Aardvark

Extremism in all its forms is a very dangerous thing that all moderate and peacefully minded people must guard against.

Extremism simply means not accepting the mainstream opinions.

In effect, not being a mindless conformist.

In some places it is the extremists who oppose the death penalty for homosexuality.

How do we know it was the real Saddam that was executed?

You were right YT2095.

People making up stupid conspiracy theories to try and be funny or seem clever.

Failing on both counts.

I don't care if Saddam was executed or not, because he doesn't bother or alter my life in any ways.

 

And don't say, "What if Saddam blowed this city?" questioned by my girlfriend. I told her that he would never blow this place because it's a small city, and he got no enemies here.

So you don't care about anything that doesn't directly effect your little life?

What narrow horizons you must have.

It's good that such a horrible man is gone, but I don't think it should have been televised, that brings us down to his level.

It was televised so that everyone would know he had definitely been executed. Otherwise conspiracy theories would have very rapidly spread.

When is it bush's and blair's turn to be hanged for their crimes agaist humanity?

Get a sense of perspective.

Hi

Perhaps you could be a bit more specific, what aspects are you looking at? What sort of information are you interested in?

If you like PM me. I'd be happy to give you my personal impressions from living in a multicultural community.

actually part of the construction involved building new homes for everyone who was discplaced by the dam, these new towns had running water and electricity, and all the other amenities of modern living that the people who were discplaced never had

Actually, many of the displaced people have been left homeless. Those lovely new towns haven't provided enough replacement homes and large sums of compensation and reconstruction money has simply gone missing.

furthermore entire temples were deconstructed and moved uphill in order to decrease the impact on the culture of the region.

And a lot of highly important archaeological sites have been lost.

As for more farm land, yes there wil be more, because now there is an easy way of irrigating the land. .

Wrong.

Large areas of flat fertile valley bottom land which does not need irrigation has been flooded. Peasants have been relocated to sloping land which can not be easily irrigated and which is significantly less fertile.

The dam has led to a loss of farmland, not the opening up of new land.

Now there's an easy way of transporting those goods to the larger markets in western china, opening the door to impoverished farmers to begin to make an actual living, one with which they can send their kids to get educated and give them a choice as to whether or not they want to be farmers.

Actually, the effects of the dam have been to further impoverish the already poor population of the area. Driven off their land and home, losing their livelyhoods and been given derisory compensation at best.

as for the floods helping to keep the land fresh, the same thing can be done with fertilizers,

Expensive chemical fertizers which the poor farmers can ill afford when previously it was done for free. That's not a good swap.

and I dare a single person here to say to a child who lost their father in the floods the previous year that the dolphins are more important than them.

Ridiculous emotive attempt to evade the isssue.

The dam has been bad for the local people and bad (!) for the dolphins.

I don't know what propaganda booklet you've swallowed about the glorious benefits of this dam. But check the facts. It's a case of thousands of peasants losing their land. Of corrupt officialdom conniving in stealing from the poorest people.

You talk of irrigation. This is not an area that needs it. You talk of navigation. That was already easy. You talk of new homes. And yet thousands of displaced peasants are homeless.

Put aside your rose tinted spectacles and look at the actual reality, not some pleasant daydream of development and prosperity for all.

of course its ethical the yangtze floods and kills thousands every decade, the three gorges dam is going to stop that and save thousands,

The flooding deposits fertile silt on farmland. The silt maintains the Yangtze delta. The dam stops that and so impoverishs the already poor Chinese peasants and causes a large delta to be rapidly eroded away by the sea.

not to mention that its going to dramatically increase the ability of company's to invest in the region and build farms (because they don't have to worry about flooding, and there's a major waterway whereby they can ferry goods).,

Build farms? perhaps you haven't noticed that the dam has flooded huge areas of farmland leading tens of thousands of peasants to become homeless and destitute.

so of course its ethical, while there should have been more of a coservation effort to protect the dolphins, I wouldn't trade human lives for theirs

Firstly, it isn't a trade between human lives and dolphins.

Secondly, the dam is bad for a lot of humans as well as the poor bloody dolphins.

This dam will be gone in a few hundred years, its artifical lake will be silted up, its hydro power obsolete. For the sake of a temporary, highly questionable advantage, a species that has swum those waters for 20 million years is lost forever.

