could reasonably be.
It's amazing where your mind will take you after something like this,
especially when you're normally saturated in information and are
suddenly cut off from most of it. From the ridiculous to the sublime,
indeed-- everything from the hollowness of grief beyond comprehension,
much less expression; to thinking about the many, many consequences of
national over-reaction; to how the Hell am I going to get to Boston this
weekend; to thinking that no matter what I thought of George Bush, and
how much glee I might ordinarily take in seeing him have a rough time
of it, this wasn't exactly what I had in mind.... to the black wrath
you share.
Then I came home and first saw the footage of the World Trade Center
collapsing. You know, you build these things to stand up to
earthquakes. You build these things to stand up to 200 mile per hour
winds. You build these things to stand up to fucking hurricanes
without doing much more than losing a few windows and slopping the
toilet water because basically, all we want to do is make a place safe
for people to go to work in the most adverse of conditions, and go home
safe to their spouses, children and parents at the end of the day.
But even though we could probably do so, we don't build them to stand
up to assholes flying big aircraft full of jet fuel straight into the
middle of the damn building.
It was the tower coming down that drove it home, because I know--
first hand-- the kind of care and attention that goes into each
subsystem designed to protect only one or two people at a time. How
much more goes into a building that houses 50,000 people?
All gone in minutes, because of filth, with the people it was supposed
to protect.
I know-- first hand-- the kind of care and planning and meticulous
effort that goes into everything about an American military operation
from the buts and bolts of the aircraft, to the trillions of dollars of
research and hardware, to the T's crossed and I's dotted in agonized
triplicate, all to minimize the possibility of hitting a non-combatant.
And this, from bastards, in response.
The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Xelloss
>
> In article <e62tptc5nmrm28on9...@4ax.com>, John Dilick wrote:
> > Well, as the shock of the events of the day wears off, I'm discovering
> > how much anger I have.
>
> [...]
>
> > Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
> > together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
> > incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
> > *anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
> > terrorist attack, but *us*.
> >
> > I fear the attitude espoused all over the 'Net, the airwaves, and my
> > workplace today, calling for bin Laden's death, by torture if
> > possible. I fear for the troops we are going to send out once we
> > identify the culprit. I fear for the freedom that is about to be lost
> > in the political dithering that is sure to follow. Most of all, I
> > fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
> > assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
> > color.
> And this, from bastards, in response.
If there was any surer sign that you were pissed off beyond anything,
Novak, it's that the insults you have doled out against those
responsible for today's events in this post were short and vulgar,
rather than your legendary long, harsh, and ego-scorching rants.
I don't have any words to soothe anyone, so I won't say anything to you
about it. I'm sure you know more about the situation than me, at any
rate.
> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
Indeed. I can at least claim the slightest modicum of morality (if ever
I could) in that I advocate the slow and excruciatingly painful death of
the mastermind behind these terrorist attacks and whatever government
supports or shelters him/her/them, rather than the entire nation and all
its bystanders.
I definitely feel rather stereotypically Texan at the moment, though;
what I'm visualizing is something similar to a very large lynch mob and
a public hanging...
Matt Hackell
And, goddammit, we did. We built those two skyscrapers to withstand the
impact of a Boeing 707. So they did what? Stole a bigger fucking plane!
> It was the tower coming down that drove it home, because I know--
> first hand-- the kind of care and attention that goes into each
> subsystem designed to protect only one or two people at a time. How
> much more goes into a building that houses 50,000 people?
>
> All gone in minutes, because of filth, with the people it was supposed
> to protect.
>
> I know-- first hand-- the kind of care and planning and meticulous
> effort that goes into everything about an American military operation
> from the buts and bolts of the aircraft, to the trillions of dollars of
> research and hardware, to the T's crossed and I's dotted in agonized
> triplicate, all to minimize the possibility of hitting a non-combatant.
>
> And this, from bastards, in response.
>
> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
As usual, John, you said it.
--
Matt Hackell
I am not here to speak to you about the pursuit of excellence. I am here
to offer an alternative.
Garrison Keilor, to Princeton University's Class of 2001
Kate Nepveu
> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
I wrote this around 5 o'clock to try and pin down how I felt (a longer
version is on my weblog). The contrast between my feelings and yours
prompted me to post it. While I feel a little more stable and able to
concentrate on other things now, the main thing going through my head
when I think about it is, as it was all day, "I can't deal with this."
Which is silly, because obviously I can. I've been talking about it all
day, and having run gibbering off in tears or anything. But still,
that's what I feel like, in a nutshell.
(And before anyone gets all twitchy, I'm not trying to imply that one of
us is right or wrong to feel this way. I'm just saying it's different,
duh.)
[This afternoon], I was curled up on a couch in the law school dining
hall, eating a comfort bar of Haagen-Dazs and trying to decide if I was
angry or not. I feel like I ought to be, but I can't seem to get past
the sick sinking feeling in my stomach every time those horrible images
of the Towers collapsing replayed in my head. Which is often. (I
stopped watching the TV news after about 11 a.m., because I could not
bear to see that footage one more time. Even Challenger was not so
sickening to me. Truly, I can only think of one or two other sights that
would be so horrible--the main being watching various loved ones die in
front of me while I was helpless, that level of horrible--and I can only
hope with all the fervency I can muster that I never see anything like
that again in my life.)
I don't *think* I'm angry. It's hard to say, because all the various
bits of me seem to be in disarray. It's almost a physical feeling of
discomfort, as though nerve connections have loosened and my stomach has
hopped onto a roller coaster just at free-fall and my lungs have shifted
around to be pressed on by my rib cage and my heart is laboring under
being squished by something else nearby. Concentrating has become the
kind of effort I experience during migraines, and my eyes are showing a
tendency to water for no apparent (immediate) reason.
When I manage to piece together my emotions, I think I'm scared and upset
rather than angry. I'm upset at what's already happened--I don't think I
need to elaborate on that--and I'm scared at what might happen next.
Call me a pessimist, but even if, by some miracle, cool heads manage to
prevail enough that retaliation is not taken out on innocent people--the
least I think we will see is further shrinking of civil rights in
America, as well as increased prejudice against people with Arab or
Islamic origins. The *last* time we had federal "anti-terrorism"
legislation, we ended up seriously curtailing the rights of convicted
prisoners to seek post-conviction relief from the courts. Given the
number of innocent people who have been recently exonerated while _on_
death row, this should not be considered a good thing, even by those who
would be happy to see the people behind today's attacks executed. And
that's not even considering the further powers investigative agencies
might gain, powers that might start out in use against terrorists, but if
history is any guide, will be expanded to deal with all manner of
domestic crime.
I want nothing more than to see the people responsible for today's
horrors brought to justice. I want this never to happen again. But I am
scared of so many things: that this signals a new era of terrorist
attacks on the U.S. (as far as I know, it's damn hard to prevent attacks
by people who are willing to die in the process), that the country will
bomb someone innocent in the haste to show that we will not take this
lightly (if anyone could doubt it!), that any last shred of hope for
peace in the Middle East will vanish if this turns out to be related to
the region, that the Constitution will get further trampled on in efforts
to prevent more attacks (see "suicide attacks," above), and that I will
never feel safe again flying.
Looking at that list (I'm sure I could come up with more, too), I really
ought to be angry at the people who have brought this upon all of us.
But I can't seem to be, yet. Perhaps later I will be able to move past
the sickness and fear.
Jeff Huo
Kate Nepveu wrote:
> j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) wrote:
>
> > The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
>
> I wrote this around 5 o'clock to try and pin down how I felt (a longer
> version is on my weblog). The contrast between my feelings and yours
> prompted me to post it. While I feel a little more stable and able to
> concentrate on other things now, the main thing going through my head
> when I think about it is, as it was all day, "I can't deal with this."
>
> Which is silly, because obviously I can. I've been talking about it all
> day, and having run gibbering off in tears or anything. But still,
> that's what I feel like, in a nutshell.
>
> (And before anyone gets all twitchy, I'm not trying to imply that one of
> us is right or wrong to feel this way. I'm just saying it's different,
> duh.)
For what it's worth, I'm going to ramble here, too, and
sincere apologies on those it bores or bothers; neither
is intended. I just...well, I really ought to be starting up
an experiment or two, but I'm not in the mood, really.
Not now. I need to write.
Damnit. Sorrow. Impossible sorrow. A single
funeral is immense sorrow, when it's just one
patient who lost a long fight with cancer. But
*two-hundred* firefighters? God alone knows
--and God alone will probably *ever* know--
how many other people? Anger, too. Volcanic anger.
It's the tail end of a whirlwind day, as e-mails
come in, as I wait by the phone. I've been lucky
this day; my family has checked in, rasfwr-j is
accounted for, my friends at various medical
schools in the NYC area are alive, and now in
the fight of their lives. All-hands drill, and I
desparately wish I could be there with them,
by their side. There are still people missing
who might have been in the WTC --several
of Taiwan's biggest banks were in the now
collapsed towers, and my family knows
some people who might have been there,
and friends from high school. But by in
large, I've been lucky this day, as far as
anyone in this country can dare count
themselves. Thankfullness is another emotion,
that most of my friends are accounted for,
along with fear for the last few, as selfish
as those emotions may be on a day when
so many others suffer.
Not shock --not even the moment when Kenn first
ICQ'd me the news. Sorrow, anger, but not shock--
not surprise. We've always been this vunerable.
There's always been people dedicated --crazy--
enough to try this. The fact it never happened
before meant, well, nothing more than it never
happened before. Today it finally did. And as
terrible as the thought is, it *will* happen again,
somehow, somewhere, and it will happen again
and again and again as long as there are men
who can choose wrong from right, I think. No laws, no walls,
no guards, can stop everything. They can stop
a lot --ninety-nine of a hundred, all but one
in a thousand, one in ten thousand,
but never all. That is freedom's price.
But above all, a single, running mantra, a single
shining vision, has been running through my
head all day with grim determination, from the
moment I first heard to the new news of the
explosives on the GW bridge:
We will rescue. We will console. We will avenge.
We will rebuild. We will take the orphaned sons
and daughters of the dead and raise them as our
own. And a thousand years from now,
when the sons of my sons of my sons
point to the gleaming spires of that which
will rise again from those ashes, they will say
to their children, Freedom has it's price, and brave
men and women paid it. But Freedom still endures.
They will say that with pride, long after history
has forgotten the very name of the scum that
perpetrated this crime. That will be the final vengence.
Freedom shall endure.
Thanks for listening,
Amy Yost
> Well, as the shock of the events of the day wears off, I'm discovering
> how much anger I have.
>
> I've got a sister-in-law who lives in Manhattan and who, until 2
> months ago, worked in the WTC North Tower (who is just fine,
> thankfully). I've got a son who was born on 9/11/91 who now has this
> tragedy indelibly linked to the first major birthday milestone in his
> life. I've got $100 in pennies sitting here as a visual aid for him
> because he couldn't visualize 10,000 of anything, let alone deaths.
>
> Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
> together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
> incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
> *anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
> terrorist attack, but *us*.
>
> I fear the attitude espoused all over the 'Net, the airwaves, and my
> workplace today, calling for bin Laden's death, by torture if
> possible. I fear for the troops we are going to send out once we
> identify the culprit. I fear for the freedom that is about to be lost
> in the political dithering that is sure to follow. Most of all, I
> fear for people just like me giving in to the rage that they feel and
> assuming guilt of *anyone* who happens to be the wrong creed, race or
> color.
This is what scares me, more than anything. I'm afraid of the backlash
within the US. I'm afraid of our fear snowballing into trampling
people's rights. I'm afraid of, god forbid, internment camps. I
didn't realize how much I fear my government.
I'm scared and angry. I'm afraid of what will come next. The attack
was well-organized, and I doubt this is the end. I want the people
responsible punished. But I've already lost that sense of security; I
don't want to lose confidence in my country.
I don't know how coherent this is; it's been a long day.
Thank god all of us are okay, and my prayers are with those waiting for
news on friends and relatives.
--
Amy Yost (Cassandra) UIN: 49226347 fai...@yahoo.com
J. Cocker
>
[snip]
>
> We will rescue. We will console. We will avenge.
> We will rebuild. We will take the orphaned sons
> and daughters of the dead and raise them as our
> own. And a thousand years from now,
> when the sons of my sons of my sons
> point to the gleaming spires of that which
> will rise again from those ashes, they will say
> to their children, Freedom has it's price, and brave
> men and women paid it. But Freedom still endures.
