Actually there are a few FACTS that are being completely left out of the media coverage... because the take all the wind out of a making this a story....

1) Constitutionally... it would have been illegal for Bush to order federal troops... including the national guard into Louisianna without the consent of the states govenor.

2) Two days before Katrina hit LA, Bush asked such permission from the LA govenor to have these federal troops standby. The answer from the govenor there was NO!

3) FEMA had actually responded to this disaster quicker than any other hurricane that has struck the US. Including Andrew which also wiped away many towns in FL.

4) The contingency and evacuation plans for this event were NOT followed as outlined by the local and state governments, who also had primary responsibility to take action.

Blaming Bush first off is ridiculous. I think we are forgetting the powers of the president. We are not a monarchy... the presidential powers really are more limited than you realize. I personally don't lay blame to anybody. It is all well and good to point fingers when you have the luxury of 20/20 hindsight. Which is my argument. The question is always why wasnt more done before something happened? I think it is amazing that we rely so heavily on our government to be the end all be all of everything. If something in our lives goes wrong... why is it supposed to be the governments fault and why should they be required to fix it? Our government is already far too big and handling far far many more things than was ever intended to be handled at the federal level.

Actually, I think if the President can start a war upon a country for questionable reasons against the help of the U.N, I think he could've gotten a helicopter down there on the first day and gotten some people off of their roofs.

`The question is always why wasnt more done before something happened?`

The answer is because Bush used the money to fix the levees on national security (aka a big list that doesn't let people using their freedom of speech to fly) and replaced the head of FEMA with a friend (a former arabian horse show coordinator) with no disaster experiance who would act as a scape goat in a situation like this.

`I think it is amazing that we rely so heavily on our government to be the end all be all of everything. If something in our lives goes wrong... why is it supposed to be the governments fault and why should they be required to fix it?`

Because that is their duty. To make sure we don't die horribly in a hurricane. I think its amazing that you don't expect them to do anything for us after they take our money, destroy our jobs, bring us into defeceit and send us to a greed war.

It seems like people are ignoring the facts. Facts such as the money for rebuilding the levees was drained for absolutely nothing, the government could've helped in the first thirty minutes, "Brownie" was a scape goat and Bush doesn't care about poor black people dieing, for if he did, those levees would have been fixed during his first year in office.

I don't think Bush is to blame, I think he shares responsibility, please, do not set up a strawman.

Also, I may agree with you were I libertarian, but fortunately I'm not, that means that I can't send all my helicoptors over to deliver food and water.

This was just sent to me by a friend..

WARNING - Contains very Explicit language!!!!!

Another aspect of the hurricane disaster to put into perspective


Foamy the Squirrel

What aspect? The squirrel just rants about how news reporters are jack asses, as if we didn't know already.

Top 3 reasons I don't watch the news:

1. Corporate Bias. How come crime in this country is dropping, and yet people seem to think it's rising? Because people watch the news. Every year the amount of coverage on Violent Crime increases, making it seem like criminal activity is increasing, making people feel like we need to build more prisons. And then we make a few more laws about marijuana so we can fill those prisons up with 18 years olds, insitutionalize them into criminals, and breed a population of criminals because of petty crimes. Prisons make criminals, criminals do not make prisons. How come real coverage of actual events people care about or downplayed, to give the viewers the feeling it's unimportant? Because their sponsors told them to. It's retarded.

2. People think there's some sort of imaginary "Liberal Bias." I mean, they're right, PBS has a liberal bias because they report news that is of interest. CNN has a very liberal bias aside from the fact that they get stories that they are going to present cut every day from their program because they show too much bias, or the fact that they let go a presidential correspondent because his second cousin was married to an open supporter of that president or something like that. Why watch the news and give people an excuse to call me a stereotypical liberal?

3. It's mostly nonsense and incorrect information. If I want to read a report that was altered by the Bush administration to downplay the effects of Global warming so the idea is formed in my Head that Global Warming is not as threatening as it is, I'll watch the news. If I want to hear about how Bush went awol then two days later see a public apology for saying he went awol, I'll watch the news, until I want to see that, I'll stick to something credible.

I agree with alot of what you said, but ever since the hurricane, the news is starting to become reliable.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

I have no idea . . . .? This one is a toughie . . I'll get back to you in . . . oh thirty years.

Here's something I figured out-

People who focus on what could have been done instead of focusing on what we can do now need to be put right.

It's too late to do anything about the past, so let's focus on the present and future. Sure you have your biased newsman who rants about the wrongs done by the president and the republican party. I say **** the Democrats and the Republicans! Go . . uh . . . Ronald Macdonald! No wait . . that's horrible.

Every single presidential election since advanced technology came about has probably been rigged one way or the other. So I have to say to all this complaining . . meh.

