World Politics

[Cylor]

Okay, I have a question for you agnostics/atheists...

If I go through my life believing in something, and it makes me happier to believe in that thing, wouldn't I be better off believing it if my life was just that tiny bit better because I believed in that?

For instance, atheists do not believe there is a God, and thus view everything (and I know it's not everything, but most things) with a negative attitude. They go through life knowing that they are doomed and this will usually make them depressed. Therefore, if I believe in God and go through life with more bliss, wouldn't that be better than thinking you are better than believers and being depressed all the time?

Ignorance is bliss I suppose. But who's to say who's ignorant, as it is all a matter of opinion and personal experience.

[Fit of Rage]

Moral of the story- believe what you like. If you choose to see a half-full/empty, God-blessed glass of water, so be it. If you choose to see a half-full/empty, non-religiously-affiliated glass of water, by all means, so be it. The point here is that there's little point to arguing about religion here where everyone is clearly too set in their ways to be changed by a few pixels in a certain order to constitute an immidiate and dramatic change in their own philosophy.

-Fit

[MaGi kOz]

Nobody answers any of my questions or thoughts that I have posted =(

[Mandagorian]

Originally posted by CyloR
Okay, I have a question for you agnostics/atheists...

If I go through my life believing in something, and it makes me happier to believe in that thing, wouldn't I be better off believing it if my life was just that tiny bit better because I believed in that?

For instance, atheists do not believe there is a God, and thus view everything (and I know it's not everything, but most things) with a negative attitude. They go through life knowing that they are doomed and this will usually make them depressed. Therefore, if I believe in God and go through life with more bliss, wouldn't that be better than thinking you are better than believers and being depressed all the time?

Ignorance is bliss I suppose. But who's to say who's ignorant, as it is all a matter of opinion and personal experience.

I wont diminish the fact that God might be real because I don't know if he exists. But hiding behind your Religous Beliefs and claiming that it was all an act of God is a sign of pure ignorance. HeavenSent is too set in his ways and at his age he is not ready to open his mind to to other possibilities. I truly think someone is spoon feeding him his information, it would be safe to say he's part of some sort of cult.

I think the Constitution has set the standards for a few rules in the past hundred years that were a problem but there is still a few problems in the Constitution that need to be changed. The right to bare arms comes to mind. About a hundred years ago there was a need for citizens to have a gun to protect there possessions but society has moved forth and we are slowly solving issues like crime. It seems the only people fighting for this rule to kept in the Constitution is red neck Americans that like their guns. I have thought up a solution to solve this issue, most of the NRA members use the excuse that they don't like firing guns they just like the heritage behind them and collecting them. So the solution is to stop selling bullets or sell them to citizens at a price 10,000 times the normal price. This would keep the NRA happy and save a lot of lives.

[HeavenSent]

Originally posted by Mandagorian
You made statements like "Is it time for your bath junior" you're a very ageism person, and if you say you aren't you's a lie. But don't worry your ignorance will be forgiven because you belief in God.

Originally posted by Mandagorian
D)Yes I'm going to grade 11....

Originally posted by HeavenSent
D) Dream on junior.

Last I checked, kids going into the 11th grade are called Juniors.

[MaGi kOz]

Originally posted by Mandagorian
So the solution is to stop selling bullets or sell them to citizens at a price 10,000 times the normal price. This would keep the NRA happy and save a lot of lives.

did you watch that one stand up of chris rock and gun deaths? he was joking about saying to have one bullet be worth 10,000 dollars... he went on jokingly saying things like:

"I'D KILL YOU.... IF I COULD AFFORD TO!"

and

"IMMA KILL THAT MOTHAFUKKER... ONCE I GET A SECOND JOB, A LOAN, AND IF I SELL OFF MY CAR... YOU'RE A DEAD MOTHA FUKKA!"

something like that. it was funny.

[HeavenSent]

Originally posted by Mandagorian
HeavenSent is too set in his ways and at his age he is not ready to open his mind to to other possibilities. I truly think someone is spoon feeding him his information, it would be safe to say he's part of some sort of cult.