>
--
Jane
'A thought for the day is more than most people can handle.'
John S. Novak, III
>> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
>
> I wrote this around 5 o'clock to try and pin down how I felt (a longer
> version is on my weblog). The contrast between my feelings and yours
> prompted me to post it.
[...]
> I don't *think* I'm angry.
Oh, trust me.
I *know* I'm angry.
Kate Nepveu
> >> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
> [...]
> > I don't *think* I'm angry.
> Oh, trust me.
> I *know* I'm angry.
That must be comforting. Seriously.
I have to go stop reading news and Usenet and go to bed. I don't know if
I'll be able to sleep well, but I plan to read tax law and fall asleep
with the light on to try to minimize the "I can't sleep because my mind
insists on replaying hideous scenes from today" effect...
John S. Novak, III
>> > I don't *think* I'm angry.
>> Oh, trust me.
>> I *know* I'm angry.
> That must be comforting. Seriously.
Much less so than you might expect, I think.
Jeena Khan
>
>> The high road is pretty damn hard to maintain, today.
>
>I wrote this around 5 o'clock to try and pin down how I felt (a longer
>version is on my weblog). The contrast between my feelings and yours
>prompted me to post it. While I feel a little more stable and able to
>concentrate on other things now, the main thing going through my head
>when I think about it is, as it was all day, "I can't deal with this."
>
>Which is silly, because obviously I can. I've been talking about it all
>day, and having run gibbering off in tears or anything. But still,
>that's what I feel like, in a nutshell.
>
>(And before anyone gets all twitchy, I'm not trying to imply that one of
>us is right or wrong to feel this way. I'm just saying it's different,
>duh.)
[snip]
>I don't *think* I'm angry. It's hard to say, because all the various
>bits of me seem to be in disarray. It's almost a physical feeling of
>discomfort, as though nerve connections have loosened and my stomach has
>hopped onto a roller coaster just at free-fall and my lungs have shifted
>around to be pressed on by my rib cage and my heart is laboring under
>being squished by something else nearby. Concentrating has become the
>kind of effort I experience during migraines, and my eyes are showing a
>tendency to water for no apparent (immediate) reason.
Thank you, Kate. Thank you for articulating what I've been feeling
all day.
Work was surreal. After desperate phone calls to make sure that various
family/friends were okay and logging onto email/usenet to check in with
people, I've alternated between feeling completely numb and on the verge
of hysterical tears.
Every call that came in for network support had the background of the
news on, loudly echoing the radios on my coworker's desk.
Desite Aaron's hopes in another post, I've already heard some signs of
race-related concerns. One woman called into the local commentary radio
show and after expressing her compassion, vowed to never shop at her
local Arab shop again. Another woman called in to say we as a country
have gone too far in anti-discriminitory laws.
Hopefully things won't escalate, but I can't help but being a bit
frightened.
Even one of my very good friends, out of his head with rage, vented about
how we should just, plain and simple, decimate the Middle East. I didn't
know what to say to him.
Every new bit of information just makes me want to cry some more.
They interviewed, locally, a San Francisco mother whose son called her
from the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. She was crying as she
told us what her son's last words to her were, and it just tore me up.
My mind keeps reeling with images of the victims. I, too, want the
monsters posing as humans responsible for this to be punished. I want
us to find out who did it and exact justice.
I think I'm *angry*, I just think it's dwarfed by grief.
And to reiterate what you say --it's just *my* way of dealing with this
horrible event I feel I simply *can't* deal with.
--cat
Eric P. McCoy
> >> Oh, trust me.
> >> I *know* I'm angry.
> > That must be comforting. Seriously.
> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
It would be much more comforting to have an assault rifle and the
guilty party in front of me.
Right now, my anger doesn't do much of anything but make me feel
helpless. I suspect it's a common feeling.
--
Eric McCoy <ctr2...@yahoo.com>
"I woke up this morning and realized what the game needed: pirates,
pimps, and gay furries." - Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka
John Dilick
wrote:
>j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) writes:
>
>> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
>
>It would be much more comforting to have an assault rifle and the
>guilty party in front of me.
>
>Right now, my anger doesn't do much of anything but make me feel
>helpless. I suspect it's a common feeling.
Bingo.
--
John Dilick
dili...@home.com
If at first you don't succeed, cheat. Cheat until caught, then lie.
Adam Bodestyne
> On Wed, 12 Sep 2001 15:27:23 GMT, ctr2...@yahoo.com (Eric P. McCoy)
> wrote:
>
>>j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) writes:
>>
>>> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
>>
>>It would be much more comforting to have an assault rifle and the
>>guilty party in front of me.
>>
>>Right now, my anger doesn't do much of anything but make me feel
>>helpless. I suspect it's a common feeling.
>
> Bingo.
>
The other way around, too. Helplessness making me feel angry...
--
Adam Bodestyne
Eric P. McCoy
> >>Right now, my anger doesn't do much of anything but make me feel
> >>helpless. I suspect it's a common feeling.
> > Bingo.
> The other way around, too. Helplessness making me feel angry...
Yes, it's quite a lovely circle.
Kate Nepveu
> >> Oh, trust me.
> >> I *know* I'm angry.
> > That must be comforting. Seriously.
> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
Today, I'm finding that my present kind of anger, at least, is a
wonderfully strengthening force, though I'm aware that this is not true
of all kinds.
John S. Novak, III
>> > That must be comforting. Seriously.
>> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
> Today, I'm finding that my present kind of anger, at least, is a
> wonderfully strengthening force, though I'm aware that this is not true
> of all kinds.
Strengthening it is, but that's not the same as comfort.
And, contrary to George Lucas and the Phantom Menace, anger doesn't
always lead to fear, nor does it always turn to mushrooming hatred.
I'm pretty familiar with anger. Anger is a frequent companion for me;
it comes easily at my command and, finally, more often bid than
unbid. There are lots of kinds of anger, and I've experienced many of
them, but nothing quite like this.
The only thing I can possibly compare it to is the kind of anger I
lived with on a daily basis when I was a young child, beset by people
who fought neither fairly nor rationally. Except this is magnified
beyond anything I could possibly have imagined. Like that, this runs
hot and cold at the same time.
And speaking from practical experience, I myself can maintain this
level and kind of anger for twenty years and counting. It'll only
harden as it cools.
Your mileage may vary.
Chad R. Orzel
wrote:
>Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
>together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
>incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
>*anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
>terrorist attack, but *us*.
Good.
That's as it should be. We should be afraid of what we can do-- maybe
that way, we can act with some sense in this situation, and steer
clear of the worst excesses and irrational overreactions.
Me, I fear that we're going to bungle this. That we'll retaliate with
the same chickenshit cruise-missiles-from-800-miles crap we always use
these days, and wreck a lot of Third World real estate for no
particular end. That we'll destroy the homes and live of innocent
civilians and create more suicide bombers in the process, without
getting the people responsible for this monstrosity. That we'll pour
billions of dollars and all our hopes into pipe dreams of safety and
isolationism.
I hope that we'll keep a clear head. That we'll find the people
responsible, and see to it that they all die. That if we go into this
on a war footing, we'll have the will to carry it through, down to the
risk of oh-so-precious American blood on foreign soil, to root out the
hateful madmen behind these actions, and topple the regimes that
support them. That we'll finally devote our time and energy and
resources into a good-faith effort to actually fix the problems in the
Middle East and elsewhere-- to remove the medieval dickheads who grind
their people down while berating us as imperialist tyrants, and try to
provide some peace, some stability, and some human fucking decency to
the people there so they'll stop throwing up one goddamn fanatic after
another.
If that means spending money, then by God, spend money. If it means
American lives will be endangered and lost, well, American lives have
been lost in the thousands while we sat on our fucking hands in New
York and Washington.
We should go to Afghanistan-- whether the Taliban were involved or
not-- and take every last servant of those repressive maniacs out,
duct-tape them to the cliff where those Buddhas stood, and see how
they stand up to mortar attacks. We should find the deep hole that
Saddam Hussein is hiding in this week, and drop bombs on it until we
crack the Earth's crust and bury him under a billion tons of molten
rock. We should bulldoze every village, town, settlement, and tin
fucking shack on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, no matter how much
money the owners sent the President's last campaign.
And then we should rebuild it all from the ground up. Every mosque,
every church, every synagogue. Every shop, house, store, and political
institution. We should build or re-build roads, and schools, and power
plants, and hospitals, and pass out hundred-dollar bills like candy
until the people there have enough education and enough of a standard
of living that they'll stop falling for the blandishments of every
frothing fanatic with a Koran and an ounce of charisma.
And when we're done with that, we should sail the Sixth Fleet to
Riyadh, and present the feudal dinks in the Gulf states with a bill
for cleaning up the squalor and hatred they've financed all these
years. Then we should pack _their_ eight-century asses off, too, and
install a halfway civilized system of government.
Yes, I know Riyadh is landlocked in a desert. We'll build a fucking
canal.
I am sick to fucking death of this whole part of the world, and their
petty hatreds and squabbles and problems, and I'm sick of us trying to
wash our hands of the whole goddamn mess. They've decided that it's
our mess, and they've by God fucked with us for long enough. If we
need to scour the Middle East to bare rock and pour ten Marshall Plans
worth of cash into the region to get some peace and fucking quiet,
then it's money well spent.
Later,
OilCan
John Dilick
wrote:
[
*clap**clap**clap*
That pretty much says it all for me as well. Thanks, Chad.
(Yeah, I know quoting the entire post for an obAOL is lame, but I'm
sick today, and I really have nothing constructive to add. You really
did say it all, Chad...)
John Johnson
"Eric P. McCoy" <ctr2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:87d74wm...@providence.local.net...
> j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III) writes:
>
> > >> Oh, trust me.
> > >> I *know* I'm angry.
>
> > > That must be comforting. Seriously.
>
> > Much less so than you might expect, I think.
>
> It would be much more comforting to have an assault rifle and the
> guilty party in front of me.
>
> Right now, my anger doesn't do much of anything but make me feel
> helpless. I suspect it's a common feeling.
Yup. And while I'm feeling anger, it's more of a deep-seated one, rather
than a flash-in-the-pan type of thing. I suspect that it'll take some time
to track down the guilty parties and then to determine the appropriate
punishment, but I think my anger will last long enough to turn into
resolve.
Based on what's been happening today, the guilty parties are going to have
no place to run.
--
John Johnson
Bill McCarthy
Very well put. You've got the makings of a nice extremist. Of course,
pansy assed actions aren't the answer here, and I agree with you almost
completely.
--
Bill McCarthy
Zackery Gay
piped up with...
Please, take a step back towards reality, and analyze your plan for
peace in the Middle East. You're talking about forcibly turning these
people to Western Culture. These people _live_ for their religion,
nothing is more important. They would hate us every step of the way,
and hate the result even more. What you have suggested is effectively
the Crusades with a less selfish motive.
Within my knowledge, Islam does not demand that its denizens destroy
America for what it represents. However, there *is* good reason to
blame the leaders of these countries: they been made to believe, or
purposely made others believe, that the "Great White American Devil"
is something they must oppose on a daily basis. Perhaps this can be
changed, but I cannot offer up a way to do it. The inhabitants of
this region have been at war with each other since the beginning of
time, and though the religions involved have changed more than once,
they show no sign of tiring of fighting and killing. I can only
believe that strife will continue ad infinitum, especially in the
Middle East.
--
Zackery Gay zb...@mtu.edu
UIN:126120579
"Throw all your bullets in the fire. . . and run like hell"
-Metallica
Michael Bruce
> In article <08nvptgs27ffrfhf4...@4ax.com>, Chad R. Orzel
> piped up with...
[snip Chad's plan]
> Please, take a step back towards reality, and analyze your plan for
> peace in the Middle East. You're talking about forcibly turning these
> people to Western Culture. These people _live_ for their religion,
> nothing is more important. They would hate us every step of the way,
> and hate the result even more. What you have suggested is effectively
> the Crusades with a less selfish motive.
It is the only path to peace. It has nothing to do with religion.
Of course, we will not take that path.
