Freetalk about USA culture: 25 new messages in 16 topics

The culture of the United States of America.

03/19/06 / 03/20/06 / 03/21/06 / 03/22/06 /

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

25 new messages in 16 topics - digest ==>Read...

soc.culture.usa
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa
soc.culture.usa@googlegroups.com

Today's topics:

* ALLHU AKBAR! - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cee8bd87bfad4a94
* Pro-Family Leaders Call Summit for Disgruntled 'Values Voters' - 2 messages,
2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/db24e375a7c4b15a
* A Question "Pro-Life" Christians Are Too Cowardly to Answer - 1 messages, 1
author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1f0d605fcbcefff0
* India is a nuclear proliferator - Says a paki - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/74bdfc9b08d4aa3f
* PART 1: Cold warrior in a strange land - $68billion for veterans and many
other war items not included in the defense budget - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d81399cbd11e209a
* Iran, Iraq Crises Converge Despite U.S. Hardliners - 4 messages, 3 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c2acc3e63af008fa
* Is the US getting it's ass kicked again? - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c3e720f581a7b047
* Racism still rife in US, says China - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d9b7345c735cc004
* Sen. Feinstein calls for Rumsfeld's removal, Iraq troop reduction - 1
messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1fb7e02bfe656863
* Cuban Conference Focuses on Elder Care - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/3a7ce9372ec23e22
* Afghan Man Sentenced to Death for Converting - 2 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/bd295e44b8e99935
* gun owners and nra proven wrong - again - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/113cc170f0e4312a
* RACHEL, ZIONAZIS ARE BLACKLISTING A DEAD AMERICAN! - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/fecef64c367c13ff
* More than 100 suspected illegal immigrants found in 8 traffic incidents - 1
messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/7338c9a79b60b67e
* Three Ways to Remember Rachel - 4 messages, 2 authors
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/06f69fcc00c58349
* Gun loon shoots, kills kid for walking on grass - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/571681d234d29371

==============================================================================
TOPIC: ALLHU AKBAR!
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/cee8bd87bfad4a94
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 9:56 pm
From: "serwad"

"Pathfinder" <dmayer76@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:8imUf.16560$S25.10038@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> please....take Michael Jackson. The Western world no longer wants him.

Michael jackson and six million other Americans have embraced Islam. Michael
has done nothing wrong, so sayeth the judge!
>
>
> "serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
> news:VYiUf.907$qe.841@bignews1.bellsouth.net...
>> Michael Jackson praises Allah in Arabic after his official conversion to
>> Islam
>>
>> http://www.teeth.com.pk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/01/MichealJackson_sIslam.mp3
>>
>
>

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:13 pm
From: drdavez28@yahoo.com

I wonder what it is about islam that attracts sexual deviants,
miscreants and other misfits.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Pro-Family Leaders Call Summit for Disgruntled 'Values Voters'
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/db24e375a7c4b15a
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:56 pm
From: Boy Toy

On 22 Mar 2006 12:41:18 -0800, "JohnN" <jnorris53@hotmail.com> wrote
in message <1143060078.773364.316360@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>

>Why would Pro-Family leaders want to meet with voters who have
>disgruntled values?
>
>JohnN

What's a disgruntled value?

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:29 pm
From: rfischer@sonic.net (Ray Fischer)

J Young <youngopinions@aol.com> wrote:
>This summit is a wonderful idea who's time has come.
>
>http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/212006c.asp
>
>(AgapePress) - A coalition of pro-family organizations has planned a "values
>voters" summit this fall because those voters are not happy with how
>Congress is treating their issues.
>A poll of values voters was recently commissioned by the Family Research
>Council to check the pulse of conservative Christians. FRC president Tony

The FRC is the same organization who seems to think that it's better
that women die rather than be allowed the HPV vaccine and get the idea
that sex is okay.

--
Ray Fischer
rfischer@sonic.net

==============================================================================
TOPIC: A Question "Pro-Life" Christians Are Too Cowardly to Answer
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1f0d605fcbcefff0
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 2:57 am
From: Ken Chaddock

james g. keegan jr. wrote:

> In article <2YJSf.146$nQ6.18@clgrps13>,
> Ken Chaddock <chaddock@hfx.eastlink.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>james g. keegan jr. wrote:
>>
>>
>>>In article <121kvr1s528pfa3@news.supernews.com>,
>>> "Dutch" <no@email.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>"David W. Barnes" <dbarnes@aol.com> wrote
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Not that it matters, since "the vast majority of abortions ARE carried
>>>>>out for "body rights" reasons.
>>>>
>>>>That's the opposite of what the data showed.
>>>
>>>
>>>no, it was exactly what the data showed, which is why you were
>>>compelled to lie about it.
>>
>> There are none so blind as those who will not see...fortunately, idiots
>>like you are in the minority and people like me will continue to work to
>>safeguard reproductive rights for women and advance reproductive rights
>>for men...even while you do your damnedest to torpedo them for everyone...

> i'm disappointed that you felt it necessary to misrepresent again;
> but not surprised.

YOU are the one who called ME a liar because I had the audacity to
repeat data published by PP and the CDC...who do you think *really* has
the credibility problem here ? (Hint, it's NOT me)

...Ken

==============================================================================
TOPIC: India is a nuclear proliferator - Says a paki
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/74bdfc9b08d4aa3f
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 2:58 am
From: "Mark Donovan"

"rkusenet" <rkusenet@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:dGmUf.6599$qX6.182150@news20.bellglobal.com...
>" A reason advanced for signing the March 2 agreement in Delhi was that
>India, unlike Pakistan, has not been a nuclear proliferator. The facts are
>to the contrary. India's role in aiding and abetting Iran's nuclear
>programme is well known. So also is its shady dealings with Iraq. To cite
>just one example: On January 19, 2002, the Los Angeles Times headline on
>the front page said "Indian firm aided Iraq". The disclosure came at a time
>when the US was abuzz with war

In my view either every nation has right to have nuclear weapons, or no
nation should have it. How can you explain that nation A is a trustworthy
bunch of guys, while nation B is a bunch of violent liars, who should not be
given those weapons?

And never forget who used WMDs on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Mark
> preparations against Baghdad. "
>
> Strange that no other country, specially US seem to think so. They all
> think that
> pakistan is rogue state when it comes proliferating nukes.
>
> http://www.dawn.com/2006/03/23/op.htm

==============================================================================
TOPIC: PART 1: Cold warrior in a strange land - $68billion for veterans and
many other war items not included in the defense budget
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d81399cbd11e209a
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 6:59 pm
From: C2Darwin@yahoo.com

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/HC23Aa01.html

DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA
Interview with Chalmers Johnson
PART 1: Cold warrior in a strange land
By Tom Engelhardt

As he and his wife Sheila drive me through downtown San Diego in the
glare of midday, he suddenly exclaims, "Look at that structure!" I
glance over and just across the blue expanse of the harbor is an
enormous aircraft carrier. "It's the USS Ronald Reagan," he says, "the
newest carrier in the fleet. It's a floating Chernobyl and it sits a
proverbial six inches off the bottom with two huge atomic reactors. You
make a wrong move and there goes the country's seventh-largest city."

Soon, we're heading toward their home just up the coast in one of those
fabled highway traffic jams that every description of
southern California must include. "We feel we're far enough north," he
adds in the kind of amused tone that makes his company both alarming
and thoroughly entertaining, "so we could see the glow, get the cat,
pack up, and head for Quartzsite, Arizona."

