It's hard to know what to write on an occasion like this. In all parts of the world, people will quietly or otherwise be recognising (commemmorating sounds too cheeful a word) The Evil Act that was committed on 11 September 2001. It's all been said before. I just wanted to say, Britain is with you. Thanks. Jeff.58 responses total.
Cast not your pearls before swine. Throw your support behind freedom, not behind America. Eventually, Americans may recognize the difference and join you.
Maybe you will learn something someday and realize whatan ass you were today.
Re 2: I'd throw your own comment back at you. America is currently having serious issues with "freedom", and the current President is most of the problem.
Thank you, twenex.
In twenex's defense (I guess): he did not exactly say America. But freedom is not a bad idea to specify. But again, as a centrist and Independent, I still submit this to say-- I don't exactly side with Bruce, or with Scott and Eric. You may have found that 9/11 doesn't inspire great patrotic passion within my breast. I'm much too iconoclastic to reduce my complex feelings to some simple flag-waving or dogmatic tripe I hear so often lately. Nor do I always feel the need to take the intellectual high road. I know GW seems to really be the Republican's "boy," but at times, I can't help but wonder if the Democrats aren't overly worried. Sue me. I'm not left of center. Of course I'm not going to be as alarmist. But that doesn't mean I like it, either. Of course, politics aside, resp:2 sounded *really* stupid.
re #1: *applause*
"Freedom" means having the right to post resposes such as 1 3, & 6. Unfortunately, there are those (a minority, to be sure) who fail - for whatever reason - to make that connection and, therefore, lack an appreciation of the blessings that have been bestowed upon us.
GOD BLESS YOU KLG!
Thank you. I believe He does, and most people thoughout this great nations and his most wonderful world.
and god bless the ceo of this GREAT CORPORATION GEORGE BUSH JUNIOR!!!
I appreciate the freedom that I have to do things like post #1. And because I appreciate it, it pisses me off when my government works to tear down the freedoms its predecessors fought for. The America I referred to in #1 is not the America which guarantees the rights to say unpopular things without being treated as at best a threat and at worst a criminal and a traitor. This is why I honored the victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks by sending a check to the ACLU.
What did YOU (collective, individual, whatever) do to honor the essential American freedoms that 9/11 were an attack upon, in commemoration of that anniversary? Donations to the ACLU can be mailed to: 125 Broad Street 18th Floor New York, NY 10004-2400
awesome, eric!
So, how exactly has your personal freedom been torn down. Give us some concrete, not theoretical or hypothetical, examples. (By the way, how are you fighting for freedom &/or honoring your predecessors who did?)
*cough*patriot act*cough*
Every time the congress of the United States passes, and the President of the United States signs a law which hides the processes of the federal justice system under a cloak of secrecy, or allows law enforcement agencies more latitude to investigate or detain citizens of the United States without proof or even reasonable suspicion that they have violated criminal laws, my rights and freedoms have been torn down, threatened, or violated. If I have to wait until *I'm* arrested or investigated before I can claim to have had my freedoms abridged then I have waited far too long. #14 seems to suggest that there is nothing to be learned from the experiences and reflections of Pastor Martin Niemoller (google it).
Mr. flem, Take a drink of water. Mr. other, In "other" words, you cannot provide a single example. Just as we suspected. (As if that will put an end to the leftist whining.)
I cannot provide an example, and that fact is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. It is a classic straw man argument.
9/11 was a great tragedy. 3,000+ people were murdered and two huge (albeit despised by many New Yorkers pre-9/11) buildings collapsed. It happened to us, and no one can blame us for pausing to remember and mourn on the anniversary But meanwhile, many more thousands of Europeans have died because of a heat wave which was a manifestation of a worsening global climate change for which a plausible case can be made that we -- not George W. Bush, not the government of the USA -- we Americans are personally responsible. But we expect Europe to drop what it's doing every 9/11 from now on and hold solemn commemorative ceremonies and send us messages of sympathy. Puh-leez.
You spread collective guilt too widely. For one thing, there are a significant number of Americans that accept that global warming is a major threat to the world and that American leaders should start doing something about it. However a majority of Americans either don't believe or care and they have elected leaders that feel the same way. In addition, there is a large component of "tragedy of the commons" in this - each person in our society generally follows the urge to enhance their own wealth and happiness, with the consequence of ever increasing resource depletion and, perhaps most important, ever increasing population. These factors are, of course, also present or potential in every other nation - who generally aspire also to increased consumption (with a modicum, here and there, of lip service to population control, economy, and restraint).
