Menchise

The teachers issue is a tricky one. In my opinion, it depends on who takes the initiative. If the teacher raises the issue in front of the children, then it's wrong, but if one of the students asks a question about the issue, then the teacher has the right to express an opinion.

quote:Granted.. the demo is cheesy but hey! thats the demo for you.. DO NOT diss a game or comment on a game just because of the demo, prime reason why I don't judge a game untill I've played through it.The whole point of playing a demo is to help one decide if the game is worth buying. The only reason why I got games like Deus Ex and Mafia was because I was impressed by the demos. The full games impressed me even more. If a demo is trash, it is more likely that the full game will suck even more, because it has ten times the trash of the demo. It is uncommon for a good game to have a demo that puts people off buying it. I haven't played the Freelancer demo yet, but I will not touch Freelancer with a ten metre pole if the demo disappoints me, despite waiting years for its release.

You want to know why the French may hate Americans? Take a look at what's being written in this thread. Could it get any more insulting than this? quote:if it wasnt for the US they would be speaking german right now.If it wasn't for the French Navy the US might still be a British colony! quote:thats gratitude for youThat's liberation for you: they have a right to disagree. Get used to it.

Did Bush colour his hair recently?

quote:and who cares if angelina jolie can act?The problem wasn't her acting. The problem was that the character was poorly written. There wasn't much that she could do with the script.

Ever since I started using Linux for Internet access, I've never had to worry about viruses again. The system is so immune to virus attacks that hackers don't bother trying.

quote:Top Ten BAD Video Game Movies Don't they mean "Top Ten ONLY Video Game Movies"? Anyway, I thought Final Fantasy was good, despite its incoherence and vagueness (e.g. ghosts being killed with bullets and the spirits never being adequately explained). The characters were substantial and well-voiced (especially Sutherland's), and the animation was impressive. In my opinion, it's the best game-inspired movie so far. Tomb Raider had a few good parts (e.g. the fight scene on jump cables in the mansion), but Angelina Jolie wasn't one of them. She was nothing but star power for a character that had no substance, with the notable exception of that brief scene with Jolie and Voight. I could not have been more disappointed with Wing Commander. It was soooooo botched!

Hehe. Looks like a minelayer to me.

LOL!

AUSTRALIAN CAPITALISM: You have one cow. The government sells you a local school, which you turn into a milking academy, cancelling classes such as reading, writing, and arithmetic. A second cow arrives by boat from Indonesia to request asylum, and is locked up in a concentration camp. The government sells you another school to pay for "border protection".

1634

Hehe. It's been a while since I've seen "All Your Base". I wonder what the next fad will be.

quote:If this is true its one more reason why we should bring down the communists in N. Korea!If this is true it's one more reason why we should bring down the capitalists in Australia!

quote:Hey this calls for a celebration! Me and Nick final agreed on something! The first rounds on me.Yippee!

quote:For those of you that don't seem able to understand the statement I made above I'll try to make it a little clearer. "Foxnews is good for a laugh though I have to admit."= biased laughable news reporting!!I got the point. I was just contributing. I should have included a smiley to emphasise that. quote:Yea, but it isn't like you post all that many links to unbiased sites either.The best description of bias that I have ever read comes from one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short stories: to "twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts". Bias can be detected in a variety of ways, but to say that a site is biased because it advocates an ideology is inadequate. I do not claim that Fox News is biased because it advocates right-wing politics. I claim that it's biased because of its manipulation of opposing views. The most overt example is Bill O'Reilly: when he 'interviews' a guest that he disagrees with, he lets the guest state an initial hypothesis, then he interrupts with a contrary response. Everytime the guest tries to elaborate on the hypothesis with an argument, O'Reilly repeatedly interrupts them and diverts the discussion while elaborating his own argument. In the end, O'Reilly has expressed an argument and the now irritated guest has expressed a bunch of fragmented assertions. This is bias. The fact that O'Reilly is right-wing is irrelevant, much like the fact that the sites I reference are leftist is irrelevant.

quote:Don't even get me started on this depression bull. Their depressed because they want to be plain and simple. They need to get a grip and stop feeling sorry for them selves and do something about it.There are two types of depression: the psychological type and the mental illness type. The first is where people just feel very upset for whatever reason (in many cases, they're not consciously aware of the real reason), and what they need depends on the issues involved (it could be emotional support, counseling, a kick in the pants, or all of the above). The second is a psychiatric disorder that is often beyond anyone's control. It can lead to either suicidal or violent tendencies, and most who have this condition require medication to stay in one piece. There is nothing "plain and simple" about either of these conditions. quote:Granted there are some out there that work and just don't bring in enough to make it. I don't mind that much buy their kid something to eat. Their at least trying to change their lives and do their part. The ones that piss me off are the ones that just set there able to work and their not doing anything but taking food off my plate. So they can feel sorry for themselves or do drugs. These are the ones I'm refering to.This is a fallacy that irritates me: the strawman argument. It involves the substitution of a reality with a constructed image. You say that you are pissed off by able-bodied persons who choose not to work. This is the constructed image that you project on the poor. Anyone among the poor who contradicts with that image is assumed to be a minority, hence the reference to "some out there that work and just don't bring in enough to make it". One can even cite individual examples to support the image, but it's still constructed from preconceptions. In all the years that I have repeatedly read and heard this argument, I have never seen or heard any evidence that the 'lazy majority' is really a majority, hence it is not a justification for the withdrawal of services that benefit people who are not within this group. quote:Hehe Foxnews is good for a laugh though I have to admit.Fox News. "Fair and Balanced" my ass!

