Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- Tyler Durden The US was in Vietnam trying to fight their way up. So it would have been pretty evident to anyone watching that the US was trying to undermine the PRC. James A. Donald: You live in a world of delusion. Your dates are all wrong, your events are all fiction. Tyler Durden So there was no Vietnam war? The US was not involved? It didn't occur in the 60s? Are you saying that the cultural revolution didn't begin in approximately 1966? That the Sino-Soviet split didn't occur in the late 1950s? Your claim was that the Vietnam war represented the US trying to attack China. In fact it represented the Soviet Union trying to conquer Indochina, as was demonstrated in the bloody and horrifying events that unfolded when the US fled. other countries in the world? Why is it always us (and not other countries) meddling in foreign affairs? In your version the war in Korea was a US attempt to attack China, but in fact we know the war was ordered by Stalin to expand communist domination - the records of his directives came into our hands when the Soviet Union fell. When Pakistan creates the taliban, funds it, arms it, and sends it from Pakistan to Afghanistan to attack Afghans, this is non interference according to you, but when the US arms the Northern Alliance and gives it air support, this is interference. Similarly, when the Soviet Union fell, it swiftly became apparent who had been causing all that trouble in South America. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Yes, I find your delusions extremely odd. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG DN7cdnmrH9zX3nRagGm67SiI6pLZnOIjYLToV2Wa 4C5cyR+u2DuxdY3674t5KX11ODbCXHXaK5XIjMrho
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on the Election
A lot of columnists are trying to look fair and balanced in their election coverage, expressing their biases opinions while claiming to be reasonable; I'm most recently mad at Safire for this. So it's nice to be able to recommend a column by someone who's making no pretense of balance, the good Doctor himself: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/6562575?rnd=1098436549411has-player=trueversion=6.0.12.1040 Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Airport insanity
On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , Which is why your great white leader is releasing them? and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, We do. efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. No. We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES. We shouldn't be doing anything put putting a bullet into Georgies brain (not that any projectile is likely to find a target consisting entirely of two already deficient cells, but...) and minding our own business. Oh, and cutting off every single nickel of funding to our partners in the mass-murderer olympics - Israel. --digsig James A. Donald -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
James A. Donald wrote: How could the US have given him support, short of violent means, such as bombing Tehran, which he was reluctant to accept? Money. Push it through your favourite UN department. Schools and hospitals == goodwill. You have this back to front. Khatami was marginalized by the mullahs, and BECAUSE he was marginalized, because democracy in Iran was suppressed, the US government THEN included Iran in the axis of evil. June 2001: Khatami re-elected January 2002: Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech February 2004: Rigged parliamentary elections lead to conservative majority Where do you source your data? W
Re: Are new passports [an] identity-theft risk?
R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41030 An engineer and RFID expert with Intel claims there is little danger of unauthorized people reading the new passports. Roy Want told the newssite: It is actually quite hard to read RFID at a distance, saying a person's keys, bag and body interfere with the radio waves. Who was it that pointed out that radio waves don't interfere, rather, receivers can't discriminate? iang
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bsIXWc4h29VIJkgExpNjUGgUXb/7oelyrYSTY5hy 4z2stYnmTb7JHw3AHWCBnz9grbOob/owyJwY6xDJS
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- On 21 Oct 2004 at 18:33, Will Morton wrote: The US missed a real trick when Khatami got into power in 1997; he had a huge swell of popular support behind him, and with significant US backing he could probably have outmaneuvered the conservatives and made some real changes. A truly democratic Persian state would be a huge boost to stability in the Middle East How could the US have given him support, short of violent means, such as bombing Tehran, which he was reluctant to accept? Instead, we had the 'axis of evil' hogwash, and lo: the conservatives marginalise Khatami, and we're back to abayas, beards and jihad. You have this back to front. Khatami was marginalized by the mullahs, and BECAUSE he was marginalized, because democracy in Iran was suppressed, the US government THEN included Iran in the axis of evil. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bOnKco+tbdVSGb2A96fIOzqUlk5hPdfyqVii+Kw6 4n8dzssBv4gYRUzzCUZUGZRnJ7jaPM6R5ewts5h7t