Dissent has been one of the biggest movers of this society since it was born. People arguing over what could have done is less pruductive than doing something in the present, but in the long run it's this dissent that progresses this society forward. The massive anger at Bush for his actions even caused him to publicly accept responsibility for doing nothing. I mean, that may not seem like much, but I think of Bush very poorly on the spectrum of humanity, so that's a big step in my mind. You know what it tells me to do? Next time he screws up, I'll be even more on the offensive, and hopefully so will everyone else, and then maybe he'll actually do something in time to save lives. It's that kind of work that has changed the world for the better.

Then, too much dissent and you get present day Germany where enflation that can be at no fault of the president causes and impeachment trial. There is a balance required, and I'm sure most people that lean more right on the spectrum than myself disagree where this balance lies.

Just a thought...

You know how your ranting about the government not doing anything for LA and whatnot?

Well your right, I sat down last night and thought about it..

Did you realize that the mayor of New Orleans kept the buses that were SUPPOSED to evac all the people halted untill pretty much half the town was underwater? Now why would he kill his own race? Oh, I forgot he was black.

And did you know why the levee was never reinforced? Because all the tree huggers and eco nazis SUED the Army Corp of Engineers EVERY time they tried to fix it.. And guess what, they won!

I'm sure those fishy's are havin fun munchin on dead bodies, after all they are much more imporrtant then us...

No I never really thought it was because of race persee, I just wanted to see you guys refute that. I mean, it seemed because so many people blamed it on race, that was what caused Bush to make a public apology.

Could I get a source to this lawsuit with environmental organizations sueing the army corps of engineers?

I'll look for it...

I can't quite remeber where I got it from, but I'm 97.1923802^123 percent sure it's true..

I'm not disagreeing, it's just that News Channels often print stories that aren't true, or stories that come from the EPA which has lost all credibilitiy.

I tend to agree with you there..

Thats why I make sure to research everything when I do a story for my school news paper

And can you believe that I'm actually objective?!!

I'm going to switch gears and go back to a little biology argument about over-population and carrying capacity.

My argument: Humans have to reverse the path of environmental destruction and put our reliance on renewable resources starting immediatly.

Humans industrialized farming to extend our carrying capacity to a number we haven't quite hit yet but are coming toward quickly, that is the assumption. After all, every other species in our Phylon follows Logistic Growth Patterns (meaning their population stops growing once they do not have enough resources to support more).

However, Exponential growth species overshoot their carrying capacity and then face a die-off. Most of you know this, especially the guy who's majoring in the stuff.

Here's the thing. Industrialized farming is not giving what's we're doing quite the attention it deserves, let me break it down:

Synthetic Fertilizer: Normally to get nitrogen, nitrogen-fixing bacteria convert nitrogen into ammonium, a form the plants can take with their roots and process it. However, syntheic fertilizer produces human-processed nitrogen that is not put into the environment naturally. Without it, we would not be able to support the population. The downside is watershed takes this nitrogen into the lakes and bays, and upsets the nitrogen-oxygen balance, pushing oxygen out of deeper water, creating deadzones where no life aside of anaerobic bacteria could survive. Synthetic ntrogen also makes farmers less inclined to rotate their crops, and whether it seems that way or not, farms are an ecosystem like any other. They rely on varient species to occupy the different niches. That brings me to the next point.

Monocropping: Monocropping is when one species of crops occupies acres of farms. When a disease hits, the ecosystem of a monocroppic farm dies, and the farmer goes out of business.

Clear-cutting: There is about 1 quarter inch of top-soil in the average rain-forest. The rain-forest requires things to constantly die, and for their bodies to remain there for decomposition. If not, then the top-soil is washed away with watershed and the nutrients are depleted, and you transform the second largest producer of oxygen in this planet into an unrecoverable wasteland.

Pesticides: So much evidence against the usage of this stuff, and its still used because we require it to support our population. Even though there are plenty of alternatives, none get the marketing of Pesticides. Something funny, certain chemicals have been found in very toxic amounts in Inuat (Eskimos) female breast milk, people who have never eaten a single vegetable that been doused with pesticides, but the same chemicals are found. These chemicals bioaccumulate in organisms. Watershed takes the pesticide out to sea, and they get breathed in, very small amounts, by the fish. Too small to care about right? Well, it stays in them, and when a larger fish eats them, all the toxins go into them, and bioaccumulate in their fat. Then bigger fish eat them, and then the Inuat eat the bigger fish. One of the biggest sellers of pesticides is Monsanto, with their product, "Round-Up." Want to know what Monsanto also does?

Genetic Manipulation: Do I even need to go into this? Well, let's just say humans have introduced animals into new environments that have completely wiped out species. Now, certain humans want to make new species. The results are in the news.

Okay, on top of that, we have gotten ourselves hooked on finite resources. You've heard of the Oil Peak, well think of it like this, ignoring the problems of modern farming we would have a carrying capacity, reach it, and level off, except that our carrying capacity shrinks every single day as we have become a bacteria feeding off a dead body. Once it's all gone, something like ninety percent of the Bacteria die, That's the Oil peak, luckily we don't rely on it for food, so most likely it will just cause a Depression that will make the one in the Early 1900s look like a slight slump.

