Steve Gagne

Ellen

I hadn't seen it that way. I was seeing it from the viewpoint of "externalization phenomena", which comes to us from Jung via Eliade et al.

But I went over to the Wiki page you drew the quote from, and found this in the discussion section:

This is all very interesting, but I'd like to point out that you're psychoanalysing a fiction film. You're putting more mental effort into interpreting the writer than he did writing it. You both make some very interesting points; the idea of Morbius as a psychotic living in a fantasy dream world of his own creation certainly adds to the texture of the character, and even strengthens the performance for modern viewers....

Umm, yeah, what he said.

steve

JD --

~ Overall, FORBIDDEN PLANET ... was as Freudian inspired as could be. I mean, we're talkin' The 'Id' here (I think 'Robby' was SuperEgo: ineffectual when the chips are down). The Krell's prob was the same as Morpheus' group; they also had 'Id's (implied), and their technology let theirs loose also....

~ As a non-SF aside: THE SAVAGE IS LOOSE is the only movie closer to having a Freudian inspiration...rather...orientation.

Freudian? More Jungian. The "individual" id was essentially powerless, until conjoined (through the fictional advanced technology) to the darkness of others', shared (collective) unconscious. At that point its evil, destructive forces would start to feed on themselves, creating an "ecstatic" condition which overpowered, not just the higher individual ethical conscience (Freudian superego), but actually destroyed any consciousness of identity (atomistic ego). Definitely Jung (by way of Eliade and others).

BTW, the reference to the robot was iconic. (As in Jungian archetypal symbolism?) Like "Play it again, Sam.", which line never occurred in Casablanca. But it was the same robot in the movie and the tv show.

~ I presume 'on mass' means 'on average.' I'll not get into 'mass quantity of the universe' discussions here.

~ Such may be, but, this thread's concerned with the remaining 'non-average', no? Like, what we see in the mirror, with wonderings about some other planets possessing like ilk? --- On mass, the universe is mostly not bumblebees either; ntl...

Perhaps a mis-spelling of "en masse", meaning "taken altogether".

It still means I'm going to need a new version of SETI@Home -- in over 7 years on SETI I haven't found anything even remotely resembling the "WOW" signal of 45 years ago. Not even a nibble.

l8r

steve

Debunking the argument from "irreducable complexity" (bacteria flagellum)

And here's another video explaining the same stuff

And a video (3d simulation) which shows how the bacteria flagellum looks like

Another video/simulation that shows how the flagellum works and looks like

I only have 28k dial-up (I live in a redlined area) & so it takes me days to download multiple videos. I also share this machine with my two teenage sons, who would rather play Halo, RuneScape (run-escape?), Renegade and Red Alert in realtime rather than let their old man download anything. Is there any way of getting transcripts for these & other video links?

In "The Forbidden Planet" (1956), the ancient race names the Krell were quite benevolent, until they got wiped out by their own invention and their suppressed savage instincts.

Which "suppressed savage instincts" were found to corrupt, and eventually derive from, the "benevolent human explorers" as well. This addressed the concept of internal corruption from historical collectivist viewpoints.

"My Favorite Martian" (1963 TV series), had a man from Mars who was quite friendly.

"Uncle Martin" the martian, however did have a duplicitous, deceptive, paranoid side, characteristics he shared with the "Dr. Smith" character from the series "Lost in Space" a couple years later. The difference being that the former was a rather good-natured fellow only seeking his own well-being until he could return home, whereas the latter was a destructive Commie Russian Pinko Bastard (to put it mildly). Or, to put it as Robbie the Robot did, "Danger-Danger-Will-Robinson!"

What a hoot! This is hilarious. How come it wasn't posted under "Humor" or "Rants"?

Everyone keeps trying to tell "Bob" that his warmonger attitudes are all wrong, without discussing his premises. Further, the attacks on him are made as if one were attempting to convince a public official or some such other idiot of an alternate viewpoint.

Sounds as useful as trying to enlist Barney Frank in helping pass the Federal Marriage Amendment.

The fact is that Tancredo's anachronistic responses are brought up as if they had any value. They don't. Telegraphing punches doesn't work in boxing, and it's doubly so in diplomacy. If this were going to be a useful policy, it should have been carried out within 6 hours af any of the earlier "terrorist" attacks. It's too late now. "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Asking "Bob" to comment beyond this is merely asking him to comment on Tancredo's irrational, emotion-laden political campaigning techniques. Quelle barbe!

deleted

?????