quote:BCM ON G4!!!Hehe. When I first saw that title, I thought you meant that BCM was running on a Mac. Silly me.

I will finish all the things that I've been putting off (e.g. my articles, my website, re-compiling the Linux kernel, etc.).

quote:I could not find a specific link on the matter but several websites DO talk about backback and suitcase nukes, of russian origin. those would be 1 kiloton in strenght, much enough to do damage if detonated in a populated area. you can kiss new york good bye, becasue the radiation will scare off every american.The point I was making was that scuds can only be labelled as a means of delivering WMD if it has such a payload. Backpacks may not be the best example to point this out, but you get the gist. quote:as for the inspectors recovering 98 scuds, thats great... but what about the rest???Why do you assume that there were more? The evidence indicated 98, and 98 were accounted for. It's possible that they have some now, which is why there are inspectors in Iraq now. quote:Iraq will almost certainly attack Israel again and with the present leadership there I doubt they will be able to show the same restraint as in the Gulf War.That's assuming that Iraq has the missiles to attack Israel again. Besides, the Israeli government would not need to show so much restraint because it's highly unlikely that any missiles (if they exist) would reach their targets given the improvements in Israeli defenses since the Gulf War. quote:In fact Iraq is a democracy and as a matter of fact it is a direct democracy. The United States on the other hand is not a democracy, I think it is time for you to get a grip little kitten. Just because their democracy is corrupted that doesn't make it any less of a democracy.A corrupt democracy is when a group or groups among the general population, whether they're a majority or a minority, have disproportionate decision-making power. Iraq is not a democracy or a corrupt democracy. When the people vote for one candidate because he's the only candidate, and all political opposition is violently put down, it's a dictatorship, because even though the formalities of the electoral process have been implemented, the decision has already been made by the dictator, hence the process has no meaning. In a corrupt democracy, elections are rigged. In Iraq, elections are purely ceremonial, hence they don't need to be rigged. quote:I'm a very patriotic American and I don't believe a single word that comes out of Emperor Bushs puppet hole.I should have put quotes around the word "patriotic" in my statement. Sorry about that. quote:These are just a few of Jaguar's statments that are totally uncivil. Most of them are targeted towards you Menchise. I myself can be a very uncivil person. If he chooses not to be civil then I will happily lower myself to his level, and enjoy doing it.I don't blame you for enjoying it, but responding to uncivil behaviour with more uncivil behaviour will only encourage more of the same. In a forum like this, "more of the same" will lead to a closed thread. Besides, it's not worth the waste of time.

STOP!!! This mudslinging has gone WAY too far! If you can't be civil, then don't post.