"there are a significant number of Americans that accept that global warming is a major threat to the world and that American leaders should start doing something about it." Oh please. You really think that gets you off the hook?
Re #19: I understand that China is already burning 20% more coal than the USA, and is ramping up rapidly; if there is a bogeyman role here, Beijing seems to want to nudge the US out of it. (The caveats of the current administration about exceptions for "developing" economies in the Kyoto treaty now appear well-founded.)
True. All we did was get there first.
I think the US is still far in the lead when you tally up carbon dioxide emmissions, either gross or per capita.
So, md, what are you doing to get yourself off the hook? I drive an ordinary car, have a high efficiency furnace and keep a cool house (and wear sweaters) - and I vote for candidates that promise to have US follow the Kyoto agreement. What do you do?
I understand and admit that I'm part of the problem. That's the main difference between you and me on this issue. As it happens, I do have a super-high-efficiency furnace and always keep the house 60-ish in winter. But that's just because I'm by nature both a cold-weather person and notoriously cheap, not because of any environmental concerns. And I don't delude myself that having a super-high-efficiency furnace somehow makes me a Friend of the Earth. As to your voting record, you have every right to be proud of it. But you must realize that "Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." - Thoreau
Yes! We can ratify the Kyoto Agreement and for the mere price of Billions of $$ put off the (supposed) effects of "global warming" by a whopping two whole years!! Such a deal. (We got a bridge you might be interested in buying, too.)
I haven't said I'm not part of the problem _ *everyone* is part of the problem. However I think both by voting and by my own personal choices and my influence (such as it is) on others, I am doing just about as much as an ordinary individual can do, and that is more than going off into the woods and only leading an individual spartan existence.
Re #17, If Patriot II gets passed, you may never be able to get an example of someone prosecuted under it. http://www.idahogreens.org/Greenweb/IssuesHtml/pat2sum.htm Example: Section 126 allows federal agents to access consumer credit reports without a subpoena or court order, and no one would be notified that their records had been accessed. Heh, now how would anyone find an example of the abuse of such a law? Section 504 abolishes fair hearings for lawful permanent residents convicted of criminal offenses through an "expedited removal" procedure, and prevents any court from questioning the government s unlawful actions by explicitly exempting these cases from habeas corpus. Congress has not exempted any person from habeas corpus -- a protection guaranteed by the Constitution -- since the Civil War.
How would any law enforcement agency in the world crack communication encrypted with say 3DES/AES? IMHO, unless criminals/terrorists use plain text to communicate, it is meaningless to tap ISPs. No?
Re 27: Hey, if we can (apparently) afford $87 billion for Bush's reelection war, then we ought to be able to afford Kyoto. Ard one merely needs to note the hottest summer on record in Europe to suspect that perhaps global warming isn't a liberal scare story after all.
Well said, sir.
Re #23: And this makes it okay for others to simultaneously condemn us and try to take our place? Re #24: That's largely due to history. How would you change that overnight, when we have such a large installed base of everything? The real problem is that the developing countries, such as China and India, are trying to develop via more or less the same route that the USA did. This will not only have them belching CO2 at the rate we were/are, it will give them the same problem of replacing infrastructure that we're refusing to face. Exempting them from emissions rules will just make the problem worse. Part of the problem is that some leftist organizations want to structure carbon abatement as an income transfer; every human being gets some CO2 allowance, and can either buy more or sell theirs for money. They want all the billions of third-world babies who aren't burning much in the way of fuel (save by deforestation, perhaps) to be supported by the first world, not to mention the massive "graveyard entitlement" that would appear. This idea is dismissed out of hand by most non-leftists, and emissions reduction gets held hostage. It makes far more sense to require that all long-term-fixed carbon release be taxed to a certain level worldwide, and let people find ways which have the least net carbon release (which would coincide, unremarkably, with the least carbon-tax paid). Re #27: We can also improve our balance of payments a lot, clean up the air in our cities and slash the funding available to Islamofascists with the same measure. What do you have against that, Kerry? Re #31: We should start charging off that $87 billion with taxes paid at the gas pump. The problem should start fixing itself quickly. The really crazy thing is that many conservation measures have a net negative cost, yet people don't even consider them. Electric cars are potentially cheaper to own and run than ICE cars, and we should be planning for a changeover as fast as we can. Right now I'm investigating the possibilities of massive cogeneration systems combined with hybrid-electric vehicles and wind power. The wind power potential of the area off the west coast of Michigan alone appears to be about 7.4 GW average. If full exploitation didn't cut total fossil fuel use of the state by more than 50%, I'd be greatly surprised.