If you think that is ethical, then screw your ethics.

The Yangtze dolphin is now considered extinct.

We all saw it coming, it was predicted and then observed as the 3 Gorges dam and increased river traffic wiped them out.

Yet another beautiful species lost as we watch. 20 million years on this planet and then gone to add a percentage onto GDP.

http://www.wwf.fi/wwf/www/uploads/images/delfiini_baiji_uhanalaiset_109642.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6179407.stm

I'm angry. People whitter about Iraq or social security whilst this planets priceless and irreplaceable treasures are lost forever.

Too many humans.

What if there were two children on the tracks, one black and one white, both equidistant from where you are standing, and you can save one child but not both. Which one do you save?

I'd like to know what conclusions you expect to be able to draw from the answers to that question. What are you attempting to discover/prove/indicate?

For myself, i'd save the white child.

What does that answer tell you?

Who was the science fiction author that had the human race completely homogenized (cause to become equal by mixing)? The result was no more disease, higher brain function and a beautiful golden skin tone, among other things. The idea was that the blend completed the human race as a whole and allowed it to become significantly more than it's ethnic splinters.

 

The story didn't really center on that fact, it was more of a piece of exposition, but that's what I really remembered from the work.

You actually think this would be a good outcome?

The complete ending of diversity in favour of enforced conformity. That sounds like a mightmare to me. A nightmare that has strange echoes from the Nazis idea of a homogenous world of beautiful white people.

And anyway, mixing races doesn't eliminate disease, increase intelligence and the resultant skin tone isn't golden. The only scifi story i can remember in which the worlds peoples are deliberately homogenised is a cautionary tale. I'll dig it out and find the authors name.

Incidentally, does anyone notice the double standards here? Imagine if a white professor were to publicly call for the extermination of all blacks in order to solve the 'race problem'?

 

When I was a lad I heard a story. It went like this.

 

“A man was killed ‘murdered actually’ and after a short time he came back to life and walked upon the earth. He established a following for himself asking that they follow his example. They were to eat human flesh, drink human blood and worship him as a god. These followers were so despised that their enemies slew them in large numbers in various ways however, no matter how they were treated they still kept coming. It is further reported that the man who began all this is still alive and walking among us and that one day he will reveal himself again.

That seems a very odd summation of Jesus's life.

I have read that by the year 2015, the average "white" man, in the US, will be the minority. Then will it be ok to the masses to have a "whites only" scholarship?

Interesting hypothetical question.

Does anyone seriously think that in a nation where whites were a disadvantaged minority other groups would do anything to give the whites 'positive discrimination' 'affirmitive action' or any other special assistance?

I had considered a detailed analysis and rejection of Fausto's hypothesis, but it's summed up by saying: What an awful piece of writing. He's posted it on a few other threads I know of, too. Each one pretty much said the same things you all have.

I've just had a quick google and found several sites where he has also posted this gibberish. On each one he just posts and runs, nowhere does he make any attempt to reply or discuss.

As this is a discussion forum perhaps a moderater might decide that this thread be locked? I can't see any sign of 'Fausto Intilla' making any effort to actually discuss his 'ideas'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6185380.stm

 

Any chance that it will stick? It's going to be hard to control the many groups that are out there, especially considering that leadership isn't centralized. But, I think it's a good sign that mid-east leaders are able to make agreements on their own volition.

Ceasefires come and go.

But it does seem promising that more talking is taking place. That provides a little hope for the future, the more they talk the more they may come to see each other as human rather than simply 'the enemy'.

Hey all,

I know the US can't back out because it would make it seem like we were wrong to start in the first place.

That's probably bad reasoning, if it were wrong in th first place then staying longer will just make it worse for the US.

My uncle is in the Navy, is just finishing his last cruise before retirement, he says that the middle east isn't what the US has to worry about. It is Korea. According to him, I guess Korea isn't very happy with the US these days, and neither are to many other countries. Heck, the US isn't even happy with the US.

Well, North Korea isn't happy with the US. But North Korea is run by a homicidal drug dealing dictator. The US doesn't really have the choice of worrying about the Middle East or Korea, both areas are important to the US.