Chalmers Johnson, who served in the US Navy and now is a historian of
US militarism, lives cheek-by-jowl with his former service. San Diego
is the headquarters of the 11th Naval District. "It's wall-to-wall
military bases right up the coast," he comments. "By the way, this
summer the Pentagon's planning the largest naval concentration in the
Pacific in the post-World War II period! Four aircraft-carrier task
forces - two from the Atlantic, and that's almost unprecedented - doing
military exercises off the coast of China."

That afternoon, we seat ourselves at his dining-room table. He's 74
years old, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis and bad knees. He walks
with a cane, but his is one of the spriest minds in town. Out the
window I can see a plethora of strange, oversized succulents. In the
distance, the Pacific Ocean gleams.

Johnson is wearing a black T-shirt that, he tells me, a former military
officer and friend brought back from Russia. The shirt sports an
illustration of an AK-47 on its front with the inscription "Mikhail
Kalashnikov" in Cyrillic script, and underneath, "The freedom fighter's
friend, a product of the Soviet Union." On the back in English, it says
"World Massacre Tour" with the following list: "The Gulf War,
Afghanistan, Vietnam, Angola, Laos, Nicaragua, Salvador, Lebanon, Gaza
Strip, Karabakh, Chechnya ... To be continued."

Johnson, who served as a lieutenant junior grade in the US Navy in the
early 1950s and from 1967-73 was a consultant for the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), ran the Center for Chinese Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley for years. He defended the Vietnam
War ("In that I was distinctly a man of my times ..."), but is probably
the only person of his generation to have written, in the years since,
anything like this passage from the introduction to his book Blowback:

The problem was that I knew too much about the international
communist movement and not enough about the United States government
and its Department of Defense ... In retrospect, I wish I had stood
with the anti-war protest movement. For all its naivete and unruliness,
it was right and American policy wrong.

Retired, after a long, provocative career as a Japan specialist, he is
the author of the prophetic Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of
American Empire, published in 2000 to little attention. After September
11, 2001, it became a best-seller, putting the word "blowback", a CIA
term for retaliation for US covert actions, into common usage. He has
since written The Sorrows of Empire, Militarism, Secrecy, and the End
of the Republic. He is just now completing the final volume of his
Blowback Trilogy. It will be titled Nemesis.

Sharp as a tack, energetic and high-spirited, by turns genuinely
alarmed and thoroughly sardonic, he's a talker by nature. Our encounter
is an interview in name only. No one has ever needed an interviewer
less. I do begin with a question that has been on my mind, but it's
hardly necessary.

Tomdispatch: Let's start with a telltale moment in your life, the
moment when the Cold War ended. What did it mean to you?

Chalmers Johnson: I was a Cold Warrior. There's no doubt about that. I
believed the Soviet Union was a genuine menace. I still think so.

There's no doubt that, in some ways, the Soviet Union inspired a degree
of idealism. There are grown men I admire who can't but stand up if
they hear the Internationale being played, even though they split with
the communists ages ago because of the NKVD [Soviet secret police
agency, a forerunner of the KGB] and the gulag. I thought we needed to
protect ourselves from the Soviets.

As I saw it, the only justification for our monster military apparatus,
its size, the amounts spent on it, the growth of the
military-industrial complex that [president Dwight] Eisenhower
identified for us, was the existence of the Soviet Union and its
determination to match us. The fact that the Soviet Union was global,
that it was extremely powerful, mattered, but none of us fully
anticipated its weaknesses.

I had been there in 1978 at the height of [Soviet leader Leonid]
Brezhnev's power. You certainly had a sense then that no consumer
economy was present. My colleagues at the Institute for the USA and
Canada were full of "Oh my god, I found a bottle of good Georgian white
wine," or "The Cubans have something good in, let's go over to their
bar"; but if you went down to the store, all you could buy was vodka.

It was a fairly rough kind of world, but some things they did very,
very well. We talk about missile defense for this country. To this day,
there's only one nation with a weapon that could penetrate any missile
defense we put up - and that's Russia. And we still can't possibly
match the one they have, the Topol-M, also known as the SS-27. When
[president Ronald] Reagan said he was going to build a Star Wars, these
very smart Soviet weapon-makers said: We're going to stop it. And they
did.

As [senator] Daniel Moynihan said: Who needs a CIA that couldn't tell
the Soviet Union was falling apart in the 1980s, a $32 billion
intelligence agency that could not figure out their economy was in such
awful shape they were going to come apart as a result of their war in
Afghanistan and a few other things?

In 1989, [Soviet leader] Mikhail Gorbachev makes a decision. They could
have stopped the Germans from tearing down the Berlin Wall, but for the
future of Russia he decided he'd rather have friendly relations with
Germany and France than with those miserable satellites [Josef] Stalin
had created in East Europe. So he just watches them tear it down and,
at once, the whole Soviet empire starts to unravel. It's the same sort
of thing that might happen to us if we ever stood by and watched the
Okinawans kick us out of Okinawa. I think our empire might unravel in a
way you could never stop once it started.

The Soviet Union imploded. I thought: What an incredible vindication
for the United States. Now it's over, and the time has come for a real
victory dividend, a genuine peace dividend. The question was: Would the
US behave as it had in the past when big wars came to an end? We
disarmed so rapidly after World War II. Granted, in 1947 we started to
rearm very rapidly, but by then our military was farcical. In 1989,
what startled me almost more than the Wall coming down was this: As the
entire justification for the military-industrial complex, for the
Pentagon apparatus, for the fleets around the world, for all our bases
came to an end, the United States instantly - pure knee-jerk reaction -
began to seek an alternative enemy. Our leaders simply could not
contemplate dismantling the apparatus of the Cold War.

That was, I thought, shocking. I was no less shocked that the American
public seemed indifferent. And what things they did do were disastrous.
George Bush, the father, was president. He instantaneously declared
that he was no longer interested in Afghanistan. It's over. What a huge
cost we've paid for that, for creating the largest clandestine
operation we ever had and then just walking away, so that any Afghan we
recruited in the 1980s in the fight against the Soviet Union
instantaneously came to see us as the enemy - and started paying us
back. The biggest blowback of the lot was, of course, September 11, but
there were plenty of them before then.

I was flabbergasted and felt the need to understand what had happened.
The chief question that came to mind almost at once, as soon as it was
clear that our part of the Cold War was going to be perpetuated - the
same structure, the same military Keynesianism, an economy based
largely on the building of weapons - was: Did this suggest that the
Cold War was, in fact, a cover for something else; that something else
being an American empire intentionally created during World War II as
the successor to the British Empire?.

Now that led me to say: Yes, the Cold War was not the clean-cut
conflict between totalitarian and democratic values that we had claimed
it to be. You can make something of a claim for that in Western Europe
at certain points in the 1950s, but once you bring it into the global
context, once you include China and our two East Asian wars, Korea and
Vietnam, the whole thing breaks down badly, and this caused me to
realize that I had some rethinking to do.

The wise-ass sophomore has said to me - this has happened a number of
times - "Aren't you being inconsistent?" I usually answer with the
famous remark of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who, when
once accused of being inconsistent, said to his questioner, "Well, when
I get new information, I rethink my position. What, sir, do you do with
new information?"