--
Michael Bruce
br...@jhereg.net
Dorit
>
> On Tue, 11 Sep 2001 17:15:46 -0500, John Dilick <dili...@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Most of all, I have this black, bleak rage inside of me, knotted
> >together with an enormity of grief and sorrow. I am fundamentally
> >incapable of understanding how terrorism is a valid response to
> >*anything*. And yet, even with the rage, I fear -- not the next
> >terrorist attack, but *us*.
[I haven't seen the original post, so piggy-backing here]
Oh, God, do I agree with you there. I too fear the extremes to which
rage and fear take people, the blind desire for retaliation. For
instance, one person I know (a psychiatry resident, no less) announced
yesterday that he thinks we should blow Afghanistan and "Palestine" off
the face of the Earth. How can people like him not see that such
indiscriminate violence, involving the deaths of so many innocent
civilians, would make us no better than the terrorists? (Not to mention
stirring up yet more hatred against us...) The kind of twisted minds
that see the deaths of thousands of innocents as a perfectly acceptable
way to wage war would be thrilled if responded to their attack by
killing civilians. It would be "proof" to their supporters that they
were right about the evil American empire all along.
>
[Snip]
> Me, I fear that we're going to bungle this. That we'll retaliate with
> the same chickenshit cruise-missiles-from-800-miles crap we always use
> these days, and wreck a lot of Third World real estate for no
> particular end. That we'll destroy the homes and live of innocent
> civilians and create more suicide bombers in the process, without
> getting the people responsible for this monstrosity.
All too likely, I'm afraid, if we go for the straight bombing route. On
the other hand, twisting the Taliban's arm (preferably with
international support) and forcing them to hand over Osama bin Laden is
certainly a valid option, especially if backed up with a _credible_
threat of war and invasion if they refuse. (Yes, I know, we have no
actual proof that he's responsible for this - but even on the unlikely
chance that he isn't, we know he's been behind other attacks on
Americans, and damn it, we cannot let _any_ known threat go at this
point. This is probably the best chance we'll ever have to get the
bastard.)
> That we'll pour
> billions of dollars and all our hopes into pipe dreams of safety and
> isolationism.
Agreed. Though there are relatively cheap measures we can take for
better security. For example, at airports and even train stations,
hand-searching carry-on luggage, only letting ticketed passengers have
access to boarding areas, and checking all passengers over with manual
metal detectors would at least minorly reduce the risk of this repeating
itself. At federal and public buildings, see the above bag-and-person
checkover methods. And honestly, at places where a _lot_ of people are
congregated at any given time, like shopping malls or huge office
buildings, metal detectors and hand-searching all bags wuld also work
wonders. I know people would scream about inconvenience and
infringement on civil liberties, but honestly, for a little more
security, I'd be willing to live with a few minor inconveniences and get
to the airport 45 minutes earlier. (These measures really don't seem
that onerous once you get used to them, by the way. Seriously.)
> I hope that we'll keep a clear head. That we'll find the people
> responsible, and see to it that they all die. That if we go into this
> on a war footing, we'll have the will to carry it through, down to the
> risk of oh-so-precious American blood on foreign soil, to root out the
> hateful madmen behind these actions, and topple the regimes that
> support them. That we'll finally devote our time and energy and
> resources into a good-faith effort to actually fix the problems in the
> Middle East and elsewhere-- to remove the medieval dickheads who grind
> their people down while berating us as imperialist tyrants, and try to
> provide some peace, some stability, and some human fucking decency to
> the people there so they'll stop throwing up one goddamn fanatic after
> another.
>
Again, I agree with you in principle - but within the boundaries of
international law and sovereingty, there's only so much we can do. Much
as I loathe the corrupt regime in Saudi Arabia, for instance, and much
as I despise their treatment of women, I can't see any way to invade
Riyadh and force them out of power without becoming exactly what our
critics claim we are: an imperialist force, determined to force itself
and its views on the rest of the world. By the way, it's also
guaranteed to raise locals against you, unless they hate their
government enough to be agitating to overthrow it themselves. Even
then, lacking a state of active war with that particular government, it
would be damn hard to justify. Now Iraq is a completely different
ballgame; they may hate us there, but if we go in and kill Saddam
Hussein, few Iraqis will shed tears. On the other hand, unless we stay
in the region for years of even decades, set up democratic institutions
and hang around long enough to ensure that they are stable and
reasonably uncorrupt and legitimized in the eyes of the people, and
provide many tangible benefits to a substantial part of the population
from our period of occupation, whomever we set in power will either fall
shortly after we leave or turn to corrupt means to preserve his/her
regime.
> If that means spending money, then by God, spend money. If it means
> American lives will be endangered and lost, well, American lives have
> been lost in the thousands while we sat on our fucking hands in New
> York and Washington.
>
> We should go to Afghanistan-- whether the Taliban were involved or
> not-- and take every last servant of those repressive maniacs out,
> duct-tape them to the cliff where those Buddhas stood, and see how
> they stand up to mortar attacks.
There I completely agree with you - the Taliban harbors known terrorists
and are destroying hte lives of many of the Afghanis. Not to mention
that there's still active resistance to their repressive rule. (But
only the first thing I said is a legitimate reason for us to overthrow
them, much as I hate to admit it.) If you harbor snakes, prepare to
have your head cut off.
We should find the deep hole that
> Saddam Hussein is hiding in this week, and drop bombs on it until we
> crack the Earth's crust and bury him under a billion tons of molten
> rock.
Harder to do without invading Iraq; see above.
We should bulldoze every village, town, settlement, and tin
> fucking shack on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, no matter how much
> money the owners sent the President's last campaign.
And now you've gotten onto much more shaky ground. Destroy everyone, of
all sides, indiscriminately? Create yet more hatred of the U.S.?
Destroy the refugee camps and kill more children? ANd tell me, where
would you envision that all the people living in these villages, towns,
settlements, etc. go? Don't tell me the Palestinians would be welcomed
with open arms by their Arab neighbors - history proves otherwise. And
this assumes they'll go, which is not a safe assumption; you'll have to
create more of the bloody refugee camps, of which there are already
enough, and probably kill many Palestinians along the way. Men, women,
and indoctrinated children. A lovely way to espouse freedom and
justice. And don't tell me the settlers will just go back across the
Green line meekly - you'll have to kill a few.
> And then we should rebuild it all from the ground up. Every mosque,
> every church, every synagogue. Every shop, house, store, and political
> institution. We should build or re-build roads, and schools, and power
> plants, and hospitals, and pass out hundred-dollar bills like candy
> until the people there have enough education and enough of a standard
> of living that they'll stop falling for the blandishments of every
> frothing fanatic with a Koran and an ounce of charisma.
A lovely idea - but again, this is not our place to do. We can _help_
as much as the locals are willing to accept - but the basic work must be
done by them, or else we really would be acting like colonial
authorities. But yes, raising the local standard of living is the best
defense against terrorism in the future. (Dare I point out that doing
the same in our inner cities would have the same effect on our crime
rates?) But there's real-life evidence for you that these things are
_much_ easier said than done. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't try; just
that we have to consider our actions - for war or for peace -
_carefully_.
> And when we're done with that, we should sail the Sixth Fleet to
> Riyadh, and present the feudal dinks in the Gulf states with a bill
> for cleaning up the squalor and hatred they've financed all these
> years. Then we should pack _their_ eight-century asses off, too, and
> install a halfway civilized system of government.
See above.
> I am sick to fucking death of this whole part of the world, and their
> petty hatreds and squabbles and problems, and I'm sick of us trying to
> wash our hands of the whole goddamn mess. They've decided that it's
> our mess, and they've by God fucked with us for long enough. If we
> need to scour the Middle East to bare rock and pour ten Marshall Plans
> worth of cash into the region to get some peace and fucking quiet,
> then it's money well spent.
And as both an American and a former Middle Easterner, I'd say that I
understand your feelings - but I can't agree with your proposed
actions. Not without some major changes. And I would say that given
the levels of hatred stirred by the latest attack, try to imagine how
you would feel if this had been going on, day in and day out, for years
or generations - if everyone you know has known someone who was killed,
blown up to bits, by terrorists or soldiers - before you judge. Only
the very best of people can rise above their hatred in such
circumstances and try to work for peace, and unfortunately, such people
are far too rare.
Dorit.
Michael Bruce
> "Chad R. Orzel" wrote:
[...]
>> I hope that we'll keep a clear head. That we'll find the people
>> responsible, and see to it that they all die. That if we go into this
>> on a war footing, we'll have the will to carry it through, down to the
>> risk of oh-so-precious American blood on foreign soil, to root out the
>> hateful madmen behind these actions, and topple the regimes that
>> support them. That we'll finally devote our time and energy and
>> resources into a good-faith effort to actually fix the problems in the
>> Middle East and elsewhere-- to remove the medieval dickheads who grind
>> their people down while berating us as imperialist tyrants, and try to
>> provide some peace, some stability, and some human fucking decency to
>> the people there so they'll stop throwing up one goddamn fanatic after
>> another.
>>
> Again, I agree with you in principle - but within the boundaries of
> international law and sovereingty, there's only so much we can do. Much
> as I loathe the corrupt regime in Saudi Arabia, for instance, and much
> as I despise their treatment of women, I can't see any way to invade
> Riyadh and force them out of power without becoming exactly what our
> critics claim we are: an imperialist force, determined to force itself
> and its views on the rest of the world. By the way, it's also
> guaranteed to raise locals against you, unless they hate their
> government enough to be agitating to overthrow it themselves. Even
> then, lacking a state of active war with that particular government, it
> would be damn hard to justify. Now Iraq is a completely different
Someone needs to take action. Someone has needed to take action for
a long time. The fact that it will be politically unpopular does not
make it any less right or necessary. That fact that it will violate
some notions of "international law and sovereignty" does not make it
any less right or necessary.
I do not think that it constitutes imperialism. The whole idea is to
educate and elevate the area, not subjugate it. Much like what we
did with our enemies from WW2.
[...]
>> And then we should rebuild it all from the ground up. Every mosque,
>> every church, every synagogue. Every shop, house, store, and political
>> institution. We should build or re-build roads, and schools, and power
>> plants, and hospitals, and pass out hundred-dollar bills like candy
>> until the people there have enough education and enough of a standard
>> of living that they'll stop falling for the blandishments of every
>> frothing fanatic with a Koran and an ounce of charisma.
>
> A lovely idea - but again, this is not our place to do. We can _help_
> as much as the locals are willing to accept - but the basic work must be
> done by them, or else we really would be acting like colonial
> authorities. But yes, raising the local standard of living is the best
> defense against terrorism in the future. (Dare I point out that doing
> the same in our inner cities would have the same effect on our crime
> rates?) But there's real-life evidence for you that these things are
> _much_ easier said than done. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't try; just
> that we have to consider our actions - for war or for peace -
> _carefully_.
There's something to be said for colonial authorities.
--
Michael Bruce
br...@jhereg.net
Chad R. Orzel
>In article <08nvptgs27ffrfhf4...@4ax.com>, Chad R. Orzel
>piped up with...
>> I am sick to fucking death of this whole part of the world, and their
>> petty hatreds and squabbles and problems, and I'm sick of us trying to
>> wash our hands of the whole goddamn mess. They've decided that it's
>> our mess, and they've by God fucked with us for long enough. If we
>> need to scour the Middle East to bare rock and pour ten Marshall Plans
>> worth of cash into the region to get some peace and fucking quiet,
>> then it's money well spent.
>Please, take a step back towards reality, and analyze your plan for
>peace in the Middle East. You're talking about forcibly turning these
>people to Western Culture. These people _live_ for their religion,
>nothing is more important.
No.
_Some_ of these people live for their religion.
Just like _some_ Christians are crazy enough to shoot abortion
doctors, and _some_ Jews were deranged enough to shoot Yitzhak Rabin,
and _some_ Buddhists are willing to set themselves on fire to protest
wars.
Most of the people in the Middle East are decent at heart, and would
like nothing better than peace and prosperity. Most Muslims are as
civilized and peacable as anyone on the planet.
The people who are crazed enough to die for a warped and twisted
perversion of their religion already hate us. The people who aren't
deserve better.
I'm not advocating forcing Western culture on anyone-- there's nothing
in Islam that is necessarily and inherently incompatible with
democratic ideals. They're welcome to build any kind of civilization
they want, as long as it's fucking civilized. As long as the mandate
to rule comes with the consent of the people, not from a lake of
innocent blood.
