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mtnyoung
Trad climber
Twain Harte, California
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Fattrad: I use these threads to help stay tuned to different sources. Thanks for the effort (others too), it gives an easy way to "check" many viewpoints.
But isn't it about time to start a next "part?" And, BTW, in Roman numerals, 40 is more commonly written: XL, not XXXX. So your next installment might be better titled: XLII
Thanks again.
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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Fatty
looks like your plans is not working my man
Western powers circulated a draft in the UN Security Council for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, as the US-led campaign to win support for the measure appears to have failed.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120112§ionid=351020104
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dirtbag
climber
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Yeah wars will solve everything.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Mar 10, 2010 - 06:58am PT
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you gotta love hitchens (from slate online):
"I have just finished reading one of the most astoundingly stupid and nasty documents ever to have landed on my desk. It consists of a letter from a law firm in Saudi Arabia, run by a man named Ahmed Zaki Yamani, to a group of newspapers in Scandinavia. I quote directly from its main paragraphs:
Over the past months my law firm has been contacted by several thousand descendants of the Prophet, who have learned about your newspaper's republication of the drawing, depicting their esteemed ancestor as a terrorist suicide bomber with a bomb in his turban.
As descendants of the Prophet, these individuals feel personally insulted, emotionally distressed and defamed by your newspaper's re-publication of the drawing. They have therefore retained my law firm and instructed me to approach you …
So that's the stupid part—the idea that people who claim descent from a seventh-century warlord and preacher have standing to sue for hurt feelings. The nasty bit comes a few paragraphs later:
t is my belief that your newspaper's fulfillment of the above-mentioned conditions would be perceived as a sign of respect and understanding throughout the Muslim world in general, and your newspaper might thus help resolve the severe conflict, which your re-publication of the drawing has created. As you may be aware, this conflict is still affecting Danish and Arab interests, in particular in the Middle East, where a number of Danish products are still being boycotted.
It is impossible not to notice the element of threat and menace contained in the second extract. It's not difficult to remind Danes of the organized campaign of hysterical retribution, ranging from the burnings of embassies to the mob-killing of civilians, that followed the first publication of some mild caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in 2005. Only a little further backstory is required: In 2008, it was discovered that a cell of eager murderers was planning to kill those who authored the caricatures, and in solidarity a large number of Danish newspapers reprinted the drawings in order to express their support for freedom of speech. Then, on New Year's 2009, a Somali fundamentalist chopped his way into the house of 74-year-old cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, who was having a sleepover with his granddaughter, and very nearly succeeded in axing them both to death. The apology for all this, however, is supposed to be forthcoming not from the aggressors and inciters but from their victims. Late last month, Copenhagen newspaper Politiken agreed to make a public apology on the terms dictated by the Yamani law firm.
Celebrating this abject decision at a triumphant press conference in Beirut last week, Yamani repeated his bizarre claim to be the lawyer for no fewer than 94,923 descendants of the outraged prophet. Again, he made one utterly absurd statement and one extremely sinister one:
In our view, all religious icons of all religions, such as the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, Moses, and (not to be compared to prophets and messengers) others who are non-religious icons but have contributed to humanity like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and others such as Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haitham and Albert Einstein all deserve respect and protection from ridicule and defamation.
Cretinism on this historic level is comparatively rare. Apparently, Yamani thinks that Mahatma is a first name rather than a Hindu religious honorific and that the words "Dalai Lama" are a secular title. Moreover (and you have to admit that tossing in a Jewish name is a nice touch), he would protect the stern Spinozist Einstein from being lampooned for the many wrong surmises he made about the Big Bang and quantum theory. But while it is obvious that he knows nothing of such matters, he does know how to unveil a threat:
We wished that all the Danish Newspapers which published the Drawings accepted to enter into a settlement as Politiken did, and published an apology to avoid multiple jurisdictional litigations and costly damages in favor of our clients.
If you ask yourself whether Yamani cares more about the supernatural world or the grossly material one, it will not take very long to come up with an answer. You can detect it in the way that he balances the soft inducement against the hard threat of remembered mayhem: Yamani or your life.
But it is in the material world that newspapers are published and in which laws and constitutions exist that inscribe their right to print material without censorship and intimidation. It is also in the material world that laws protect grandfathers and their granddaughters from homicidal religious maniacs. Are we to surrender these hard-won rights in favor of the hectic emotions of people who claim a distant kinship with a quasi-mythological figure who was uneasy with both reading and writing and preferred to recite? This is without precedent. Are we now to be dogged with lawsuits by those in whose veins the blood of Henry VIII, Mussolini, Columbus, or Ivan the Terrible can be alleged to flourish? (At least—unless you believe Dan Brown—this will not be such a problem in the case of the Virgin Mary.)
The thing would be ridiculous if it were not so hateful and had it not already managed to break the nerve of one Danish newspaper. In Ireland a short while ago, a law against blasphemy was passed, making it a crime to outrage the feelings not just of the country's disgraced and incriminated Roman Catholic Church but of all believers. The same pseudo-ecumenical tendency can be found in the annual attempt by Muslim states to get the United Nations to pass a resolution outlawing all attacks on religion. It's not enough that faith claims to be the solution to all problems. It is now demanded that such a preposterous claim be made immune from any inquiry, any critique, and any ridicule.