If I appear set in my ways it's because after years of searching and seeking, I finally found what I was looking for... or rather, He found me. Cult eh? I have no leader other than the Lord and the convictions He puts in my heart. I have no following nor do I belong to one, nor do I seek to be a part of one, or seeks followers. My mission and service in this world is a seed-planter. I plant ideas in people's minds and the Lord chooses what to do with that seed. I broadcast a certain frequency that only someone tuned in on that frequency will begin to understand. I'm a messenger, not one that sticks around to see what the Lord has done with the seeds of thought that I've planted. I say the anti-christ will descend from the heavens and the people will think he's Jesus returned. But when the real Jesus returns, none of us will occupy the flesh. Flesh will cease to exist. No one has to believe what I say until it happens. Then when it does, hopefully some will remember what they heard about this long before it happened and finally open their eyes to the Truth, the Way & the Life and be spared from the wrath of God which takes place shortly thereafter.

Originally posted by Mandagorian
It seems the only people fighting for this rule to kept in the Constitution is red neck Americans that like their guns.

You're such a hypocrite. Even though i was misunderstood to be racist and called no one by any duragatory racist remarks, it's still ok for you to spew your non-prejudice views [sarcasm] towards anyone you deem to be a red-neck?
With guns... just take away all the guns from the good guys so that only the bad guys have guns. It's a proven fact that where societies bare arms, the crime rate is low. This is another area I was referring to with my post about the tolerant and the intolerant. People kill people, not guns. Yet it's the intolerant that want to take the guns away from people instead of making tougher laws on gun crimes and strictly enforcing the laws we already have.

[Bioture]

I would love to see anyone attack the arguments i made in the wrapping it up post above.

[HeavenSent]

Re: A very quick wrap-up

Originally posted by Bioture
Discussing or debating with religious people is ultimately futile because to come to the conclusion that there is a god or gods is illogical and therefore irrational and any debate or discussion with someone who is illogical ultimately becomes irrational and totally pointless and absurd.

agreed, although I wouldn't word it quite as you did.

Originally posted by Bioture
Atheism will never be big because it does not offer a reward for belief or a punishment for non belief. Atheists face reality and know that there is no escape. Atheists do not knock on your door or stand on street corners handing out pamphlets.(although they do have websites)
Atheism will never be big because the level of intelligence of humankind is too low, and it is getting lower as stupid people out-breed intelligent people.

Interesting way to put it. This sounds like just another religion to me; a proud and boastful religion that denies God. There is an escape, but the Atheists are just too stubborn to use the exit.

Originally posted by Bioture
My decision to be athiest is mine, and mine alone. I was born into a christian family. And the sad fact of the matter is "believing is easier than thinking" (quote by calvert?) which is why we have so many more believers than thinkers.

It looks to me like you've laid the whole God trip on your parents. It's typical for rebellious atheists to be spawned out of over-bearing, regimented religious homes. Spiritually speaking, more people would rather hear someone tell them what God says than to see for themselves what God actually says. Some in influential positions take advantage of this fact and give false information. If i had a nickle for everyone that said, "The Bible says...." when it really doesn't.. not even close. God wants us to be thinkers, not spoon-feeders.

Originally posted by Bioture
Does religion play a part in World Politics? Abso-fucking-lutely. We believe that god is on OUR side when we make decisions to kill other people. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. God is all-powerful. Draw your own fucking conclusions people. Instead of asking god or referring to a book of fairy tales. Ultimately, god takes away our power of rational decision making. Some religions are not only false, theyre blatant lies.

I abso-fucking-lutely agree with you... except for the fairy tales part of course... Also, you think that if there is a God, why is there all this pain, suffering and chaos? Yet God's not running this world. He may or may not allow some things to be done, but as far as the choices on what's happening to the world is a direct result of "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.(Eph:6:12) It's Satan that's running this world. The chaos, pain & suffering will end when Jesus takes over.

Originally posted by Bioture
Again, I respect the convictions of theists, even if they do not do so in return. I will, however, under no circumstance belive in false clams and promises. Blind faith in something that will set everything right while everyone just sits back and does nothing.

That's fine. Really. If the Lord wants you, He will call you. You don't have to put on a religious pretense to do good and love thy neighbor.. etc.. You're alright

[Mandagorian]

Originally posted by HeavenSent
Last I checked, kids going into the 11th grade are called Juniors.

You called me that before you knew I said I was entering grade 11, you also said "I wanted to put this in before you have a bath" and "do you have the rubber duckey with you?". Read your own post "kids", I'm a teenager but I think you fail to see the difference.