Islam was, back in the day, a more tolerant and refined religion than
Christianity. What we see enacted by the Taliban, and preached by the
maniacs who cheer this monstrosity is a perversion, an affront to the
ideals of the religion they claim to espouse, in the same way that the
various white supremacist sects are a slap in the face to everything
that Christianity is, and the hateful paranoia of the McVeigh is an
affront to everything America stands for.
>Within my knowledge, Islam does not demand that its denizens destroy
>America for what it represents. However, there *is* good reason to
>blame the leaders of these countries: they been made to believe, or
>purposely made others believe, that the "Great White American Devil"
>is something they must oppose on a daily basis. Perhaps this can be
>changed, but I cannot offer up a way to do it. The inhabitants of
>this region have been at war with each other since the beginning of
>time,
I'm sick of this argument, too.
God damn it, the British and French fought a dozen wars over a span of
centuries, and they've forgiven each other. France and Germany were on
opposite side of the two bloodiest conflicts in all of human history
within the past hundred years, and they get along just fine now.
History is not determinism. Because people have fought in the past is
no reason to think that they must fight forever. The current situation
is not some inevitable result of the religious conflicts involved in
the region, but rather a warped legacy of colonial mismanagement,
twisted by barbaric and bloodthirsty leaders who've been propped up
and tolerated for geopolitical reasons. There's no democracy in the
Middle East because there's no tradition of democracy in the Middle
East, and because nobody has really made an effort to establish and
nourish democracy in the Middle East. We've been content to play one
brutal and barbaric strongman off against another for years now, while
the decent and law-abiding people are ground down by years of
oppression and violence.
It's time to end this game. Fuck the strongmen-- pull them down, feed
their bodies to wild dogs, destroy their corrupt organizations root
and branch, and hunt their henchmen and underlings to the ends of the
earth. We need to do with Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest what we
did with Japan-- tear the oppressive regimes down to the ground, hang
the people responsible, and start over. Yeah, it'll piss some people
off, but fuck them. They don't like us anyway. The rest of the people
want things they're not getting, things we take for granted: the rule
of law, freedom of the press, freedom from oppression. They don't have
those things because we've tolerated their downright medieval leaders
for too long, but they deserve the same rights and freedoms that
everyone else does, and they should be given a real chance to get
them.
Ironically, Iran may come to be a good example of where this should
go, largely because we completely wrote them off after the 80's. Left
to their own devices, the people there have decided that, you know
what, they're not so keen on repressive theocracy, and would actually
like some of what the West has-- rule of law, freedom of the press,
good jobs and consumer goods. They're not junking Islam by any means,
but they're standing up and demanding reform, and in the absence of
any despots propped up by a distant superpower, they're getting some
of it. They've got a long way to go yet, but it's a good thing to see,
and proof that a long history of brutal despotism does not condemn a
people to eternal tyranny.
Later,
OilCan
Christopher Tong
Michael Bruce wrote:
>
> On Wed, 12 Sep 2001 21:45:20 -0400, Dorit <dx...@po.cwru.edu> wrote:
> > "Chad R. Orzel" wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >> I hope that we'll keep a clear head. That we'll find the people
> >> responsible, and see to it that they all die. That if we go into this
> >> on a war footing, we'll have the will to carry it through, down to the
> >> risk of oh-so-precious American blood on foreign soil, to root out the
> >> hateful madmen behind these actions, and topple the regimes that
> >> support them.
> >> [And then the whole Plan(TM) swerves into nutso territory]
> > Again, I agree with you in principle - but within the boundaries of
> > international law and sovereingty, there's only so much we can do. Much
> > as I loathe the corrupt regime in Saudi Arabia, for instance, and much
> > as I despise their treatment of women, I can't see any way to invade
> > Riyadh and force them out of power without becoming exactly what our
> > critics claim we are: an imperialist force, determined to force itself
> > and its views on the rest of the world. By the way, it's also
> > guaranteed to raise locals against you, unless they hate their
> > government enough to be agitating to overthrow it themselves. Even
> > then, lacking a state of active war with that particular government, it
> > would be damn hard to justify. Now Iraq is a completely different
> Someone needs to take action. Someone has needed to take action for
> a long time. The fact that it will be politically unpopular does not
> make it any less right or necessary. That fact that it will violate
> some notions of "international law and sovereignty" does not make it
> any less right or necessary.
You're insane. Absolutely batshit crazy. You wish to impose your own
subjective, imperfect notions of right and wrong on some part of the
world that absolutely doesn't share the same notions as you? The Arabs
would die to the very last man before allowing any such thing to
happen. While some people might like the imposition of some American
ideals, there is no way on this planet that you are going to find more
than a handful willing to be forced to subjugate their culture and
beliefs to adopt your foreign, alien notions of "comfort".
One can lure them away from their current state by mechanisms already in
place thankyouverymuch. Given time, worship of Mammon may overcome
worship of God. If this happens, then at least it was their choice. It
is not our choice to make for them and will hopefully never, ever be.
Protecting the world from such grandiose, arrogant and dangerous schemes
is the reason why such notions of "international law and sovereignty"
exist. And if you wish to violate such things to protect your own sorry
asses, well, then I hope the rest of the world stands against you. And
if the existence of such a foreign culture in some way endangers my life
then so be it. I'm willing to sacrifice a bit of security to allow
other people the freedom to hold their own beliefs as opposed to forcing
them to cleave to my beliefs just for safety's sake.
> I do not think that it constitutes imperialism. The whole idea is to
> educate and elevate the area, not subjugate it. Much like what we
> did with our enemies from WW2.
Bullshit. Don't go about playing all mealy-mouthed with words like
that. What you are proposing holds more echo of Meiji Japan or
Nicaragua than West Germany... and we all know what came of that. Plans
to protect the world from the Communist threat... to bring the yellow
monkeys into the industrialized fold. At the very best, you'll make an
rival as developed as you are.
> [...]
> >> [pie in the sky plans]
> > A lovely idea - but again, this is not our place to do. We can _help_
> > as much as the locals are willing to accept - but the basic work must be
> > done by them, or else we really would be acting like colonial
> > authorities. But yes, raising the local standard of living is the best
> > defense against terrorism in the future. (Dare I point out that doing
> > the same in our inner cities would have the same effect on our crime
> > rates?) But there's real-life evidence for you that these things are
> > _much_ easier said than done. Which doesn't mean we shouldn't try; just
> > that we have to consider our actions - for war or for peace -
> > _carefully_.
> There's something to be said for colonial authorities.
What hypocrisy.
This from the citizen of a country who marks with pride her breaking
away from colonial authority and official refusal to support colonial
authority.
Chris
who's aware that this is harsh, but knows a cause he'd fight for.
Aaron F. Bourque
>You're insane. Absolutely batshit crazy. You wish to impose
>your own subjective, imperfect notions of right and wrong on
>some part of the world that absolutely doesn't share the same
>notions as you?
. . . stop spewing stupid in my direction.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque
--
"If you don't know concentration, which gives you peculiar pleasure, your life
looks like hell."--Hiroyuki Nishigaki
http://delinquents.keenspace.com/d/20010703.html
Damn the tree and all its kind!
Nothing's impossible in the hot soul.
Christopher Tong
"Aaron F. Bourque" wrote:
> From: Christopher Tong ct...@polbox.com
> >You're insane. Absolutely batshit crazy. You wish to impose
> >your own subjective, imperfect notions of right and wrong on
> >some part of the world that absolutely doesn't share the same
> >notions as you?
> . . . stop spewing stupid in my direction.
Oh, a witty response. I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything as
stupid in my reply as the original notion that America should descend to
colonialism to be "righting wrongs" in the Mideast. You'd set off a
cataclysm that would make Tuesday look like a minor incident for one...
Chris
John S. Novak, III
> I'm sick of this argument, too.
> God damn it, the British and French fought a dozen wars over a span of
> centuries, and they've forgiven each other. France and Germany were on
> opposite side of the two bloodiest conflicts in all of human history
> within the past hundred years, and they get along just fine now.
You forgot three even better examples:
We left Great Britain a few hundred years ago, and they are our
staunchest allies today, even closer than the Canadians.
And about fifty years ago, we were in the process of letting no stones
stand in Germany and Japan. Germany is a member of NATO, which has
closed ranks with us today (thanks guys) and Japan is an extremely
friendly nation.
Aaron F. Bourque
>I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything as stupid in my reply as
>the original notion that America should descend to colonialism
>to be "righting wrongs" in the Mideast.
1) Many people still haven't dealt with their feelings about this
situation.
2) The person who brought the idea up is not in charge of
making policy. Probably not even close tyo anyone.
3) "You wish to impose your own subjective, imperfect notions of
right and wrong on some part of the world that absolutely doesn't
share the same notions as you?" These poor excuses for
humanity killed people that are barely tangentially related to their
cause, whether their cause is justified or not.
4) I said it before: 20-something people felt that their lives were
worth thousands. They were wrong.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I said this before too: stop
being stupid.
Christopher Tong
"Aaron F. Bourque" wrote:
>
> From: Christopher Tong ct...@polbox.com
>
> >I'm sorry, but I just don't see anything as stupid in my reply as
> >the original notion that America should descend to colonialism
> >to be "righting wrongs" in the Mideast.
> <snip reasons I was an idiot>
> Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; I said this before too: stop
> being stupid.
*sigh* you're right, I was being insensitive about the whole thing.
It's just that I get even more ticked off about what America might do
for revenge than the actual event in some cases. I'll think I'll stop
now.
Apologies to all.
Chris
Aaron F. Bourque
>Apologies to all.
Apology accepted.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque
--
Aaron F. Bourque
Oh, and:
>It's just that I get even more ticked off about what America
>might do for revenge than the actual event in some cases.
It's pointless to be ticked off--or afraid--at what we *might* do.
We *might* do a lot. Not only do we have nukes, we do have a
small store of biological weapons "to research treatment."
And then there's salting the ground.
And we could also, before an attack, relocate Palestinians and
Afgahnis, to some place like the Himilayas.
And there's more.
America has power. Americans have restraint.
Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque
--
Chad R. Orzel
>"Chad R. Orzel" wrote:
>> We should go to Afghanistan-- whether the Taliban were involved or
>> not-- and take every last servant of those repressive maniacs out,
>> duct-tape them to the cliff where those Buddhas stood, and see how
>> they stand up to mortar attacks.
{...}
>We should find the deep hole that
>> Saddam Hussein is hiding in this week, and drop bombs on it until we
>> crack the Earth's crust and bury him under a billion tons of molten
>> rock.
{...}
>We should bulldoze every village, town, settlement, and tin
>> fucking shack on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, no matter how much
>> money the owners sent the President's last campaign.
>
>And now you've gotten onto much more shaky ground. Destroy everyone, of
>all sides, indiscriminately?
I would've thought the "duct tape" and "crack the Earth's crust" lines
would've been sufficient indication that I was being hyperbolic.
Failing that, I thought the canal to Riyadh would be a huge tip-off.
Anyway, this was not intended as a serious plan for anything. I'm
certainly not advocating the wholesale slaughter of anyone.
I do think, though, that there are a number of situations in the
region that have been allowed to stand for too many years as an
affront to all that is good and decent in human civilization.
Afghanistan is one, Iraq another, and the West Bank/ Gaza situation a
third. We've turned a blind eye to the horrendous situations in these
areas for reasons of geopolitics, or simple isolationism. My only hope
for any good to come out of yesterday's monstrous actions would be for
it to shock us out of our complacency, and get us to actually pay
attention and put some real effort into fixing these messes (which are
largely our own fault...).
The cost will be high, but removing the corrupt and oppressive regimes
and providing the aid to rebuild is the only thing which has any hope
for providing a lasting peace.
These things should also be done in as multi-lateral a fashion as
humanly possible-- under UN auspices, if possible. But we shouldn't
let that force us into tap-dancing around the tender feelings of the
various other corrupt regimes in the area. The Gulf states won't like
it, but fuck them-- we left Hussein in power in part to avoid
offending their delicate sensibilities, and we all know what a
wonderful idea _that_ was.
Later,
OilCan
Kate Nepveu
> >> > That must be comforting. Seriously.
> >> Much less so than you might expect, I think.
> > Today, I'm finding that my present kind of anger, at least, is a
> > wonderfully strengthening force, though I'm aware that this is not true
> > of all kinds.
> Strengthening it is, but that's not the same as comfort.