This has to stop, and it has to stop right now. All democratic countries and assemblies should be readying legislation along the lines of the First Amendment, guaranteeing the right of open debate on matters of religion and repudiating the blackmail by law firms and individuals whose own true ancestry would not bear too much scrutiny."
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UncleDoug
Mountain climber
Places unkown
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Mar 12, 2010 - 12:32pm PT
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Jeff,
Something got you nervous?
The only time you post with this veracity is when someone has taken you down a couple of notches.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Mar 14, 2010 - 07:57am PT
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Is Tom Hanks Unhinged?
Posted By Victor Davis Hanson On March 11, 2010 @ 5:38 pm In Uncategorized | 227 Comments
Much has been written of the recent Tom Hanks remarks to Douglas Brinkley in a Time magazine interview about his upcoming HBO series on World War II in the Pacific. Here is the explosive excerpt that is making the rounds today.
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.
Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous. Consider:
1) In earlier times, we had good relations with Japan (an ally during World War I, that played an important naval role in defeating imperial Germany at sea) and had stayed neutral in its disputes with Russia (Teddy Roosevelt won a 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his intermediary role). The crisis that led to Pearl Harbor was not innately with the Japanese people per se (tens of thousands of whom had emigrated to the United States on word of mouth reports of opportunity for Japanese immigrants), but with Japanese militarism and its creed of Bushido that had hijacked, violently so in many cases, the government and put an entire society on a fascistic footing. We no more wished to annihilate Japanese because of racial hatred than we wished to ally with their Chinese enemies because of racial affinity. In terms of geo-strategy, race was not the real catalyst for war other than its role among Japanese militarists in energizing expansive Japanese militarism.
2) How would Hanks explain the brutal Pacific wars between Japanese and Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, Japanese and Filipinos, and Japanese and Pacific Islanders, in which not hundreds of thousands perished, but many millions? In each of these theaters, the United States was allied with Asians against an Asian Japan, whose racially-hyped “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,” aimed at freeing supposedly kindred Asians from European and white imperialism, flopped at its inauguration (primarily because of high-handed Japanese feelings of superiority and entitlement, which, in their emphasis on racial purity, were antithetical to the allied democracies, but quite in tune with kindred Axis power, Nazi Germany.)
3) Much of the devastating weaponry used on the Japanese (e.g., the B-29 fire raids, or the two nuclear bombs) were envisioned and designed to be used against Germany (cf. the 1941 worry over German nuclear physics) or were refined first in the European theater (cf. the allied fire raids on Hamburg and Dresden). Much of the worst savagery of the war came in 1945 when an increasingly mobilized and ever more powerful United States steadily turned its attention on Japan as the European theater waned and then ended four months before victory in the Pacific theater. Had we needed by 1945 to use atomic bombs, or massive formations of B-29s when they came on line, against Hitler, we most certainly would have.
We should also point out that for many Americans, initially in 1941-2, the real war was with the Japanese, not the Germans (despite an official policy of privileging the European theater in terms of supply and manpower), but not because of race hatred, but due to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Until then (Hitler would in reaction unwisely declare war on the U.S. on December 11, 1941) Germany had been careful to maintain the pretense of non-belligerency, while Japan chose to start a war through a rather treacherous surprise assault at a time of nominal peace — thus inciting furor among the American public.
Despite Hanks’ efforts at moral equivalence in making the U.S. and Japan kindred in their hatreds, America was attacked first, and its democratic system was both antithetical to the Japan of 1941, and capable of continual moral evolution in a way impossible under Gen. Tojo and his cadre. It is quite shameful to reduce that fundamental difference into a “they…us” 50/50 polarity. Indeed, the most disturbing phrase of all was Hanks’ suggestion that the Japanese wished to “kill” us, while we in turn wanted to “annihilate” them. Had they developed the bomb or other such weapons of mass destruction (and they had all sorts of plans of creating WMDs), and won the war, I can guarantee Hanks that he would probably not be here today, and that his Los Angeles would look nothing like a prosperous and modern Tokyo.
4) What is remarkable about the aftermath of WWII is the almost sudden postwar alliance between Japan and the U.S., primarily aimed at stopping the Soviets, and then later the communist Chinese. In other words, the United States, despite horrific battles in places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, harbored little official postwar racial animosity in its foreign policy, helped to foster Japanese democracy, provided aid, and predicated its postwar alliances — in the manner of its prewar alliances — on the basis of ideology, not race. Hanks apparently has confused the furor of combat — in which racial hatred often becomes a multiplier of emotion for the soldier in extremis — with some sort of grand collective national racial policy that led to and guided our conduct.
An innately racist society could not have gone through the nightmare of Okinawa (nearly 50,000 Americans killed, wounded, or missing), and yet a mere few months later have in Tokyo, capital of the vanquished, a rather enlightened proconsul MacArthur, whose deference to Japanese religion, sensibilities, and tradition ensured a peaceful transition to a rather radical new independent and autonomous democratic culture.