Self-censorship? Man, life is full of irony. Like expecting the Pope to reproduce.

But if you think that creating the next generation of human beings (as our parents did) is "ruining" your life, that is so pathetically irrational that I cannot relate to it enough to form any credible "reason" why it would be right or wrong.

On the other hand, since none of us is getting out here alive, there is no -logical- reason why we should care if our species survives a long time. It cannot benefit us. It is one of those things that there is no logical reason for.

Now, I -do care- but I cannot defend my caring logically.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob

Just because the reasons are not on the tip of your tongue, it doesn't mean that your caring is not rational. More than 95% of our thinking occurs in the perpetual wild night of our subconscious, addressed in dreams and visions of the night. It takes a monstrous effort to ride that rhino.

Now concerning the making of a rational world for ourselves and those who come after, I'm not arguing from a point of "primary utility" here. but rather the concept borrowed from economics of "marginal utility" -- the incremental value, at the "margin", of "just one more unit". The particular measurable unit being, "one more day of a rational life FOR ME as a living human being".

If we guess wrong and short ourselves as to how many more days each of us needs to have a rational world to live in, then we sentence ourselves to an ultimately irrational existence in the end. If we each overestimate our own needs, however, and create conditions for an "excess amount of rationality" (how's THAT for an oxymoron), there is a "surplus value" which of right belongs to each of us as its creator. Now, you may choose to leave that "consumer surplus" on the table, so to speak, as is done in trading "commodity items", but it doesn't mean that we don't have both the right and the power to specify the beneficiary of such a surplus. Witness LP as AR's "intellectual heir". She had every right to choose who would be the beneficiary of the remains of her particular intellectual edifice. Even if she was wrong.

But in recognizing this, we have to presume that the creators, the rational people, are on the whole actually creating excess value, i.e., making the world a better, more rational place to live. We also have to presume that this will be an on-going process rather than a fluke. I presume that my own life is a value, and I presume others do also. I must reason from this that my parents' creating me and my generation was a value for them, as a fulfillment of their own life values. Of course this also applies to the generation before that. And before that. And before that. "Et-Cetera, Et-Cetera, Et-Cetera....." back to our common ancestors, the first two dna expressions (at least one male and one female, in close enough temporal and geographic proximity to provide for reproduction) of our species. And from this I see that

A generation goes, and a generation comes....What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"? It has been already, in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.

(Q'oheleth 1:4a, 1:9-11)

So there must needs be other rational people within this community of interest, so that our efforts do not work at cross purposes, but actually contribute even more excess value, one for the other. (Also known as synergy). Of course, there are those who will die before I do, but the excess value of their efforts will make it easier for me to maintain a rational world for myself and those around me after they are gone. Likewise, I may die before others, in which case whatever creativity and rationality I have expressed can serve as meat for those who come after.

For those who come after.

*I* get to choose that, and so do you. And so does Michael. And Kat. And Judith. And Victor. And Philip. And Wolf. And Barbara. And Nathaniel. And President Bush. And the Pope. And so does everyone else. Reproduction -- keeping life going -- is part of our nature as living beings. If we choose to create the next generation, we are choosing the continuation of life, and if we choose against it, we are choosing against the continuation of life -- Extinction. Death. Period. Even if through some hedonistic self-deception we convince ourselves otherwise.

If one can't understand that as a matter of PRINCIPLE, applicable as "right" across the totality of the human race, and dictated in fact by our NATURE, then by what "right" do they claim to be intellectual heirs of those who swore to sacrifice "Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor" in defense of Liberty and the Natural Rights of Man?

for the record, on war crimes:

Flag, Faith, and Family Values

Wolf --

Well done.

Only one "ever-so-slight" point of contention: to refer to the the disgusting religious hypocrisy of the current administration as "faith".

As a "man of faith" myself, I know that if I'm talking from "revelation", I'll say so (you do not have an unearned "right" to impune my integrity and presume I am lying), and I cannot, under any circumstances, expect you or any other human being to agree with me unless and until you receive the same "revelation", testable against a pre-existing, recognized (objective) standard. When it should happen that you receive the Word (if ever) is NOT MY CALL. But that doesn't mean anyone has the right to censor what I may say based on it.