So yes, over-population is a threat, not because we don't have enough food, but we are continuing to poison our habitat and ourselves. In my opinion, we've already overshot our carrying-capacity because we could not support the current population without most of the harmful tools I listed above, and eventually, when we do meet the reprocussions, there will be a die-off.

Good points all... my only change in your arguments would be the references to the logic models that other species follow. Humans really cant be compared to those models because to my knowledge we are the only species who directly manipulates its own food supply.

Oddly enough though this poisoning of the environment is also solving the problem in a strange way. For decades now, researchers have been trying to discover why sperm counts in men have been slowly declining. The answer so far they have come up with is that estrogen-replacement drugs taken by millions is excreted in urine which is passed into our sewage treatment plants which have no means of breaking down the hormone. So as the treated waste is finally returned to the environment the estrogen remains. Water levels everywhere in North America have trace amounts of female hormones, which are increasing. This estrogen reduces the ability to create sperm and hence you will see ever decreasing birth rates.

Very well put Doomed.

except ammonia is not the preferred nitrogen source of plants, it is nitrates NO3. nitrogen fixing bacteria in the soil and roots of legums turn atmospheric nitrogen into nitrate. when an organism dies the nitrogen compounds are broken down into ammonia(poisonous) by fungi and bacteria, which is then turned to nitrite(also poisonous). the nitrite is then turned into nirate by a totallydifferent bacteria.

also the leaking of nitrogen into lakes and streams doesn't really ofset a nitrogen-oxygen ratio. excess nitrogen leads to explosive growth in plant life. algae being very adaptive protists take advantage of the excess nitrogen and have a population explosion. eventually the protists run out of nitrogen and being unable to support the population size begins to die off. decomposition requires the use of oxygen...and lots of it so you see a depletion in oxygen becuase the decomposition of the algae. this when reaching critically low levels deprives fish of oxygen, thus causing the fish kill.

this is of course freshwater, saltwater gets even more complicated and much worse.

I'm muy sorry Doomed but I most say I'm a very stone-aged man.

Three menn try to get to the pretty valley on the other side of the stream.. Ok streams are pathetic... the mighty river of none ending doom!. Anyways, so these guys scratch their head a little and think.

I need to get from A......................... to ....................C but B in my way.. What can I do?

First the man trys to swim, that doesn't work, he drowns and his two brothers are left. The second brother thinks that maybe I can just avoid the problem and builds a catapult and flings himself over.. He makes it but in a big red mark. The third brother thinks of how much he wants to get there and decides that just maybe a boat might do it. He gets within 20 meters of the land and his boat sinks and he drownds

Ok, all three of the brothers are dead... 450 years later.

The land where these brothers came from is experiencing the worst famine ever known, and so they search for a new source of food and life. They come across the same spot where they called the brothers idiots for attempting to cross. Yet out of desperation the decided to try and cross together.

The people make very similiar mistakes to that of the brothers, yet finally, the people start working together and make a plan.

They'll build a bridge, and afte rmuch work and heartache it is finished. The people can cross into the better place.

Now my story may seem simple and very... well.. simple.. however.. Look at this as the "over population problem" and look at previous probs of the past. With human inginuity, and the technology that comes with that man has overcome many obsticles, save war.

While I don't think your fears are dumb or ungrounded, I do think you always overlook how well the human mind CAN perform in dire circumstances.

Neela,

That would solve the problem, if the problem was overpopulation. It's not, we produce enough grain alone to feed every single human being 3500 calories a day. The problem lies in where we get the food. Anyway, infertility also naturally rises in organisms that are heavy in population. Also, correct humans may not follow an exponential pattern, despite how the human growth graph looks like one. The difference is that some major changes would be need to be made to stop the drop.

Megil, Yeah I over simplified iy.

Channler, So you're saying, we shouldn't worry about all these environmental threats because once we are at the worst possible situation we will finally start working together? It starts now by raising awareness of what we need to do, get off oil and on renewable energy, find unharmful ways to farm, etcetera.

I must say that our dependence on about 7 grains is ridiculously risky. we can thank the green revolution for that. I am just glad scientists saw this and we have a seed bank of wild cultivars should massive crop die out occur. Of course it will take time between the planting of the seed bank and cultivation during which we will have to ration out remaining grain supplies. It is a very very dangerous situation should it ever occur.

On a similar note is the coming plague. Basically it is a result of the massive amount of antibiotics humans produce and ingest. You know how doctor's always tell you to finish yourmedication even if you feel better. There is a reason for this apart from preventing the dumping of antibiotics. When you feel better it emans the antibiotics has killed MOST of the antigen( foreign particle usually bacterial proteins and viruses) Antibiotics kill those bacteria or destroy those viruses that are ill-apt to deal with the medicine. so basically the weak antigen are destroyed. there are still those that remain that have a genetic resistance to the drug and can tolerate certain levels and times of exposure. should you stop taking the drug these strong bugs will multiply and in doing so create new variations some of which will be able to tolerate even higher levels of medication. Eventually a point is reached where a strain develops that is entirely immune to one, sometimes even 2 antibiotics. This is very serious becuase then no matter how much medication you take these 'bugs' are not affected by them.

