fort hood

[dave_k]

Originally Posted by Lavrans

See- religions can be silly, too.

Divine underwear can't save your life
The earth is 4 billion years old not 6000 years old
Mary wasn't a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus but her parents believed the story.
God doesn't live near a star named Kolob (I don't see how omnipotent beings have to live anywhere)
Fossils aren't machinations of Satan put on the earth to fool us.

[dave_k]

Like nearly all religious conflicts the war against Islamic terrorists isn't about religion or cultures it's about politics. This war is about colonialism, self determination and America's support of Zionism. Up until 2001 support of Zionism was the big one. Today I think the fundamentalist Muslims are just plain pissed at the Americans for being in the middle east although supporting Israel won't win you any popularity contests with Muslims.

In a sense Dick's right part of this conflict goes back to the crusades but it's not about the religious aspects of the crusades but the colonial aspects of the crusades. The only people who care about the religious aspects of this war are the people who think it will lead to 72 virgins or raptured because of it. If you think about it that's 2 sides of the same coin. promises of a reward for having faith at the expense of the other faith because I'm sure Muslims aren't going to get raptured and Christians won't get 72 virgins

[Dick Seibert]

While we are all-consumed with a couple of nut-crazed Islamic terrorists, the Chinese are planning to invade, and take back, Taiwan, we have pledged to support Taiwan and are selling them F16s to counter the attack.

Originally Posted by The Economist

Such scenes touch raw nerves in America, where intellectual and political opinion has long been bitterly divided over how to assess China’s rise. Left-wing Democrats, alarmed by China’s human-rights abuses, find themselves in league with right-wing Republicans who see China as a new Soviet Union, to be distrusted and contained. The October 1st extravaganza also worried a third, more centrist, camp: those who see the Communist Party’s resort to nationalism as a sign of its weakness and of China’s vulnerability to upheaval that could have damaging global consequences.

Few expect rapid progress. Dennis Wilder, a former adviser to the National Security Council under President Bush, says there is a dangerous lack of knowledge even about basic issues such as China’s nuclear-alert system. China has a few dozen land-based nuclear missiles capable of hitting some or all parts of America and is soon expected to deploy them on submarines. America’s nuclear force is far larger, but as Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution argue in a book published in 2007, nuclear war between the two countries over Taiwan is not unimaginable.¹

And speaking of religion, how about Confucianism?

Originally Posted by The Economist

ON THE ground floor of one of the University of Maryland’s redbrick Georgian-style buildings is the small office of the Confucius Institute. When it opened five years ago, it was the first of its kind in America. Now there are more than 60 of them around the country, sponsored by the Chinese government and offering Chinese culture to win hearts and minds.

China’s decision to rely on Confucius as the standard-bearer of its soft-power projection is an admission that communism lacks pulling power. Long gone are the days when Chairman Mao was idolised by radicals (and even respected by some mainstream academics) on American university campuses. Mao vilified Confucius as a symbol of the backward conservatism of pre-communist China. Now the philosopher, who lived in the 6th century BC, has been recast as a promoter of peace and harmony: just the way President Hu Jintao wants to be seen. Li Changchun, a party boss, described the Confucius Institutes as “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up”.

China’s partial financial backing, its hands-off approach to management and the huge unmet demand in many countries for Chinese-language tuition have helped Confucius Institutes embed themselves in universities that might have been suspicious. The University of Maryland’s institute does not offer courses that count towards degrees (and nor do many of the others). It helps with Chinese-language teaching in the wider community, not just on campus. The director, Chuan Sheng Liu, is appointed by the university, as most of them are.

There are occasional hints of politics. Earlier this year the University of Maryland’s institute organised an exhibition of photographs from the Tibetan plateau. At an opening ceremony a senior Chinese diplomat made a speech criticising the Dalai Lama. The pictures, he said, showed the “remarkable social changes and improvement” in Tibet under Chinese rule and demonstrated that Tibet had been “part of China since ancient times”. But the website of the Confucius Institute in Edinburgh promotes a talk by a dissident Chinese author whose works are banned in China. Even the Pentagon has been helping to fund some language courses at Confucius Institutes under the National Security Language Initiative, launched by George Bush in 2006 to promote the study of “critical-need” languages.

The late Samuel Huntington, in his 1996 bestseller “The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order”, describes a Confucian world, with China at its centre, that will find itself in growing conflict with the West. This is the kind of view that the Confucius Institutes are intended to dispel. Mr Liu, a long-time physics professor at the university, says his mission is to promote cultural understanding. He speaks of the “amazing similarity” between Confucian teachings and George Washington’s etiquette guide, “Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation”.