Would you have the US back out and focus on an ever increasing threat elsewhere or stay and fight a war that many deem as pointless these days?

Regardless of the original reasons for the Iraq war, pulling out would probably result in a collapse in Iraq with the outbreak of anarchy and civil war.

So my vote is to stay in and make the best of a bad job in rebuilding Iraq. To pull out would be to abandon the Iraqi people. That would be a grave betrayal.

You know why "white guilt" is valid?

In my opinion stating that someone is guilty or innocent on the basis of their skin colour is plainly wrong. Just because someone is white does not make them guilty of anything any more than being black does so.

Do you honestly believe that somebody that says something like this is going to treat a black person exactly the same as a white person? (and for your information, hotcomm, let's see how you act when every white person on the subway grabs up their purses/bags when you get on - day after day after day-, even if you're coming from a stock broker job in a suit - I've seen it happen literally hundreds of times).

Yes, racism exists. Prejudice continues. That doesn't logically lead to an argument for 'positive' discrimination. How is that a solution to that problem?

And yet I still say that it does not go far enough. Unless you're willing to go live as a farmer in Namibia, you're benefiting from how your ancestors raped, stole, and killed.

A presumption that only whites are or were guilty of raping and stealing.

Looking at history all peoples and civilisations have been built on the subjugation and domination of other peoples. Aztecs, Mongols, Zulus, Ottomans and the list goes on. On your reasoning the more successful a civilisation is the more guilty it is, while the weaker and more oppressed the more innocent it is. Weakness is morality, strength is sin.

The Xan people (Kalahari Bushmen) inhabited all of Africa South of the Congo region. They have now virtually disappeared because of the genocidal ethnic cleansing praticised by Negroes invading from Central and East Africa. Are the Negroes of South Africa subject to 'black guilty' about the actions of their ancestors?

The present day Indians of America are the descendants of people who were probably not the first to reach America. Their is some evidence that North Europeans reached America in the last ice age.

Is their 'Red guilty' about the extermination of those early Northern Europeans?

There is even some evidence that Australian Aboriginals reached America via the Bering Straits, That Australian Aboriginals inhabited South East Asian, living in present day Japan, Korea, South East China and Indonesia. The Mongoloid peoples drove them away, ethnically cleansed them.

Is their 'Yellow Guilty' about that early act of invasion, stealing, killing and no doubt other unpleasantnessess?

And to arbitrarily decide that you're being fair now, is (excuse the language) complete and utter bullshit.

Fine, but i'm not subjugating them, stealing their land, raping or killing them. Now they can get on with their lives and make the best that they can. Life is still unfair, but feeding a sense of grievance and entitlement isn't going to make it any fairer.

Because, y'know what? You people always lose. Always.

Not entirely sure who you are refering to here.

And we get to watch you die a little inside. And it's great. But you always have a little bit more hate left to give.

Again, i'm not sure who you are referring to but i do like your passion.

Anyway, if you are concerned about unfairness surely it would be better to tackle it in a more objective fashion, target those people who are underperforming. Focus help on the ill educated, the poorly housed, the low paid and unemployed. If it is true that certain ethnic groups are unfairly trated then they will receive a disproportionate amount of the help, and it will avoid the problem of wealthy members of ethnic minorities being advanced at the expense of poor whites (and what ever other ethnic groups are not favoured).

In summation, 'positive' discrimination is wrong in principle and additionally does not work in practice. A bad combination.

Doesn't alter the fact that you cannot breed a seedless banana from wild seeded varieties.

Well, maybe, i'm not quite sure about that. Here's a link you might find interesting on the latest research into the paelobiology of the ancestoral banana http://www.inibap.org/news/ressources/File/phytoliths_fp.pdf

However, here is a brilliantly funny clip for you. The banana is 'the evolutionists greatest nightmare'. This is just too good, i almost believe it is a spoof, the banana as 'proof' of Gods benevolent creation.

Enjoy http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5479410612081345878

I wonder where you learned that seedless bananas reproduce through cuttings. Perhaps... from me!

 

Cuttings are clones. You can't selectively breed seedless plants. They don't have seeds. They can't reproduce.

I don't want to step into a flame war here guys, but as a matter of interest seedless bananas are not just reproducd using cuttings.