That was a bad choice of words on my part, for which I apologize. I was
too focused on my own complete disarray and wistfully thinking that it
was pretty uncomfortable to not know, or be able to control, what you
were thinking...
Oleg Ozerov
"Chad R. Orzel" <orz...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> Ironically, Iran may come to be a good example of where this should
> go, largely because we completely wrote them off after the 80's.
There's Turkey, as well.
--
O.
Christopher Tong
"Aaron F. Bourque" wrote:
> >From: Christopher Tong ct...@polbox.com
> Oh, and:
> >It's just that I get even more ticked off about what America
> >might do for revenge than the actual event in some cases.
> It's pointless to be ticked off--or afraid--at what we *might* do.
> We *might* do a lot. Not only do we have nukes, we do have a
> small store of biological weapons "to research treatment."
> And then there's salting the ground.
> And we could also, before an attack, relocate Palestinians and
> Afgahnis, to some place like the Himilayas.
> And there's more.
> America has power. Americans have restraint.
I hope, for the sake of the world, that they do. I been reading quite a
lot of Usenet today (I was planning to go to Seattle when I planned my
leave... now I've got quite a bit of free time) and I've seen far more
war mongerers than restrained people. Quite a bit of this is due to the
emotions... but then, a lot of the folks preaching war (like K*lk*r and
B*ss**r have always been about this shit. Now people are starting to
listen to them and take them seriously. I'm totally astounded. Nothing
has changed and yet everything has changed. I waver between disgust,
anger and sorrow and guilt because I go through this turmoil for totally
different reasons than the most folks out there do.
I am disgusted and angry because people would take advantage of other
peoples' weakness in the wake of this tragedy, fear that some rash,
irreversible course of action will come about as a result of this and
sorrow that things will never be the same. It's totally fucked up
relative to what you folks in America are going through and I can't help
but feel guilty about the whole thing.
Articles like this don't help much either:
<http://dailynews.philly.com/content/daily_news/2001/09/12/opinion/EDTA12E.ht#TOP>
I hope the American people have the patience to wait until heads cool
off a bit first.
Chris
Jeff Huo
Michael Bruce wrote:
> Someone needs to take action. Someone has needed to take action for
> a long time. The fact that it will be politically unpopular does not
> make it any less right or necessary. That fact that it will violate
> some notions of "international law and sovereignty" does not make it
> any less right or necessary.
>
> I do not think that it constitutes imperialism. The whole idea is to
> educate and elevate the area, not subjugate it. Much like what we
> did with our enemies from WW2.
I find it interesting that you choose that example.
We literally reduced Japan to glowing ash, rebuilt
the entire country, every institution, every thought
process, it's education, it's economy, *everything*,
in our image. And the same society then produces
Aum Shinrikyo, which proceeds to poison-gas
thousands of subway riders and, if the device
they had under the skyscrapers of Shinjuku
had worked, would have amassed a body count
that would have made even yesterday's horror
take second place.
Heck, *our* country produced Oklahoma City.
The problem isn't cultures or ideals, it's men.
Men who twist societies into sick shapes.
Individuals who use their free will to choose
evil. In *any* ideaological framework.
And unless you wipe out individuality,
that will *never* change. Mike Koz. already
warned us about seeking the One Final Solution
that will make everything Perfectly Safe Like
It Was Before, because it doesn't exist, neither the
solution nor the peace we *thought* we had.
You want to change regimes? Change societies?
There are ways. Want to make the individual
men who carried this out pay? There are ways.
Want to convince countries that having anything
to do with terror is Really Bad Idea? There are ways.
Does Something Need To Be Done? Sure. But
we'd better *think* hard about what it is we do
before we do it. And uniformly paving over
anybody --even with the intention of building
it up better the way we think it should be-- is
not likely to work more wonders than to incite
a hatred that will never die.
And finish the job whomever set up this
horrible disaster wanted done.
-Jeff
--
Jeff Huo | je...@spundreams.net.nospam (remove nospam)
U. Michigan Med | http://www.spundreams.net/~jeff
New to the group? Welcome! Please read
http://www.landfield.com/faqs/sf/robert-jordan-faq/
Chad R. Orzel
<je...@spundreams.net.nospam> wrote:
>Michael Bruce wrote:
>> I do not think that it constitutes imperialism. The whole idea is to
>> educate and elevate the area, not subjugate it. Much like what we
>> did with our enemies from WW2.
>I find it interesting that you choose that example.
>We literally reduced Japan to glowing ash, rebuilt
>the entire country, every institution, every thought
>process, it's education, it's economy, *everything*,
>in our image. And the same society then produces
>Aum Shinrikyo, which proceeds to poison-gas
>thousands of subway riders and, if the device
>they had under the skyscrapers of Shinjuku
>had worked, would have amassed a body count
>that would have made even yesterday's horror
>take second place.
A nation of a hundred and fifty million, they've produced _one_
apocalyptic doomsday cult. One.
>Heck, *our* country produced Oklahoma City.
We've got a population of nigh on three hundred million, and we've
coughed up _one_ _man_ crazed enough to resort to mass murder.
How many Palestinians are there? Twenty million? We have _suburbs_
bigger than that, and yet they seem to manage to find one suicide
bomber a week. Throw half a dozen Middle Eastern countries together,
and you'll still be short of the combined populations of the US and
Japan, and yet they've produced a hundred times as many willing mass
murderers as our two nations.
>The problem isn't cultures or ideals, it's men.
>Men who twist societies into sick shapes.
>Individuals who use their free will to choose
>evil. In *any* ideaological framework.
Yes, but the wrong social framework unquestionably encourages people
to choose evil. And I'm not speaking against any religion or creed
here-- Islam is not the problem any more than Christianity is the
reason for our relative sanity. The problem is grinding poverty,
crushing oppression, unending injustice. These are people who have
very little, and have been convinced that it's because somebody else
stole what is rightfully theirs. They've been spoon-fed a perverted
mirror image of their faith, and convinced that it's somehow OK to
kill thousands of innocents.
Breaking that system can and will help. No, it won't magically
eliminate all terrorism-- there will always be some people who have
enough mental wires crossed to willingly do evil deeds. But the
current social and political structure of the Middle East is warped
and twisted enough to _encourage_ this sort of behavior, and it needs
to be replaced.
Later,
OilCan
Zackery Gay
piped up with...
>
> >Please, take a step back towards reality, and analyze your plan for
> >peace in the Middle East. You're talking about forcibly turning these
> >people to Western Culture. These people _live_ for their religion,
> >nothing is more important.
>
> No.
>
> _Some_ of these people live for their religion.
> Just like _some_ Christians are crazy enough to shoot abortion
> doctors, and _some_ Jews were deranged enough to shoot Yitzhak Rabin,
> and _some_ Buddhists are willing to set themselves on fire to protest
> wars.
>
> Most of the people in the Middle East are decent at heart, and would
> like nothing better than peace and prosperity. Most Muslims are as
> civilized and peacable as anyone on the planet.
>
> The people who are crazed enough to die for a warped and twisted
> perversion of their religion already hate us. The people who aren't
> deserve better.
>
I'll agree on this much without any discrepancy at all.
> I'm not advocating forcing Western culture on anyone-- there's nothing
> in Islam that is necessarily and inherently incompatible with
> democratic ideals.
AFAIK, Islam _means_ submission. Submissiveness is the antithesis of
capitalism, and is not terribly compatible with democracy. However, I
believe that this is something that can be overcome, if the people are
freed of the despots that reign there.
> They're welcome to build any kind of civilization
> they want, as long as it's fucking civilized. As long as the mandate
> to rule comes with the consent of the people, not from a lake of
> innocent blood.
>
> Islam was, back in the day, a more tolerant and refined religion than
> Christianity. What we see enacted by the Taliban, and preached by the
> maniacs who cheer this monstrosity is a perversion, an affront to the
> ideals of the religion they claim to espouse, in the same way that the
> various white supremacist sects are a slap in the face to everything
> that Christianity is, and the hateful paranoia of the McVeigh is an
> affront to everything America stands for.
>
> >Within my knowledge, Islam does not demand that its denizens destroy
> >America for what it represents. However, there *is* good reason to
> >blame the leaders of these countries: they been made to believe, or
> >purposely made others believe, that the "Great White American Devil"
> >is something they must oppose on a daily basis. Perhaps this can be
> >changed, but I cannot offer up a way to do it. The inhabitants of
> >this region have been at war with each other since the beginning of
> >time,
>
> I'm sick of this argument, too.
> God damn it, the British and French fought a dozen wars over a span of
> centuries, and they've forgiven each other. France and Germany were on
> opposite side of the two bloodiest conflicts in all of human history
> within the past hundred years, and they get along just fine now.
>
They share a race, a religion(somewhat), and everything else besides
language and nation. You're talking about centuries of war at the
most; I'm talking about millennia.
> History is not determinism. Because people have fought in the past is
> no reason to think that they must fight forever. The current situation
> is not some inevitable result of the religious conflicts involved in
> the region, but rather a warped legacy of colonial mismanagement,
> twisted by barbaric and bloodthirsty leaders who've been propped up
> and tolerated for geopolitical reasons.
In theory, you're correct; in practice, however, the path to peace is
either mutual extermination or something we have yet to see.
>There's no democracy in the
> Middle East because there's no tradition of democracy in the Middle
> East, and because nobody has really made an effort to establish and
> nourish democracy in the Middle East. We've been content to play one
> brutal and barbaric strongman off against another for years now, while
> the decent and law-abiding people are ground down by years of
> oppression and violence.
>
> It's time to end this game. Fuck the strongmen-- pull them down, feed
> their bodies to wild dogs, destroy their corrupt organizations root
> and branch, and hunt their henchmen and underlings to the ends of the
> earth. We need to do with Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest what we
> did with Japan-- tear the oppressive regimes down to the ground, hang
> the people responsible, and start over. Yeah, it'll piss some people
> off, but fuck them. They don't like us anyway. The rest of the people
> want things they're not getting, things we take for granted: the rule
> of law, freedom of the press, freedom from oppression. They don't have
> those things because we've tolerated their downright medieval leaders
> for too long, but they deserve the same rights and freedoms that
> everyone else does, and they should be given a real chance to get
> them.
>
I'd like to see it, I'd like to be a part of it, but it's a thousand
times more complicated than you've set it out to be. Perhaps I'm not
enough of an optimist in this day and age, but I can see no good
coming from America wiping the Middle East clean and trying to start
it on a different track.
Matt Hackell
[snip]
> > I'm not advocating forcing Western culture on anyone-- there's nothing
> > in Islam that is necessarily and inherently incompatible with
> > democratic ideals.
>
> AFAIK, Islam _means_ submission. Submissiveness is the antithesis of
> capitalism, and is not terribly compatible with democracy. However, I
> believe that this is something that can be overcome, if the people are
> freed of the despots that reign there.
It means "Submission [to the will of God].
What's your opinion on the binding of Isaac [1], Daniel in the Lion's
Den, the Christian martyrs?
These are all Judeo-Christian examples of the "submission that Islam
demands"; heck, modern evangelist movements demand something not far
different, and Jews and Christians make right nice capitalists when
they're in the right society. And made pretty good communists in another
society, too, for what it's worth.
> > I'm sick of this argument, too.
> > God damn it, the British and French fought a dozen wars over a span of
> > centuries, and they've forgiven each other. France and Germany were on
> > opposite side of the two bloodiest conflicts in all of human history
> > within the past hundred years, and they get along just fine now.
>
> They share a race, a religion(somewhat), and everything else besides
> language and nation. You're talking about centuries of war at the
> most; I'm talking about millennia.
I don't understand this claim. First, Islam has only been around for
about 1400 years, so "millennia isn't even an operative term yet."
Second, the entire Middle East was at peace from the Ottoman conquest
until virtually World War I, and for long stretches of time before that
as well. It's no more "always at war" than the Balkans, or the
Rhineland.
> > History is not determinism. Because people have fought in the past is
> > no reason to think that they must fight forever. The current situation
> > is not some inevitable result of the religious conflicts involved in
> > the region, but rather a warped legacy of colonial mismanagement,
> > twisted by barbaric and bloodthirsty leaders who've been propped up
> > and tolerated for geopolitical reasons.
>
> In theory, you're correct; in practice, however, the path to peace is
> either mutual extermination or something we have yet to see.
