Aggrad02

I will pm it to you. It isn't anything exciting other than it was unexpected, I wouldn't want to take that experience away from anyone else. --Dustan

Didn't know where esle to put this. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/ By Matthew Philips Newsweek Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.

Thanks Brant, No one has a claim on my production, regardless of the name they use. --Dustan That is why you're wrong. Indeed the state has a legitimate claim on a portion of your production. Should you receive a service for no fee? First off, Who is the State? If you can answer me that, then we can move to the second question that can only be answered after the first one: What service is this "State" providing me? BTW: Just like the state has no claim on my production, it also does not have the right force feed me crap I don't want. If I need any service from anyone (State, Individual, Corporation) I will gladly pay for it.

Thanks Brant, No one has a claim on my production, regardless of the name they use. --Dustan

How is involuntary taxation not theft? --Dustan

I was reading Greenspan's book last night and ran across a mention of Ayn Rand that was not listed in the index. It quite pleasant since I had not anticipated it, so be on the look out. --Dustan

Yea, but I least I can do a little dance around my room. --D

It has been edited. I wasn't aware of that, thanks. --Dustan

Yes Michael this makes finding any information very difficult. Even when presented with information that maybe correct most times the tone that it is presented really questions the authenticity. (This is from both sides) --Dustan

Michael, I agree with you about the language, but I do not feel that it is due to "the flowery language of religous [islam]" but due to their culture regardless of religion. I may be stereotyping here but many of the people in that part of the world (From Turkey through Iran to India) have such mannerism in their language, hardly ever are they direct when speaking but they dance. In my business all of my suppliers, most of my competitors and some good friends that I have met have been either from Pakistan, Turkey, or India, and it has been hard to learn to take what they say and figure out what they really mean. For instance, when my supplier says that he will be getting a certain product in next week that I need, this can mean one of several things: 1) He really is getting it in next week, 2) He has no idea if he can get it or not, but is going to try and find out and if he can get it, it might be next week it might be next month 3) he knows for sure that he can get it but he has no idea when or 4) He can't get it and probably won't, but won't tell me this just in case he eventually does. Another interesting story is when a friend of mine Manish and I opened up our first business together. We went to our supplier (for the first time) and spent about 4 hours picking out goods to sell. It takes the staff there about an additional 45 minutes to count and package everything up. Then we go and stick with the owner to settle the invoice. Manu had told me to let him talk and he would handle the buying. He spent about 30 minutes haggling with the owner over pennies here and there. In the end we got about $40 off a $4,000 bill. Then Manu told him we needed 30 days credit on about $2500 of the bill and that we would leave him a check to deposit in 30 days. This was a man who we just met for the first time and to who Manish never told his real name too. After another 20 minutes of arguing over this, Manu told me we were not going to buy and that we were going to leave. The owner said fine and as we were almost to our cars in the parking lot, he came out and called us back in and eventually gave us the credit. Now listen to this, we didn't even need the credit, we had enough money to pay him, when I asked Manish about this he said "as long as we owe him money he will never try and cheat us in the future, it is like insurance". The whole business experience was extremely different from anything I had ever experienced before. Back to Ahmadinejad, I don't think he is evil (other than being collectivist and religious, but that would include most of the world), nor do I think he is antisemitic. I think he is sincere in wanting peaceful resolutions (who doesn't want peace if they can get it). But I do think that they are trying to build a bomb. It is something about the way they talk about it, that is similar to the way my "desi" friends talk that leads me to believe that they are going after the bomb. But I also don't think they would use it against Israel for many reasons. --Dustan

Are they only sold online or do they have retail locations? Can I become an Ojo dealer like I can become a T-Moblie Dealer?

WHooo Hoo!!! We have gotten some more of our rights back today: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20999950/ PORTLAND, Ore. - Two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional because they allow search warrants to be issued without a showing of probable cause, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as amended by the Patriot Act, "now permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment." (More)

I seriously hope so. I actually seriously hope we don't have to find out. --Dustan

Very frighting scenario. May reason save us.