Of coruse I am summarizing here, i could get more technical but I shant.

Not only is medication to blame. Notice all the antibacterial products out there that kill 99.9% of hamrful bacteria and viruses? well guess what that .1% are the few(in the thousands and even millions we are taking here) bacteria that manged to survive the antibiotics. these will reproduce to make equally resistant bacteria and through sexual reproduction (yes bacteria exchange plasmids in oder to maintain variation) create even "stronger" bacteria that can tolerate or are immuno to the antibiotic. the hihgh-resistant bugs are thus being dubbed "super-bugs" because they are reaching the levels of immunity every single day. You se it in papers where a young man dies from a simple staff infection. why becuase the drugs could not fight the bacteria.

And even worse than the creation of these Super-bugs is the weakening of our immune systems from constant help of anti-biotics. This means a high percentage of people's immune systems will be unable to act (an immune response takes several days ) fast enough to destroy the pathogen before the pathogen overwhelms, or kills, the host. so the coming plague will be a combination of superbugs that will be immune to a majority of antibiotics, and facing weakened immune systems equallin massive catastrophe.

antibiotics are not easy to make, and there are only like 6-7 that have been developed. and they were shortly after the discovery of penicillin. I think currently there are 2-3 antibiotics that are entirely useless, and there is only ONE that ahs yet to be distributed. It was put aside after scientists theorized the ability for bacteria to become immune.

Just one example of how our technology has made a bigger problem than the one it solved.

However Megil if not for technology we would still be hunting gazelle in the wilds of africa and none of us would go to college and know all this stuff and be able to talk smack...

And doomed, I never said that, people should be well aware. Though I don't see any solutions to the problem in your post..

I care for our wildlife and the fragility of our ecosystem but I'd like to see you give up your internet and cellphones and BOOKS for the better of the enviroment before we start throwing out problems and trashing human advance...

It's not just about our ecosystem here, it's about us. People have assumed because we manipulated our ecosystem to rely on farming and tamed animals for survival the ecosystem is nothing more to us than some pretty thing to look at. This is unfortunately the idea formed in many people's heads. We are still apart of the ecosystem and still rely on the balance of the ecosystem for survival, even if we can grow our own food. There is a cycle that feeds into our own.

Channler, if you didn't say that, what did you say? You gave a story, I interpreted it that when faced with a problem on the brink of death people are willing to cooperate to find a way where others who were not under the same stress failed. This has made me intrepret your story to suggest that we don't need to act yet, because it's not life-threatening yet.

You'd be surprised how certain situations can cause cooperation between two partys...

And near death experience doesnt have to be the providing factor in it either

A good example of that is the movie Crash. One of my favorite movies.

Well one of these events might be the current events of the past few months. With the hurricanes keeping a good portion of refining offline and the resulting sky rocketing fuel costs I would be very surprised if you didnt see a bigger push for alternative fuels here shortly. Also I would like to see them use the reconstruction of New Orleans as an opportunity to show America the benefits of such. When they start rebuilding New Orleans they should encourage companies that produce fuel cells and solar cells to donate or at least sell at cost. The biggest problems with alternative fuels is the tremendous cost of them. The few people who buy solar cells for their homes currently can't support the market and so these units cost some $20,000 or more. Hardly an expense most people would justify on limited budgets when fossil fuel energy was so cheap. As the oil prices increase and more people start buying solar... solar will get cheaper. Eventually the longterm savings of solar will outweigh the cost of oil and you will see things rapidly change all over the country. Concern for the benefits to the environment is good.. but unfortunately it comes down to cost for it to become practical.

Ok time for a new topic...

What are your thoughts about guns and gun control?

Just a short one about guns....in Sweden we are not allowed to carry guns..unless we are hunters, and so have a licence for it.

We aklso are obliged to have a special safe at home for the storage of weapons when not in use. There are regulations about the lock of the safe as well....

So we are not so used to carry weapons here...and if I may say so I´m glad , because I do think that it woud increase violence.

I forgot who originally pushed for the second amendment in the costitution but I remember his reasoning was that he wanted to be able to control his slaves better. I don't like guns but I think it must be a conscious decision not to carry one because it is a right to be able to defend yourself in this country and to make them illegal only shifts the balance to the people who obtain things illegally. Making guns illegal won't take them out of the hands of thugs and mobsters, only out of crazed ranchers and various other rednecks. It should be pointed out most gun deaths in suburban areas result along the lines of a wife or mother hearing noises outside, grabbing her husband's shotgun and shooting the burglar only to find out it was her daughter breaking curfew.

I should also point at that I am not a libertarian, I don't think if someone gets shot they should sue the guy who shot them or lynch him. I think the government needs to restrict guns as much as possible, making them much harder to obtain.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-10/...ent_3696757.htm

Let it begin.

Anyway, what are your opinions concerning this?