A personal experience five years after the collapse of the Soviet Union
also set me rethinking international relations in a more basic way. I
was invited to Okinawa by its governor in the wake of a very serious
incident. On September 4, 1995, two marines and a sailor raped a
12-year-old girl. It produced the biggest outpouring of
anti-Americanism in our key ally, Japan, since the Security Treaty was
signed [in 1960].

I had never been to Okinawa before, even though I had spent most of my
life studying Japan. I was flabbergasted by the 32 American military
bases I found on an island smaller than Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands
and the enormous pressures it put on the population there. My first
reaction as a good Cold Warrior was: Okinawa must be exceptional. It's
off the beaten track. The American press doesn't cover it. It's a
military colony.

Our military has been there since the battle of Okinawa in 1945. It had
all the smell of the Raj about it. But I assumed that this was just an
unfortunate, if revealing, pimple on the side of our huge apparatus. As
I began to study it, though, I discovered that Okinawa was not
exceptional. It was the norm. It was what you find in all of the
American military enclaves around the world.

TD: The way we garrison the planet has been essential to your
rethinking of the American position in the world. Your chapters on
Pentagon basing policy were the heart of your last book, The Sorrows of
Empire. Didn't you find it strange that, whether reviewers liked the
book or not, none of them seemed to deal with your take on our actual
bases? What do you make of that?

CJ: I don't know why that is. I don't know why Americans take for
granted, for instance, that huge American military reservations in the
United States are natural ways to organize things. There's nothing
slightly natural about them. They're artificial and expensive. One of
the most interesting ceremonies of recent times is the brouhaha over
announced base closings. After all, it's perfectly logical for the
Department of Defense to shut down redundant facilities, but you
wouldn't think so from all the fuss.

I'm always amazed by the way we kid ourselves about the influence of
the military-industrial complex in our society. We use euphemisms like
supply-side economics or the Laffer Curve. We never say: We're
artificially making work. If the WPA [Works Progress Administration of
the Great Depression] was often called a
dig-holes-and-fill-'em-up-again project, now we're making things that
blow up and we sell them to people. Our weapons aren't particularly
good, not compared to those of the great weapons makers around the
world. It's just that we can make a lot of them very rapidly.

TD: As a professional editor, I would say that when we look at the
world, we have a remarkable ability to edit it.

CJ: Absolutely. We edit parts of it out. I mean, people in San Diego
don't seem the least bit surprised that between here and Los Angeles is
a huge military reservation called Camp Pendleton, the headquarters of
the 1st Marine Division. I was there myself back in the Korean War
days. I unfortunately crossed the captain of the LST-883 that I was
serving on. We had orders to send an officer to Camp Pendleton and he
said, "I know who I'm going to send." It was me [he laughs]. And I'll
never forget it. The world of marine drill sergeants is another
universe.

In many ways, as an enthusiast for the natural environment, I am
delighted to have Pendleton there. It's a cordon sanitaire. I spent a
little time with its commandant maybe a decade ago. We got to talking
about protecting birds and he said, "I'm under orders to protect these
birds. One of my troops drives across a bird's nest in his tank and
I'll court-martial him. Now, if that goddamn bird flies over to San
Clemente, he takes his chances."

Even then I thought: That's one of the few things going for you guys,
because nothing else that goes on here particularly contributes to our
country. Today, of course, with the military eager to suspend
compliance with environmental regulations, even that small benefit is
gone.

TD: So, returning to our starting point, you saw an empire and ...

CJ: ... It had to be conceptualized. Empires are defined so often as
holders of colonies, but analytically, by empire we simply mean the
projection of hegemony outward, over other people, using them to serve
our interests, regardless of how their interests may be affected.

So what kind of empire is ours? The unit is not the colony, it's the
military base. This is not quite as unusual as defenders of the concept
of empire often assume. That is to say, we can easily calculate the
main military bases of the Roman Empire in the Middle East, and it
turns out to be about the same number it takes to garrison the region
today. You need about 38 major bases. You can plot them out in Roman
times and you can plot them out today.

An empire of bases - that's the concept that best explains the logic of
the 700 or more military bases around the world acknowledged by the
Department of Defense. Now, we're just kidding ourselves that this is
to provide security for Americans. In most cases, it's true that we
first occupied these bases with some strategic purpose in mind in one
of our wars. Then the war ends and we never give them up. We discovered
that it's part of the game; it's the perk for the people who fought the
war. The marines to this day believe they deserve to be in Okinawa
because of the losses they had in the bloodiest and last big battle of
World War II.

I was astonished, however, at how quickly the concept of empire -
though not necessarily an empire of bases - became acceptable to the
neo-conservatives and others in the era of the younger Bush. After all,
to use the term proudly, as many of them did, meant flying directly in
the face of the origins of the United States. We used to pride
ourselves on being as anti-imperialist as anybody could be, attacking a
king who ruled in such a tyrannical manner. That lasted only, I
suppose, until the Spanish-American War. We'd already become an empire
well before that, of course.

TD: Haven't we now become kind of a one-legged empire in the sense
that, as you've written, just about everything has become military?

CJ: That's what's truly ominous about the American empire. In most
empires, the military is there, but militarism is so central to ours -
militarism not meaning national defense or even the projection of force
for political purposes, but as a way of life, as a way of getting rich
or getting comfortable. I guarantee you that the 1st Marine Division
lives better in Okinawa than in Oceanside, California, by considerable
orders of magnitude. After the Wall came down, the Soviet troops didn't
leave East Germany for five years. They didn't want to go home. They
were living so much better in Germany than they knew they would be back
in poor Russia.

Most empires try to disguise that military aspect of things. Our
problem is: For some reason, we love our military. We regard it as a
microcosm of our society and as an institution that works. There's
nothing more hypocritical, or constantly invoked by our politicians,
than "support our boys". After all, those boys and girls aren't
necessarily the most admirable human beings that ever came along,
certainly not once they get into another society where they are told
they are, by definition, doing good. Then the racism that's such a part
of our society emerges very rapidly - once they get into societies
where they don't understand what's going on, where they shout at some
poor Iraqi in English.

TD: I assume you'd agree that our imperial budget is the defense
budget. Do you want to make some sense of it for us?

CJ: Part of empire is the way it's penetrated our society, the way
we've become dependent on it. Empires in the past - the Roman Empire,
the British Empire, the Japanese Empire - helped to enrich British
citizens, Roman citizens, Japanese citizens. In our society, we don't
want to admit how deeply the making and selling of weaponry has become
our way of life; that we really have no more than four major weapons
manufacturers - Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General
Dynamics - but these companies distribute their huge contracts to as
many states, as many congressional districts, as possible.

The military budget is starting to bankrupt the country. It's got so
much in it that's well beyond any rational military purpose. It equals
just less than half of total global military spending. And yet here we
are, stymied by two of the smallest, poorest countries on Earth. Iraq
before we invaded had a GDP [gross domestic product] the size of the
state of Louisiana and Afghanistan was certainly one of the poorest
places on the planet. And yet these two places have stopped us.

Militarily, we've got an incoherent, not very intelligent budget. It
becomes less incoherent only when you realize the ways it's being used
to fund our industries or that one of the few things we still
manufacture reasonably effectively is weapons. It's a huge export
business, run not by the companies but by foreign military sales within
the Pentagon.

This is not, of course, free enterprise. Four huge manufacturers with
only one major customer. This is state socialism, and it's keeping the
economy running not in the way it's taught in any economics course in
any American university. It's closer to what John Maynard Keynes
advocated for getting out of the Great Depression - counter-cyclical
governmental expenditures to keep people employed.