Economic interdependence seems to work fairly well. At least when
there's an infrastructure on both sides that stands to lose.
> I'd like to see it, I'd like to be a part of it, but it's a thousand
> times more complicated than you've set it out to be. Perhaps I'm not
> enough of an optimist in this day and age, but I can see no good
> coming from America wiping the Middle East clean and trying to start
> it on a different track.
Well, obviously not wiping it clean. But breaking it down (like Japan)
and building it back up...I think so. Arab/Muslim culture is far less
different from our own than Japanese or Korean culture, and South Korea
and Japan have embraced peaceful relations with the West and each other
(mostly) despite some really horrific acts on all sides during the War.
--
Matt Hackell
I am not here to speak to you about the pursuit of excellence. I am here
to offer an alternative.
Garrison Keilor, to Princeton University's Class of 2001
[1] Have I heard correctly that bin Laden's organization is called some
variant of "Akeidah"? In Hebrew, that's the name for the binding of
Isaac. (Of course, in the Qu'ran, it is Ishmael that is bound)
Daniel Magnusson
<mhac...@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
<snip all>
>[1] Have I heard correctly that bin Laden's organization is called some
>variant of "Akeidah"? In Hebrew, that's the name for the binding of
>Isaac. (Of course, in the Qu'ran, it is Ishmael that is bound)
Al Qaeda, I believe.
--
Daniel Magnusson
Matt
je...@spundreams.net.nospam says...
> We will rescue. We will console. We will avenge.
> We will rebuild. We will take the orphaned sons
> and daughters of the dead and raise them as our
> own. And a thousand years from now,
> when the sons of my sons of my sons
> point to the gleaming spires of that which
> will rise again from those ashes, they will say
> to their children, Freedom has it's price, and brave
> men and women paid it. But Freedom still endures.
>
> They will say that with pride, long after history
> has forgotten the very name of the scum that
> perpetrated this crime. That will be the final vengence.
>
> Freedom shall endure.
Wow. That sums it up better than anything else I've heard.
Zackery Gay
Hackell piped up with...
> From the book of zb...@mtu.edu ...
> >
> > AFAIK, Islam _means_ submission. Submissiveness is the antithesis of
> > capitalism, and is not terribly compatible with democracy. However, I
> > believe that this is something that can be overcome, if the people are
> > freed of the despots that reign there.
>
> It means "Submission [to the will of God].
>
I must admit that I put that together rather poorly. I meant that
their submissiveness makes them more vulnerable to Despots, and has
kept them from demanding civil rights. What we see as basic human
rights are a foreign concept to the average impoverished, illiterate,
oppressed Muslim. They have been taught to hate us, and I don't see
how _we_ can teach them differently.
> What's your opinion on the binding of Isaac [1], Daniel in the Lion's
> Den, the Christian martyrs?
Daniel and the martyrs had little to do with submissiveness. Daniel
was thrown in on orders of King Nebuchadnezzar and the martyrs stood
up for what they believed when threatened with death.
The near-sacrifing of Isaac is a different matter. It's almost a
paradox within our faith that is best explained as the difference
between then and now. Abram was tested by God and his obedience
proved his worth to God. I can't begin to debate theology, but I
believe that "and lead us not into temptation" is an indication that
God will not test us in this way any longer.
> These are all Judeo-Christian examples of the "submission that Islam
> demands"; heck, modern evangelist movements demand something not far
> different, and Jews and Christians make right nice capitalists when
> they're in the right society. And made pretty good communists in another
> society, too, for what it's worth.
>
Perhaps, this is the difference between present-day Christianity and
Islam. Christians have in large part,(and IMO unfortunately), made
their religious beliefs secondary to their political beliefs.
--
Zackery Gay zb...@mtu.edu
UIN:126120579
"Throw all your bullets in the fire. . . and run like hell"
-Metallica
P.S. I know I'm in over my head now, I think I'll just shut up after
this.
R Sanderson Pratt
Matt Hackell <mhac...@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote in message
news:MPG.160a93cc8...@news.georgetown.edu...
>
> [1] Have I heard correctly that bin Laden's organization is called some
> variant of "Akeidah"? In Hebrew, that's the name for the binding of
> Isaac. (Of course, in the Qu'ran, it is Ishmael that is bound)
I believe it means "the leadership". But I've never seen it in Arabic, just
transliterated, so that's a well educated guess, not something I have the
means/desire to research at the moment.
Sandy
BTW let me know if the lines are wrapping wrong. I'm not sure OE knows what
is good for it...
Jeff Huo
zb...@mtu.edu says...
> In article <MPG.160a93cc8...@news.georgetown.edu>, Matt
> Hackell piped up with...
> > From the book of zb...@mtu.edu ...
>
> > Den, the Christian martyrs?
>
> Daniel and the martyrs had little to do with submissiveness. Daniel
> was thrown in on orders of King Nebuchadnezzar and the martyrs stood
> up for what they believed when threatened with death.
>
> The near-sacrifing of Isaac is a different matter. It's almost a
> paradox within our faith that is best explained as the difference
> between then and now. Abram was tested by God and his obedience
> proved his worth to God. I can't begin to debate theology, but I
> believe that "and lead us not into temptation" is an indication that
> God will not test us in this way any longer.
Also, remember also that God specifically promised Abraham
that Abraham would become the father of a great nation (Gen.
12) and further specifically stated that the son Abraham
would have through Sarah --Isaac-- would be the line through
which that would come (Gen. 17) *before* asking Abraham to
sacrifice Issac in Gen. 22.
I think the order is critical: God promised Abraham that
Isaac specifically would be the father of the nations, then
told Abraham to sacrifice him. Abraham trusted that somehow
the two promises were compatible --that somehow God would
apparently enable the dead Isaac to give rise to a nation.
That's entirely different than Abraham sacrificing a son
like a cow, I think.
Chad R. Orzel
wrote:
>In article <2k70qt00p94p7e62s...@4ax.com>, Chad R. Orzel wrote:
>
>> I'm sick of this argument, too.
>> God damn it, the British and French fought a dozen wars over a span of
>> centuries, and they've forgiven each other. France and Germany were on
>> opposite side of the two bloodiest conflicts in all of human history
>> within the past hundred years, and they get along just fine now.
>
>You forgot three even better examples:
>
>We left Great Britain a few hundred years ago, and they are our
>staunchest allies today, even closer than the Canadians.
We were never in a continual state of war with them, as is a basic
requirement for the "they're always fighting, we can't do anything"
argument. We had a falling out, there was a slight recurrance in 1812,
and then we pretty much left each other alone for a hundred years or
so. Relations rarely slipped below "cordial."
England and France on the other hand fought wars which are known to
history by the length of time they spent fighting.
>And about fifty years ago, we were in the process of letting no stones
>stand in Germany and Japan. Germany is a member of NATO, which has
>closed ranks with us today (thanks guys) and Japan is an extremely
>friendly nation.
Of course, fifty years before _that_ Germany was barely a country at
all, and Japan was still clawing its way out of the stasis and
isolationism of the Tokugawa era. So again, it's not as effective a
counter to the "they're just crazy" argument. We were never in a
continual state of war with Japan-- they were below our radar for most
of our national existence.
Germany and Japan are wonderful demonstrations of the fact that one
intense and devastating war does not necessarily condemn the
participants to eternal hatred, but then again, Germany and Japan are
sort of special cases. I can't think of another example of a victor in
war treating the vanquished with the generosity we showed the (West)
Germans and the Japanese. Which is why I think we need to repeat that
performance with any countries we take apart as a result of the
current troubles.
Later,
OilCan
John S. Novak, III
>>You forgot three even better examples:
>>We left Great Britain a few hundred years ago, and they are our
>>staunchest allies today, even closer than the Canadians.
> We were never in a continual state of war with them, as is a basic
> requirement for the "they're always fighting, we can't do anything"
> argument. We had a falling out, there was a slight recurrance in 1812,
> and then we pretty much left each other alone for a hundred years or
> so. Relations rarely slipped below "cordial."
Enh.
Relations have improved almost monotonically for the last two hundred
years. In 1811, we were not the bosom buddies we are today.
>>And about fifty years ago, we were in the process of letting no stones
>>stand in Germany and Japan. Germany is a member of NATO, which has
>>closed ranks with us today (thanks guys) and Japan is an extremely
>>friendly nation.
> Of course, fifty years before _that_ Germany was barely a country at
> all, and Japan was still clawing its way out of the stasis and
> isolationism of the Tokugawa era. So again, it's not as effective a
> counter to the "they're just crazy" argument. We were never in a
> continual state of war with Japan-- they were below our radar for most
> of our national existence.
Depends on the fine point of what you're trying to demonstrate.
I mean, we really had to kick some serious ass, there. Twice, for one
of them.
> Germany and Japan are wonderful demonstrations of the fact that one
> intense and devastating war does not necessarily condemn the
> participants to eternal hatred, but then again, Germany and Japan are
> sort of special cases. I can't think of another example of a victor in
> war treating the vanquished with the generosity we showed the (West)
> Germans and the Japanese. Which is why I think we need to repeat that
> performance with any countries we take apart as a result of the
> current troubles.
Agreed.
And Jesus, over the last hour, the count of extraneous people being
picked up in airports is climbing almost by the minute! It's half
horrifying, to realize how very much worse this might have been-- half
uplifting, as the success rate seems to have fallen from 75% to 50% or
so based on our knowledge-- and half an opportunity to execute due
process before handing them over to the Mossad (who surely have claims
on each and every one of them, too) to get pumped so full of drugs they'll
be pissing truth serum for the next six months.
Here I was thinking that the FAA, FBI and other alphabet soups were
over reacting, but I guess not.
Mani Annamalai
Which more or less translates to The Quest.
Mani Annamalai
"To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell -
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."
-- Lucifer, 'Paradise Lost', Milton.
John S. Novak, III
Mani Annamalai wrote:
>> Al Qaeda, I believe.
> Which more or less translates to The Quest.
That's like, the eigth translation I've heard today.
Dilick, care to comment?
Oleg Ozerov
"Mani Annamalai" <ma...@camtech.net.au> wrote
> dani...@lycos.com (Daniel Magnusson) wrote
> > On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:59:14 GMT, Matt Hackell
> > <mhac...@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
> >
> > <snip all>
> >
> > >[1] Have I heard correctly that bin Laden's organization is called some
> > >variant of "Akeidah"? In Hebrew, that's the name for the binding of
> > >Isaac. (Of course, in the Qu'ran, it is Ishmael that is bound)
> >
> > Al Qaeda, I believe.
>
> Which more or less translates to The Quest.
I read it meant The Base.
There's actually a www.binladen.com which is a site of Saudi company. I
guess it's that bin Laden name.
--
O.
John Dilick
wrote:
>In article <55f0575f.01091...@posting.google.com>,
>Mani Annamalai wrote:
>
>>> Al Qaeda, I believe.
>> Which more or less translates to The Quest.
>
>That's like, the eigth translation I've heard today.
>Dilick, care to comment?
A better translation is 'The Base'.
The problem is that there are two distinct 'K' sounds and 'D' sounds
in Arabic, so it is hard to tell which ones are being transliterated
into the Roman alphabet.
--
John Dilick
dili...@home.com
If at first you don't succeed, cheat. Cheat until caught, then lie.
Nathan Wolfe
"John Dilick" <dili...@home.com> wrote in message
news:dqv2qt4v0f12p7c3p...@4ax.com...
> On 14 Sep 2001 03:25:49 GMT, j...@concentric.net (John S. Novak, III)
> wrote:
>
> >In article <55f0575f.01091...@posting.google.com>,
> >Mani Annamalai wrote:
> >
> >>> Al Qaeda, I believe.
> >> Which more or less translates to The Quest.
> >
> >That's like, the eigth translation I've heard today.
> >Dilick, care to comment?
>
> A better translation is 'The Base'.
>
> The problem is that there are two distinct 'K' sounds and 'D' sounds
> in Arabic, so it is hard to tell which ones are being transliterated
> into the Roman alphabet.
>
As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
Jim Hill
>> I'm not advocating forcing Western culture on anyone-- there's nothing
>> in Islam that is necessarily and inherently incompatible with
>> democratic ideals.
>
>AFAIK, Islam _means_ submission. Submissiveness is the antithesis of
>capitalism, and is not terribly compatible with democracy.