Iran has always been a very religious country. I don't mean very religious like people are very devoted to their faith, I mean the leaders of Iran oftenly think Islam or the highway. The see the Holy Land as a place specifically for Muslims. I mean, it's hard not the sympathize with Iran because of the harassment they get from the US, like the threat that they'll do to them what they did to Iraq and so on. This is just their radical take on a conflict though. I think the situation is far too complicated. For one, the Jews were basically thrown at Israel not too long ago in their struggle to survive. They were placed in "Unoccupied land" as our Government reported it near the end of WW2. Of course, it wasn't unoccupied land. The Israelites didn't really have a choice in the matter, they could either kick out the Palestinians or be a people without a land themselves. Currently, however, we have Israelites who are flat-out racists and think of themselves as the Chosen People. They're treating the Palestinians like compassion and we're helping them.

Do I think the US needs to back-off? No, but I think they need to switch sides in the confclit. They need to moderate the conflict so they two people can come to a compromise. It would lessen world terrorism, it would make many of the governments thinking like Iran's to back off Israel and it would make the US look better to a world account. Helping Israel accomplish this racist compassion is inviting the very destructive behavior that our current Government claims it wants to stop.

The conflicts between Israel and Palestinians are just the current focal point of a conflict that has been going on for centuries. It really has nothing to do with how Israel is treating Palestinians or if Palestinians are blowing up innocent Israelies. Both are condemnable in these actions, but it boils down to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all were basically born from the same belief system. A belief system that contained within it that those who followed it were Chosen and all others were inferior. As this belief system fractured and branched into these three religions each group of people took with them this sole belief that they were right and the others were wrong. They all took it upon themselves that it is there duty to "save" the others by converting them to their cause. By word, birth, or sword! Even though the desired outcome truly is unattainable and fruitless.. They still fight on.

If you step back and look at the really big picture painted throughout history... The conflicts haven't changed really...

I disagree Neela. The story between Israel and Palestine today is about religion but it started when jews were forced out of their home and onto other people's properties. This is a battle over territory, and religion does not play that big a role as much as it's just a vehivle from which this conflict is played. The conflict here is very simple to understand. The Palestines had their land. The super powers stole their land and stuck the Jews there, and let those two people quabble it out. Whether or not the Israelites or Palestines think they're the chosen people is not really the concern, it may offer a little resistance but I for on believe most human beings are prone to compromise and they can yield their religious beliefs to peace.

But the conflict is much greater than just a small group of misplaced people trying to recover their land because of the religious overtones. It draws in almost all other countries of the world because of it. For example: The Kurds in northern Iraq are as equally displaced and are fighting for their lands back from Iraq, Turkey, and Iran, but we hear next to nothing of their conflicts because they are all generally of the same religion. Other Islamic/Muslim countries back the Palestinians because they share similar beliefs. They provide funding/encouragement to continue the fight. The US and western countries back Israel in much the same way. I think it is because of these outside forces putting pressure on both sides that the conflict will be nearly impossible to resolve. To be honest the land dispute won't be settled until Israel and Palestinian leaders get the chance to talk without these outside pressures interfering.

But you have conflict between the two of them because each believe the land is there's and neither has a right to it. The only way we're going to resolve this problem is if all parties involved are willing to compromise and that means despite what role religion plays people need to realize their adversaries are people just like them trying to survive who have right to land.

This brings up a question for Channler. Let's say, Channler, that about 45 devil-worshippers, as in people who worshipped Satan, came to your home town and lived in it. Would you be able to coexist with them? Share your schools, and your community with them? I have little doubt you would, but I hear stories all the time of so much negativity caused by people who have no idea what they're doing. For instance today in my class there was a girl who happened to mention she hated Christians, and I was deeply offended. I'm not Christian, and two years ago I would have said right on, but I realized somewhere along the line that alienation is the cause of most of the problems today. My teacher, who I consider to be a great progressive thinker was making a joke in class today about his friends who told their kids, "You can bring home anyone, be it someone of the same sex, of a huge age difference, of any religion or ethnicity, just don't bring home a republican." he added, "I told my kids the same tihng only I said 'Don't bring home a republican or a democrat." I don't know, it's weird how many double-standards I see these days. People see themselves so high above these narrow-minded religious folk and they don't seem to realize that as soon as you put someone in a class, you're no longer marking them as human, but as a member of that class. You no longer empathize with them. They are, "The others" or the opposition, and maybe it's even more subtle than that. I really just wish before anyone would make judgments they'd sit for a second and recall the phrase, "I share a pulse with that person."

I think we are overlooking the fact that the city of jerusalem is holy to the three abrahmic religion, as such all want to be in possession of it. historically speaking the land of isreal was in fact that of the jews before it belonged to the palestines. However, the land was taken and the jewish diaspora began. after the second diaspora(WW2) since the jews had been so abused, were given a country of their own, their original homeland was given to them, meaning the palestinians had to move from what had been their home for several thousand years. they fought back for their land, and also becuase as Muslims they saw Jerusalem as holyground. as it stand the holy land is divided by the three religions, and hostilities are not bound to end until one of them has the entire city for themselves.