The country suffers from a collective anxiety neurosis every time we
talk about closing bases, and it has nothing to do with politics. New
England goes just as mad over shutting down the Portsmouth Naval
Shipyard as people here in San Diego would if you suggested shutting
the Marine Corps Air Station. It's always seen as "our base". How dare
you take away our base! Our congressmen must get it back!

This illustrates what I consider the most insidious aspect of our
militarism and our military empire. We can't get off it anymore. It's
not that we're hooked in a narcotic sense. It's just that we'd collapse
as an economy if we let it go and we know it. That's the terrifying
thing.

And the precedents for this should really terrify us. The greatest
single previous example of military Keynesianism - that is, of taking
an economy distraught over recession or depression, over people being
very close to the edge and turning it around - is Germany. Remember,
for the five years after Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933, he was
admired as one of the geniuses of modern times. And people were put
back to work. This was done entirely through military Keynesianism, an
alliance between the Nazi Party and German manufacturers.

Many at the time claimed it was an answer to the problems of real
Keynesianism, of using artificial government demand to reopen
factories, which was seen as strengthening the trade unions, the
working class. Capitalists were afraid of government policies that
tended to strengthen the working class. They might prove to be
revolutionary. They had been often enough in that century. In this
country, we were still shell-shocked over Bolshevism; to a certain
extent, we still are.

What we've done with our economy is very similar to what Adolf Hitler
did with his. We turn out airplanes and other weapons systems in huge
numbers. This leads us right back to 1991 when the Soviet Union finally
collapsed. We couldn't let the Cold War come to an end. We realized it
very quickly. In fact, there are many people who believe that the
thrust of the Cold War even as it began, especially in the National
Security Council's grand strategy document, NSC68, rested on the clear
understanding of late middle-aged Americans who had lived through the
Great Depression that the American economy could not sustain itself on
the basis of capitalist free enterprise.

And that's how - my god - in 1966, only a couple of decades after we
started down this path, we ended up with some 32,000 nuclear warheads.
That was the year of the peak stockpile, which made no sense at all. We
still have 9,960 at the present moment.

Now, the 2007 Pentagon budget doesn't make sense either. It's $439.3
billion ...

TD: ... Not including war ...

CJ: Not including war! These people have talked us into building a
fantastic military apparatus, and then, there was that famous crack
[president Bill Clinton's secretary of state] Madeleine Albright made
to General Colin Powell: "What's the point of having this superb
military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" Well, if you
want to use it today, they charge you another $120 billion! [He
laughs.]

But even the official budget makes no sense. It's filled with weapons
like Lockheed Martin's F-22 - the biggest single contract ever written.
It's a stealth airplane and it's absolutely useless. They want to build
another Virginia-class nuclear submarine. These are just toys for the
admirals.

TD : When we were younger, there were always lots of articles about
Pentagon boondoggles, the million-dollar military monkey wrench and the
like. No one bothers to write articles like that anymore, do they?

CJ: That's because they've completely given up on decent, normal
accounting at the Pentagon. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning
economist, and a colleague at Harvard have put together a real Pentagon
budget which, for the wars we're fighting right now, comes out to about
$2 trillion.

What they've added in are things like interest on the national debt
that was used to buy arms in the past. Turns out to be quite a few
billion dollars. Above all, they try to get a halfway-honest figure for
veterans' benefits. For this year, it's officially $68 billion, which
is almost surely way too low given, if nothing more, the huge number of
veterans who applied for and received benefits after our first Gulf
War.

We hear on the nightly news about the medical miracle that people can
be in an explosion in which, essentially, three 155-millimeter shells
go off underneath a Humvee, and they survive through heroic emergency
efforts. Barely. Like Bob Woodruff, the anchor person from ABC News.
The guy who saved his life said, I thought he was dead when I picked
him up. But many of these military casualties will be wards of the
state forever. Do we intend to disavow them? It leads you back to the
famous anti-war cracks of the 1930s, when congressmen used to say:
There's nothing we wouldn't do for our troops - and that's what we do,
nothing.

We almost surely will have to repudiate some of the promises we've
made. For instance, Tricare is the government's medical care for
veterans, their families. It's a mere $39 billion for 2007. But those
numbers are going to go off the chart. And we can't afford it.

Even that pompous ideologue Donald Rumsfeld seems to have thrown in the
towel on the latest budget. Not a thing is cut. Every weapon got
through. He stands for "force transformation" and we already have
enough nuclear equipment for any imaginable situation, so why on earth
spend anything more? And yet the Department of Energy is spending $18.5
billion on nuclear weapons in fiscal year 2006, according to former
senior Defense Department budget analyst Winslow Wheeler, who is today
a researcher with the Center for Defense Information.

TD: Not included in the Pentagon budget.

CJ: Of course not. This is the Department of Energy's budget.

TD: In other words, there's a whole hidden budget ...

CJ: Oh, it's huge! Three-quarters of a trillion dollars is the number I
use for the whole shebang: $440 billion for the authorized budget; at
least $120 billion for the supplementary war-fighting budget,
calculated by Tina Jones, the comptroller of the Department of Defense,
at $6.8 billion per month.

Then you add in all the other things out there, above all veterans'
care, care of the badly wounded who, not so long ago, would have added
up to something more like Vietnam-era casualty figures. In Vietnam,
they were dead bodies; these are still-living people. They're so
embarrassing to the administration that they're flown back at night,
offloaded without any citizens seeing what's going on. It's amazing to
me that [Congressman] John Murtha, as big a friend as the defense
industry ever had - you could count on him to buy any crazy
missile-defense gimmick, anything in outer space - seems to have
slightly woken up only because he spent some time as an old marine
veteran going to the hospitals.

Another person who may be getting this message across to the public is
Gary Trudeau in some of his Doonesbury cartoons. Tom, I know your
mother was a cartoonist and we both treasure Walt Kelly, who drew the
Pogo strip. How applicable is Pogo's most famous line today: "We have
met the enemy and he is us"?

PART 2: Whatever happened to Congress?

Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the author of The End of
Victory Culture. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has recently
come out in paperback.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Iran, Iraq Crises Converge Despite U.S. Hardliners
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c2acc3e63af008fa
==============================================================================

== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:00 am
From: "Mark Donovan"

"DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
news:pTnUf.14035$Eg2.11220@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>
> "Mark Donovan" <mdon@don.org> wrote in message
> news:UxnUf.10208$TK2.6930@trnddc07...
>>
>> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
>> news:61nUf.14027$Eg2.289@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>>> [We better leave Iran alone. We have no business meddling in their
>>> affairs]
>>>
>>> WASHINGTON - The agreement last week between Washington and Iran to hold
>>> direct talks on Iraq has forged a new linkage between the Iraq and Iran
>>> crises.
>>>
>>
>>
>> The only linkage here is that the US is establishing the extreme
>> ultra-fundamentalist islamic regimes in both countries.
>
> You are correct in Iraq. But Iran is a democracy.

Right, that's why we hate it. It won't be after the upcoming US invasion...