Another technique is to hand pollinate domesticated bananas with pollen from 'wild' seeded bananas. By doing this, one in aproximately 10,000 bananas will contain a viable seed which can be used to grow a new hybrid banana plant.

This plant can then be backcrossed to produce a banana which doesn't have seeds.

It's very slow work, but it is a technique which is used. So you can see that seedless bananas can and are the product of selective breeding.

(and incidently, even just using cuttings there will occasionally be mutation and variation which can be selected for, sexual reproduction aids the process of selection but is not essential)

I had a banana in Mexico once that was smaller than the Cavendish and had a bluish tint. The texture was creamy and the flavor was fantastic.

I think most people don't realise that there is any choice in the matter, that a banana is just a banana.

Perhaps there is a gap in the market for high quality specialist bananas? I know i'd pay more for a blue Mexican banana! I think retailers could be missing a trick here, people are becoming more discerning and want more than just cheap food at the expense of blandness,(hope).

IIRC, there was a fungus that destroyed the last breed of popular banana back in the 50's and the Cavendish then became the export of choice.

That breed of banana was the 'Gros Michel'. It wasn't completely wiped out and scientists are trying to cross it with the Cavendish to get a tastier and fungus resistant fruit.

I didn't see any obscure words in his post.

And yet when you try to interpret his post you are reduced to positing what you think he might be trying to state.

His post may not have used any obscure words (evolutive?) but it certainly puts them together in an obscure fashion.

Nothing romantic, just an attempt to seem intelligent by writing nonsense (i use the word carefully) in an obscure and convoluted system.

It would be easier to give a response if we had a better idea of the function or benefit of these implants.

What sort of benefits/uses are we being hypothetically offered here?

Sorry to be rude, but my bullshit alarm is going ballastic.

The theory of Stephen J.Gold of the pointed equilibrium, Darwin’s theory of the natural selection and finally Jung’s sincronicity, all have a sole common denominator: the extreme mathematical improbability of acasual events which characterize them.

No they don't.

Human intelligence does not completely follow the entropy principle,

It doesn't follow the entropy principle at all. Evolution of human intelligence takes place in an open ended system, not a closed system. Therefore the entropy principle is inapplicable.

it actually constantly evolves towards a state of higher order;

Really?

Do you have any evidence of increasing human intelligence since the last ice age or since the original emergence of homo sapiens?

I doubt it.

At this point, it is absolutely necessary to remember that:

despite the probability of existence (or manifestation) of a higher order referring to a microscopic system (atomic-molecular) is extremely scarce, they will anyhow be much higher that the probability of existence (or manifestation) of a higher order referring to a macroscopic system.

You do understand the difference between biology and physics don't you? Life is not a random quantum event but a series of chemical reactions strongly directed by selective pressures.

In an isolated significant coincidence as well as in a qualitative leap at an evolutive level referring to mankind or to any other animal species, there is always therefore a trace of the shadow of a high improbability of manifestation of a higher order referring to a macroscopic system.

That sentence does not actually make any sense.

Because the probabilities of manifestation of a higher order referring to an atomic-molecular system, are higher in comparison to those of a higher order referring to a macroscopic system; it can be inferred that casual genetic mutation in an animal species must forcedly be more frequent than evolutive qualitative leaps as well as each significative coincidence

Does that mean that only a minority of mutations are benefical? If so, thanks, we already know.

(in this case intended as a significant event for the whole of mankind, such as a fall of a meteorite of immense dimensions on our planet).

Intended? By whom?

If our neurons had not been able through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to reach a state of a higher order, we would very probably still find ourselves at the Stone Age;

If we hadn't evolved we would not be where we are now.

I'm blinded by your insight.

or maybe we would never have actually existed, because the impossibility, for an atomic-molecular system to reach a determined and rather elevated order state, would imply a “phase displacement” of some percentage upon the most common value of Nature constants (such as Plank’s for example) which, as well as not granting us our existence, would also not let the Universe, which to us is so familiar, to exist.

If our neurons hadn't evolved the universe might not exist.

Pretentious and deliberately obfusticating, in the final analysis, meaningless.