Also Islam is a peaceful religion, their view on the other two abrahmic reigions is nowhere as warped as the christian and jewish view of Islam. Islam accepts the existence of Jesus as a prophet, the Jews deny him, and the Christians call him messiah. as such Islam views the other two religions as older versions of their religion, that either ignored the true messiah, or followed a poser. But nowadays, radicals have changed the world view.

I heard my name ring from the bowels of W4O! And here the bell is.. located.. err.. yea..

Anyways, about them Satanists..

I really don't hate or purposely shun anyone.. I may openly disagree with them and at times threaten there life, but after a while I cool down and carry on with my life. (Doomed = Prime Example )

But, while I don't really like the idea of satanism, as long as they treat me with the same respect that any individual SHOULD deserve. I'll return it, and even be friends with them.

I know one satanist that I'm friends with, hes cool.. sometimes.. creepy all the time.. but his personality and mine were so similiar before he became "one of them" that theres no way in hell () that I couldn't consider him a friend. However I wish he wouldn't be like that, because I do think that some of their practices are odd(under statement) and I personally think its wrong what they do. I am not going to shove my beliefs down his throat, I share my opinion and thats it. And I think he respects me for that.

But anyways, back to COD2.. got to defeat hitler and get those jews back to the holy land

EDIT: Now that I just looked at that article I think that Iran is way over stepping its political bounds now..

Reminds me of the one proffesor from NC that said all whites (or something) should be eradicated..

My view on the matter is as follows:

I do not believe that any country has the right to be formed solely for the purpose of the protection of the people of one religion, or ethnicity, or any other difference that sets the people of the world apart. Nor do I believe that any nation has the right to restrict immigration or settlement depending on ones religion. Now that Israel does exist however, I believe it has the right to do so. It is too late to go back and allow the Jews and Muslims to live side by side, to integrate them into one society (like other nations around the world, particularly in Asia), but we can at least strive to solve the problem at hand today. I do not think that the solution to this problem would be to eradicate a country from the planet, which I believe to be an insanely idiotic proposition in the first place. What we need to do now is to allow for the creation of a state of Palestine, and make sure that both Israel and Palestine can live in peace as neighbors in a national sense. As to the fact that the upholders of the religion of Judaism having settled on the land of Israel first, to this I agree, but I cannot agree with anyone who says that since their ancestors settled there first, that the land belongs to them. Land of any kind belongs to all the people of the earth, and if we cannot put religion behind us and focus more on just plain PEOPLE as PEOPLE and not label them as one religious sect or another, then we cannot solve this problem.

You do realize, that instead of seeing the conglomeration of nations, we seeing mroe of a break down due to cultural differences. Nation-states, function much better than a state in which more than one nation resides, the reason being that a nation-state is more homogenous and you have no other nation with which to disagree with. The revolutionary wars in Africa are a prime example of nations trying to break free from the superimposed boundaries that the europeans laid on them. As was the conflict in Yugoslavia. There would be far less conflict to have a nation-state than it would be to ahve a state of many nations.

New topic:

Tonight at midnight they will be executing Stanley T Williams. For those not familiar, Stanley T Williams was founder the Crips, charged for the murder of 4 people. There's a rather good wiki article on him actually.

I don't even think I want to hear opinions because I'm so fundamentally against the death penalty. Anyway, what do you guys thinks?

I think Shwartzennegger has no balls at all. Too many steroids shrunk them into raisins. He's too much of a coward to allow a guy to survive even if every inch of evidence has pointed that he deserves to live.

I support the death penalty but I still undecided about Mr. Williams.

He used to be a bad man, but now I think hes seen the error of his ways. However this doesn't account for the criminal group he started up.

(and yes doomed, I do think that the founders of the KKK should of been hung too. )

I'm undecided about the death penalty, because while I don't like the idea of people being killed as punishment for their crimes, I don't like the idea of murderers and the like alive either.



I don't know enough about mr. Williams other than his founding of the crips. SO, I guesss I don't have an opinion about that either.

Well according to numerous sources (and himself too) hes reformed and even preached out against the gang life.. Which is a good thing, but does that make it right the wrongs that he commited?

Am I for or against the death penalty.... Kind of Both actually.
The current form of death penalty is completely and totally pointless. If it takes 20-40 years after conviction to finally execute the sentence the whole point to killing them is mute. So yes currently I believe the death penalty to be wrong, since the only real benefits to having a death penalty would be to deter other wouldbe killers from their crimes and to allow the family of those murdered to have a sense of justice and move on with their lives. Our current way of dealing with it does not deter anyone. However, If after conviction and a quick number of limited appeals(say within two years) the sentence was carried out... it might make a difference to a few people. I realize this opinion will be opposed by many of you... but I believe it to be justice when a person has taken the lives of multiple people with cruel and deliberate intention is finally put to death. It means that all those possibly hundreds of people whose lives were impacted by the murders can have a bit of closure and start to move on again. As to Mr. Williams... I do not know enough about the case to really comment. I don't think just because he was the founder of a gang or just because he "believes himself reformed" should have any bearing on the outcome. The fact is that those four people are dead and to me nothing like that is forgivable.