If, on the other hand, I'm dealing from abstractions of the concretes I've evaluated by my own reason (denying the impediments of an unearned guilt or pain), I simply remember the "revelation": "Come now, let us REASON together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. "(Isaiah 1:18). I remember this, not as a "theistic command", but as a better poetic expression of a truth than I could muster on my own: advocates of "faith" MUST be advocates of true "reason". Though they must, in their confidence, be willing to make "jumps" fit only for "creative" people, that would not necessarily be apparent to a cursory, mundane inspection by those for whom the activity under question is not particularly relevant, these would only be evaluated as "irrational" by those whose first principles were based not in reality but in a value system based in an abstract symbology, i.e., an ultimately imaginary, subjective basis. As an example of a a true, rational, faith-based enterprise, I submit "Samaritan's Purse", run by Franklin Graham, the son of the reverend Billy Graham.

But back to the non-interventionism of Ron Paul (or RuPaul as my best friend calls him). In an ideal world, his viewpoint would would be nearly unanimous, as in the results of a "poll" from last week:

From The Daily Mail.

Sex for the motherland: Russian youths encouraged to procreate at camp

By EDWARD LUCAS - More by this author »

Last updated at 08:35am on 29th July 2007

Comments (6)

Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp's mass wedding. "They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia".

Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.

With its relentlessly upbeat tone, bizarre ideas and tight control, it sounds like a weird indoctrination session for a phoney religious cult.

But this organisation - known as "Nashi", meaning "Ours" - is youth movement run by Vladimir Putin's Kremlin that has become a central part of Russian political life.

Scroll down for more

Sinister: Millions of young Russians at a youth camp discerningly similar to the Hitler Youth

Nashi's annual camp, 200 miles outside Moscow, is attended by 10,000 uniformed youngsters and involves two weeks of lectures and physical fitness.

Attendance is monitored via compulsory electronic badges and anyone who misses three events is expelled. So are drinkers; alcohol is banned. But sex is encouraged, and condoms are nowhere on sale.

Bizarrely, young women are encouraged to hand in thongs and other skimpy underwear - supposedly a cause of sterility - and given more wholesome and substantial undergarments.

Twenty-five couples marry at the start of the camp's first week and ten more at the start of the second. These mass weddings, the ultimate expression of devotion to the motherland, are legal and conducted by a civil official.

Attempting to raise Russia's dismally low birthrate even by eccentric-seeming means might be understandable. Certainly, the country's demographic outlook is dire. The hard-drinking, hardsmoking and disease-ridden population is set to plunge by a million a year in the next decade.

But the real aim of the youth camp - and the 100,000-strong movement behind it - is not to improve Russia's demographic profile, but to attack democracy.

Under Mr Putin, Russia is sliding into fascism, with state control of the economy, media, politics and society becoming increasingly heavy-handed. And Nashi, along with other similar youth movements, such as 'Young Guard', and 'Young Russia', is in the forefront of the charge.

At the start, it was all too easy to mock. I attended an early event run by its predecessor, 'Walking together', in the heart of Moscow in 2000. A motley collection of youngsters were collecting 'unpatriotic' works of fiction for destruction.

It was sinister in theory, recalling the Nazis' book-burning in the 1930s, but it was laughable in practice. There was no sign of ordinary members of the public handing in books (the copies piled on the pavement had been brought by the organisers).

Once the television cameras had left, the event organisers admitted that they were not really volunteers, but being paid by "sponsors". The idea that Russia's anarchic, apathetic youth would ever be attracted into a disciplined mass movement in support of their president - what critics called a "Putinjugend", recalling the "Hitlerjugend" (German for "Hitler Youth") - seemed fanciful.

How wrong we were. Life for young people in Russia without connections is a mixture of inadequate and corrupt education, and a choice of boring dead-end jobs. Like the Hitler Youth and the Soviet Union's Young Pioneers, Nashi and its allied movements offer not just excitement, friendship and a sense of purpose - but a leg up in life, too.

Nashi's senior officials - known, in an eerie echo of the Soviet era, as "Commissars" - get free places at top universities. Thereafter, they can expect good jobs in politics or business - which in Russia nowadays, under the Kremlin's crony capitalism, are increasingly the same thing.

Nashi and similar outfits are the Kremlin's first line of defence against its greatest fear: real democracy. Like the sheep chanting "Four legs good, two legs bad" in George Orwell's Animal Farm, they can intimidate through noise and numbers.

Nashi supporters drown out protests by Russia's feeble and divided democratic opposition and use violence to drive them off the streets.

The group's leaders insist that the only connection to officialdom is loyalty to the president. If so, they seem remarkably well-informed.

In July 2006, the British ambassador, Sir Anthony Brenton, infuriated the Kremlin by attending an opposition meeting. For months afterwards, he was noisily harassed by groups of Nashi supporters demanding that he "apologise". With uncanny accuracy, the hooligans knew his movements in advance - a sign of official tip-offs.

