So Srebernica (sp?) and similar massacres never happened? I won't deny that all sides were guilty of crimes against humanity, and the whole tragedy was triggered in part by that Tudjman guy in Croatia, but it was Milosevic who was the worst of the bunch, and the Bosnians and Kosovars had no local protection, like the Croats had from Austria and Germany, and Serbia had from RussiaOriginally Posted by Kurt Horner
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
The real world is a post 9/11 world not the pre-9/11 world that once existed. The post 9/11 world or mindset accepts the fact that 3,000 American brains were already splattered on the sidewalks of New York city and across a field in Pennsylvania.
I'm not acting like their behavior is shocking or foriegn to me. I didn't expect red carpets, grand receptions or warm social greetings upon our entry. I fully understood that we as a nation were going to war and I also understood the consequences which accompany war. Now that the time for war is already here and currently going on, so to speak. I would prefer that the vast majority of the carnage, the dealth and the destruction to be contained to their world vs our world. What rational minded American would disagree with me on this position? None!
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 09-09-2009 at 05:23 PM.
Fester
It was a mess. Of course, the Russians supported the orthodox slav faction, the Muslims supported the Muslims while the West supported the Catholics. One key is in fighting failed states rather than to fall into the temptation to back the faction whose culture most comfortable to the intervening power. No faction was entirely innocent, but there were too many (notably the women and children) who were. Many in the US before September 11th thought one casualty was too many, thus there were absurd rules of engagement for US forces. It should have been Europe's problem, not America's.
It was anything but perfect.
Yet, we no longer have a failed state on Europe's border. It was an open sore that had to be closed. It was ugly. All conflict is ugly. I just don't think it would have been wise to let a failed region fester and grow.
Don't forget the 160+ souls who were incinerated at the Pentagon.
I want people to know that peace is possible even in this stupid day and age. Prem Rawat, June 8, 2008
Living in the Brave New World of Obama's America, I'm thinking about changing my screen name to "Kulak". What do you think?
Well, if the liberals are right, we should change our screen names to "Mud". Which "Mud" would you prefer to go by? Mud-1 or Mud-2
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 09-09-2009 at 07:15 PM.
FWIW, I posted this on 17 APR 2008:
Go Figure.
-Don't hold your breath.
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.
You're mixing two conflicts. Srebrinica happened in the Bosnian war in the mid-90s and is fairly well established. Kosovo is further south and occurred in the late 90s. Intervention there was largely based on the Racak Massacre. The Racak incident is difficult to call a genocide as it involved ~40 victims who may have been members of the KLA. The Kosovo intervention is of dubious value, especially since the amount of death and destruction during the NATO bombing campaign vastly exceeded what occurred before it.
Ah, but those of us with a September 2009 mindset accept the fact that those 3000 people died. We're just wondering when you're going to get over it and stop cheering on the butchering, imprisoning and torturing of people who had nothing to do with 9/11.
I'll be over it in about 30-40 years. I'm already at the point where I don't really care about what happens to them or their kind.
Last edited by K-I-A 67; 09-09-2009 at 08:25 PM.
No, the 98th percentile is.
Here are the definitions I am using. These apply for people in prime working years, long before retirement age.
A person is underclass if they are living in poverty and unemployed most of the time.
A person is working poor if, even while working, they are still in poverty.
A person is working class if they are not in poverty when working, but if they become permanently unable to work they will be underclass.
A person is middle class if, should they become permanently unable to work, they suffer a decline in living standards, but do not fall into poverty.
A person is rich if they suffer no decline in living standards if they stop working permanently.
My household is at the 95% percentile, and we are definitely middle class. Were I to lose my job, my wife and I could activate pensions paying perhaps 20K annually. Our 401(k) and other assets earn about 50K annually. Together this would yield about 70K of income. COBRA insurance would run about 20K, leaving up about 50K before taxes on which to live, were I not able to work. We would not fall into poverty, but would suffer a substantial decline in living standards.
Now suppose we had earned a 99th percentile income instead of the 95th percentile income that we did earn. In this case, were I to lose my job, our income would be about 130K, 110K after COBRA insurance, which is about what we would be living on. We would suffer no decline in living standards.
You apparently are sufficiently far away from these income levels to think an individual making 83K (the 90th percentile) is "rich". That would certainly be news to them.
Last edited by Mikebert; 09-09-2009 at 08:43 PM.
DOH, sorry. I was going my childhood memories of news stories, not the most reliable!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
How do you define wealth? In the old days it was simple, just count how many horses a man owns.
But we live in a more complex world today.
An important distinction needs to be made here.
Income and Net worth are two different things.
An extreme example would be Steve Jobs who "technically" has an income of $1 but a net worth of billions.