Mark

>>> Hardliners in the George W. Bush administration are resisting any
>>> linkage between the two crises, because they want to avoid pressure for
>>> a broader settlement with Iran.
>>>
>>> But they have already lost the battle against talks with Iran on the
>>> stabilisation of Iraq. Those negotiations are likely to increase the
>>> pressure for bilateral negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme and
>>> Iranian security concerns.
>>>
>>> The convergence of the two issues is being driven both by the need of
>>> the United States and Iraqi political factions for Iranian help in
>>> resolving the sectarian violence and political deadlock in Iraq, and by
>>> Iran's desire to reach a broader settlement with Washington.
>>>
>>> The U.S. reactions to the Iranian acceptance of talks on Iraq reveal a
>>> sharp contrast in the attitudes of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
>>> and other administration officials toward the talks.
>>>
>>> Before flying to Australia, Rice said the talks with Iran on Iraq "could
>>> be useful". The following day, however, some administration officials
>>> began to denigrate the value of those talks. White House National
>>> Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley said they were "simply a device by
>>> the Iranians to try to divert pressure that they are feeling in New
>>> York".
>>>
>>> Hadley suggested that there was no need for the United States to talk
>>> with Iran at all, because, "We're talking to Iran all the time: We make
>>> statements, they make statements."
>>>
>>> The same day a "senior U.S. official", speaking to reporters while
>>> demanding anonymity, called the Iranian offer of talks "a stunt" and
>>> said Washington would participate only to avoid "criticisms that it did
>>> not do all it can do to defuse bloody tensions in Iraq". And a White
>>> House official sought out reporters to say the Iranian offer was "almost
>>> puffery".
>>>
>>> The attacks by those associated with the administration's hard-line
>>> policy toward Iran revealed sharp differences over which is more
>>> important -- isolating Iran diplomatically, or taking advantage of its
>>> influence within the Shi'a political leadership in Iraq to help settle
>>> the crisis there.
>>>
>>> The Dick Cheney-Donald Rumsfeld group, whose views were expressed by
>>> Hadley and the anonymous officials minimising the importance of talks
>>> with Iran, clearly care less about what happens in Iraq than they do
>>> about maintaining the policy of implicit, if not explicit regime change
>>> in Tehran.
>>>
>>> Rice and Khalilzad, however, are apparently willing to risk a weakening
>>> or breach of the policy of isolating and threatening Iran, because they
>>> recognise the desperation of the sectarian-political situation in Iraq
>>> and believe Iran could help.
>>>
>>> Since late last year, Bush has sided with Rice and Khalilzad against
>>> Cheney and Rumsfeld, when they prevailed on Bush to authorise talks with
>>> Iran on the Iraq crisis. In late December or early January, Khalilzad
>>> dispatched a message to Iranian authorities proposing cooperation on
>>> Iraq, according to the London-based Arab-language newspaper Al-Hayat.
>>>
>>> The Cheney-Rumsfeld group did not attack the decision then, because they
>>> were confident that Iran would reject an invitation for discussions
>>> limited solely to Iraq. Iran's foreign minister quickly confirmed that
>>> belief by declaring that Iran would not agree to those terms.
>>>
>>> Khalilzad has apparently repeated his proposal to Iran to discus the
>>> stabilisation of Iraq more recently. According to a Mar. 12 article in
>>> the London Sunday Times by Lindsey Hilsum, the international editor of
>>> London's Channel 4 news, a senior Iranian intelligence official said
>>> that the U.S. invitation of talks on Iraq had been "renewed" in late
>>> February.
>>>
>>> This time, the Iranians did not reject the U.S. proposal. Their
>>> willingness to help stabilise the situation in Iraq without any
>>> commitment to broader talks reflects the increased perception in Tehran
>>> of a danger of military confrontation with Washington.
>>>
>>> Since the Iranian rejection of Khalilzad's earlier proposal for talks,
>>> the Bush administration has stepped up its pressure on Tehran over the
>>> nuclear issue and orchestrated a campaign to take the nuclear issue to
>>> the Security Council.
>>>
>>> In agreeing to help the United States on Iraq, the Iranians are
>>> primarily interested in the possibility of using talks on Iraq as a
>>> bridge to broader diplomatic negotiations with Washington. The Iranian
>>> intelligence official told Hilsum that Tehran would accept the U.S.
>>> offer for talks but wanted them to be in a neutral country, hoping they
>>> would eventually lead to a dialogue on the nuclear issue as well.
>>>
>>> In announcing Tehran's acceptance of U.S. terms for the talks, Ali
>>> Larijani, Iran's chief negotiator on its nuclear programme, who is known
>>> to be close to the supreme leader of the regime, Ayatollah Ali Khameini,
>>> hinted at the desire to reach an accommodation with Washington on
>>> nuclear and other issues.
>>>
>>> "If the Americans stop their troublemaking in the region and if they
>>> examine their previous conduct and behaviour, a lot of things may
>>> happen," he said.
>>>
>>> The hardliners in Washington are determined to avoid just such
>>> negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme. No sooner had the Iranian
>>> agreement to discuss Iraq been made public on Mar. 16 than
>>> Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns publicly ruled out any
>>> discussions with Iran on the nuclear issue.
>>>
>>> He asserted that any such negotiations would be "futile in view of the
>>> country's track record on the issue". But he also revealed that
>>> rejecting negotiations on the nuclear enrichment is part of the
>>> administration's strategy of pressure on Iran, referring to its
>>> "calculationàthat it is better to isolate the Iranian regime."
>>>
>>> Although the administration seeks to keep cooperation with Iran over the
>>> crisis in Iraq separate from its strategy of isolation of Iran, the
>>> evolution of the Iraq crisis may make such separation impossible. The
>>> discussions on Iraq will have to involve various political formulas
>>> which the United States and Iran could both support. Iran would be asked
>>> to help sell the militant Shiite parties on a settlement plan with
>>> unpalatable compromises for those same parties.
>>>
>>> If the Iranians become more deeply involved in the internal negotiation
>>> in Iraq, and the usefulness of their role becomes widely recognised, it
>>> will certainly be more difficult for the United States to resist
>>> political-diplomatic pressures to talk with Tehran about the larger
>>> issues threatening the peace of the region -- Iran's nuclear programme
>>> and the U.S. efforts to isolate and destabilise the regime.
>>>
>>> Ironically, Iran's assistance in brokering a Shiite-Sunni political
>>> compromise has been sought by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI,
>>> the largest party in the dominant Shiite alliance.
>>>
>>> Sunni political leaders, meanwhile, have rejected the idea of
>>> U.S.-Iranian talks on a settlement, despite the fact that the Iranian
>>> support is necessary to get the Shiites to agree on key Sunni demands.
>>>
>>> http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0322-02.htm
>>>
>>
>>
>
>

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:02 am
From: "DoD"

"Mark Donovan" <mdon@don.org> wrote in message
news:mboUf.10219$TK2.5457@trnddc07...
>
> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
> news:pTnUf.14035$Eg2.11220@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>>
>> "Mark Donovan" <mdon@don.org> wrote in message
>> news:UxnUf.10208$TK2.6930@trnddc07...
>>>
>>> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
>>> news:61nUf.14027$Eg2.289@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>>>> [We better leave Iran alone. We have no business meddling in their
>>>> affairs]
>>>>
>>>> WASHINGTON - The agreement last week between Washington and Iran to
>>>> hold direct talks on Iraq has forged a new linkage between the Iraq and
>>>> Iran crises.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The only linkage here is that the US is establishing the extreme
>>> ultra-fundamentalist islamic regimes in both countries.
>>
>> You are correct in Iraq. But Iran is a democracy.
>
> Right, that's why we hate it. It won't be after the upcoming US
> invasion...

We better not invade it. Is that what you really want?

