If you've posted in forums you might remember writing some decent responses. I usually spend a lot of time polishing my discussion forum responses depending on the subject or who I am talking to. Often I want to remember what I said about something, but finding the original post can be difficult. So it makes sense to capture the better responses for later review. Welcome to Clint's Reposts.Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Oil is humanitarian
Ben wrote in http://www.network54.com/Forum/79106/message/1142967280/Man%2C+we+have+Straw+men+all+over+this+board.....:
"According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they 'die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.'"
That is, they die to lack of food, lack of basic necessities, and die of preventable diseases. If we were to move just 1% of what we spend on our defense budget, just imagine the good works we could do for these children.
Again, humanitarianism is only an issue, or so it seems, when abundant oil is under the soil.
Not to be cold about it, but it was oil that gave rise to the population of now dying children in the first place.
Fossil fuels made possible the rapid growth of population as transportation cost were reduced and human productivity increased greatly.
From: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/pop_socio/pop_socio.html
As you can see from the charts on this webpage human population has increased exponentially in the recent past. Oil was, and is, in a sense extremely humanitarian in that it lifted scores of countries out of absolute poverty and short life spans so that many more children could survive overall. Unfortunately the huge increase in birthrates left much larger populations of children exposed to the usual world problems: lack of sanitation, unstable governments, etc.
One could argue that by obsessively going after oil we are doing more for child good works than 1% of redirected defense spending could even come close to matching, not that redirecting that money would be a bad thing. I applaud your humanitaran instincts but throwing money at the poverty problem only delays the inevitable unless world attitudes and behaviors change. Until we stop fighting each other learn to work together, there will always be children dying of poverty. I'm not holding my breath on the working together concept. Nature (at least the nature we see on planet earth) is red in tooth and claw, meaning that no one is really at fault here. The universe has its own purpose and it appears 30,000 children dying each day due to poverty is part of it, as is a 100% defense budget.
--C
"According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they 'die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.'"
That is, they die to lack of food, lack of basic necessities, and die of preventable diseases. If we were to move just 1% of what we spend on our defense budget, just imagine the good works we could do for these children.
Again, humanitarianism is only an issue, or so it seems, when abundant oil is under the soil.
Not to be cold about it, but it was oil that gave rise to the population of now dying children in the first place.
Fossil fuels made possible the rapid growth of population as transportation cost were reduced and human productivity increased greatly.
From: http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/pop_socio/pop_socio.html
As you can see from the charts on this webpage human population has increased exponentially in the recent past. Oil was, and is, in a sense extremely humanitarian in that it lifted scores of countries out of absolute poverty and short life spans so that many more children could survive overall. Unfortunately the huge increase in birthrates left much larger populations of children exposed to the usual world problems: lack of sanitation, unstable governments, etc.
One could argue that by obsessively going after oil we are doing more for child good works than 1% of redirected defense spending could even come close to matching, not that redirecting that money would be a bad thing. I applaud your humanitaran instincts but throwing money at the poverty problem only delays the inevitable unless world attitudes and behaviors change. Until we stop fighting each other learn to work together, there will always be children dying of poverty. I'm not holding my breath on the working together concept. Nature (at least the nature we see on planet earth) is red in tooth and claw, meaning that no one is really at fault here. The universe has its own purpose and it appears 30,000 children dying each day due to poverty is part of it, as is a 100% defense budget.
--C
Monday, March 13, 2006
We all have opinions. Tom Fox's got him killed.
nerdolita wrote (http://www.network54.com/Forum/79106/message/1142249525/I+think):
everyone who 'reads' a situation gets an opinion of it that is colored by the beliefs they already have...
"For even while the largest media outlets were refusing to show those bland Danish cartoons -- and doing so out of a pretended “respect for Islam” -- they were dredging up additional sordid photos from the Abu Ghraib outrage in 2004, and running those prominently."
These two issues are COMPLETELY different in my view...
Not printing the cartoons is respecting your fellow mans religion...
Showing pictures from Abu Ghraib is about human rights...
I STRONGLY support making human rights issues public.
Sure, I'll bite.
Supporting human rights issues is a straw man position. Who could possibly not support human rights, eh? But supporting human rights as a moral position does nothing to address the situation of either Abu Ghraib or the cartoons. That's because there is deception, half-truths, and agendas loose on the land engineered by those with personal reasons to stir the pot--both middle eastern and western agendas.
I think you'd need to read back at least a couple years of David W's articles to grasp how deeply he understands the Islamic/Muslim/Arabic/Middle East situation. And how, as a public writer himself, he is in a position to comment on the utter collapse of western news organization's ability to provide factual news regarding either Abu Ghraib or the cartoons.