Bob, I thought you might like this: http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/04102...nnett-which.php It was sometime during middle school when I actually began to think about the posters. Every one of my classrooms seemed naturally endowed with those laminated squares, patched up along the wall like a quilt of inspiring messages. Some posters became classics, such as the kitten grasping a rope above a sentence that read “Hang in there!” or the long rambling message, each word a different color, beginning: “In twenty years it won’t matter what kind of car you drove or what type of shoes you wore...” and ending in “...but what will matter is the education you received.” Of all these posters, one bothered me most of all. I have seen this same message in many forms, but the one in my seventh grade homeroom class read: “There are followers and then there are leaders. Which one are you?” Long before I read the works of Ayn Rand, this message seemed misleading in some deeply important manner that I could not conceptualize. I simply thought to myself: is that truly all the world is made up of? I am neither a leader nor a follower. Where do I belong? In school, I hated doing group projects. It is not that I disliked my fellow students; I simply enjoyed doing things my way. Only I knew what I really wanted, and only I could meet my own expectations. Group work invariably included subtle character manipulations, a shake-down of sorts to settle everyone into their appropriate slots. Finding myself as the group leader, I could never convince the other members to do exactly what I wanted. As a follower, I was forced to let my ideas slip away for the better good. Reading that same poster again and again, the confused thoughts of my younger self echoed in my mind: I am neither a leader nor a follower. Where do I belong? The truth is, of course, that there is a third category. I personify it as a silent man standing in the shadows thinking thoughts that no one can ascertain. In the stadium of the world, the cheerleaders jump, the crowd cheers, and the silent man walks away. Why does this man get left out in a two-fold world? It’s simple: leaders make themselves seen, and followers are so vast in numbers that they cannot help but be noticed. The man in shadows requires nothing, follows no one. That same poster adorned the wall in my freshman math class. “There are followers and then there are leaders. Which one are you?” Sitting in my uncomfortable desk, rereading the words over and over again, I began to hate that poster and the message it conveyed to the class. “The world is not so foolishly simple!” I wanted to cry to the hand that inked such a message, to the bored kid sitting behind me, to the teacher that blissfully plastered up posters without thinking about their contents. What most people do not realize is that both the follower and the leader are mutually dependent upon each other in order to maintain their positions. A leader cannot lead if there is no one willing to follow. A follower cannot bow before an empty throne. The relationship is symbiotic and binding. There is another way to live; a way that is neither as a leader nor a follower. It is the way of the individual. Ayn Rand understood this dilemma. Whereas I wanted to tear that poster from the wall, Rand created characters who refused to acknowledge the meaning of its message. Such a message could not function in their world. Howard Roark would shrug and walk on, Hank Rearden might scowl, and Dagny Taggart would laugh. The leader-follower scenario does not play out among Rand’s heroes. Certainly, they may seem like leaders, but unlike the traditional definition, they are never dependent upon those who look up to them. Roark, Rearden, and Dagny never asked for followers. They simply lived the way they wanted to live and controlled their worlds with earned skills and riveted intensity. They were the individuals who played on no teams, who accepted no compromise, and who most definitely did not care about what posters said. In my sophomore year of high school, I picked up a copy of The Fountainhead. Occasionally, when I looked up to catch my breath, those same words haunted me from above the blackboard. “Which one are you?” it taunted. But no tides of implacable anger rose inside me this time. Now I knew. Taking a deep breath, I plunged back into the text and let the world around me evaporate. Jessica Bennett attends school at Truman State University where she is studying for a BA in communications. She has loved writing all her life, and hopes to incorporate her passion into a full-time writing career.

