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@Quark: so they're OK to drink?
re: lefties taking-up arms: I left an andean "nuevo cancion" band over that very issue. At the time, i felt the FMLN (salvadoran resistance) was just causing the poor more misery with blowing up granaries and burning crops. After all these years, I can no longer say armed resistance is inappropriate in all cases. Of course in the US it would be sheer suicide. they know where you are. In other cases...I don't know.
"War is an extension of politics by other means" - Carl von Clausewitz
N
Rove welcomes former Alabama AG who hounded Siegelman: ‘Hey, Bud!’
By Muriel Kane
Thursday, April 29th, 2010 -- 11:19 am
More Geeky Science ---
Last night the Discovery Channel showed a story about relatively new phenomena called "megacryometeors." These are huge (as large as basketballs) ice chunks that appear to fall out of a clear blue sky. After refuting the "dropped out of an airplane" idea, the story explained that these are created between the troposphere and the statosphere and may be the result of more water vapor in the increasingly warmer atmosphere. They can fall to earth anytime and anywhere.
http://www.megacryometeors.com/
Yikes!
God In Search of Man, reflection by Abraham Joshua Heschel
This is from the book above.
I have highligted the main point i want you to take.
The minds are sick. The hearts are mad. Humanity is drunk with a sense of absolute sovereignty. Our pride is hurt by each other's arrogance. The dreadful predicament is not due to economic conflicts. It is due to a spiritual paralysis.
This is an age of suspicion, when most of us seem to live by the rule: Suspect thy neighbor as thyself. Such radical suspicion leads to despair of man's capacity to be free and to eventual surrender to demonic forces, surrender to idols of power, to the monsters of self-righteous ideologies.
What will save us is a revival of reverence for man, immitigable indignation at acts of violence, burning compassion for all who are deprived, the wisdom of the heart. Before imputing guilt to others, let us examine our own failures.
Religion's task is to cultivate disgust for violence and lies, sensitivity to other people's suffering, the love of peace. God has a stake in the life of every man. He never exposes humanity to a challenge without giving humanity the power to the challenge. Different are the languages of prayer, but the tears are the same. We have a vision in common of Him in whose compassion all men's prayers meet.
In the words of the prophet Malachi, "From the rising of the sun to its setting My name is great among the nations, in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure offering; for My name is great among the nations." It seems to me that the prophet proclaims that men all over the world, though they confess different conceptions of God, are all really worshiping the One God, the Father of all men, though they may not even be aware of it.
What will save us? God, and our faith in man's relevance to God. Respect for each other's commitment, respect for each other's faith, is more than a political and social imperative. It is born of the insight that God is greater than religion, that fait h is deeper than dogma.
It is customary to blame secular science and antireligious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes a heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion-its message becomes meaningless.
To quote from classic rabbinic literature: "Pious men of all nations have a share in the world to come, and are promised the reward of eternal life. I call heaven and earth to witness that the Holy Spirit rests upon each person, Jew or gentile, man or woman, master or slave, in consonance with his deeds."
God's voice speaks in many languages, communicating itself in a diversity of intuitions. The word of God never comes to an end. No word is God's last word.
Man's most precious thought is God, but God's most precious thought is man.
It is not the role of the media to promote christianity but for the fruits fo Christians to be a testimony of our faith my word
"Greek fire" was launched from warships. I think the Chinese used directed natural gas set afire as a defensive weapon.
@Zero G. so are you saying it is appropriate to use violence from the left? If so, in all cases, or just in certain situations?
I'm not so certain I have a strong opinion one way or another on this at this time. Obviously few would want to stand idle while being beaten. On the other hand when firing the first shot, does a leftist ultimately betray their ideals?
N
@Zero G: I think they called it Greek Fire.
@Gene Savory
I'll play with words as much as anybody, and you've made a tasty comment. True-nuff the invention of gunpowder was not an attempt at the precursor to psychedelic light shows in pyrotechnic display. However, exothermic warfare goes farther back than that, think flaming pitch in catapaults for that matter.
on yesterday's gun talk-
the story of the bars in az with 1 bar that had open carry that never got robbed and the unarmed bar that got robbed multiple times made me think of the levee problem where a town on 1 side of the river can break the levee of the town across the river. this floods the town on the other side and takes pressure off the remaining levee, saving the culprit town.
so, picture this: Cletus gets good and drunk on payday at the armed bar, buys a few rounds for friends. once he's good & hammered he heads home. when he leaves the bar he finds he's blown or lost all his money, all he has is his keys-and his gun.