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:08 am
From: Bert Hyman

In news:TYnUf.14037$Eg2.11813@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil>
wrote:

>
> "Bert Hyman" <bert@iphouse.com> wrote in message
> news:Xns978ED2CCB6BF0VeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7...
>> In news:RSnUf.14034$Eg2.5565@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD"
>> <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> "Bert Hyman" <bert@iphouse.com> wrote in message
>>> news:Xns978EC9508158AVeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7...
>>>> In news:61nUf.14027$Eg2.289@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD"
>>>> <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> [We better leave Iran alone. We have no business meddling in their
>>>>> affairs]
>>>>
>>>> If Iran didn't want other countries "meddling" in its affairs, it
>>>> should never have joined the UN, and then signed the Nuclear
>>>> Nonproliferation Treaty.
>>>
>>> In that you are correct. They should leave it at once. But we better
>>> not attack them. They are a sovereign nation, just like Iraq was.
>>
>> As were Japan and Germany in the 1930s. If Iran continues on the path
>> it's started, Iran can expect the same treatment.
>
> So you are going to invade a sovereign nation?

Me? No.

But if Iran behaves itself and respects the sovereignty of its
neighbors, neither will anybody else.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:09 am
From: "DoD"

"Bert Hyman" <bert@iphouse.com> wrote in message
news:Xns978ED70CCA03DVeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7...
> In news:TYnUf.14037$Eg2.11813@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> "Bert Hyman" <bert@iphouse.com> wrote in message
>> news:Xns978ED2CCB6BF0VeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7...
>>> In news:RSnUf.14034$Eg2.5565@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD"
>>> <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Bert Hyman" <bert@iphouse.com> wrote in message
>>>> news:Xns978EC9508158AVeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7...
>>>>> In news:61nUf.14027$Eg2.289@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com "DoD"
>>>>> <thecats@ss.mil> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> [We better leave Iran alone. We have no business meddling in their
>>>>>> affairs]
>>>>>
>>>>> If Iran didn't want other countries "meddling" in its affairs, it
>>>>> should never have joined the UN, and then signed the Nuclear
>>>>> Nonproliferation Treaty.
>>>>
>>>> In that you are correct. They should leave it at once. But we better
>>>> not attack them. They are a sovereign nation, just like Iraq was.
>>>
>>> As were Japan and Germany in the 1930s. If Iran continues on the path
>>> it's started, Iran can expect the same treatment.
>>
>> So you are going to invade a sovereign nation?
>
> Me? No.
>
> But if Iran behaves itself and respects the sovereignty of its
> neighbors, neither will anybody else.

So you think they are gonna invade someone? If so then who?

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Is the US getting it's ass kicked again?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/c3e720f581a7b047
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:06 pm
From: "HelpmaBoab"

Will they never learn. The Yanks got their asses kicked in Vietnam and now
it is happening again in Iraq - even Afghanistan. Innocent Yanks suffer
while the chimp in the whitehouse stays in power.

Tam

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Racism still rife in US, says China
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/d9b7345c735cc004
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:06 pm
From: "n.t."

"... Americans are much more open, despite their problems. It's what
keeps,
and makes, this country, great. ..."

Well, now that I've finally read your comment, I should clarify that my
comment earlier about the white folks, the Vietnamese, and the Chinese
only pertain to the Americans with whom I am familiar ...

n.t.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Sen. Feinstein calls for Rumsfeld's removal, Iraq troop reduction
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/1fb7e02bfe656863
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:07 am
From: "DoD"

"serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:sPnUf.593$q6.122@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>
> "DoD" <thecats@ss.mil> wrote in message
> news:BJmUf.14025$Eg2.2473@tornado.rdc-kc.rr.com...
>> SAN JOSE, Calif. - Sen. Dianne Feinstein called on President Bush to fire
>> Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over his handling of the Iraq war and
>> reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from the current 130,000 to
>> 50,000 by year's end.
>>
>> Feinstein, D-Calif., said Monday that Bush should replace Rumsfeld and
>> other senior Pentagon officials with new leaders who will start pulling
>> American troops out of Iraq.
>>
>> "I say it's time to change course, to bring in another team," Feinstein
>> said during a speech before the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. "We
>> should not be putting American soldiers in the middle of a civil war with
>> targets on their backs."
>>
>> Feinstein has been vilified by many California Democrats for her vote
>> three years ago authorizing Bush to use military force in Iraq and for
>> not calling for a full-scale pullout.
>>
>> "We all know we can't cut and run," she said. "What I'm talking about is
>> changing the nature of this mission."
>>
>> Feinstein said American troops should be pulled out of a primary combat
>> role, and their mission should largely be training and logistics.
>>
>> Her proposal follows those made by other congressional leaders, led by
>> U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Penn., calling for a timetable for a phased
>> troop withdrawal.
>>
>> "We have to say to Iraq that it's time for your soldiers and police
>> forces to take over," she said.
>>
>> White House spokesman Blair Jones said the president continues to have
>> confidence in Rumsfeld's leadership and makes decisions about troop
>> levels based on military advice and not "artificial timetables set by
>> politicians in Washington."
>>
>> "As the president has said, we are implementing a strategy that will lead
>> to victory in Iraq," Jones said. "A victory in Iraq will make the country
>> more secure and help lay the foundation of peace for a generation."
>>
>> http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/14151671.htm
>>
> Democrats have been asleep at the wheel on the issue of removal of war
> criminals from the government

Well, you only can do so much you know.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Cuban Conference Focuses on Elder Care
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/3a7ce9372ec23e22
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 10:12 pm
From: prodigal1

Leo J Callaghan wrote:
<snip>
nothing of any interest
you persist...like a festering boil on one's arse
1. Shut up.
2. Fuck Off.
HTH

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Afghan Man Sentenced to Death for Converting
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/bd295e44b8e99935
==============================================================================

== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:18 pm
From: "ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com"

Seeker wrote:
> <ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote ...
> >>
> >> On 5 October 2002, the state government of Tamil Nadu, India, issued an
> >> ordinance that effectively (when interpreted according to Hindutva
> >> ideology) outlawed religious conversion.
> >> http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/10497.htm
> >
> > In the Tamilnadu law (repealed in 2004), a proselytizer was required to
> > inform officials of the local district about the conversion; he did not
> > require any permission to perform conversion ceremonies. It was up to
> > officials to take him to court with a charge of converting by force*,
> > allurement* or fraud* and it was upto a judge (not Hindutva
> > ideologists) to determine whether the charge had merit.
>
> The judges are Hindutaa ideologues.

Do you have a survey?

> The political climate in Tamil Nadu is
> Hindutva.

Ho ho!

> > himself, there was a penalty only for converting other people (and only
> > if converted by force, allurement or fraud), and the penalty was
> > certainly not death; it was (a maximum of) a fine and imprisonment.
>
> Why is this even needed. If someone converts a Hindu by fraud, you can
> convert that person back to Hinduism by fraud.

I haven't said it is needed; I have only said that the law you refer to
doesn't say "do not proselytize or convert" but rather says, "it's
illegal to convert by force, bribery or fraud". Be that as it may,
changing the question to: why is this deemed neecessary even by some
people who support the right to convert and proselytize, the
paradoxical answer is that there are schools of thought that some kinds
of proselytism infringe on religious liberty.