Income taxes are expensive so the rich have a strong incentive to engage in financial wizardry.
Because of this, you cannot measure a rich man's wealth by looking at income.
How do you judge a man's wealth?
a) if he's middle class look at his income
b) if he's rich look at his net worth
Also... if he's middle class look at his unsecured DEBT. Lots of people nowadays have middle class incomes, but actually a NEGATIVE net worth. These people have the trappings of wealth, yet are actually poor.How do you define wealth? In the old days it was simple, just count how many horses a man owns.
But we live in a more complex world today.
An important distinction needs to be made here.
Income and Net worth are two different things.
An extreme example would be Steve Jobs who "technically" has an income of $1 but a net worth of billions.
Income taxes are expensive so the rich have a strong incentive to engage in financial wizardry.
Because of this, you cannot measure a rich man's wealth by looking at income.
How do you judge a man's wealth?
a) if he's middle class look at his income
b) if he's rich look at his net worth
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
This website is run by Libertarians.
http://www.antiwar.com/
you are wrong in your assertion that Libertarians did not try.
FYI Libertarians did TRY to prevent all of this foolishness. This silly belief that government should be given a blank check to do whatever the hell it wants all in the name of providing security.
They failed of course but at least they tried which is more than I can say for liberals.
After 9 / 11 and of course the lead up to Iraq war part 2 there was a lot of energy and motivation. Libertarians tried very hard but after all these years yeah I admit it. It's kinda hard to keep the steam pressure up at a high level for an indefinite amount of time.
We all have to grow tired eventually right? -> especially when everybody else decides to turns a deaf ear towards you and you're outnumbered. A lot of Libertarians have given up.
So now they're moving onto the next hot topic, which is health care reform.
Last edited by fruitcake; 09-10-2009 at 02:35 AM.
Spiral
This of course is an important part of the spiral of violence. If something is done, there is an instinct to respond with interest. This is human, if not rational. It is understandable if not constructive.
By "them" do you mean terrorists or Muslims in general? If the latter, you've officially gone off the deep end. If the former, how do you distinguish terrorists from Muslims in general without due process?
You are correct that debt (or maybe a lack thereof) is another important variable to consider when trying to calculate a man's wealth right alongside with income and net worth.
However the point of my argument is NOT an attempt at creating a grand unifying theorem to explain wealth and taxation (I'll need more than 1 paragraph to properly explain that.)
I'm just demonstrating the absurd things that Liberals do sometimes.
--- Liberals keep on making a stupid attempt to tax the rich.
--- While the rich find clever ways to evade these taxes with financial wizardry.
Again the story of Steve Jobs aka the $1 man demonstrates this clearly.
Let's take a good look at the economic policies as practiced by the true controllers of economic policy -- shareholders, corporate boards, and business executives. They chose to create economic insecurity for all but themselves and a few small groups that they can't really control -- entertainers, big landowners, professionals, successful business owners, and government employees. Corporate America chose to enforce a so-called "wage fund" that holds that only so much money can be paid as wages, and that Big Business can constrict the fund at will. Such is possible when unions are emasculated, the government is weak or bought off, and media (guess who owns them? Right -- the corporate media are owned by advertisers, for all practical purposes) are pliant or corrupt. Such is especially true in the degenerate time of the latter decade or so of a 3T. You know how it is -- challenge corporate power, and advertisers disappear. Also note that business becomes cartels. Oh, do people get burned with deflated wages and inflated prices. The executives? They are paid well enough that they can find the means of closing off their consciences. Hint: mobsters generally earn much more than the usual working stiff.You are correct that debt (or maybe a lack thereof) is another important variable to consider when trying to calculate a man's wealth right alongside with income and net worth.
However the point of my argument is NOT an attempt at creating a grand unifying theorem to explain wealth and taxation (I'll need more than 1 paragraph to properly explain that.
I'm just demonstrating the absurd things that Liberals do sometimes.
--- Liberals keep on making a stupid attempt to tax the rich.
--- While the rich find clever ways to evade these taxes with financial wizardry.
Again the story of Steve Jobs aka the $1 man demonstrates this clearly.
Manufacturing corporations choose to become importers and insist upon "free trade" as a means of ensuring that the only real cost of importing is transportation. Tariffs plummet. Workers in corporations that transform themselves from manufacturers to importers are cast off as easily as I dispose of junk mail. Unions are destroyed as employers make workers "an offer that they can't refuse" -- decertify the union, take a paycut, and you might get to keep your job.