Even when Nashi flagrantly breaks the law, the authorities do not intervene. After Estonia enraged Russia by moving a Sovietera war memorial in April, Nashi led the blockade of Estonia's Moscow embassy. It daubed the building with graffiti, blasted it with Stalinera military music, ripped down the Estonian flag and attacked a visiting ambassador's car. The Moscow police, who normally stamp ruthlessly on public protest, stood by.

Nashi fits perfectly into the Kremlin's newly-minted ideology of "Sovereign democracy". This is not the mind-numbing jargon of Marxism-Leninism, but a lightweight collection of cliches and slogans promoting Russia's supposed unique political and spiritual culture.

It is strongly reminiscent of the Tsarist era slogan: "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and Nationality".

The similarities to both the Soviet and Tsarist eras are striking. Communist ideologues once spent much of their time explaining why their party deserved its monopoly of power, even though the promised utopia seemed indefinitely delayed.

Today, the Kremlin's ideology chief Vladislav Surkov is trying to explain why questioning the crooks and spooks who run Russia is not just mistaken, but treacherous.

Yet, by comparison with other outfits, Nashi looks relatively civilised. Its racism and prejudice is implied, but not trumpeted. Other pro-Kremlin youth groups are hounding gays and foreigners off the streets of Moscow. Mestnye [The Locals] recently distributed leaflets urging Muscovites to boycott non-Russian cab drivers.

These showed a young blonde Russian refusing a ride from a swarthy, beetle-browed taxi driver, under the slogan: "We're not going the same way."

Such unofficial xenophobia matches the official stance. On April 1, a decree explicitly backed by Mr Putin banned foreigners from trading in Russia's retail markets. By some estimates, 12m people are working illegally in Russia.

Those who hoped that Russia's first post-totalitarian generation would be liberal, have been dissapointed. Although explicit support for extremist and racist groups is in the low single figures, support for racist sentiments is mushrooming.

Slogans such as "Russia for the Russians" now attract the support of half of the population. Echoing Kremlin propaganda, Nashi denounced Estonians as "fascist", for daring to say that they find Nazi and Soviet memorials equally repugnant. But, in truth, it is in Russia that fascism is all too evident.

The Kremlin sees no role for a democratic opposition, denouncing its leaders as stooges and traitors. Sadly, most Russians agree: a recent poll showed that a majority believed that opposition parties should not be allowed to take power.

Just as the Nazis in 1930s rewrote Germany's history, the Putin Kremlin is rewriting Russia's. It has rehaabilitated Stalin, the greatest massmurderer of the 20th century. And it is demonising Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first democratically-elected president. That he destroyed totalitarianism is ignored. Instead, he is denounced for his "weak" pro-Western policies.

While distorting its own history, the Kremlin denounces other countries. Mr Putin was quick to blame Britain's "colonial mentality" for our government's request that Russia try to find a legal means of extraditing Andrei Lugovoi, the prime suspect in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

Yet the truth is that Britain, like most Western countries, flagellates itself for the crimes of the past. Indeed, British schoolchildren rarely learn anything positive about their country's empire. And, if Mr Putin has his way, Russian pupils will learn nothing bad about the Soviet empire, which was far bloodier, more brutal - and more recent.

A new guide for history teachers - explicitly endorsed by Mr Putin - brushes off Stalin's crimes. It describes him as "the most successful leader of the USSR". But it skates over the colossal human cost - 25m people were shot and starved in the cause of communism.

"Political repression was used to mobilise not only rank-and-file citizens but also the ruling elite," it says. In other words, Stalin wanted to make the country strong, so he may have been a bit harsh at times. At any time since the collapse of Soviet totalitarianism in the late 1980s, that would have seemed a nauseating whitewash. Now, it is treated as bald historical fact.

If Stalin made mistakes, so what? Lots of people make mistakes.

"Problematic pages in our history exist," Mr Putin said last week. But: "we have less than some countries. And ours are not as terrible as those of some others." He compared the Great Terror of 1937, when 700,000 people were murdered in a purge by Stalin's secret police, to the atom bomb on Hiroshima.

The comparison is preposterous. A strong argument can be made that by ending the war quickly, the atom bombs saved countless lives.

Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman-may have failed to realise that nuclear weapons would one day endanger humanity's survival. But, unlike Stalin, they were not genocidal maniacs.