[Mandagorian]

Originally posted by HeavenSent
If I appear set in my ways it's because after years of searching and seeking, I finally found what I was looking for... or rather, He found me. Cult eh? I have no leader other than the Lord and the convictions He puts in my heart. I have no following nor do I belong to one, nor do I seek to be a part of one, or seeks followers. My mission and service in this world is a seed-planter. I plant ideas in people's minds and the Lord chooses what to do with that seed. I broadcast a certain frequency that only someone tuned in on that frequency will begin to understand. I'm a messenger, not one that sticks around to see what the Lord has done with the seeds of thought that I've planted. I say the anti-christ will descend from the heavens and the people will think he's Jesus returned. But when the real Jesus returns, none of us will occupy the flesh. Flesh will cease to exist. No one has to believe what I say until it happens. Then when it does, hopefully some will remember what they heard about this long before it happened and finally open their eyes to the Truth, the Way & the Life and be spared from the wrath of God which takes place shortly thereafter.

You're such a hypocrite. Even though i was misunderstood to be racist and called no one by any duragatory racist remarks, it's still ok for you to spew your non-prejudice views [sarcasm] towards anyone you deem to be a red-neck?
With guns... just take away all the guns from the good guys so that only the bad guys have guns. It's a proven fact that where societies bare arms, the crime rate is low. This is another area I was referring to with my post about the tolerant and the intolerant. People kill people, not guns. Yet it's the intolerant that want to take the guns away from people instead of making tougher laws on gun crimes and strictly enforcing the laws we already have.

So basically you brainwash people with the lords ideas? Everything you talk about is fiction, F-I-C-T-I-O-N.

But when the real Jesus returns, none of us will occupy the flesh. Flesh will cease to exist.

You sound like a religious extremist.

You're such a hypocrite. Even though i was misunderstood to be racist and called no one by any duragatory racist remarks, it's still ok for you to spew your non-prejudice views

You dodged Conc's question because your views would be racist and you would be discredited for that.

It's a proven fact that where societies bare arms, the crime rate is low. This is another area I was referring to with my post about the tolerant and the intolerant. People kill people, not guns

When society bares arms you have an increase of deaths, people with guns are prone to accidents. And think about your kids, do you want them growing up in a society where you can shoot anyone? Guns might not kill people but they are the weapon that people use to kill people. You'd think today as a society we would know enough not to kill eachother but that's not the case, if we remove the element of guns we decrease murder. I'm not saying we would eliminate it but it would help.

HeavenSent their is not much more that can be said on this thread, as I said I respect you for having a deep sense of faith in God but don't try to force it down my throat or anyone else's throat for that matter. Respect goes two ways, I respect your beliefs and I'd like you to respect my belief that God might not exist. I would like you to keep your mind open to other possibilities, One thing is definite nothing is certain.

[Material Girl]

linkage ($$ AKA AHH THE INJUSTICE!@#/)

If only I could write like this..



Goodbye, New World Order

The Bush administration's go-it-alone war has delivered the coup de grâce to the idea of an international community. Now what?

By David Rieff




Here is the pessimists' case: Whatever else it may eventually accomplish, the war in Iraq seems to have put the final nail in the coffin of the dream of global citizenship that began more than half a century ago with the founding of the United Nations. Instead of a world order grounded, however imperfectly, in the idea of collective security, the war has made plain one of the central new realities of the post-9/11 world: The most powerful nation on earth, the United States of America, has decided to turn the international system on its head.

That system was based on strong states committing themselves not to do everything that was in their power. They did not make such undertakings out of altruism (states are states, after all, not charitable trusts), but out of the insight born in the ashes of World War II that the benefits of multilateralism far outweighed its risks. The Nazi experience showed that the right to act unilaterally was bound to be abused by evil regimes and provided democracies with insufficient means to confront evil. The organizers of the United Nations, notably such distinguished Americans as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ralph Bunche, in effect tried to constrain all nations within the legal steel hawsers of a doctrine of collective security.

In reality, this system never worked very well. War might have been outlawed under the U.N. Charter (except in the case of self-defense or threats to collective security), but throughout the Cold War era, both the United States and the Soviet Union pursued their own interests, and, when they deemed it necessary, went to war, though usually by proxy and usually in the Third World. This alone probably should have been enough to convince anyone that the brave new norms of international conduct enshrined in such founding U.N. documents as the Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were nothing more than empty stipulations of collective moral ambitions. By any objective criterion, the world remained the same tragic place it had always been, as unredeemed by international law as it had been by religion, or Marxism, or liberal capitalism.

