Politics

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3482974 PETA (People For The Ethical Treatment of Animals), collected animals, promised to find homes for them, and instead euthanized them in the back of a van and dumped them in the dumpster belonging to a shopping center. http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=3482974 If anyone here has been donating money to these "people", I hope you'll find a better cause. I think it is unfortunate that unwanted dogs and cats must be euthanized, but I understand that "we" can't allow them to breed out of control. I have a tremendous problem when the "holier than thou" PETA people collect money from the general public under the …

The Sydney Morning Herald (and I believe the New York Times) reported today that President Bush wants the Intelligent Design theory taught in schools, along with evolution:

This is most disturbing:

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html Yep, real zombie dogs. Ok, not *really* zombie dogs, but still... And it's actually from a peer-reviewed and reliable source: Journal of Trauma Injury Infection and Critical Care. 2004; 57(6): 1266-1275 Mokele

I was surprised () to see that this board didn't have a thread dedicated to the all-knowing Political Compass test. So, here it is. Take the test at http://www.politicalcompass.org/, then post your results. I'll go first: Economic Left/Right: -4.88 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.90

I moved this post here because it really belongs here in politics: Do you have a source for this, a real source? Try the US Government Declassified Archives right here: Northwoods Operation Here's an alternate link to the .pdf file Northwoods Op 2 If that doesn't spell it out for you, do a search with Dogpile "Operation Northwoods".

BBC News Article Round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. The Sunni Moslems have usually been the good guys, but they seem to be behind the insurgency in Iraq. Who can blame them? The Shiites are using their police powers to commit further tortures and murders of Sunnis. This is when the ink is barely dry on any agreements signed by the alleged coalition government. It's a joke. What do you get when you set up a joint Shiite/Sunni government? You get a Shiite government. As far as I know, historically Sunnis have been much easier to get along with, by anybody, than the Shiites. Saddam may or may not have played head games with…

It is often said that the definition of insanity is "Doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result." In the early 1980s the US needed a strong ally in the Middle East to help it oppose the threat of a religiously-controlled Iran. Iraq, and its dictator leader Saddam Hussein, provided a ready answer, and money and weapons flowed into that country. The resulting war cost Iraq and Iran dearly in lives, with no clear victory or resolution to anybody's problems. In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the US needed a strong ally in the Middle East to help it oppose the threat of a religiously-controlled Afghanistan. Pakistan, and its d…

Multiculturalism is a result of freedom of expression. Culture is perceived by perople. For people to perceive culture it has to be expressed by others. Therefore, to argue against multiculturalism is to argue against freedom of expression. If a person is against multiculturalism and defends his position by saying that he is free to express himself, wouldn't this be contradictory?

It's been said that websites that illustrate how bombs can be made are hazardous because they allow terrorists to more easily create bombs and more easily educated those sympathetic to terrorists. Do you think the state should be allowed to try censor these sites for the sake of national security?

Full story here: http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-molest01.html

I hear on the news that the guy who got shot in London the other day was not connected to terrorism in any way. It seems that the cops thought that since he ran from them and had on some loose clothing, that he was a suicide bomber, so they whacked him. Sorry about that--uh?

I was speaking to an Australian who said that all American TV shows should be banned from Australian TV because they were "destroying Australian national identity" and promoting the Americanization of Australia. I argued that the ratings statistics clearly show that viewers in Australia prefer American shows to Australian-made shows, so whatever the consumers want the consumers should get. What exactly is "national identity" and why would anyone think it's important?

An Israeli engineer, Alon Bodner, has developed a device that allows divers to extract dissolved air from water, replacing conventional scuba tanks and/or rebreathers. It works using the "Henry Law," which states that as the pressure of a liquid is released, the amount of gas able to be dissolved within the liquid decreases. The device uses a centrifuge to lower the pressure of some seawater, thereby liberating dissolved air. Note that this is different from electrolysis and does not result in pure oxygen, but rather in breathable, non-toxic air containing nitrogen, hydrogen, etc in addition to oxygen. It promises to be a revolutionary technology. Bodner hopes to hav…