As the new cold war deepens, Mr Putin echoes, consciously or unconsciously, the favourite weapon of Soviet propagandists in the last one.

Asked about Afghanistan, they would cite Vietnam. Castigated for the plight of Soviet Jews, they would complain with treacly sincerity about discrimination against American blacks. Every blot on the Soviet record was matched by something, real or imagined, that the West had done.

But the contrasts even then were absurd. When the American administration blundered into Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of people protested in the heart of Washington. When eight extraordinarily brave Soviet dissidents tried to demonstrate in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia, in 1968, they were instantly arrested and spent many years in labour camps.

For the east European countries with first-hand experience of Stalinist terror, the Kremlin's rewriting of history could hardly be more scary. Not only does Russia see no reason to apologise for their suffering under Kremlin rule, it now sees the collapse of communism not as a time of liberation, but as an era of pitiable weakness.

Russia barely commemorates even the damage it did to itself, let alone the appalling suffering inflicted on other people. Nashi is both a symptom of the way Russia is going - and a means of entrenching the drift to fascism.

Terrifyingly, the revived Soviet view of history is now widely held in Russia. A poll this week of Russian teenagers showed that a majority believe that Stalin did more good things than bad.

If tens of thousands of uniformed German youngsters were marching across Germany in support of an authoritarian Fuhrer, baiting foreigners and praising Hitler, alarm bells would be jangling all across Europe. So why aren't they ringing about Nashi?

• Edward Lucas is author of the forthcoming The New Cold War And How To Win It.

Klaatu's closing speech in -The Day the Earth Stood Still- was pure Libertarian.

Ba'al Chatzaf

It's been a l-o-o-o-n-g time since I saw it last,but I believe you are right.

But the other sf films of that era (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Invasion from Mars, Forbidden Planet, Not of This Earth, etc.) point to the anti-communist zeitgeist of the 50's.

Then of course, there is the take from the first episode of the video series "Red Vs. Blue" (copyright Rooster Teeth Productions), based loosely on the video game Halo (copyright Microsoft Corp.):

There is a far off ringworld called Halo. Two armies, the Red and the Blue, have sparsely-manned military bases in a box canyon on the ringworld, where representatives of each side sit in tense, actionless opposition to one another.

At the Red base, two soldiers on sentry duty are busy talking:

Simmons: Hey.

Griff: Yeah?

Simmons: You ever wonder why we're here?

Griff: It's one of life's great mysteries, isn't it? Why ARE we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything? Y'know, with a plan for us, 'n'stuff. I don't know, man, but it keeps me up at night.

(stupefied pause)

Simmons: WHAT?!?!? I mean, why are we OUT HERE, in THIS CANYON?!?

Griff: Ohhh....uhhhhhh, I.....yeah.

Simmons: What's all that stuff about God?

Griff: Uhhhh....

Simmons: Hmmm?

Griff: (with feigned innocense) Nothing.

Simmons: You want to talk about it?

Griff: (small voice) No.

Simmons: You sure?

Griff: (small voice) Yeah.

Simmons: Seriously, though, why are we out here? As far as I can tell, it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. No way in or out....

Griff: Mmm-hmm...

Simmons: The only reason that we set up a Red base here, is that they have a Blue base over there. And the only reason they have a Blue base over there, is because we have a Red base here.

Griff: Yeah. That's because we're fighting each other.

Simmons: No, no, f'real -- even if we were to pull out today, and they were to come take our base, they would have TWO bases in the middle of a box canyon. Whoop-de-F*in'-doo!

Griff: What's up with that anyway? I mean, *I* signed on to fight some ALIENS. The next thing I know, ******* blows up the whole Covenant Armada, and I'm stuck in the middle of nowhere, fighting a bunch of Blue guys.

Meanwhile, heavy activity is also afoot at the Blue base. Two soldiers stand sentry duty, observing the Red base...

Tucker: What are they doin'?

Church: What???

Tucker: I said, what are they doing now?

Church: Gosh, damn, I'm getting SO SICK of answering that question!

Tucker: You're the one lookin' through the f*in' rifle sight, I can't see SHIT! Don't lecture me, 'cause I'm not just gonna sit up here an' play with my dick.

Church: Okay, look. They're just standing there, and talking, okay? That's all they're doin'. That's all they EVER do, is just stand there, and talk. That's what they were doin' LAST WEEK; that's what they were doin' when you asked me FIVE MINUTES AGO. So, five minutes from NOW, when you ask me "what are they doin'?"my answer's gonna BE: "they're still JUST TALKIN', and they're still JUST STANDIN' THERE!"