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- James A. Donald: But Khatami was knackered shortly after being elected, so any aid would be aiding the terrorists. We saw how well that worked in Fallujah and Sadr city. June 2001: Khatami re-elected A few months or weeks thereafter, Khatami knackered. Will Morton Either you're trolling, in which case I salute you as a master of your art, or you are wilfully ignorant. BBC June 6 2001, a few days after Khatami's election http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1373476.stm : : Much of the press that backs Mr Khatami's reforms : : has been silenced, and many of the president's : : supporters have been jailed or face charges Had the US supported Khatami, it would have in fact been supporting not Khatami, but rather those who imprison his supporters, and who seek to murder people like me. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG q7pyxdArlCfDAnZE5d3/+IxkWI7iTjT8piFY8Z9P 4EqVTUwRFAWA5KaO8hX5bsicPYMeirjqN7jA2dTqy
Re: Airport insanity
-- James A. Donald wrote: We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. J.A. Terranson No. We are under attack by those DEFENDING THEMSELVES. All of the terrorists came from countries that were beneficiaries of an immense amount of US help. Saudi Arabia was certainly not under attack. If they were Palestinians, and they hit the Pentagon but not the two towers, then they would be defending themselves. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG TazBQdvcQ8iq915Dug3d8ZVm8QLxZw7X3TzUYyIl 4DkboB4fOyw1vcB2E48rceVjwQYN583Qs6efqDL8Z
Re: James A. Donald's insanity
Where did I write to you that it's horrible thing to lock people up in Gitmo, or that we (whomever that is) deserve to be attacked? Show me the email, with headers that says such a thing. Oh, wait, you can't, because I never wrote such. Let's see, so you've got lots of people questioning your version of various events, and you've got claims that various people wrote things that they did not, and lots of people challenging the accuracy and indeed, truth of your statements. Hmmm... So what is the obvious conclusion there? The whole world must be against you? Nah, you're not important enough to be paranoid. So, what is the obvious conclusion? No, no, 2+2 is not 5, even for extremely large values of 2... Come on, come on, out with it, say it, say it... That's right! *Ding* you're reality challenged. Ah! There, doesn't that feel better? Now, please, go back and take your meds before the nice men in the white coats come to take you to the funny farm. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up.
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
James A. Donald wrote: But Khatami was knackered shortly after being elected, so any aid would be aiding the terrorists. We saw how well that worked in Fallujah and Sadr city. snip June 2001: Khatami re-elected A few months or weeks thereafter, Khatami knackered. Hmm. Either you're trolling, in which case I salute you as a master of your art, or you are wilfully ignorant. *plonk* W
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) .. In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. -TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW)
Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
-- James A. Donald wrote: How could the US have given him support, short of violent means, such as bombing Tehran, which he was reluctant to accept? Will Morton Money. Push it through your favourite UN department. Schools and hospitals == goodwill. But Khatami was knackered shortly after being elected, so any aid would be aiding the terrorists. We saw how well that worked in Fallujah and Sadr city. You have this back to front. Khatami was marginalized by the mullahs, and BECAUSE he was marginalized, because democracy in Iran was suppressed, the US government THEN included Iran in the axis of evil. June 2001: Khatami re-elected A few months or weeks thereafter, Khatami knackered. January 2002: Bush's 'Axis of Evil' speech February 2004: Rigged parliamentary elections lead to conservative majority --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG awTWa50VppXAeloD/WWVz2J1joqO+pSreygahZBW 4jOiLYK/ThEv65/df4FnAeG1XfpolTTv2+g9uXCPU
Re: James A. Donald's insanity
Sunder wrote... Come on, come on, out with it, say it, say it... That's right! *Ding* you're reality challenged. Well, perhaps, but Mr Donaldson's brain has been turned into a host/vector for a very powerful set of memes. In a sense, one can't blame him: He has an answer for everything, and his answers emanate from a set of beliefs that feel quite consistent in his mind, or at least that can be derived from a fairly elementary set of principals. That's a hell of a lot more than I can say for most of the rest of us Cypherpunks, for whom the world is a lot more complex. Sometimes, I suspect it would be kind of comfy living in Mr Donald's world: Good and Evil are very distinct entities, and you know who they are. Unfortunately for me the world looks a hell of a lot more complex and shadowy, shades of gray. Ah well. Pass that crack pipe of absolute certainty over here Mr Donald... -TD From: Sunder [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: James A. Donald's insanity Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:06:28 -0400 (edt) Where did I write to you that it's horrible thing to lock people up in Gitmo, or that we (whomever that is) deserve to be attacked? Show me the email, with headers that says such a thing. Oh, wait, you can't, because I never wrote such. Let's see, so you've got lots of people questioning your version of various events, and you've got claims that various people wrote things that they did not, and lots of people challenging the accuracy and indeed, truth of your statements. Hmmm... So what is the obvious conclusion there? The whole world must be against you? Nah, you're not important enough to be paranoid. So, what is the obvious conclusion? No, no, 2+2 is not 5, even for extremely large values of 2... Come on, come on, out with it, say it, say it... That's right! *Ding* you're reality challenged. Ah! There, doesn't that feel better? Now, please, go back and take your meds before the nice men in the white coats come to take you to the funny farm. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ --*--:and our people, and neither do we. -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. - On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: -- On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack to suck it up? When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people who show every sign of trying to kill us , and that we deserve their past efforts to kill us, efforts that some of them promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are telling us to suck it up. _ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx
Re: Airport insanity
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 20, 2004 3:10 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Airport insanity Lots of murderous terrorists have been released from Guatanamo, and in the nearly all cases the most serious of their complaints make it sound like a beach resort, except for the fact that they could not leave. Maybe I missed that. All but one of the comments I read about involved a lot of complaints about mistreatment, albeit often with the admission that Gitmo was still better than being in an Afghan prison. As a nitpick, though, it's not at all clear that most of the people at Gitmo were really terrorists, or even murderers. None of them has had a trial, few have even had hearings, and many were released as not a threat to us. (They may still be a threat to everyone else around them.) A few have more serious complaints. Either they are lying or, those who say they were well treated apart from being held captive are lying. Surely the other alternative is that only some prisoners are subjected to torture, e.g., the ones that look to have some serious intelligence value. James A. Donald --John
Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
Well, yes there are counterexamples I guess. The kind of retardation I'm talking about seems to happen when the influence in through covert, destabilising channels. Taiwan is a particularly odd example...it definitely has started forming a modern economy, but then again it had many decades of oppression. It also had swiped billions upon billions of dollars of gold and other substances that backed the Chinese monetary system prior to 1949, so arguably that money had to go somewhere. -TD From: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:59:26 -0400 (GMT-04:00) From: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) ... In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we interfere and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example is China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. -TD --John (Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW) _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Airport insanity
-- On 22 Oct 2004 at 0:00, John Kelsey wrote: All but one of the comments I read about involved a lot of complaints about mistreatment, albeit often with the admission that Gitmo was still better than being in an Afghan prison. As a nitpick, though, it's not at all clear that most of the people at Gitmo were really terrorists, or even murderers. Most of them were non Afghans in Afghanistan in the middle of a war and no plausible explanation of their presence, which makes it fairly certain they had signed up Bin Laden and company. So if they had not personally targeted women and children, they had signed up with an organization that they know rapes and murders. Don't give me that moral relativism crap that their view of themselves as heroes is as just as valid as our view of them as vicious subhuman monsters. None of them has had a trial, few have even had hearings, and many were released as not a threat to us. (They may still be a threat to everyone else around them.) Different rules apply in war. Now if the president got away with the principle that an enemy combatant captured in time of war is anyone the president designates as an enemy combatant, *then* I would be worried about the fact that they did not get trials and all that. In a guerilla war or terrorist war, war rules are even more dangerous to liberty than usual since the battlefield is everywhere. However in this case the application of the rules of war, rather than peace, is legitimate. They are for the most part foreigners picked up in Afghanistan, where the usual wartime rule is that if you cannot give a plausible account of yourself, they will skin you. While we should be very concerned that the chronic war on terror may lead to rules of war extending to everyday life, rules of war are still necessary to deal with large scale enemies with the capability to control territory and exclude the forces of justice. We should not apply rules of war to some terrorists snatched in New York - that would be dangerous to the freedom of the ordinary New Yorker, but if the government snatches terrorists in Afghanistan or near Fallujah, rules of war should apply. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG L9l0XwGGAOnDTD1f/nlXg15rkevzTJFhQEhPA0e1 4HxKjMzjQlUTID/enTbsses+z2wda2UXVev2ZKUSS