Brevity rather than verbosity and pompous pontificating please.

the eu is as democratic as the uk.

if you dont like that, then you dont like representatonal democracy where the representatives choose their own leadership and staff, and would prefer everyone in a position of power above a certain level to be voted for.. fair one, but bear in mind that your gripe is with the eu not being a certain type of democracy, not being undemocratic, and that the UK suffers the same flaw.

No.

I don't think that the UK is a direct democracy. Never stated it. But the UK does have directly accountable politicians. Unlike the EU. That is why the UK is a democracy. The EU isn't.

Looked up the word 'patronage' yet?

only in areas where he has chosen to accept that eu law overrules uk law.

No.

EU law automatically overides UK law. Mr Blair doesn't have any choice over that.

we haven't been forced into this. this is all by and with our agreement.

Which still doesn't make the EU at all democratic.

your logic would seem to suggest that new york is part of the united faschist dictatorial empire of america

No. Strange distortion your attempting there:-p

the logic is that our entry was democratic.

Which is irrelevant. You really seem to think that just because the entry was a decision taken by a democratic government makes the EU democratic.

It doesn't.

yes, because he was elected, had the support of most people, and the enabling act, with the permission of the people via their representatives, made him into a dictator for his term.

Which links to your oft repeated

the logic is that our entry was democratic.

no, because he removed people right to speak against him in any way, shape, or form, or to have a say in the running of their country in any way, shape, or form.

Funny, that reminds me of the way a certain organisation based in Brussels behaves.

in short: hitler democratically achieved an undemocratic rulership.

Gosh. Just like the EU!

in contrast, the eu democratically achieved a democratic rulership, such as it has.

A democratic rulership which gets by without bothering with the inconvience of democracy. How efficent!

democracies deal with people with different wants, from different situations etc. throwing in 'different countries' doesnt make it any harder than, say, the fact that the uk contains many immagrants, too many nazis, pasifists, militarists, people who want to pay less tax, people who want better (more expensive) services, christians, jews, muslims, atheists, a few jedi according to the sensus, people of all ages and classes, etc etc etc.

Wrong.

The differences between people within a country are trumped by a shared national loyalty. Without that shared bond there is nothing on which to base the democracy.

democracies deal with this. they deal with a vast array of conflicting view points and pick the majority one, or, occasionaly, the sane one. that the people consider themselves all part of the same big, happy family is not required, as im sure the nazis, immagrants, extremely poor, those with radical political views, or anyone else that feels unakin with the other members of their demos will attest to.

Democracies deal with that by using the common bonds of nationality. Something the EU can not do.

I've not bothered responding to large chunks of what you stated, largely because most of it was redundant and partly because it is too late. I may add more comments later.

Simply put, The EU is a oligarchical, supra national bureaucracy. It extends control and issues laws and directives with no direct reference to the voters. The EU 'Parliament' is toothless, barely even looking at most legislation, let alone actually vetoing anything. There is no European Demos and so there can be no European democracy ( can you name any European political parties with cross border appeal?, the only exception, Sinn Fein, is the exception that proves the rule).

In summary. The EU is an artifical, undemocratic organisation. Arguing otherwise reminds me of those people who used to argue that the 'Peoples Democratic Republics' of the Eastern Bloc were really democratic.

the answre is: indifferent.

I'm fairly sure most Americans would take a rather different point of view.

reason? it wouldn't happen. take the euro for example. britain didn't like it. britain doesnt use it. no problem.

No problem! I seem to remember ERM, economic crisis and huge amounts of EU funded propaganda aimd at persuading the British that not abolishing the Pound would relegate the UK to poverty.

Just a shame that the British people are too stubborn and contrary for even the Eurocrates to force that particular dogs breakfast on them.

or had you not noticed that we still use sterling,

Funnily enough i did notice.

whilst germany, france etc have switched to the euro?

Without anyone bothering to ask the people. Against some serious public opposition in many of the countries.

That must be the democracy you think the EU displays so well:-p

im sure they didn't vote to exclude us just to be mean.

Pity about the Germans or the Dutch or the Spanish or the Swedes or the Finns not getting a vote on it at all.

Perhaps some of them don't feel as indifferent as you profess to be? Still, never mind, as you stated, if you can't get a mandate from the voters, just do it anyway.

Good old EU democracy:D Impose rules, expand control, ignore the electorate. After all, it's all in a good cause!