Re #17, your examples klg New Terror Laws Used Vs. Common Criminals http://story.news.yahoo.com/news? tmpl=story&cid=514&e=8&u=/ap/20030914/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/anti_terror_law s_2
"Re #23: And this makes it okay for others to simultaneously condemn us and try to take our place?" I don't *think* I said that, but who knows? You realize that even after we've gone over to solar and wind power and hydrogen engines, and the others in their billions have soiled the nest so badly that humankind is half-a-generation from extinction, they'll *still* be blaming us.
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So, would you rather help fix a problem, or just worry about how others will view us and do nothing?
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Re #17: It's hard to provide examples because information about use of many of the Patriot Act provisions is classified. In some cases even statistics about how many times provisions have been used have ben ruled to be secret information. I suspect this was written in specifically *because* it lets proponents of the law claim opponents can't point to specific cases of abuse.
Re #36, the idea that muslim nations hate the US bcoz they-dont- worship-muhammed is mostly propogated by a few fundamentalist organisations and the media. I have no reason to believe that the common man on the street in the middle-east region follows that logic. However, they do dislike the US and its allies bcoz they perceive the actions of the US and its allies as meddling in their affairs. I cannot say whether that perception is true or false but its sad to see that the media keeps selling this story that they-hate-us-bcoz-we- are-rich-and-not-muslims (and it seems to find a lot of buyers).
The U.S. meddles in *everyone's* affairs. They shouldn't take it personally. ;>
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Yes, for them it *is* a religious matter. However, that doesn't mean that *all* Muslims are anti-American/anti-Western etc. Just beause British people are brought up to hate the IRA because they are terrorists doesn't mean all Irish people are the same. I know several personally who are not. There must be more where they came from.
Oh, and by the way. Have the levels of intelligence, education and courtesy amngst the GREX population really sunk so low that we have to commemmorate a tragic event by *bitching* at each other? If only you knew how tempted i was to go back and delete this item for that reason.
Oh, my god! Bitching on grex??! Next thing you know, there will be *drift* or something, and then where will we be??
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Not necessarily. Catholics *tend* to be republicans and Protestants tend to be loyalists, but there is some crossover. And there is also the Alliance Party, which is cross-community. If you wish to drag religion into it, America is more religious than much of Europe; politicians proclaiming "God Bless Grat Britain" would stick in many people's throats.
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They have a State church, so it isn't surprising that it's "God Save our Gracious Queen".
God Save the Queen, actually. And it's generally recognised htat the embarrasment of having a State Church in a country where (a) at least half of the indigenous population is non-church going and (b) efforts are being made to promote multiculturalism is part of the reason why there is a moratorium on bringing religion into politics. Furthermore, a significant number of monarchists (not to mention republicans, i.e. those who advocate the abolition of the monarchy) advocate the replacement of God Save the Queen with, for example, Land of Hope and Glory, or even "Imagine," by John Lennon. The religious contingent advocate "Jerusalem", which is where the phrase "[England's] Green and Pleasant Land" originated.
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If i were dah, i believe my response would be, "AH HA HA HAHAH HA HA!!". If I were dah...
No, because if you were me you'd realise that's only somewhat funny and not unfunny enough to deserve an ironic "HAHahahaha, eTc. "
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something like that.
Apparently Jedi garnered something like 200,000 adherents, and wasn't put on the census despite the Government's own claims that any religion which garned over 100,000 adherents (i think) would be put on the list. I wouldn't say that means "the majority of non-church-going [Brits] were Jedi Knights", though; the majority of people in Britain are non-church-going, and hte poulation of the UK is around the 59 million mark (49 million or so of whom live in England proper, i.e. not in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.)
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/grin
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