5) Hanks quips, “Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?” That is another unnecessary if asinine statement — if it refers to our struggle against radical Islam in the post 9/11 world. The U.S. has risked much to help Muslims in the Balkans and Somalia, freed Kuwait and Iraq in two wars against Saddam Hussein, liberated or helped to liberate Afghanistan both from the Russians and the Taliban, and has the most generous immigration policy toward Muslims of any country in the world, ensuring a degree of tolerance unimaginable to Muslims in, say, China or Russia. Hanks should compare the U.S. effort to foster democracy in Iraq with the Russian conduct in Chechnya to understand “what’s going on today.”
In short Hanks’s comments are as ahistorical as they are unhinged. One wonders — were they supposed to entice us into watching the upcoming HBO series on the Pacific theater? But if anyone is interested in the role of race on the battlefield, one could probably do far better in skipping Hanks, and reading instead E.B. Sledge’s brilliant memoir, With the Old Breed, which has a far more sophisticated analysis of race and combat on Peleliu and Okinawa, and was apparently (and I hope fairly ) drawn upon in the HBO series. (Sledge speaks of atrocities on both sides in the horrific close-quarter fighting on the islands, but he makes critical distinctions about accepted and non-accepted behaviors, the differences between Japanese and American attitudes, and in brilliant fashion appreciates the role of these campaigns in the larger war. One should memorize the last lines of his book.)
It would be easy to say that Hanks knows about as much about history as historians do about acting, but that would be too charitable. Anyone with a high school education, or an innate curiosity to read (and Hanks in the interview references works on the Pacific theater), can easily learn the truth on these broad subjects. In Hanks’ case, he is either ignorant and has done little real research, or in politically-correct fashion has taken a truth about combat in the Pacific (perceptions of cultural and racial difference often did intensify the savagery of combat) and turned it into The Truth about the origins and conduct of an entire war — apparently in smug expectation that such doctrinaire revisionism wins applause these days in the right places (though I doubt among the general public that he expects to watch the series.)
All in all, such moral equivalence (the Japanese and the U.S. were supposedly about the same in their hatreds) is quite sad, and yet another commentary on our postmodern society that is as ignorant about its own past as it is confused in its troubled present.
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Mar 16, 2010 - 01:56pm PT
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And it's all for your stinking condos that you want to be built.
Push the Palestinians back, Push the Palestinians back, way back. Kill the women, children Palestinians injure them as well , Kill the Palestinians, Kill the Palestinians , get more land, push then back way back.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Mar 16, 2010 - 08:10pm PT
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Push the Palestinians back, Push the Palestinians back, way back. Kill the women, children Palestinians injure them as well , Kill the Palestinians, Kill the Palestinians , get more land, push then back way back.
How many Arab states TRULY support the Palestinians? Iran, Syria?
And taking more land? They (Israelis) were attacked from those lands and essentially said, "F*#k you, we'll take those lands now as a buffer zone and build a wall".
Eqypt ain't no good friend of their 'brothers', either. The Palestinians under Arafat, and now Hamas, are a bunch of trouble-making PITA's.
If the Palestinian people really wanted peace they would chill. Allow all religions to pray at the Temple Mount WITHOUT CONDITION!!! Who are the intolerant ones????
http://rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=292711&D=2010-03-16&SO=&HC=1
Meh! No sympathy....
Hamas has to go. It's just an arm of Iran. Same with Hezbollah in Lebanon/Syria.
If they're not careful, they get a major ass-kicking. Israel can do it.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 16, 2010 - 08:30pm PT
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The Israelis seem to have bumbled into a fight that they can't win, one which clarifies the divergence between the US' interests, and those of a minority of Israelis. The Israeli interest has always been in actions that are inconsistent with its rhetoric, pandering to domestic extremists, and obfuscating the growing differences between its interests and those of the US. Looks like they've finally blown it. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/opinion/16iht-edcohen.html?hp
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Mar 17, 2010 - 07:22pm PT
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More like "Give them a shekel, they'll take a cubit".
With 'allies' like Israel, who needs enemies?
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Mar 17, 2010 - 08:53pm PT
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MH- "With 'allies' like Israel, who needs enemies?"
"I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse." Genesis 12:3
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TripL7
Trad climber
san diego
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Mar 17, 2010 - 11:34pm PT
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TGT- "This isn't good."
"Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:" Psalm 122:6.
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Binks
Social climber
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Mar 22, 2010 - 01:31pm PT
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Dear God, please let the Jews and Arabs fight their own war and bomb each other if they want to. Please leave Americans and American money out of it. Please let the American public finally realize that 9/11 is all about some Israelis and some Arabs hating each other and attempting to spread it to America. It never had anything do with America, ever.
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Binks
Social climber
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Mar 22, 2010 - 02:38pm PT
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The biggest theft ever from America all so the chosen ones can reclaim their empire from thousands of years ago. Megalomania!
You better pray Americans don't see it for what it is.
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