Like most, you miss the point. The submission is to God, and there's not
a damn thing in that which is incompatible with capitalism OR democracy.
Let me leave you with a parting thought from a religion which is
dominant is many if not most capitalist democracies:
"O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless,
not as I will but as Thou wilt."
Jim
--
"This place blows." -- David Letterman
John Dilick
wrote:
>"John Dilick" <dili...@home.com> wrote in message
>news:dqv2qt4v0f12p7c3p...@4ax.com...
>
>> A better translation is 'The Base'.
>>
>> The problem is that there are two distinct 'K' sounds and 'D' sounds
>> in Arabic, so it is hard to tell which ones are being transliterated
>> into the Roman alphabet.
>>
>
>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
*blam*
That's for bringing that stupid thing back into circulation.
Anyway, it's more like a military base.
--
John Dilick
dili...@home.com
No tagline -- I'm not in the mood to be amusing.
Bill McCarthy
> And Jesus, over the last hour, the count of extraneous people being
> picked up in airports is climbing almost by the minute! It's half
> horrifying, to realize how very much worse this might have been-- half
> uplifting, as the success rate seems to have fallen from 75% to 50% or
> so based on our knowledge-- and half an opportunity to execute due
> process before handing them over to the Mossad (who surely have claims
> on each and every one of them, too) to get pumped so full of drugs they'll
> be pissing truth serum for the next six months.
*smile*
If there's one thing that Middle-Eastern terrorists truly fear, it is the
Mossad. I, for one, would be glad to have their assistance in this
endeavor.
--
Bill McCarthy
Jamie Bowden
While we routinely extend to foreign nationals the same rights as we do to
citizens in criminal cases, where does it say we have to? I won't say we
shouldn't, because I firmly believe that giving them the same rights under
the law as any American is right, what's to stop the questioners from not
doing so?
Jamie Bowden
--
"It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold"
Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur"
Iain Bowen <ala...@alaric.org.uk>
David Loewe, Jr.
<Ozzypti...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>"Mani Annamalai" <ma...@camtech.net.au> wrote
>> dani...@lycos.com (Daniel Magnusson) wrote
>> > On Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:59:14 GMT, Matt Hackell
>> > <mhac...@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:
>> > <snip all>
>> > >[1] Have I heard correctly that bin Laden's organization is called some
>> > >variant of "Akeidah"? In Hebrew, that's the name for the binding of
>> > >Isaac. (Of course, in the Qu'ran, it is Ishmael that is bound)
>> > Al Qaeda, I believe.
>> Which more or less translates to The Quest.
>I read it meant The Base.
That is what I have seen as well, Oleg.
>There's actually a www.binladen.com which is a site of Saudi company. I
>guess it's that bin Laden name.
Osama bin Laden is the (youngest ?) son of a Saudi construction
tycoon. His father, apparently built most of the modern highways in
Saudi Arabia. His money comes from his inheritance from his father. he
is, I understand, a wanted criminal inside Saudi Arabia.
--
"Something's wrong in this House today
Something's been going on there may be a price to pay"
Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson
Frank van Schie
Leigh Butler wrote:
>
> Okay, I fear to admit this, but I have never been able to get anyone
> to explain this phrase to me. I apparently Missed Something.
>
> Anyone not too sexy for this joke care to explain to my clueless self?
Once Upon A Time, there was a computer game called Zero Wing. It was a
Japanese computer game. Someone decided to release it in the US.
So they hired a Japanese translator. Who, by the look of it, only spoke
Japanese.
http://www.hugefans.com/allyourbase/files/zerowing.gif
--
Frank
Nathan Wolfe
"Leigh Butler" <leigh_...@paramount.com> wrote in message
news:3ba240db...@news.cis.dfn.de...
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 08:37:39 -0500, John Dilick <dili...@home.com>
> wrote:
>
> >On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 05:03:03 GMT, "Nathan Wolfe" <ncw4...@home.com>
> >wrote:
>
>
> >>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
> >
> >*blam*
> >
> >That's for bringing that stupid thing back into circulation.
>
> to explain this phrase to me. I apparently Missed Something.
>
> Anyone not too sexy for this joke care to explain to my clueless self?
Essentially it's just the really poor translation done in the game "Zero
Wing". However, it has come to represent a whole host of related jokes and
material, for example The Laziest Men on Mars' song incorporating the
phrases as the lyrics using a computer generated voice. If you really want
to know (and you probably don't) just search for "all your base are belong
to us" online.
Move zig, move. For great justice.
Leigh Butler
wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 05:03:03 GMT, "Nathan Wolfe" <ncw4...@home.com>
>wrote:
<snip translations>
>>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
>
>*blam*
>
>That's for bringing that stupid thing back into circulation.
Okay, I fear to admit this, but I have never been able to get anyone
to explain this phrase to me. I apparently Missed Something.
Anyone not too sexy for this joke care to explain to my clueless self?
--
Leigh Butler leigh_...@paramount.com
******************************************************
The opinions expressed above do not necessarily reflect those
of Paramount Pictures or its affiliates.
Leigh Butler
Oh, now that's Comedy.
Japanese video game translations always have a few howlers, IME, but
that's got to be the worst I've ever seen.
(Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
Kate Nepveu
> While we routinely extend to foreign nationals the same rights as we do to
> citizens in criminal cases, where does it say we have to? I won't say we
> shouldn't, because I firmly believe that giving them the same rights under
> the law as any American is right, what's to stop the questioners from not
> doing so?
The text of the relevant amendments generally refers to "the people"
or "no person." There's a plurality (i.e., couldn't get 5 Justices
to sign onto it) Supreme Court opinion that maybe suggests it's not
enough to be _present_ in the US to get constitutional protections,
that you need to have some kind of substantial connections, or that
you're legally here, or that the property being searched's in the US,
or who knows what-all else. (It's a very muddled opinion, and as I
say, not a majority one.) This case had to do with the search of
foreign property owned by a non-resident foreign national, so the
Court didn't really have to confront the issue.
However, in a number of cases, resident aliens have been specifically
provided Constitutional rights (like the Equal Protection Clause,
and search-and-seizure protections in the U.S.). And the 5th Amendment
is a fundamental trial right, and not part of this analysis.
Kate
--
http://www.steelypips.org/elsewhere.html -- kate....@yale.edu
Paired Reading Page; Book Reviews; Outside of a Dog: A Book Log
"The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud."
--Coco Chanel
David Scotton
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:54:47 +0200, Frank van Schie
> <fvs...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
> >http://www.hugefans.com/allyourbase/files/zerowing.gif
>
> Oh, now that's Comedy.
>
> Japanese video game translations always have a few howlers, IME, but
> that's got to be the worst I've ever seen.
You really have to watch the flash video to get the full effect.
http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/
> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
--
David K. Scotton <dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> | UIN:3595734
"I don't embrace depravity as much as I dry hump it."
-Mark Loy
Leigh Butler
<dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
>On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:32:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
>> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:54:47 +0200, Frank van Schie
>> <fvs...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
>> >http://www.hugefans.com/allyourbase/files/zerowing.gif
>>
>> Oh, now that's Comedy.
>>
>> Japanese video game translations always have a few howlers, IME, but
>> that's got to be the worst I've ever seen.
>
>You really have to watch the flash video to get the full effect.
>http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/
I have no response to this.
Wow, I'm smiling. That's so refreshing.
>> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
>> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
>> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
>
>Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
Nope, but was on hand for FFVII, which had some great one liners.
And the bitch-slapping, of course.
It was groovy fun.
scifantasy
>Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
That damned Professor Daravon...
--
scifantasy
"RTF*"
Laura M. Parkinson
>> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
>> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
>> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
>
>Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
I had a good feeling!
--
-'-,-'-<<0 Trickster 0>>-'-,-'- lpark...@mindspring.com
http://lparkinson.home.mindspring.com
"Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be
destroyed." -Richard Adams, Watership Down
Jim Hill
>
>There's actually a www.binladen.com which is a site of Saudi company. I
>guess it's that bin Laden name.
Yep. The bin Laden family fortune comes from architecture and
construction. Note to those who ask how the hijackers could possibly
have known where to crash to do the most damage: do a little research.
There's a good chance old Osama his own bad self provided this
information.
David Scotton
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:04:05 -0700, David Scotton
> <dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> >On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:32:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
>
> >> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
> >> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
> >> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
> >
> >Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
>
> Nope, but was on hand for FFVII, which had some great one liners.
Ah, yes. There was Barret's famous "Shi't!" and some other good lines
(The apostrophe may have been in a different place). But for its
ability to cause confusion, Final Fantasy Tactics is unparalleled.
scifantasy
>Ah, yes. There was Barret's famous "Shi't!" and some other good lines
Actually, on thinking about this, the way the Japanese language is set
up, one couldn't put something in the "shi" because it's one
character. Shi't would be the closest a Japanese person could get.
--
scifantasy
"RTF*"
Oleg Ozerov
"Jim Hill" <jim...@swcp.com> wrote
> Oleg Ozerov wrote:
> >
> >There's actually a www.binladen.com which is a site of Saudi company. I
> >guess it's that bin Laden name.
>
> Yep. The bin Laden family fortune comes from architecture and
> construction. Note to those who ask how the hijackers could possibly
> have known where to crash to do the most damage: do a little research.
> There's a good chance old Osama his own bad self provided this
> information.
Yeah, I knew that, I guess. Although the website loads on "binladen", it
actually says "benladen" there. Arabic to Latin transcription intricacies, I
suppose.
I don't think any expert was neede to know here to crash. Really, expert
pilots, expert engineers. Ten people for a year each in avaiation school,
say 20K per person? Maybe less, if they could work while studying. Or
nothing, if bin Laden recruits from the trainees. A couple dozen knives.
0.1K? Plane tickets for 19. 6K? A computer and Internet access to study
flight schedules. 1K? Alright, rent an old Boeing for a month for practice.
50K? What's the total? <300K How many people have such resources? >100K.
Has it occurred to anyone that bin Laden conceivably can plant a
_legitimate_ pilot given enough time?
--
O.
Christopher Tong
Oleg Ozerov wrote:
> "Jim Hill" <jim...@swcp.com> wrote
<snip>
> > Yep. The bin Laden family fortune comes from architecture and
> > construction. Note to those who ask how the hijackers could possibly
> > have known where to crash to do the most damage: do a little research.
> > There's a good chance old Osama his own bad self provided this
> > information.
> Yeah, I knew that, I guess. Although the website loads on "binladen", it
> actually says "benladen" there. Arabic to Latin transcription intricacies, I
> suppose.
Either one will do... IIRC, vowels are pretty fluid things to represent
in Arabic (since they aren't written).
<snip>
> Has it occurred to anyone that bin Laden conceivably can plant a
> _legitimate_ pilot given enough time?
He might have already, but America might have restrictions on the
nationality of its pilots. (Do they?) And they might restrict based on
race too (although that'd have to be a fairly subtle thing).
Chris
Oleg Ozerov
"Christopher Tong" <ct...@polbox.com> wrote
> Oleg Ozerov wrote:
> > Has it occurred to anyone that bin Laden conceivably can plant a
> > _legitimate_ pilot given enough time?
>
> He might have already, but America might have restrictions on the
> nationality of its pilots. (Do they?) And they might restrict based on
> race too (although that'd have to be a fairly subtle thing).
Even more eye-opening is the fact that any day dozens of _foreign_ pilots
fly over Manhattan. Bin Laden wouldn't even have to plant a pilot in
America.
--
O.
Christopher Tong
Oleg Ozerov wrote:
He would if he wanted to get a plane with that much fuel in it.
Contrary to what Stephen King wrote in the _Running Man_, it takes more
than a quarter tank of jet fuel to melt a building's internal supports,
apparently. Those twoers stood for more than an hour while the jet fuel
burned.
Chris
Of course, a highjacked Megatop 747 en route from Vancouver to Singapore
would be a huge source of concern...
Jim Hill
>
>>>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
>
Damn you, Leigh Butler. When next we meet, there's no way I'm
disco-dancing.
>care to explain to my clueless self?
I oughtn't, but it was a phrase that appeared in a video game made in
Japan, sold in the US. Somehow it became a meme.
Oleg Ozerov
"Christopher Tong" <ct...@polbox.com> wrote
> Oleg Ozerov wrote:
> > "Christopher Tong" <ct...@polbox.com> wrote
> > > Oleg Ozerov wrote:
>
> > > > Has it occurred to anyone that bin Laden conceivably can plant a
> > > > _legitimate_ pilot given enough time?