(pregnant pause)

Tucker: What are they talkin' about?

Church: Y'know what? I f*in' HATE YOU.

Back at the Red base, the soldiers continue to discuss things in lieu of the normal boredom of sentry duty.

Griff: Talk about "waste of resources"! I mean, we should be out there findin' new, INTELLIGENT forms of life, and y'know, FIGHT THEM!

Simmons: Yeah, no shit. That's why they should put US in charge.

John;

I have seen the TZ episode. Lloyd Bochner's last line "It's a cookbook".

I maybe wrong but the first benevolent aliens in the movies were in ET and Close Encounters.

The movies from the 50ths the aliens always wanted to eat us.

Benevolent aliens came with StarTrek; Roddenbury's earlier effort (EFC) came with the same paranoia of the 50's:

I guess this means I'll have to download another version of SETI@Home. >sigh<

Ok so I didn't get it quite right ... but here is a story of the story from TimeLine #81, May/June 2005.

The Koran Challenge in Yemen

By Mac Lawrence

As reported in The Christian Science Monitor, a young judge in Yemen is helping defuse terrorism by challenging al Qaeda prisoners to a debate.

In the article, James Brandon writes that Judge Hamoud al-Hitar began the experiment with five defiant terrorist prisoners. “If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran,” Hitar is reported to have said to the militants, “we will join you in your struggle. But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence.” If the prisoners did agree to no more violence, they would be released and offered job training and help to find work.

Yemen is particularly notorious as a breeder of terrorists. As the Monitor article noted, it is Osama bin Laden’s ancestral home, provided the majority of recruits for his Afghan camps, had a record of kidnapping foreigners, and was behind the attack on the USS Cole.

The steps taken by the Yemen government to combat terrorism have apparently avoided the use of force wherever possible, despite pressure particularly by the United States. As one highly placed Yemeni was quoted in the Monitor: “It’s only logical to tackle these people through their brains and heart. If you beat these people up, they become more stubborn. If you hit them, they will enjoy the pain and find something good in it—it is a part of their ideology. Instead, what we must do is erase what they have been taught and explain to them that terrorism will only harm Yemenis’ jobs and prospects. Once they understand this, they become fighters for freedom and democracy, and fighters for true Islam.”

Yemen’s efforts so far have been so successful that one European diplomat is quoted in the Monitor as saying: “Yemen has gone from being a potential enemy to becoming an indispensable ally in the war on terror.” Hitar’s dialogue program has certainly played a part. More than 350 former prisoners have made it through the dialogue program, none of whom has left the country to fight elsewhere.

“An important part of the dialogue is mutual respect,” the Monitor quotes Hitar as saying. “Along with acknowledging freedom of expression, intellect, and opinion, you must listen and show interest in what the other party is saying. If you study terrorism in the world, you will see that it has an intellectual theory behind it.” And, as the dialogues showed, what the terrorists had been taught did not hold up when they studied the Koran.

Though U.S. pressure to use force persists, and some in the Yemen government agree, the Monitor notes that “Hitar has been invited to speak to antiterrorism specialists at London’s New Scotland Yard, as well as to French and German police, hoping to defuse growing militancy among Muslin immigrants,” and “U.S. diplomats have also approached the cleric to see if his methods can be applied to Iraq.”

~ Re this request for non-Muslims to start a 'dialogue' with the non-'peaceful' Muslims:

~ Pointlessly suicidally-accelerating for non-Muslims...UNTIL...the 'PEACEFUL' Muslims START such a 'dialogue' with their news-headline-filled war-making brethren.

~ While THEY, the 'PEACEFUL' ones, show no basis, nor interest (!) for a 'dialogue' with the war-mongers (if they have tried, please link to where such was shown), much less show them a judgemental accusation of "You are Koranically WRONG!", then, what basis do non-Muslims have?

~ NONE. --- Like, who talks against a pointed gun/knife/explosive, other than for the purpose of stalling while attempting to outmanuever? Only suicidal idiots...or cowards using others as shields.

LLAP

J:D

John

I don't remember where I saw it -- I'll have to do some looking when I have the time -- but I saw last year where a leading Muslim university professor in Yemen was working with anti-extremist forces, and what they were doing was Koranic challenges to captured Al_Qaeda members and proponents of Wahhabism, resulting in something akin to anti-cult "deprogramming" sessions. IIRC, it is working successfully. Get back to you l8r on that.

Steve

Name a reason for caring about what happens to the world after we die that is sufficiently compelling to lead one to ruin one's own finite life.