An example of a discussion of the subject outside India:
http://www.libertymagazine.org/article/articleview/190/1/37/
experts were invited by the International Religious Liberty Association
(IRLA) and the Ministry of Justice of Spain to a May 1999 meeting in
Madrid. A consensus statement describes "bad" proselytism as an
unethical activity that can take many forms, including willful
misrepresentation of the beliefs and practices of others, or the use of
force, coercion, compulsion, mockery, or intimidation to press for
conversion

As for why it is deemeed necessary by people who oppose the right to
convert and proselytize, if they can't get approval for laws to ban
proselytism, the next best thing they can aim for is laws to regulate
proselytism, and to then look for ways to find proselytizers in
violation of the regulations.

> > * Definitions: (a) "allurement" means offer of any temptation in the
> > form of - (i) - any gift or gratification, either in cash or kind; (ii)
> > - grant of any material benefit, either monetary or otherwise. (b)
> > "convert" means to make one person to renounce one religion and adopt
> > another religion; (c) "force" includes a show of force or threat of
> > injury of any kind including threat of divine displeasure or social
> > ex-communication; (d) "fraudulent means" includes misrepresentation or
> > any other fraudulent contrivance.

== 2 of 2 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:28 pm
From: "Seeker" <4not_listed_due_to_spam_bots_121101@dont.reply>

"Mohd Kaffir" <fragrance28_693@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143073973.508627.70740@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>
> Seeker wrote:
>> Typical statement of a loser.
>>
>> "Mohd Kaffir" <fragrance28_693@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1143009423.453240.194310@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>> > Ranjit seems to have taken care of you already.
>> >
>> > Seeker wrote:
>> >> "Mohd Kaffir" <fragrance28_693@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> >> news:1142839277.186250.188050@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>> >> >
>> >> > Seeker wrote:
>> >> >> "Mohd Kaffir" <fragrance28_693@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> >> >> news:1142822076.783503.257410@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Seeker wrote:
>> >> >> >> "Mohd Kaffir" <fragrance28_693@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> >> >> >> news:1142816666.653454.229280@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > Seeker wrote:
>> >> >> >> >> <ranjit_mathews@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> >> >> >> >> news:1142810312.667284.210060@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
>> >> >> >> >> > Seeker wrote:
>> >> >> >> >> >> <visualseeplus@yahoo.com> wrote ...
>> >> >> >> >> >> > Religion of Peace folks.
>> >> >> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> >> >> > KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who allegedly
>> >> >> >> >> >> > converted
>> >> >> >> >> >> > from
>> >> >> >> >> >> > Islam
>> >> >> >> >> >> > to Christianity is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and
>> >> >> >> >> >> > could
>> >> >> >> >> >> > be
>> >> >> >> >> >> > sentenced to death, a judge said Sunday.
>> >> >> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> >> >> Harami Hindu, you have such laws in India too where pain
>> >> >> >> >> >> of
>> >> >> >> >> >> death
>> >> >> >> >> >> is
>> >> >> >> >> >> imposed
>> >> >> >> >> >> on anyone converting out of Hinduism.
>> >> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> >> > There is no such law.
>> >> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> >> I distinctly remembering reading about such a law in Tamil
>> >> >> >> >> Nadu.
>> >> >> >> >> Has
>> >> >> >> >> that
>> >> >> >> >> law been repealed?
>> >> >> >> >
>> >> >> >> > Really? Are you which universe you are talking about?
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> On 5 October 2002, the state government of Tamil Nadu, India,
>> >> >> >> issued
>> >> >> >> an
>> >> >> >> ordinance that effectively (when interpreted according to
>> >> >> >> Hindutva
>> >> >> >> ideology)
>> >> >> >> outlawed religious conversion.
>> >> >> >>
>> >> >> >> http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/10497.htm
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Where did it mention "death penalty"??
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I don't know. I haven't read the whole thing.
>> >> >
>> >> > You know, apologizing for writing lies make you earn respect.
>> >>
>> >> Apologize for what? Besides what would I gain from earning your
>> >> respect.
>> >> I
>> >> already know that you Hinduvadis can't see beyond a person's religion.
>> >>
>
> You don't know shit.
> Prove it.

You know what kind of hatred lurks in your heart. Why do I need to prove it.

>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> > Besides it is common knowledge
>> >> >> how people are murdered in Indai for conversion.
>> >> >>
>> >> >
>> >> > There is no "common knowledge". You said the following:
>> >>
>> >> The people at risk of conversion are the lower castes dalits etc. They
>> >> are
>> >> routinely killed in India for converting to Christianity or Islam.
>> >> Now,
>> >> India is passing laws making it illegal for them to convert. You
>> >> introduce
>> >> the concept of fraud. Are the dalits not smart enough to the world's
>> >> largest
>> >> democracy?
>> >>
>
> The law of farud prevention had no relation to "castes".

Of course it does. The one who were converting were the lower castes (sc,
tribals etc). These conversions were viewed as fraud by the largest
democracy. Meaning, lower castes are stupid and incapable of seeing the
fraud; therefore, a law was passed to tell the lower castes that they don't
have the right to convert because all such conversions are fraud and the
lower castes are incapable and lacking mental faculty to see it.

Right to practice religion freely is so fundamental, yet the worlds largest
democracy can't seem to provide this right to its lower castes.

>
>
>> >> > "
>> >> > Harami Hindu, you have such laws in India too where pain of death is
>> >> >>> imposed
>> >> >>> on anyone converting out of Hinduism.
>> >> > "
>> >> >
>
> I am still waiting for proof on your above statement.
> Put up or shut the fuck up.

I provided you with the law in Tamil Nadu that makes it illegal for anyone
to convert out of Hinduism.

I am sure you are proud of your colorful language.

>
>
>> >> >
>> >> >
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > Also, you quoted an evangelical site, instead of a real news
>> >> >> > site.
>> >> >> > The law was about banning conversion by coercian and bribery.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> And that site had a link to the indian site. It doesn't matter
>> >> >> what,
>> >> >
>> >> > but in
>> >> >> India people don't have religious freedom to convert.
>> >> >
>> >> > Again, prove or accept insults.
>> >>
>> >> You have been insulting me for years now. Do you really think you can
>> >> accomplish anything by keeping on insulting me?
>> >
>
> You are beyond any insults.

At least, you realize that you aint got the stuff to insult me.

> You lie most of the time.

I never lie. I provide facts to the best of my knowledge. You can't ask for
more.

> Occassionally I just feel like pointing out your lies.
> Many times I don't do that either.

If you want to carry on a debate, you must learn to do it with facts, logic
and calmness.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: gun owners and nra proven wrong - again
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/113cc170f0e4312a
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:20 pm
From: Bill Smith

>
>I sure hope you're my little brother. Your mom make quilted vests for
>you, per chance, or have I asked before?
>
>Kane

IIRC, you have asked before and unless my Mom was lying, I have no
older brothers. There are a lot of Smiths about.

Bill Smith

==============================================================================
TOPIC: RACHEL, ZIONAZIS ARE BLACKLISTING A DEAD AMERICAN!
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/fecef64c367c13ff
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 10:20 pm
From: "serwad"

Censorship of the Worst Kind
By VANESSA REDGRAVE

I am urging the Royal Court Theatre to sue the New York Theatre Workshop for
the cancellation of the production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie". Not
because I donated money for this production, which the Royal Court have been
fundraising for--a target of 50,000 pounds, underwritten by Alan Rickman.