>
> > > He might have already, but America might have restrictions on the
> > > nationality of its pilots. (Do they?) And they might restrict based
on
> > > race too (although that'd have to be a fairly subtle thing).
>
> > Even more eye-opening is the fact that any day dozens of _foreign_
pilots
> > fly over Manhattan. Bin Laden wouldn't even have to plant a pilot in
> > America.
>
> He would if he wanted to get a plane with that much fuel in it.
> Contrary to what Stephen King wrote in the _Running Man_, it takes more
> than a quarter tank of jet fuel to melt a building's internal supports,
> apparently. Those twoers stood for more than an hour while the jet fuel
> burned.
If a pilot could be gotten in, a mistake in overfuelling the jet could be
made, too. Besides, there are other dangers besides jet fuel.
> Chris
>
> Of course, a highjacked Megatop 747 en route from Vancouver to Singapore
> would be a huge source of concern...
*looking at the globe*
WTF would it be doing over New York?
--
O.
Rimrunner
>Leigh Butler wrote:
>>
>>>>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
>>
>>Anyone not too sexy for this joke
>
>Damn you, Leigh Butler. When next we meet, there's no way I'm
>disco-dancing.
I know I've mentioned the band Kultur Shock (who donated the proceeds of
tonight's show to disaster relief--some of them are from Bosnia and are no
strangers to this kind of experience) a few times.
On their new CD, "Fucc the INS" (misspelling intentional), they cover this
song.
There's really nothing like hearing the "I'm too sexy" lyric sung by a man
with a thick eastern European accent.
>>care to explain to my clueless self?
>
>I oughtn't, but it was a phrase that appeared in a video game made in
>Japan, sold in the US. Somehow it became a meme.
There's a video floating around where various ads and corporate logos are
parodied using this phrase. Another band we play with sometimes have used
it in their live show.
-g,
they're punk, of course
--
Murder of Crows @ http://www.murderofcrows.net
NEXT SHOW: GoGirlsMusicFest @ Sit & Spin, Seattle, Sat Sept. 29 2001
"The risk of loss is the shadow cast by affection." -- Carolyn Hax
Maggie
> On Sat, 15 Sep 2001 00:01:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
> > On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:04:05 -0700, David Scotton
> > <dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> > >On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:32:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
> >
> > >> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
> > >> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
> > >> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
> > >
> > >Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
> >
> > Nope, but was on hand for FFVII, which had some great one liners.
>
> Ah, yes. There was Barret's famous "Shi't!" and some other good lines
> (The apostrophe may have been in a different place).
It's been a while since I played VII, but I think that's where the
apostrophe was.
> But for its
> ability to cause confusion, Final Fantasy Tactics is unparalleled.
<*wide eyed*>
What *are* you getting me into, dearest?
--
Maggie UIN 10248195 http://www.darkfriends.net
"Shadow found himself thinking about a garage in San Clemente with box
after box of rare, strange and beautiful books in it rotting away, all
of them browning and wilting and being eaten by mold and insects in the
darkness, waiting for someone who would never come to set them free."
- Neil Gaiman, cut from _American Gods_
scifantasy
>> But for its
>> ability to cause confusion, Final Fantasy Tactics is unparalleled.
>
><*wide eyed*>
>
>What *are* you getting me into, dearest?
*Evil, evil grin*
You have no idea.
--
scifantasy
"RTF*"
Zackery Gay
> Zackery Gay wrote:
>
> >> I'm not advocating forcing Western culture on anyone-- there's nothing
> >> in Islam that is necessarily and inherently incompatible with
> >> democratic ideals.
> >
> >AFAIK, Islam _means_ submission. Submissiveness is the antithesis of
> >capitalism, and is not terribly compatible with democracy.
>
> Like most, you miss the point. The submission is to God, and there's not
> a damn thing in that which is incompatible with capitalism OR democracy.
>
> Let me leave you with a parting thought from a religion which is
> dominant is many if not most capitalist democracies:
>
> "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless,
> not as I will but as Thou wilt."
>
>
All right, I opened my big mouth and made a generalization based on my
rather average knowledge of the Islamic faith. I didn't consider how
closely that aspect of Islam reflects Christianity, and as I said in
another post: I meant to communicate that this attitude seems to have
contributed to keeping them in the power of ruthless despots.
Everything else I can come up with seems to have gaping holes in its
logic, so I'll just go lurk now.
--
Zackery Gay zb...@mtu.edu
UIN:126120579
"Throw all your bullets in the fire. . . and run like hell"
-Metallica
Jim Hill
>
>Contrary to what Stephen King wrote in the _Running Man_, it takes more
>than a quarter tank of jet fuel to melt a building's internal supports,
>apparently.
You don't have to melt the supports, just get 'em hot enough for the
properties to change.
Jennifer Winters
> Christopher Tong wrote:
> >
> >Contrary to what Stephen King wrote in the _Running Man_, it takes more
> >than a quarter tank of jet fuel to melt a building's internal supports,
> >apparently.
>
> You don't have to melt the supports, just get 'em hot enough for the
> properties to change.
Melting is a type of change of properties...specifically, when a solid
substance becomes liquid. What other properties are you thinking of?
--
Dreamweaver
In Memoriam: 09-11-01
David Loewe, Jr.
>"Jim Hill" wrote:
>> Christopher Tong wrote:
Just a guess here - tensile strength, sheer strength, ductility.
John Dilick
<jewi...@vt.edu> wrote:
Melting is, specifically, a phase change.
You can change lots of other things (i.e. shear strength, torsional
strength, ductility and compressive loading ability) without changing
a substance's phase.
--
John Dilick
dili...@home.com
If at first you don't succeed, cheat. Cheat until caught, then lie.
Jim Hill
I knew as asoon as I posted this that some genius would weigh in with
the correct but pointless comment that a solid->liquid phase transition
is a "change of properties". I also knew that "You don't have to melt
'em" would be overlooked as a statement disqualifying the solid->liquid
transition from the list of other ways a fire can ruin metal structures.
I was thinking, since you asked, of materials coming out of solution, of
solid->solid phase transitions, of heat treatments reducing tensile
strength, of brittle<->ductile transitions, et freakin' cetera, many of
which occur before the solid->liquid transition we call "melting". From
the wording of my orginal sentence, the gifted reader would conclude
that I referred to those events which occur at temperatures below the
melting point.
Matt Hackell
> Jennifer Winters wrote:
[snip]
> >Melting is a type of change of properties...specifically, when a solid
> >substance becomes liquid. What other properties are you thinking of?
>
> I knew as asoon as I posted this that some genius would weigh in with
> the correct but pointless comment that a solid->liquid phase transition
> is a "change of properties". I also knew that "You don't have to melt
> 'em" would be overlooked as a statement disqualifying the solid->liquid
> transition from the list of other ways a fire can ruin metal structures.
>
> I was thinking, since you asked, of materials coming out of solution, of
> solid->solid phase transitions, of heat treatments reducing tensile
> strength, of brittle<->ductile transitions, et freakin' cetera, many of
> which occur before the solid->liquid transition we call "melting". From
> the wording of my orginal sentence, the gifted reader would conclude
> that I referred to those events which occur at temperatures below the
> melting point.
I have nothing to add, but this has got to be the least likely exchange
to take place in a thread called "Feelings..."
--
Matt Hackell
I am not here to speak to you about the pursuit of excellence. I am here
to offer an alternative.
Garrison Keilor, to Princeton University's Class of 2001
Johan Gustafsson
leigh_...@paramount.com (Leigh Butler) writes:
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:04:05 -0700, David Scotton
> <dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> >On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:32:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
["all your base"]
> >> (Thinking of Resident Evil, where one character insists that your
> >> character take the lockpick - "You, the master of unlocking!" - which
> >> I'm sure makes perfect sense in Japanese...)
> >
> >Have you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics? It's crazy.
>
> Nope, but was on hand for FFVII, which had some great one liners.
>
> And the bitch-slapping, of course.
>
> It was groovy fun.
Sure, but I think the "Honey Bee Inn" sequence scarred me for life...
--
Johan Gustafsson *** e98...@efd.lth.se
Fight, Rand al'Thor! For everlasting peace!
The Great Gray Skwid
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:04:05 -0700, David Scotton
> <dsco...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> >On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:32:47 GMT, leigh_...@paramount.com said:
> >> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 19:54:47 +0200, Frank van Schie
> >> <fvs...@wanadoo.nl> wrote:
> >> >http://www.hugefans.com/allyourbase/files/zerowing.gif
> >> Oh, now that's Comedy.
> >> Japanese video game translations always have a few howlers, IME, but
> >> that's got to be the worst I've ever seen.
> >You really have to watch the flash video to get the full effect.
> >http://www.planettribes.com/allyourbase/
> I have no response to this.
> Wow, I'm smiling. That's so refreshing.
My minor contributions to the phenomenon:
http://skwid.home.texas.net/16tons.jpg
http://skwid.home.texas.net/zigsaved.jpg
http://skwid.home.texas.net/badzig.jpg
http://skwid.home.texas.net/AYBRIAN.jpg
You might notice something of a theme...
--
| | |\ | | | ) Theudegisklos "Skwid" Sweinbrothar
|/| |\ |/ | |X| ( SKWID, Vulture V4 pilot ( The Humblest Mollusc
| | | | | | | ) Evan "Skwid" Langlinais ) on the Net
"What Would Cthulhu Do?" http://skwid.home.texas.net
Leigh Butler
>Leigh Butler wrote:
>>
>>>>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
>>
>>Anyone not too sexy for this joke
>
>Damn you, Leigh Butler. When next we meet, there's no way I'm
>disco-dancing.
Not even if I bring a catwalk?
Janet Rolsma
wrote:
>On 15 Sep 2001 01:03:37 -0600, jim...@swcp.com (Jim Hill) wrote:
>
>>Leigh Butler wrote:
>>>
>>>>>As in the base of the pillar, or like "All your base are belong to us"?
>>>
>>>Anyone not too sexy for this joke
>>
>>Damn you, Leigh Butler. When next we meet, there's no way I'm
>>disco-dancing.
>
>Not even if I bring a catwalk?
>
Let me know when and where and I'll provide the groovy shirt like the one
from the video.
Janet
--
Let's see if Jim can walk the walk and talk the talk.
Kathie
wrote:
>
>It's time to end this game. Fuck the strongmen-- pull them down, feed
>their bodies to wild dogs, destroy their corrupt organizations root
>and branch, and hunt their henchmen and underlings to the ends of the
>earth. We need to do with Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest what we
>did with Japan-- tear the oppressive regimes down to the ground, hang
>the people responsible, and start over. Yeah, it'll piss some people
>off, but fuck them. They don't like us anyway. The rest of the people
>want things they're not getting, things we take for granted: the rule
>of law, freedom of the press, freedom from oppression. They don't have
>those things because we've tolerated their downright medieval leaders
>for too long, but they deserve the same rights and freedoms that
>everyone else does, and they should be given a real chance to get
>them.
>
Over the past week I have found my feelings and attitudes about this
situation changing every few hours everything from wipe the entire
Middle East off the planet to the hell with them let's step out
totally, withdraw financial and technological and any other sort of
aid we provide and let them sink into the stone age and wipe each
other out to a mindnumbing sadness where I really don't care what we
do since nothing can undo what happened last week. But today, I read
the statement from Mullah Mohammed Omar that we were using the case
against bin Laden as a PRETEXT to destroy their system of Islam, that
was the final straw. I agree with you totally. We need to get these
lunatics out of control in all these countries no matter what it
takes. Human rights groups have been begging world leaders to do
something about the Taliban for years. If a "remove the strongman"
policy had been in effect years ago the people who are responsible
for giving these terrorist a safe place to hide would all be gone.
Until last week, I was opposed to the US toppling foreign
governements, today I think that we should draw up a list as soon as
possible and start knocking them down.
I don't know if this post even makes sense. I have been having
problems making sense over the last four or five days. I am just too
terrified. Terrifed about the safety of our nation, terrified for my
draft age sons, terrified about the possibility of biological weapons
being used anywhere, terrified of our government, terrified of the
Afghani, Iraqi and other governments, terrified of radical changes in
our freedoms, just sick and terrified in general. So if it isn't
sensible, please forgive me.
Kathie