Judith

It's getting pretty boring isn't it.

Being the only rational consciousness, none others beyond it...

Reductio ad absurdum...bound to the the single concrete rational consciousness, there is but one, mine, and there is no other....

A finite one...so when it's gone, it's gone......but when?

You don't know, I don't know, so do we seek a rational world *fit* for ourselves and our chosen "posterity", one appropriate for man qua man, or do we just say, "FUCK IT. EVERYONE ELSE, JUST FUCK OFF AND DIE. I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK WHAT KIND OF WORLD WE LIVE IN. I HOPE THE FUCKIN' MOOZLIMS NUKE US. REMEMBER, IN THE LONG RUN WE'LL ALL BE DEAD."

Now THAT'S ruining a life. Many, in fact.

But if you think that creating the next generation of human beings (as our parents did) is "ruining" your life, that is so pathetically irrational that I cannot relate to it enough to form any credible "reason" why it would be right or wrong.

Name a reason for caring about what happens to the world after we die that is sufficiently compelling to lead one to ruin one's own finite life.

Judith

Name a reason for caring about what happens to the world after we die that is sufficiently compelling to lead one to ruin one's own finite life.

Judith

I don't think having chiildren should be considered a duty. It is a very serious obligatiion.

Of course there is no specific duty or obligation to bear children -- like, obligation to whom? Where there is "obligation" there would normally be some sort of "accountability", yes?

The "obligation", however is to one's own integrity: if you claim to want to have a world inhabited by rational human beings, it up to you to do what you can to provide it. No-one else owes you a rational world, and no-one else, especially a world full of irrational people, is going to give you a rational world for free. If all you do is complain about other people's irrationality and their irrational children, without bringing your own children into the world, and raising them up to your ideals, then you are just a crybaby, and your words are naught but those of a liar and a hypocrite. You already know what is necessary. Do it, or don't, as you so choose, but you are not free to deny the consequences in reality.

I'm glad we're all on-topic here.

This discussion was about MONEY; how did it get sidetracked into Islam and abortion?

And whether Bob likes it or not, Ron Paul will get the nomination, partly because Republicans will wake up and realize that he's the only Republican candidate who has a chinaman's chance of beating the Democrats in the current political milieu . And when he becomes president, if war is justified, he will ask for a CONSTTUTIONAL declaration of war; barring that, we won't be engaging in anymore blood-for-oil adventurism, and have it shoved down our throats as a bunch of LIES about imaginary terrorists.

Now as far as the money situation goes, if you put the different reports together, not only has ole "Sleeper Cell" McCain spent almost everything he has, but Mitt Romney ALSO has spent twice what he took in last quarter. So much so that Ron Paul is nearly in a dead heat with him, in terms of remaining cash-on-hand after debts are resolved. (Now if Romney were president, would he be any less profligate with our tax money?) That leaves Giuliani as the only competition, with about $12 million more unencumbered.

(Unless you include the Council on Fred Relations, the Man Who Stands For Nothing In Particular Besides Looking Good as a President on TV, Mr. Thompson. Scary. How much does he have in his warchest? God only knows!)

So Bob, you got a better candidate, "put yer money where yer mouth is!"

Sounds good, but until our leaders can muster the courage to name Muslims as the threat, muslims will continue in silence.

Jody,

See the following:

Building Moderate Muslim Networks

This is a free PDF monograph you can obtain simply by clicking on the link above. You can read it online, download it to your hard drive and print it out (217 pages). It was sponsored by the Rand Corporation. (No relation to our beloved. )

Daniel Pipes even recommends this document and this is precisely the approach I have been arguing for. See his latest article for New York Sun:

Bolstering Moderate Muslims

April 17, 2007

I did read part of this report and it is very encouraging on the ideological front.

The powers that be behind the scenes are making sure moderate Muslim networks are now receiving funding if they adopt individual rights, separation of church and state, etc. It will take a while to catch up to the spread of the fundamentalist Sunni type Islam (Salafi or Wahhabi or whatever you want to call it) heavily funded by Saudi Arabia, but that is the basic strategy now being implemented. This is even endorsed by Daniel Pipes while sitting on a panel beside Yaron Brook and Wafa Sultan in public. I am seeing more and more indications of the results of this effort and I find it a welcome change from the previous silence from moderate Muslims about terrorism and radical Islamism.

Michael

I haven't finished it yet -- it is dense reading, like the Quran. One wants to hope, but for every report like the one you cite., there are ten of these:

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56643

In spite of the spoiler alert, this movie sounds interesting; I'll have to look into it.