Dantrag, I'd hate to get like this but...

Your against abortion because to you its unethical to kill something that will eventually become a human being, and yet you're undecided about executing things that already are human beings... sounds like a double standard.

Anyway, this is my opinion on the death penalty, later I will be giving my opinion on Tookie.

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," - Ghandi.

That is to say, that the only way to really stop a cycle of violence is to end it yourself, not with revenge but with peace, and you have to take all the compassion you'll getting for it in stride.

An example - Months ago I was on the TES chat and got into an argument with someone over australian native people. I could have kept arguing but I got sick of it, so I just let the other person keep spewing great compassion until they got bored. It's something that's close to my heart, and I felt horribly disheveled by the racism I was hearing, and yet all the argument was doing was causing unrest in the chatroom, and pissing off the other person, so despite the fact that I had to take a bunch of great compassion for ten minutes in the end it didn't mean anything to me, and I stopped a cycle of unrest.

Granted, I love conflict, I just hate violence, but anyway, here's some more stuff about incarceration in general...

We live in a society that discriminates against black people, it's not the fault of every human being, we're simply participants in an unbalanced society. Poor people commit more crime, and more poor people are black. Poverty is one of the hardest things to get out of in this society, but if we could practice equality instead of this master and slave capitalist society we currently live in, then poverty wouldn't exist to that deep a level, and crime would go down. The majority of the people on death row are gangsters like Tookie, but joining a gang is a result of a lot of things, the only fault to the actual member being that they didn't take responsibility of their actions in the beginning. Joining a gang is the result of a poor kid in a poor neighborhood who wants A. a familiy and B. power.

So again I stress, it is the unbalanced, rat-race society we live in which is the heart of gang violence. Rich white guys don't even seem the realize it but every moment they exploit the poorer part of society, they are supporting gang violence. Most gangsters who end up killing people when they're older are the result of the circumstances from which they were born in.

You can argue that any guy who kills someone is simply a bad person, but there is a psychological feel that people growing up in hard neighborhoods are conditioned with from the moment they're born. They're taught they have to be hard in order to survive, even if it's never said it's unconsciously ingrained in their system simply from living in those neighborhoods. They see people around them shooting guns, so they don't think it means much when they pull the trigger, then once they do there is a moment of shock to see what they did but it wears off, and after that they're changed.

So, I think we need a rehabilitation system, instead of a revenge system. Prison only really puts people into the cycle. You have to be really hard to survive prison, so its like an accelerated program to breed gangsters. That's what really pisses me off about justice. To tell you the truth, I think justice is just one guy's way of making himself feel pure after comitting revenge. Truth is, once you take life you're a honoured user, and all human beings are bastards because all humans have to eat food. Justice is trying to purify an action that commits a wrong against somebody who comitted a wrong, and there is no difference to me.

Now onto Tookie.

When the Crips first started, mostly all gangs were just 12-30 thugs who decided to take over neighborhoods so if shop owners and people living around paid them off, they'd stop them from getting robbed, basically. Tookie and his friend started the crips which sort of conglomerated a bunch of smaller gangs and protected the neighborhood, but did so in a bloody way. If one of their members was killed the find and kill the killer's family. They'd rob and burglarize, and all that stuff. Again I stress they were all products of a poverty stricken society, and that's what naturally happens to poor people in poor neighborhoods.

Tookie went to prison for murdering four people in two different robberies, and maintained his innocence. Thoughout the entire 20 years he was on death row if he admitted to the murders of those four people he would have gotten clemency, but he said he'd rather die than give into a corrupt system and make something up. I can see why, it was exactly like the red scare, or the inquisition. You say you're not a heretic, we'll drown you, you admit you are and we'll burn you, and those were his options.

Shwartzenegger said that he never redeemed himself because there was no apology, but there was. Here is the transcript.



So Shwartzenegger's real claim was that because he never admitted to murdering the four people he was convicted for, he obviously never reached redemption, but...

* There was no physical evidence he comitted those crimes
*All witnesses that testified against him had something to gain
*He was not judged by a jury of his peers
*There was evidence he was sedated during his trial
*1980s legal systems were unapologetically racist, with 4/5 incarcerated people being young minorities.

In closing I'd like to say this: The number 1 argument I hear from people is that he comitted the crime and he can't expect to get off just because he claims he reached redemption.

1. If it was just a CLAIM he would have also admitted to murdering those four people, but redemption was not just a ploy to get off detah row, he could have lied to get off death row any time he wanted.

2. It's a sad thought that redemption means nothing to people, and that people must still suffer the backlash from who they used to be instead of who they are now. He decided to seek justice. I will repeat, he decided to seek justice of the life he lead and wrongs he comitted, and the way in doing so was to encourage young poverty stricken kids to get educations. He reached gang members all over the country, and he spoke on the level, not as some harvard graduated NAACP respresentative, but as a former member, he spoke to them as one of them, and they got his message, not someone elses. He decided that was the purpose of his life, and that to me is justice.