Of course, it was not only such psychological and cultural predispositions that led the post-1945 generation to believe in an international community, and in the possibility of global democracy and global justice. It was a time when, in Western Europe and North America anyway, people became prosperous to a degree that would have been unimaginable at any previous moment in history; when campaigns for justice -- labor rights, women's rights, the civil rights movement -- seemed to have succeeded in overturning what many had considered the "natural" order of things. At such a time, why would it seem so unreasonable or unrealistic to dream of a world in which other "natural" conditions, most significantly war itself, were brought under control?

Today, not least because of Iraq, such expectations may seem preposterous, otherworldly. As a disenchanted friend of mine at the United Nations said to me recently, "We like to say at the U.N. that had the world organization not existed, the world would have to invent it. But we all know that people at the level of the founders of the U.N. don't exist in international politics at present. In other words, we couldn't invent it today." Indeed, with the possible exception of British prime minister Tony Blair, there is not a single head of state of a democratic country who seems genuinely committed to a set of principles that he or she is willing to risk career and future for (and this is not necessarily to endorse the particular principles Blair is committed to, only to honor him for hewing to them).

Yes, some people still want to believe in the United Nations -- though they're becoming fewer and fewer in number. There is even the fantasy that some institutional or policy silver bullet -- the International Criminal Court, say, or the Kyoto Protocol -- will provide an Archimedean lever for solving the world's woes. Were it not for the machinations of the United States, which refused to sign on to either Kyoto or the international court, the argument goes, we would be well on our way to a better world; even so, America stands only as an obstacle that will be overcome on the road to inevitable progress.

Such claims have all the ingredients of a fine press release, but the reality is more depressing. It is true, for example, that European governments increasingly subscribe to the ideology -- some would say the secular religion -- of human rights. But then so does the United States; after all, the official position of the U.S. government is that the intervention in Iraq was undertaken at least in part in the name of human rights. Now a doctrine that can be claimed by the United States of America as well as the still social democratic nations of Western Europe, and the nongovernmental organizations that view the United States as little more than a rogue state -- not to mention major transnational corporations that have signed on to a U.N. "compact with business" -- has become elastic to the point of fatuousness. If we all claim to be pledged to the cause of human rights (and who, it seems, does not?), then it is hard not to think of Dr. Johnson's remark about patriotism, that it is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

As far as the international system is concerned, what are the most striking aspects of the current situation? There is the United Nations sunk in irrelevancy, except as the world's leading humanitarian relief organization. There is a landscape of international relations that seems far more to resemble the bellicose world of pre-1914 Europe than the interdependent, responsible world imagined by the framers of the U.N. Charter. There is an entire continent, sub-Saharan Africa, mired in an economic calamity largely not of its own making. There is a Europe that pays lip service to human rights, but remains intransigent where its own real interests -- such as farm subsidies that effectively condemn sub-Saharan Africa to grinding poverty by limiting its agricultural exports -- are concerned. And then there is the United States, seemingly bent on empire.

Where was the good news again? That Augusto Pinochet was briefly detained in London, or that Slobodan Milosevic will likely spend the rest of his life in a U.N. jail?

This, while somewhere between 2 and 4 million Congolese die in the first general war in Africa since decolonization? The truth is that, outside the developed countries, much of the world is actually in worse shape than it was just a few decades ago. Where there has been progress, if that term is even appropriate in so apocalyptic a context, it has been in the realm of norms -- that is, the laws that nations try to evade and ignore, and in which many of the most decent people on this slaughterhouse of a planet continue to believe. But we are deep in loaves-and-fishes land here. To believe that states will suddenly come to their senses and behave as responsible members of an "international community," when few states have ever done this, is, indeed, to believe in miracles.

[Material Girl]

continued . . .

There is unquestionably a globalized world economy, which remains largely dominated by the United States and is administered through central banks, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. But there is no such thing as an international community, at least not one worthy of the name -- assuming, that is, we mean a community of shared values and interests, not just shared membership in the United Nations. For that matter, even the old, Cold War-era blocs are disintegrating: The G-77, the major international organization representing the developing world, now has trouble agreeing on anything beyond the most generic recommendations. The run-up to the Iraq war showed the depth of the divisions within the so-called transatlantic family, and equally sharp splits were evident within Europe during the same period. Never mind community; how can there be any international system when what we have actually witnessed in the period since 9/11 has been the steady erosion of the very idea of consensus in international relations?