What troubles me about the premise of extra-judicial action resonates through the old Michael Douglas movie, "The Star Chamber" (a term stolen from historical secret trials in England, similar to the Spanish Inquisition).

Part of the wisdom of history distilled into the U.S. Constitution, i.e., the genius of the tripartite separation of powers, is that no one human being may be trusted to have the sole power to impose his independent individual concept of justice on the rest of society through force. Whereas we, as citizens in a civil society, foreswear the use of force or fraud in our individual lives, the government, which acts as a "storehouse" for our natural right of self-defense, is likewise constrained by the objective rule of civil (as opposed to martial) law to utilize that delegated right in a limited fashion.

This identification of this separation of powers was drawn from the Old Testament of the Bible. Specifically:

For the LORD is our judge, the LORD is our lawgiver, the LORD is our king; he will save us. (Isaiah 33:22, KJV)

This was principle of the anarcho-capitalist government under the first several hundred years of the early biblical Israelite nation:

( a ) Judge: Judicial function of government

( b ) Lawgiver: Legislative function of government

( c ) King: Executive (enforcement) function of government

And NO MAN was considered "righteous" enough to assume more than one function at a time, but only the invisible deity. This principle was likewise applied to the United States, a consequence of either ( a ) the Christian concept of "original sin", or ( b ) Hobbes' concept of man in a state of nature, or ( c ) both.

Of course, it could only work here because of two sides of the same reason:

( a ) Citizens held that morality was a personal responsibility, and

( b ) Citizens rejected the unitary theocracies that held in several of the colonies, where the three functions of government would be bound in a single political body.

That is, they would not grant a sanction to an authoritarian body to dictate the terms of their existence. They took the book of "rules" away from the authoritarians and made its understanding their own responsibility, reading the Exodus and the Gospel as archetypes of their battle for human liberty.

I don't think that any "vigilante" approach to justice fits with this approach.

.

.

.

.

And if that wimp Ron Paul does win it will be a sad day for people who do not want to see the Muslims get the upper hand. Ron Paul lacks the blood lust. We need a killer in the White House. Preferably a stone killer.

.

.

.

.

.

.

[Mr. Rogers Voice/on]

Can you spell asymmetric warfare? Sure you can.

[Mr. Rogers Voice/off]

Look what they are doing to our troops with simple-ass roadside bombs. And they are not even breaking a sweat.

Look what they did to the WTC with two stolen jet planes and -box cutters-.

Here is a recipe for disaster. Collect 200 pounds of radioactive waste from hospitals. Mix with dynamite. Detonate. You now have radioactive waste spread over sever square blocks which are rendered uninhabitable for several months minimum.

Load up an 18 wheeler with a ton and a half of high explosive. Put Abdul and Achmed at the wheel. Drive to middle of Lincoln Tunnel, say Shadah and detonate. The Lincoln Tunnel is gone for good. If done at rush hour several thousand people will drown.

I beg of you. Think. Think. Think. If I can figure out how to do it, so can dedicated Jihadi Warriors. And these people -want to die-!

I agree with them. I want them to die too. But before they harm us.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Bob, faced with the same situation, Dr. Paul would not go wimpering for a "police action" or a "coalition", he would go for a CONSTITUTIONAL DECLARATION OF WAR, which would give the president the legal power to take off the kid gloves and get the job done. No American president has had the balls to do this since FDR. In fact, a declaration of war is exactly what Dr. Paul proposed in Congress for these bloody jingoistic escapades in Afghanistan and Iraq, BUT IT WAS REFUSED.

So what kind of government are you supporting that steals money from the electorate in the form of taxes in order to embroil our countrymen in unwinnable, undeclared wars? That spies on its citizens and has abrogated the right of habeus corpus? You think that this fascist ruling alliance of government thugs and global corporatists is a better state than dhimmitude? At least in a dhimmi society there is an ethnarch charged with complying with and enforcing the laws of the dhimmi subculture (in addition to the muslim laws), who will meet the wrath of muslim authorities if such internal laws are violated by the ethnarch. The ethnarch also "runs interference" for his own people, to keep them out of the hands of the muslim law. But this lawless group now in power here will use any means they choose to enforce their vision of global corporatism on this country, destroying it from within in the process, and leaving none to represent the individual citizen, or protect him from their ravages.

And you choose to give them carte blanche? You paint yourself as much a TRAITOR as they are, and deserve the same as they do.