I hope you will do enough research about the cartoon issue to realize that additional cartoons were "added" to the mix by those with much to gain by fanning the anti-western flame. The additional cartoons weren't added by western cartoonists (see http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?artID=568):
From several sources, we now know that word of the cartoons was then carried systematically through the Muslim world -- to principal mosques, madrasahs, and government offices starting in Egypt. This was done by delegations sent by Ahmed Abu-Laban, the Saudi-supported Imam of Copenhagen. And in addition to the dozen cartoons that had actually appeared in that obscure provincial newspaper -- most fairly innocent, and one actually satirizing opposition to Islam -- the delegations' "media kits" included as many as 30 graphics that had never appeared, and by their nature would never appear, in a Western mainstream newspaper. For instance, a photo of a man dressed as a pig, over the caption, “This is the real Mohammad.”
The fake pictures not only outnumbered the real ones, they were much nastier. Many were in the style of anti-Semitic cartoons that appear frequently in Arab papers, but turned around to target Muslims instead of Jews. And the covering letter, which I have read in translation, was full of outrageous lies about events in Denmark, and misrepresentations of what had been said by Danish journalists and politicians.
And while the Abu Ghraib situation is not one of the U.S.'s prouder moments, if you are interested in human rights issues nerdolita then hopefully you are even more incensed, and you are speaking out even more strongly and often, about abuses to citizens of both Afghanistan and Iraq (especially women) by fellow citizens, for they make the abuses in Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park.
And then of course there is Tom Fox.
Perhaps you need to ask yourself if you are not exactly in the position now that David Warren spoke of:
Ask yourself, when reading or watching, if the consistent message is not: “Fear Islam, but do not dare to criticize it.”
Would you dare criticize Islam, or would you feel you are disrespecting your fellow man's religion?
C
everyone who 'reads' a situation gets an opinion of it that is colored by the beliefs they already have...
"For even while the largest media outlets were refusing to show those bland Danish cartoons -- and doing so out of a pretended “respect for Islam” -- they were dredging up additional sordid photos from the Abu Ghraib outrage in 2004, and running those prominently."
These two issues are COMPLETELY different in my view...
Not printing the cartoons is respecting your fellow mans religion...
Showing pictures from Abu Ghraib is about human rights...
I STRONGLY support making human rights issues public.
Sure, I'll bite.
Supporting human rights issues is a straw man position. Who could possibly not support human rights, eh? But supporting human rights as a moral position does nothing to address the situation of either Abu Ghraib or the cartoons. That's because there is deception, half-truths, and agendas loose on the land engineered by those with personal reasons to stir the pot--both middle eastern and western agendas.
I think you'd need to read back at least a couple years of David W's articles to grasp how deeply he understands the Islamic/Muslim/Arabic/Middle East situation. And how, as a public writer himself, he is in a position to comment on the utter collapse of western news organization's ability to provide factual news regarding either Abu Ghraib or the cartoons.
I hope you will do enough research about the cartoon issue to realize that additional cartoons were "added" to the mix by those with much to gain by fanning the anti-western flame. The additional cartoons weren't added by western cartoonists (see http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/index.php?artID=568):
From several sources, we now know that word of the cartoons was then carried systematically through the Muslim world -- to principal mosques, madrasahs, and government offices starting in Egypt. This was done by delegations sent by Ahmed Abu-Laban, the Saudi-supported Imam of Copenhagen. And in addition to the dozen cartoons that had actually appeared in that obscure provincial newspaper -- most fairly innocent, and one actually satirizing opposition to Islam -- the delegations' "media kits" included as many as 30 graphics that had never appeared, and by their nature would never appear, in a Western mainstream newspaper. For instance, a photo of a man dressed as a pig, over the caption, “This is the real Mohammad.”
The fake pictures not only outnumbered the real ones, they were much nastier. Many were in the style of anti-Semitic cartoons that appear frequently in Arab papers, but turned around to target Muslims instead of Jews. And the covering letter, which I have read in translation, was full of outrageous lies about events in Denmark, and misrepresentations of what had been said by Danish journalists and politicians.
And while the Abu Ghraib situation is not one of the U.S.'s prouder moments, if you are interested in human rights issues nerdolita then hopefully you are even more incensed, and you are speaking out even more strongly and often, about abuses to citizens of both Afghanistan and Iraq (especially women) by fellow citizens, for they make the abuses in Abu Ghraib look like a walk in the park.
And then of course there is Tom Fox.
Perhaps you need to ask yourself if you are not exactly in the position now that David Warren spoke of:
Ask yourself, when reading or watching, if the consistent message is not: “Fear Islam, but do not dare to criticize it.”
Would you dare criticize Islam, or would you feel you are disrespecting your fellow man's religion?
C