I am most certainly for the death penalty. But against life in prison. A murderer needs to be dealth with, they took someone's LIFE. They need to be punished, why should they get away when they were caught, for killing someone? They deserve it, which is why i don't think how countries like Singapore, and Saudi arabia, deal with murders is so bad.

Someone was just murdered in my town, it has been over fifty years since the last murder, everyone knew this poor woman. She was the councilor at the middle school. She was out for a jog and someone hit her with their car, took her into a barn and rapped and killed her. Now my friend dylan is motherless. I do not think the person who killed this woman is worth anything, why should he have life and not Dylan's mom, it's not fair. And saying life isn't fair won't work, because even if it isn't people need to try and do whatever they can to make it fair.

However life in prison is cruel. This is 10X worse then the death penalty, at least with the death penalty you only have to live life in hell (prison) for about twenty years. If a eighteen year old murders someone and he gets life in prison he could have 50-60 years in prison

I would rather have life in prison than the death penalty if I was given a choice. Living is less cruel than dying.

Doomed, what you are saying (or at least what is understood) is that Anarchy is the way to go.

hamster, if you murder someone, the hell with it. Hell, why not just kill them back!? Oh wait, now we disrupt the balance.

You are promoting violence by not dealing with it.

-=-

And please do not even bring the race issue up. That arguement is getting rather old considering the fact that so many black students will get government help to go to a college, while a white student of the same poverty level, same grades, and same number of family is told that there income level is to high to get finacial aid.

Oh, but encourage gangs! They give young black males a sense of family! They give them a place where they will be respected.

Horse compassion. Why don't we start making people (Note I said people, not black, asian, or indifferent) be accountable for themselves? Why don't we start helping parents with there kids instead of throwing money at the damned problem?

I'm apart of the local after-school program for middle school kids. ALL the kids that come there are black, and they all have some sort of gang influence. I can proudly say, that helping them, that teaching them, has caused almost every student that I've talked to "shape-up". I showed them the law, and I showed them respect. However, what I showed most of though is love.

And thats what I get in return, respect and love. All because I cared, not because I threw money at it, and told them to go talk to their parents. It was because several other 14-19 year old middle class people, decided that without a figured head, these kids would be looked down upon.

Help the people, don't sit on a internet board and complain about the problem. That makes you just as bad as a murder in my opinion.

You're the same; You're against killing murderes, but you don't mind seeing unborn children killed.

Sounds like a double standard to me as well.

I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
-Abraham Lincoln

Taking into consideration both sides of this issue, I have one thing to say, but I'm going to say it very clearly.

The taking of a human life, is in every way, wrong. I find it relatively strange that the leaders of the American nation, my nation, can approve the taking of a HUMAN life. Whether it be through war, justice, or crime. The death penalty is simply put, a horrendous practice that occurs far too often. It is a breach of Human rights to purposely take a life. Sure, murderers are at fault as well, but it doesn't do justice to in turn murder the murderer.

Dwell upon that.

-Gamer10

Hmm...I´m against abortion....and so is my hubbie, death-penalty is not ocurring here in sweden and hasn´t been for a loong time..but I must say...I would gladly hang someone who abuses or kill an innocent child for instans....

Channler - No, let me give my definition of justice more clearly:

Everytime an action is committed, it starts a ripple effect, or hastens a ripple effect already in progress. It starts or is a catalyst for cycles, and not every cycle is good in the social sense.

For instance, I am fundamentally against violence, therefore when a violent cycle begins, I consider the action that started it to be wrong, I consder the person who committed it to have committed a wrong.

Justice is when the cycle is stopped. Justice, to me, is stopping a murderer from murdering again, but not by killing them, by sending them to prison, and not a prison that can train them to be better, stronger killers like ours do today, but one that rehabilitates them. Tookie, for instance, sought redemption, he sought to end gang violence, to not only finish his life with his previous actions that helped increase gang violence accounted for, but also with gang violence heavily damaged by his work, like a surplus of peace.

Also, please don't use the "better things to do than complain on an internet forum" I get that all the time by the various people I argue with over different things, but it's more productive than you think. For one, I have 24 hours a day I can spend doing whatever I like, writing an argument on the internet takes like 10 minutes. The other thing is it sort of works like quality control for my arguments, so I get better at holding my position, I weed at my bad stances, and occasionally I change my mind on an issue. I've been arguing on forums since I was like 13, and since then I've become champion of my schools debate team and leads us to the state finals, and I'm generally just better at arguing with people without getting defeisive or throwing fallacies at them. So then, you must be asking, what's the point at being good at arguing? Well, it also just makes me better at talking to people, and Cesar Chaves (Cofounder of the farmworkers union) has said the only successful way he was ever able to organize people is by talking to one person, then talking to another person, then talking to another person.

So that's why I debate over the internet, and not instead of anything, I do plenty of other stuff for my various causes as well.