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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Jul 22, 2004 12:05:42 GMT -5
Well, with Drum's help I think we effectively debunked the 'special interest' scientists who challenge global warming. But that's an old debate. You either believe that pumping massive amounts of industrial/chemical pollutants into the air is A Bad Thing, or (somehow) you don't, and dredging up old links that no-one ever looks at is not something I have time for anymore.
Alaskan oil drilling. Logging. Undermining of the EPA.... Need I go on.
Oh, and perhaps Bush should sign up to the ICC while he's at it. Yet to hear any reason why he won't, other than he'd be in trouble.
But if all else fails, why not kick him out of office for culpably ignoring warnings prior to 9/11, as concluded in today's admonishing report? Too late to hold Clinton accoutnable on this, but Bush can be made to pay at the polls.
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Post by Proud on Jul 22, 2004 12:07:35 GMT -5
remember, it's clinton's fault for 9/11! it's clinton's fault the economy's bad! it's clinton's fault that we had to go to afghanistan! it's clinton's fault we had to go to iraq! it's clinton's fault saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction! it's clinton's fault gays are getting married! it's clinton's fault that we'll go to war with iran next!
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 22, 2004 12:12:27 GMT -5
I'm half tempted to check with Strat-o to see if you're really JLLM, or if Michael Moore has hi-jacked your screen name. Find some facts, and critize Bush on those. Your criticisms are so off and spin-based they're not even worth debating.
The fact that a buch of people who buy into the "sky is falling" environmentalism have decided which scientists are the reputable ones says nothing.
Your claims that the EPA has been undermined have no basis ... not to mention that you've totally ignored the explanation.
The reason why Bushwon't sign on to the ICC has been explained to you and others over and over and overagain. Bush (and many other Americans) are not willing to strip American citizens of their US Constitutional rights to hand them over to the ICC.
And the 9/11 report was presented today with the chair and vice-chair making it clear that neither Bush nor Clinton was at fault in 9/11 happening. My good God take the damn cotton out of your ears! The respect I used to have for you is sinking very very fast.
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Post by Rit on Jul 22, 2004 12:17:29 GMT -5
so the constitutional rights of americans are more important than the environment of the global population.
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 22, 2004 12:18:42 GMT -5
so the constitutional rights of americans are more important than the environment of the global population. What do you see as the connection between the ICC and the environment? |
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Post by JesusLooksLikeMe on Jul 22, 2004 12:36:14 GMT -5
I'm half tempted to check with Strat-o to see if you're really JLLM, or if Michael Moore has hi-jacked your screen name. Find some facts, and critize Bush on those. Your criticisms are so off and spin-based they're not even worth debating. The fact that a buch of people who buy into the "sky is falling" environmentalism have decided which scientists are the reputable ones says nothing. Your claims that the EPA has been undermined have no basis ... not to mention that you've totally ignored the explanation. The reason why Bushwon't sign on to the ICC has been explained to you and others over and over and overagain. Bush (and many other Americans) are not willing to strip American citizens of their US Constitutional rights to hand them over to the ICC. And the 9/11 report was presented today with the chair and vice-chair making it clear that neither Bush nor Clinton was at fault in 9/11 happening. My good God take the damn cotton out of your ears! The respect I used to have for you is sinking very very fast. First up. equating me with Michael Moore is not going to make me go away, and is a shoddy rhetorical device. Though I'd be happy to make Moore's money and be a pain in Bush's arse, by all means. You've explained the party line on why Bush won't join the ICC before, yes, just as you parrot the party line on everything - no matter how palpably absurd. Tell you what, instead of going on about cotton wool over my ears, how about you record yourself, play it back, and realise how ridiculous such explanations sound. Next you'll be parroting the "states rights" excuse on the money-spinning exercise for the logging companies that relaxation of (tey more) environmental laws will represent. You're so gullible. As for 9/11... 2 reports on British TV (one of C4 and one on C5) have, in the last hour, described the report as critical of both Clinton and Bush. Either British TV is suddenly fucking me around, or you're wrong. If British TV has really sunk that low, I'm pretty saddened. I need to see the whole text of the report, and the speeches made during its release/presentation then. |
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Post by Thorngrub on Jul 22, 2004 12:55:44 GMT -5
Hey Chrisfan, did you think the Sheriff of Nottingham was "the good guy" - (by any chance) - ?
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 22, 2004 13:06:34 GMT -5
My equating you to Michael Moore was not an attempt to make yougo away. I don't care to make you go away. Although I will think twice about reading your posts from this point forward. I used to think you were a well-thought out liberal guy who could express your views well, and respected other people's opinions. Now, I know that my thoughts on you were wrong. Oh well. You live, you learn.