Government offers tax cuts targeted at the rich paid for by reductions in public services. Meanwhile competition for existing jobs intensifies, and university educations become increasingly expensive even as real incomes fall. But to avoid the certainty of spending the rest of one's miserable life as a retail clerk, domestic servant, a smart kid from the middle class needs to get an increasingly-expensive college degree just to avoid falling into the class of the working poor. That takes credit, and the Federal Reserve of course opens the floodgate of the money supply. Of course some lender gets to make a neat profit off that in the form of interest -- and pliable stooges in Congress enact laws that prohibit people from defaulting on student loans in the event that something goes terribly wrong.
Add this: that the reactionary government can't quite afford to create the image that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting much poorer, so it promotes a speculative boom in real estate and heavy borrowing by consumers so that they can feel as if they are still middle-class even if their real pay says otherwise. Welcome, subprime lending!
Yes, I know, things would be less damaging, at least fiscally, if Americans accepted that they had the obligation to allow themselves to work maximal hours for pay that just barely allows physical survival -- ideally after giving all that they have to the exploiter classes and then working to exhaustion. People would go poor, and maybe they would show gratitude to their exploiters for not starving them.
To make a long and bad story short, consider the consequences of a social order that most people think grossly exploitative and beyond any possibility of reform. It should be clear to anyone that the closer that a capitalist society fits the Marxist stereotype of a vile social order so horrible that anything could be better, the more likely it is to have a socialist revolution at some crisis -- a financial panic among the elite, a nationwide disaster, or a military debacle. Such a revolution, if successful, results in the elimination of those seen culpable of creating widespread misery.
The people first to the wall will be the people you lionize. Then come their stooges in government, clergy, and media. You will be in that group.
Last edited by pbrower2a; 09-11-2009 at 02:23 AM.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Whenever it was supported by the force of law, or by trade restrictions, or the like. So like, pretty much all the time. (Assuming, of course, that, among those upon whose backs the administration of the laws was lain, could be found at least one or two who found slavery abhorrent...)When was slavery subsidized on the backs of those who found it abhorrent
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
What's more, this Xer would be more than happy to find (or convince) little Millie volunteers to wear the vests themselves, and to content his more experienced self with simply organizing bigger numbers of them -- were it to turn out that such were a more effective tactic.
It's not monstrous to hit back at an occupier with whatever means you can make effective use of. Only an occupier would argue otherwise.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
You don't rate it. The kulaks were the hardest-working, most self-sufficient, entrepreneurial members of the Russian peasant class. As was recognized even while they were being liquidated, "on the backs of the kulaks, Russia was fed".
You're far too much of an imperial tool to deserve to class yourself with them. If you really want to pick a period name for yourself, I would recommend "wrecker" (vreditel, if you want the phonetic). Those particular types came from all walks of life and all classes -- anyone can carry the name.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Unamerican activities...
Suicide doctrines aren't particularly American, not deliberate doctrines such as the World War II Japanese kamikaze aircraft or modern explosive vests.
This isn't to say Americans aren't brave. There was a point on the second day at Gettysburg when one Union regiment (The 1st Minnesota) was all that was available to prevent many Confederate regiments from hitting a gap in the Union lines. They one regiment was ordered to "capture those flags," to take the offensive against overwhelming force in order to buy time.
In World War II a goodly number of Medals of Honor were given for throwing one's self on a grenade. One person dies. One's buddies survive.
But this is quite different from embracing a weapons system that is obviously suicidal. I am not saying Americans are any less brave than others. I'm saying we have the numbers, technology and training that we haven't generally had to develop a tradition of suicide tactics.
Anyway, in my opinion, if Americans have to stop an invading Chinese convoy, they are apt to do it with carrier air strikes and submarines. Such a convoy would get sunk way before any trucks get ashore. It has been a long time since we have been in a position where suicide tactics have been required. We just generally just have the numbers and technology that we don't need to go suicidal.
This isn't to say that such a culture couldn't develop under the right circumstances.
Of course, "Soviet justice" between 1917 and at least 1985 was one of the most blatant of oxymora, as people were commonly convicted of things that they did not do and of failures to achieve the impossible (some vreditel, which of course included some genuine goldbricks and saboteurs as well). About the only class of criminals whose convictions stand the test of fairness in the Soviet Union were those of war criminals -- traitors and Nazis who committed atrocities.
OK -- the posters justpassingthrough, KIA67, and fruitcake are genuine saboteurs of discourse as well as intellectual goldbrickers.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
When I asked Mr. Bert if he thinks that the 99 percentile is "Middle Class", he replied:
OH
MY
GOD.
Ha Ha Ha!
1) The killing was less one-sided;
2) The killing did end (at least for a while);
3) US intervention may have been dubious from our POV, but the KLA/UCK got a free air force out of the deal. Cheers!
---
-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows. [/QUOTE]