This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that.It is
black-listing a dead girl and her diaries.A very brave and exceptional girl
who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be proud and
grateful for her existence. They couldn't silence her voice while she lived,
so she was killed. Her voice began to speak again as Alan Rickman read her
diaries, and Megan Dodds became Rachel Corrie.Now the New York Theatre
Workshop have silenced that dear voice.

I shall never forget the glimpse, at the close of Alan Rickman's production,
of Rachel when 10 years old, shot on a little family movie camera, making
her speech about world poverty and the urgent need to end the misery. The
New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that little girl, as well as the
girl who confronted the Israeli army Caterpillar bulldozer.

There has to be a court case on the sheer fact of the cancellation of this
production. I suppose lawyers were consulted about the word "postponed". We
in the theatre know however what cancelling a production means, whatever
words are used. Megan Dodds, and a crew lose their jobs. The Royal Court
Theatre lose a production that was a few weeks from opening in New York
City.

For the Royal Court Theatre were producing "Rachel Corrie", with the New
York Theatre Workshop, and putting up a lot of money--$100,000 dollars.

I hope that all theatre artists, writers, designers, actors, directors,
independent producers and artists' representatives will make their protests
known publicly as well as directly to the New York Theatre Workshop
management. I hope that American Actors Equity will be asked to take up and
support the Royal Court Theatre producer, Elyse Dodgson, the director, Alan
Rickman, and the actress Megan Dodds.

If this cancellation is not transformed into a new production, somewhere in
New York, immediately, we would be complicit, all of us, in a catastrophe
that must not be allowed to take place. This play is not about taking sides.
It is about protecting human beings.

In this case, Palestinian human beings who have no protection, for their
families, their homes or their streets.

Rachel Corrie gave her life to protect a family. She didn't have or use a
gun or bomb.

She had her huge humanity, and she gave that to save lives.

==============================================================================
TOPIC: More than 100 suspected illegal immigrants found in 8 traffic incidents
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/7338c9a79b60b67e
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:20 pm
From: "bernard farquart"

"gpsman" <gpsman@driversmail.com> wrote in message
news:1143053046.271272.250900@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> Frank Arthur wrote: <brevity snip>
>
>> "laura bush" states that "ALL illegals are dangerous drivers". This is a
>> clearly insane statement.
>
> I think snipping "these", from the original post of "ALL _these_
> illegals", and then claiming the OP is insane for saying something they
> actually didn't... indicates insanity.
> -----
>
> - gpsman
>
Holy crap, I agree with a gpsman post.

Someone take my temperature.

Bernard

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Three Ways to Remember Rachel
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/06f69fcc00c58349
==============================================================================

== 1 of 4 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:22 pm
From: "serwad"

Censorship of the Worst Kind
By VANESSA REDGRAVE

For the Royal Court Theatre were producing "Rachel Corrie", with the New
York Theatre Workshop, and putting up a lot of money--$100,000 dollars.

In this case, Palestinian human beings who have no protection, for their
families, their homes or their streets.

Rachel Corrie gave her life to protect a family. She didn't have or use a
gun or bomb.

She had her huge humanity, and she gave that to save lives.

== 2 of 4 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 10:21 pm
From: "serwad"

Censorship of the Worst Kind
By VANESSA REDGRAVE

For the Royal Court Theatre were producing "Rachel Corrie", with the New
York Theatre Workshop, and putting up a lot of money--$100,000 dollars.

In this case, Palestinian human beings who have no protection, for their
families, their homes or their streets.

Rachel Corrie gave her life to protect a family. She didn't have or use a
gun or bomb.

She had her huge humanity, and she gave that to save lives.

== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 10:23 pm
From: "serwad"

Censorship of the Worst Kind
By VANESSA REDGRAVE

For the Royal Court Theatre were producing "Rachel Corrie", with the New
York Theatre Workshop, and putting up a lot of money--$100,000 dollars.

In this case, Palestinian human beings who have no protection, for their
families, their homes or their streets.

Rachel Corrie gave her life to protect a family. She didn't have or use a
gun or bomb.

She had her huge humanity, and she gave that to save lives.

== 4 of 4 ==
Date: Thurs, Mar 23 2006 3:23 am
From: "DoD"

Alex, you don't need to post something 9 times.

"serwad" <serwad@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:9toUf.606$q6.564@bignews8.bellsouth.net...
>
> Censorship of the Worst Kind
> By VANESSA REDGRAVE
>
> I am urging the Royal Court Theatre to sue the New York Theatre Workshop
> for the cancellation of the production of "My Name Is Rachel Corrie". Not
> because I donated money for this production, which the Royal Court have
> been fundraising for--a target of 50,000 pounds, underwritten by Alan
> Rickman.
>
> This is censorship of the worst kind. More awful even than that.It is
> black-listing a dead girl and her diaries.A very brave and exceptional
> girl who all citizens, whatever their faith or nationality, should be
> proud and grateful for her existence. They couldn't silence her voice
> while she lived, so she was killed. Her voice began to speak again as Alan
> Rickman read her diaries, and Megan Dodds became Rachel Corrie.Now the New
> York Theatre Workshop have silenced that dear voice.
>
> I shall never forget the glimpse, at the close of Alan Rickman's
> production, of Rachel when 10 years old, shot on a little family movie
> camera, making her speech about world poverty and the urgent need to end
> the misery. The New York Theatre Workshop have silenced that little girl,
> as well as the girl who confronted the Israeli army Caterpillar bulldozer.
>
> There has to be a court case on the sheer fact of the cancellation of this
> production. I suppose lawyers were consulted about the word "postponed".
> We in the theatre know however what cancelling a production means,
> whatever words are used. Megan Dodds, and a crew lose their jobs. The
> Royal Court Theatre lose a production that was a few weeks from opening in
> New York City.
>
> For the Royal Court Theatre were producing "Rachel Corrie", with the New
> York Theatre Workshop, and putting up a lot of money--$100,000 dollars.
>
> I hope that all theatre artists, writers, designers, actors, directors,
> independent producers and artists' representatives will make their
> protests known publicly as well as directly to the New York Theatre
> Workshop management. I hope that American Actors Equity will be asked to
> take up and support the Royal Court Theatre producer, Elyse Dodgson, the
> director, Alan Rickman, and the actress Megan Dodds.
>
> If this cancellation is not transformed into a new production, somewhere
> in New York, immediately, we would be complicit, all of us, in a
> catastrophe that must not be allowed to take place. This play is not about
> taking sides. It is about protecting human beings.
>
> In this case, Palestinian human beings who have no protection, for their
> families, their homes or their streets.
>
> Rachel Corrie gave her life to protect a family. She didn't have or use a
> gun or bomb.
>
> She had her huge humanity, and she gave that to save lives.
>
>
>
>
>

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Gun loon shoots, kills kid for walking on grass
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.usa/browse_thread/thread/571681d234d29371
==============================================================================

== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Mar 22 2006 7:24 pm
From: "Felix D." <#1Chekist@OGPU.org>

"0:->" <pohaku.kane@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:if2dnVWFl7a_d7zZRVn-jA@scnresearch.com...
> Felix D. wrote:
> > "A." <atalanta.brilliante@gmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:1143056066.148050.173220@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> >
> >> As an educator, it seems to me both sides are at fault. The fact that
> >> so many people still support either side and fail to see how their own
> >> side is creating stupid kids really bugs me.
> >
> > This is true. An era of lowered expectations gets you just what you
expect.
>
> I presume you recognize a really hot sig line, no?
>
> 0:-]

It's yours if you want it. <thanx>

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