Brant, There are some article and reports that the Military spread the diseases when ever they could on purpose. Also, just because it is not a "law" does not mean that it does not become part of policy. The President is commander and chief of the armed forces. If military was exterminating Indian populations then it was policy. --Dustan

Roger read: http://www.iearn.org/hgp/aeti/aeti-1997/na...-americans.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_hi...igenous_peoples http://www.wicocomico-indian-nation.com/pages/genocide.html From L. Frank Baum, author of "The Wizard of Oz" Quote; The nobility of the Redskin is extinquished and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The whites by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.(WHY NOT ANNIHILATION?)Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced, better they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are An Indian named American Horse, who had been friendly to the American troops for years gave this narrative of the slaughter at Wounded Knee; "they turned their guns, Hotchkiss guns upon the women who were in the lodges standing there under a flag of truce, and of course as soon as they were fired upon they fled...There was a women with an infant in her arms who was killed as she almost touched the flag of truce, and the women and children of course were strewn all along the circular village untill they were dispatched. Right near the flag of truce a mother was shot down with her infant; the child not knowing that it's mother was dead was still nursing, and that especially was a very sad sight.The women as they were fleeing with their babies were killed together, shot right through, and the women who were heavy with child were also killed...After most of them had been killed a cry was made that all those who were not killed or wounded should come forth and they would be safe. Little boys who were not wounded came out of their places of refuge, and as soon as they came in sight, a number of soldiers surrounded them and butchered them there... Of course it would have been alright if only the men were killed; we would feel almost grateful for it. But the fact of the killing of the women and more especially of the of the young boys and girls who are to go to make up the future of the Indian people, is the saddest part of the whole affair and we feel it very sorely." Unquote" Shortly after the massacre, Baum stated his approval, in the "Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer's paper stating that; we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up and wipe these untamed and untameable creatures from the face of the earth. Well at least they didn't bake them in an oven, Right Roger? What is really sickening is people who will not even let you touch the "Israel/Palestine" because of the WWII holocaust, but will turn a blind eye to other atrocities that occur around the world. My gut feeling is they do this because what happened in WWII happened to "white" people, and incidences like this happened to "brown" people, like the Native Americans, or the Sudanese, or African Slaves. --Dustan

Bob, In the first quote. Did he consider logic as mathematics or was he just talking about numerical mathematics. --Dustan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americ...e_United_States This is just a summary. Also one that comes immediately to mind was the treatment of Native Americans in Texas. The Commanche and Apache were very warful tribes and terrorized the expanding settlers. In response the settlers, US Army, and Texas Rangers would go on Indian killing sprees. Also, I can't remember off the top of my head, but a Texas Ranger Captian caught the Commanches (the entire Commanche nation, men, women and children) in the Palo Duro Canyon in far west Texas. These were the Commanches lead by Quannah Parker and they would hide in the canyon to go undetected. The Rangers went in and killed every single horse in the whole valley. The horse was to the Indians what oil is to us today, they critical means of survival. This effectively eliminated the Commanches and forced the ones who could make it on foot to the reservations (concentration camp?) in Oklahoma. If you want more information, go research it. Especially Andrew Jackson and then the plains indian wars. --Dustan

I am doing research so I will see if I can verify this. Thanks, Dustan

Careful, "we" is all wrong. --Brant When I say we, I mean as United States policy at the time. --Dustan That was not U.S. policy at that or any time. You are talking about Hitler, now. --Brant No I am talking about the US policy and actions towards the native Americans of this county. --Dustan

Careful, "we" is all wrong. --Brant When I say we, I mean as United States policy at the time. --Dustan

Well what would happen here if all of the illegal and legal Mexican immigrants moved to California and declared independence? We would have an all out war. But by the same token, that is basically what we did to the Native Americans in this country, so we are not necessarily off the hook, we just made sure that almost of all of the natives were killed. --Dustan

Thanks for the information Bob. The history that I have read so far implies that the Palestinians would have agreed to a one state solution but the Jews wanted their own state, and only attacked after the Jews declared independence. Also were all of the Jewish settlements connected and in the same area or were their Arab settlements mixed in. --Dustan

HEY!!! I'm not Bob I think I could accept that argument. But then like you said at the end finding a home, for the homeless was probably very difficult. Especially when people were already living were they decided to go. --Dustan