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Post by Meursault on Jul 22, 2004 13:09:45 GMT -5
Kumbaya, or die!
C'mon Stratman help me out.
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Post by Thorngrub on Jul 22, 2004 13:10:04 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]Oh well. You live, you learn. [/glow]
Well, some of us, at least.
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Post by Meursault on Jul 22, 2004 13:11:04 GMT -5
Thorn, check PM's
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Post by Thorngrub on Jul 22, 2004 13:15:39 GMT -5
Done.
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Post by Rit on Jul 22, 2004 14:50:06 GMT -5
looks like Chrisfan does identify with the Sherrif, Thorn. She'll go to bat for who ever the status quo is, and she'll risk everything she owns or knows to do so, because, gosh darn it, the rights of her fellow citizens come first. pretty noble if you arsk me.
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Post by chrisfan on Jul 22, 2004 14:55:04 GMT -5
Ritalin, I'm still waiting for your answer on the relation between the ICC and the environment. Please, help me see the light.
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Post by melon1 on Jul 22, 2004 14:56:39 GMT -5
Jesus' Jihad?
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 22, 2004
In the New York Times last Saturday, Nicholas Kristof discovers what he considers to be a disturbing counterpoint to calls by Islamic radicals to wage war against Christians and Jews: the Left Behind books, the runaway bestselling series of novels that depict the Christian fundamentalist notion of the “Rapture.” This is the moment at the end of the world when good Christians are taken into heaven, and the rest are left on earth to suffer the judgment of God. Quoting some lurid passages from the latest book in the series, The Glorious Appearing, he sees a dark implication of the fact that these books are bestsellers: “ordinary Americans joined in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in part because of a lack of empathy for the prisoners. It’s harder to feel empathy for such people if we regard them as infidels and expect Jesus to dissolve their tongues and eyes any day now.”
He evidently missed what Christianity says about empathy.
I am not a Christian fundamentalist and do not believe in the theology that the “Left Behind” series expresses, but Kristof has missed a fundamental distinction: a depiction of Jesus killing people at the Last Judgment, no matter how glorious a reader may find it, is not even remotely equivalent to an explicit and repeated call for believers to wage war against unbelievers.
Calls like that go out from mosques worldwide with numbing regularity. One would be hard pressed to find a church making the same kind of call on the other side. No one who reads “Left Behind” is going to kill you because of it. He might be waiting for Jesus to do it, but that is not a call to action.
Traditional Christianity and traditional Islam both believe in Judgment and Hell. Mr. Kristof’s analysis suggests that if you believe that those things exist, you must want to kill people. He completely ignores the fact that the two religions actually have quite developed teachings about how to behave in this world that don’t depend at all on their eschatologies (that is, their respective teachings about the end of the world.).
Mr. Kristof either has no clue or doesn’t care that Christianity doesn’t have and never has had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Christians. Islam, on the other hand, has now and has always had a doctrine mandating warfare against non-Muslims. See, just to name a few, Qur’an 9:29 (“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day … (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [the special tax on non-Muslims] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”) and hundreds of other verses; Sahih Muslim 4294 (Muhammad says: “Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war”); a legal manual endorsed by the closest thing to a Vatican that Sunni Islam has, Al-Azhar University: ‘Umdat al-Salik o.9.8 (“… [make] war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians . . . until they become Muslim or pay the non-Muslim poll tax”); plus the writings of all the major Islamic jurists.
I am not saying that Christians have never behaved in a beastly manner. I am saying that they didn’t do it because of their ideas of what was going to happen at the end of the world — or, for that matter, because of the teachings of Jesus. Whatever you can say about the Crusades and the Inquisition, you will never find a New Testament verse commanding that Christians go out and kill people. But jihadists who kill today are doing so because of teachings of Islam to which I referred above, and others. Muslims who do not kill don’t have different teachings; they just ignore these.
This is, of course, the one thing that people like Nicholas Kristof can never and will never admit, because it would explode the foggy multiculturalism and relativism that passes for a world view in their minds. But it is simply a fact. Prove me wrong.
For Mr. Kristof to term this set of novels “militant Christianity,” which is somehow equivalent or becoming equivalent to militant Islam, shows that he has not the remotest idea of what the jihadists are really saying, why they are saying it, and how it differs from what Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are saying. This kind of theological equivalence is the idiot stepchild of the moral equivalence that the learned pundits used to preach regarding the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
And just as moral equivalence played into the bloody hands of the Communists, so theological equivalence plays into the hands of the jihadists, attempting as it does to blunt the force of the moral argument against them. Yeah, sure, they preach murder, but hey, look at these novels! A few days after it appeared, Krostof’s piece was picked up by the Pakistan News Service and the notorious “Jihad TV network,” Al-Jazeera. They know a friend when they see one.
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