"hmm", he thinks," the wife's gonna kill me." How does he keep the wife happy? he remembers that unarmed bar and uses his gun to rob it, thus saving his marriage.
re: Kansas...its SO square.
Nels,
I can tell you this, the crowd that came to meet the Nazis at CIty Hall was not a Gandhian bunch...some were of course, but many responded with rocks and bottles thrown over the heads of the police.
Gandhi was confronting the British. Chalmers Johnson posits that the British could not remain a democracy and an Empire simultaniously and chose to give up the Empire. If Gandhi was confronting the Nazis, India would be German speaking today.
For that matter, without Malcolm X (whose admitted killer is being released,) and the Black Panthers etc., on the more extreme action front, I doubt Martin Luther King would have had as much traction. Many SNCC members also had questions about the efficacy of political violence.
Nietzche had it right IMHO: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.
I have no real answers - only doubts.
re; prop 8. i remember hearing about the Mormon contributions only from Thom. I purposely listened for it.
With . . .
> Texas school books being purged of actual history and science to make room for winger propaganda,
> Arizona subverting immigration law to institutionalize election engineering fraud and
> Oklahoma mandating that doctors rape their patients with a foreign object if they are considering certain legal medical procedures . . .
Does anyone else thing that Kansas must be being driven insane by other States out right-wing whackoing them?
rladlof: it just shows that the Arizona Republicans didn't give much thought to the implications of this law. Or actually, maybe they did and didn't care.
I went to the Rock Island Arsenal to visit my uncle's grave. The guard refused to accept my federally issued identity card as valid, but then accepted my state driver license. Eh?
@Zero G: you're right, I know Jesus was extremely anti-gun (except holy-water guns),. re: umbrella man: I personally think umbrella man was there to signal the shooter in the storm drain (Rosselli?) that the act was "on".
"I wanted to be a philosopher, but i couldn't pass the metaphysical." - harry ashburn
@Zero G: I think firepower as a political statement started with the invention of gunpowder.
@Jeanie: I was serious about my electric bill being proof of citizenship. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is a governmental institution and the bill shows that I am legally paying for the electric and water and sewer in the house I live in. The DWP recognizes that I live there . . . Just like a farging Drivers Liscence.
NOTE: Neither Driver Licenses nor power bills say anything about the status of anyone’s farging Citizenship.
Tried to phone in today...circuits too crowded. It is essential that any conversation about nuclear power plants include a discussion about Three Mile Island. Let me direct your attention to "Three Mile Island Revisited" http://www.videoproject.com/thr-159-v.html which has shown on Free Speech TV. The popular mythology about this event in 1979 is that no one died, not true! Cancer rates in the area are off the map, birth defects in humans, cows born with two heads and genetically altered plant life are just part of the lasting legacy of "Three Mile Island". To this day radiation is being released into the atmosphere as it is with all nuclear plants. Americans must make the effort to be better informed about such issues, especially with a president extolling the virtues of this deadly technology. Stephen Long
@Harry,
Neither did Thom and Lamar explain the Umbrella Man in Dealy Plaza in Ultimate Sacrafice...
@Zero G. I know this comment comes a bit late, but I've been mulling over the comment of when did shooting guns become a political statement. You mentioned the American revolution in response. I agree. I've also been wondering when did the left give up guns/violence to achieve their goals (remembering that the Bolsheviks where considered leftists, yet where extremely violent). My impression is it started with Gandhi, and has carried through to this day. Not that I'm saying Gandhi was the first to try this tact (I'm sure several would point to Jesus), but in the modern age, he reminded people of the power of peaceful, non-violent protest. It almost seems to be a given now, that if your a real leftist/liberal/progressive, you're expected to be non-violent, and if your a right wing/conservative/asshole you're expected to cling to violence.
I don't know, what do you think? Have we divided ourselves so much, that we feel that its important to express our outrage differently? Used to be fight fire with fire, now it seems to be fight fire with water.
N
Tried to phone in today...circuits too crowded. It is essential that any conversation about nuclear power plants include a discussion about Three Mile Island. Let me direct your attention to "Three Mile Island Revisited" http://www.videoproject.com/thr-159-v.html. The popular mythology about this event in 1979 is that no one died, not true! Cancer rates in the area are off the map, birth defects in humans, cows born with two heads and genetically altered plant life are just part of the lasting legacy of "Three Mile Island". To this day radiation is being released into the atmosphere as it is with all nuclear plants. Americans must make the effort to be better informed about such issues, especially with a president extolling the virtues of this deadly technology. Stephen Long
re: halliburton subcontractors: yeah, subcontracting is a favorite tool of the neo-cons. great way to diffuse the blame and save on wages.