There can be little doubt, unfortunately, that the United States has played a major role in this decline. Liberals tend to blame the Bush administration for this, but in reality, there is far more continuity between the Clinton and Bush foreign-policy doctrines than Democrats usually like to concede. It was the Clinton administration, after all, that embraced the principle "with partners if we can, alone if we must." Yes, Clinton and his aides did not try to publicly humiliate the United Nations, but there was nothing genuinely multilateral about their approach to stopping the Bosnian war or resolving the Middle East crisis. Indeed, when then-U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali did not do what the Clinton people wanted on the Balkans, he was blocked by the United States in his bid for a second term -- even though all the other 14 members of the Security Council at the time wanted to grant him one. While the atmospherics and aesthetics accompanying the use of American power do indeed distinguish the current administration from its predecessor, in substance the Clinton and Bush teams have been remarkably of one mind on issues surrounding the unilateral application of U.S. military might.

None of this is meant to endorse the radical view, exemplified by such figures of the hard left as Noam Chomsky in the United States and Régis Debray in France, that the collapse of the international system is simply the result of the wickedness of U.S. foreign policy. Such an analysis merely turns the official rhetoric of America's inherent goodness on its head: Instead of being the root of all good, America is seen as the root of all evil. It is true that, by opting for the kind of world-defying unilateralism it chose in Iraq, the United States did a great deal to turn the United Nations into even more of a hollow shell than it already was. But the fact that the United Nations can be effective only if supported (read: underwritten) by the United States testifies to how little substance that system ever really had.

Besides, open defiance of U.N. rules is hardly the province of the United States. Few countries are more pro-United Nations than the Netherlands. But no Dutch government would dream of acquiescing in the U.N. drug authority's demand for a strict prohibitionist and punitive policy toward soft drugs. Obviously, there is a difference between bending the rules about making war and the rules about smoking marijuana, but each reveals in its own way the falsity of the idea that any state is going to subordinate its own interests to those of some fictive international "community." All politics is local -- an adage international lawyers and human-rights activists could profit from pondering more seriously and respectfully.

To say this is not to demand that people stop dreaming of a better world. Many of us may still aspire to the idea of global citizenship and long for the day when the words "international com- munity" would not be cause for a bitter smile or a sardonic shrug. But it is important to understand how far we are from that day and to act accordingly.

At present, after the sweeping U.S. victory in Iraq, the mood among those Americans who want to continue to uphold some kind of internationalism has tended more and more toward disappointment and bitter resignation. There is much apprehensive talk about empire, much anxiety about the drift of the country, particularly with regard to civil liberties, much (in my view, grotesquely unwarranted) nostalgia for the Clinton administration, while, simultaneously, the legitimate fear of terrorism continues to haunt people's visions of the future.

Is there a way out of this dilemma, beyond simply taking refuge in local politics? However paradoxical this may seem, it is precisely those committed to struggling for a better world in these dark times who stand most desperately in need of abandoning the fantasy of an idealized, law-based international system. In this sense, the profound disenchantment occasioned by the war in Iraq may actually be an opportunity to rethink realism.

What realism cannot do is offer the same kind of millenarian hope that is the essential DNA of idealism. Realism is fundamentally defensive. If anything, that can often make the realist's activism more, rather than less, intense and committed. But there is no getting around the fact that the assumption underlying every variant of realism is that things will not necessarily get better, and may very well grow worse. [/SIZE]


taken with permission from www.motherjones.com =)


Personally, I'd just like to take this moment to say that it's too bad for the pussy asss cloaking Liberal party.... GTFO

[sixtoo]

jesus I was going to post here my thoughts and opinions o plenty, but its so way off track by now its pretty pointless!

I live right across from that sexy country you call America (Niagara Falls, Canada). I have no complaints. The only thing I do have to say about americans ....they tend to have a hard time handling our beer, and often come here with ski's / snowboards attached to the rack of their SUV's during the middle of summer... asking themselves.. where all the snow is?

The worst thing I've ever been asked while working in a resturant...

say kid you don't happen to know when they turn off the waterfalls do you?

uhhh yeah, the same time we fold up the street lamps, roll up the sidewalks and let the penguins out

[Material Girl]

I like Penguins.