Re: US grand strategy and Iraq Pramit Pal Choudhuri wrote an article that put forward the idea that the US government has a grand strategy of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East in order to defeat terrorism. I put forward a contrary view, because Choudhuri's article is deeply flawed. Choudhuri describes a sustainable process toward global hegemony as the establishment of "an international system that enshrines economic and political values which serves the interests of both the great powers and all potential rivals". This hypothesis has an intrinsic contradiction. It assumes that global hegemony is preferable when it assembles a system that all freedom-loving people are supposed to like, but if the proposed system really does serve the interests of "both the great powers and all potential rivals", it would not require a hegemon to impose it like some global mafia, which is what the grand strategy amounts to. Democracy comes from the people rising up and making their own decisions, not from a military superpower imposing its will. The latter is intrinsically opposed to the essence of democracy, because democracy encourages the people to make independent decisions that are not necessarily in the interests of the superpower. When it is in the interests of a superpower to appear to be pro-democratic, it will promote the establishment of a pseudo-democracy (what Choudhuri calls "capitalist democracies"), where the people have decision-making power over issues that do not affect the interests of the superpower, such as the election of so-called representatives who were pre-selected by the economic elite. The transitional pseudo-democracy of Afghanistan has even less credibility as a democracy than the unflattering model that I present above, not least because the violent electoral rigging and the appointment of brutal warlords as representatives of a "liberated" people do not amount to any meaningful representation let alone accountability. In short, Afghanistan has a transitional government that has been moving away from democracy since its establishment, while simultaneously being promoted by the US government as a budding democracy in the Middle East. The prospects for the "grand strategy" seem awfully bleak to me. Choudhuri also provides a laughable attempt to explain away the history of US intervention in the Middle East, which has been anything but pro-democratic, and included the strengthening of Saddam Hussein even during his worst crimes against humanity. Choudhuri paraphrases Richard Haass when he writes that "because of reasons of oil, the Cold War and containing Iran, the US did not encourage democracy in the Arab world. The region has now become the world?s "democratic exception". He went on to say, "It is not in the US interest ? or that of Muslims ? for America to continue this exception"" In case Choudhuri didn't notice, oil is still a factor, the containment of Iran is an even bigger priority today, and the Cold War provides as little justification for limiting democracy as fighting terrorism does. Therefore, if those were the real reasons for limiting democracy in the past, then future actions will not be any different because the circumstances are no different from what they were before. This leads on to one of the most remarkable contradictions to the "grand strategy" fantasy: TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System), promoted by the Bush Administration in mid-2002 and once compared to the Stasi (East German Secret Police). It would be extremely unusual for the Bush Administration to push for democracy in the Middle East at the same time that it pushes for fascism in its own country. In conclusion, the strategy of the US government is not the spreading of democracy in the Middle East, but the spreading of US domination in the Middle East. As long as the US government is directly involved in political change within the region, the best that one can hope for are a few pseudo-democracies that make decisions so conveniently in line with US interests that one could mistake the voters for pod people. However, the more likely possibility is a bunch of military juntas. [ 01-01-2003, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: Menchise ]

quote:oh heres a prime one... how about desert storm? he fired scuds on israel after we attacked him...Those scuds had conventional payloads, hence they were not WMD. quote:maybe you were too busy reading some socialist propogandaIf you're going to assume that everything written by a socialist is a lie, then why should I, being socialist, waste my time talking to you? quote:and dont think about saying a scud is not a WMD... it is. if you can rig it with nerve gas that can wipe out half a civillization its a WMDA backpack can be rigged with a nuke. Does that mean that all backpacks are WMD? Should the US military invade all airports, hotels, camp sites, and other suspected hiding places of backpacks?! Should all backpackers be held incommunicado on the suspicion that they may know another backpacker who plans to destroy a city?! It's ridiculous! quote:hes ALWAYS had those. its not hard to hide shit like that in a big ass desert.You need to learn more about how weapons inspectors operate. It's not like they walk in with a clipboard and tick stuff off. In the 1990s, the inspectors accounted for 98 scuds that were buried in the desert. They didn't do it by playing "hide and seek", they did it with good old fashioned police work: the inspectors inquired the scud manufacturers in Russia, got the receipts and serial numbers for the missiles, and confronted the Iraqis with this concrete evidence, giving them no choice but to confess. The Iraqis then brought the inspectors to the desert where the scuds were buried and the serial numbers were compared and matched. Despite an incomplete declaration and repeated attempts to deceive the inspectors, Iraq was fundamentally disarmed in 1996. If the Iraqis are hiding ballistic missiles today, the inspectors will find them. quote:and where do you get this twisted ass info from saying that the israeli intelligence services doesnt think saddam is a threat to them??? are you an intelligence officer? do you know for a fact??? you have a freind in israeli intelligence???Here. quote:saddam used scuds on them before and he is stupid enough to do it againSaddam attacked Israel during the Gulf War not because he felt like it, but for strategic reasons. The attack was a deliberate attempt to provoke a retaliation from the Israelis, which would have splintered the Arab members of the coalition.

quote:Iraq has already threatened to attack Israel with WMD's if he is attacked by us.Give me a source. quote:Our allies are behind us, why would they be if we had no proof?The "allies" have not seen any proof, and it wasn't until the US government offered a few carrots that the other major powers started to fall into line (here is my source). Apart from a few "me too" countries like Britain and Australia, the coalition has been built with bribery and intimidation. quote:We are going to take out Saddam, BECAUSE he is crazy enough to use WMD'sNo he's not. Saddam knows all too well that any aggression would be the end of him. He wouldn't dare attack Israel with baseball bats let alone WMD. Another point worth mentioning is that despite being one of Israel's neighbours, Iraq is not regarded as a serious threat by Israeli intelligence agencies. quote:This is gonna be quick, targeted, and complete within a week, then Iraq will be rebuilt, with a democratic governmentA democratic government in Iraq is so contrary to US interests that it simply won't happen. quote:The world is about to change BIG time, and YOUR favorite form of government will be placed on the ashheap of history where it belongs!!Jaguar, I've had enough of your flagrantly dishonest innuendos about my preference for particular forms of government. They're a total waste of web space. Try being civil for a change.