Looks like more arrests in the 7/7 case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4720027.stm Just as a brief aside, it's fascinating to me how fast the British authorities have been able to move on this case. The number of people arrested and the way information has been coming out is really impressive. It suggests to me a number of things: 1) British intelligence is pretty darn good. These people know what's going on within their borders. (Quite unlike my country.) 2) Right or wrong, the London public surveillance system certainly seems to be paying massive dividends at the moment. 3) Britain seems to be reconsidering its policy of tolerating pro-viol…

What's in a name? The BBC has allegedly ordered its reporters not to use the word "terrorist" when referring to the London bombers. Here in the States, the New York Times does the same with Iraq, calling it an "insurgency" and calling the Al Qaida people there "fighters". The Wikipedia defines terrorism as this: "Terrorism refers to the use of violence for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological goal." The poll question is simply this: Do you feel that the London bombers were "terrorists"?

Minutes ago, I came across some of the most vile, hateful things I'd ever seen in my life - people absolutely cheering for the torture and murder of Matthew Sheppard, and saying they would feel no remorse if even more gays were tortured and murdered. I hear this all the time from the conservative people I know. These people enthusiastically defend their hatefulness in the name of God, where they claim that homosexuality is unnatural and evil because its condemned in Leviticus and Romans. However, divorce is condemned just as harshly, but almost no one claims that divorce is unnatural and evil - these kinds of contradictions makes it obvious that anti-gay movement is m…

Why should we not use cruel and unusual punishment? surely all punishment is, by its very definition, cruel; locking someone up or putting them to death is hardly a nice thing to do. Why the big no-no on having unusual punishment? I can see the point of not, for example, not cutting theives hands off, but a total ban on imaginative punishments... The reason that i started thinking about this, is that i saw a program on the telly the other day about the illigal trade in unfit meat. In ye olde days, if a food-vender was suspected of selling rotten meat, he would be forsed to eat the meat that he was selling -- a quite fitting punishment, with 0% chance for…

Here's a link: http://money.cnn.com/2005/07/13/news/newsmakers/ebbers_sentence/index.htm?cnn=yes Yet another victory for the Bush/Ashcroft Justice Department, IMO, closing the last chapter on the largest case of accounting fraud in US history.

Interesting column by Thomas Friedman in the Wednesday New York Times. He's mainly talking about how moderate Israelis have come to recognize that the settlers are not their friends. But he draws a fascinating parallel with the Arab-Muslim world that I have not read before -- he suggests that the path that Sharon and moderate Israelis are taking, in terms of trying to reign-in the settlers (and the radical right of Israeli politics) is exactly the approach that the Arab-Muslim world needs to take with regard to Islamic terrorism. What an excellent suggestion. Of course, the Palestinian Authority has been trying to do this for some time now, but an important …

http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/23/scotus.property.ap/index.html Someone please tell me there's a GOOD reason for this decision! The repercussions could be disatrous!

I realize this poll is overly restricted, but what I'm looking for here is a sense of which option you would choose if these were your only available options. Because of the restriction, nobody should hold any respondant responsible for claiming to advocate the position of their response in this poll. Thanks. The question here is, which of these choices would you most favor?

In countries like Australia, voting is compulsory, while in countries like the USA, voting is voluntary. I hypothesize that, if voting is voluntary, then there will be a bias by politicians to supply more extreme policies in an attempt to get people to vote. Would you agree with this? Have there been any studies on the topic? http://www.answers.com/topic/public-choice-theory

I got an interesting civics lesson today from an unlikely source -- a circuit court judge in a criminal proceeding. No, thankfully, I was not sitting at the defenant's table. I was sitting in the jury box. One of the more interesting statements from the judge was (and I'm paraphrasing here, because I didn't want to be "the wierdo in the back row who's taking notes") that there are only five countries in the world in which citizens have the right to a trial by jury. The Wikipedia article on jury trials seems to support this assertion, if not the judge's specific statistic. I didn't realize there were so many differences in other legal systems. Some of th…

Yeah I know, here goes ol' Pangloss looking for bias in the media again. Believe me, I'll understand if you think that about me -- I wonder it about myself sometimes. (Hopefully it's at least a good sign that I recognize that predispotion in my thinking.) Here's the story, and the quote I'm curious about: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4673421.stm Ok.... um.... am I the only one who sees a problem here? Are they saying that a referendum to hold a referendum on abortion laws was defeatred, are they saying that a referendum to overturn abortion laws was defeated, or are they saying that a referendum to maintain abortion laws was defeated? Mayb…