Some American officials grumble that Chinese universities are far less receptive to America’s cultural-promotion efforts than American ones are to China’s. But as one comforts himself, “if you’re in a system that’s that paranoid, your soft power is self-limited.²

It's been said that the biggest failure of the Bush II administration was allowing Iraq to divert it's attention from China, now the Obama administration is being diverted by Afghanistan.


¹ The Economist now charges for their online version
² The Economist now charges for their online version,
But behind the links are their addresses for a 14-day free trial.

[Lavrans]

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

While we are all-consumed with a couple of nut-crazed Islamic terrorists, the Chinese are planning to invade, and take back, Taiwan, we have pledged to support Taiwan and are selling them F16s to counter the attack.

...

It's been said that the biggest failure of the Bush II administration was allowing Iraq to divert it's attention from China, now the Obama administration is being diverted by Afghanistan.

And I'd say that Bush II's worst mistake was his willingness to promote so much of both his agenda and reasons why we should invade Iraq be colored with Christian dogma. The administration at the least did a poor job of promoting the war, allowing it to take on a Christian vs. Islam rhetoric which will continue to foment.

A little more honesty and less worry about being portrayed as Iraq being a war for oil would have gone a long ways- it's much easier to forgive the quest for money than the quest for minds and souls. Even the "Great Satan" believers could admit that there were good people in the country until it became the "Great (Christian) Satan".

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by dave_k

Fossils aren't machinations of Satan put on the earth to fool us.

God bless Dick, but he does try. One day he'll come to know the modern mark of the beast is fingers that can't touch type on a pda/phone. :)

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

And speaking of religion, how about [...] The Economist

Well suffering succotash, if you put it that way, just look at the edge of your dollar coins Sarah.

[Dick Seibert]

Well Mark I do have a dollar coin, the only one I ever got (not going back to the old silver dollars). Whoever gave it to me gave it to me as change thinking it was a quarter so I threw it on my bureau and there it sits. I says (with my aged eyes I took my magnifying glass, right next to my hearing horn) "E Pluribus Unum" (nothing new there), "in God we Trust" (nothing new there), and "2007 D" (must mean that it's one of Richie Poor's coins, minted in 2007). so what else am I suppose to look for?

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

...so what else am I suppose to look for?

The truth of course.
http://www.theweek.com/article/index...in_controversy

[Dick Seibert]

I see, Sarah doesn't want us old geezers to have to take out our magnifying glasses to see that our coin of the realm is real, a homage to the God who threw the money changers out of the temple. I guess we'll be spending the Yuan anyway, currently it tales 6.67 Yuan to get a dollar, we'll see what happens as the dollar continues to collapse.

As Obama falls on his face (as he did in New Jersey and Virginia recently) I pray to the God of my coin that the Republicans can come up with someone more credible than Sarah, we Libertarians are never going to make it all the way to the big white house. .

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

As Obama falls on his face....

He was pushed! Sheesh, I though old guys were supposed to not miss much. So fa as Lib's ever taking the throne, that will come about sometime after the apocalypse.

[Overbuilders]

Originally Posted by MarkMc

He was pushed! Sheesh, I though old guys were supposed to not miss much. So fa as Lib's ever taking the throne, that will come about sometime after the apocalypse.

And tripped! By a rogue teleprompter that wasn't there! Whatever it takes...

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by Overbuilders

Whatever it takes...

For what?

[The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.... H, √, Z, &, 9, @, ¬, a, ¥, ø.]

[Overbuilders]

Originally Posted by MarkMc

For what?

To trip him up and push him down. On his face is nice.

[MarkMc]

Originally Posted by Overbuilders

To trip him up and push him down. On his face is nice.

If you shut up and do as you are told, you have the right not to be killed, and you do not even have the right not to be killed, for no matter what the Sovereign does, it does not constitute violation of the contract.
~Hobbes, Leviathan

So much more interesting than Dobbs.

[frenchie]

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

Well Mark I do have a dollar coin, the only one I ever got (not going back to the old silver dollars).

Really? I get them pretty often, over here - couple times a month, maybe. Some vending machines (LIRR comes to mind) use them to make change.

Originally Posted by Dick Seibert

I pray to the God of my coin that the Republicans can come up with someone more credible than Sarah, we Libertarians are never going to make it all the way to the big white house. .

Twice, I thought I'd found someone to be optimistic about. One of them got caught in a scandal, the other one accepted a special-envoy appointment from Obama.

Last year, same thing when I went away for the summer: John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate.

I'm nervous about what the R's are going to come up with when I go away next summer.

Although it'd never happen, I'd love to see Robert Gates on a ticket.