World Politics

[Bioture]

Life is but a dream on the way to death

This is the way the world ends... Not with a bang... But a wimper.

[Material Girl]

I like Sleepy Weasel's quotation better:

" Teh world is but a bottle and life is but a dram. "

[parallelogram]

Originally posted by Speaker Of Trench
Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making (although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.

After making out Canada to be a haven of nonviolence, Moore asks why. He proclaims that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership," somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges, gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun toting, gun crazy country!"

Or as he put it elsewhere, "then I learned that Canada has 7 million guns but they don't kill each other like we do. I thought, gosh, that's uncomfortably close to the NRA position: Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Bowling concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and gun nuts -- it has lots of those -- but because the Canadian mass media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American media is.

Which leaves us to wonder why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued a press release. congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination.

Or does Bowling have a hidden punch line, and in the end the joke is on them?

This is quite the impressive movie review. Probably because the "author" stole it from a website. Actually, a few websites:

http://www.bobfreemanshow.com/moore.html

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

[Mayo Inc.]

well thats interesting

[Luis Logic]

Since when did TW members become religous? Don't you all worship the Devil? Excuse the cynical observation, but it's what i've come to know as true.

PEACE

L. Logic

[MaGi kOz]

Originally posted by parallelogram
This is quite the impressive movie review. Probably because the "author" stole it from a website. Actually, a few websites:

http://www.bobfreemanshow.com/moore.html

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

haahh speaker of trench is bullshit.

[Escalate]

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. -heavensent

1. God is omnipotent, and omniscient.
2. God was solely responsible for the creation of man, and of earth.

Conclusion: God is not only directly responsible for the fucked up world we inhabit, he saw it coming and chose to do nothing about it.

To the "Free-will" counterargument:

1. There are only two factors that influence every decision made by a human being: Genetic behavioral disposition (genetically determined personality traits and predispositions), and environment (experiences).

2. Neither of these factors are within the control, direct or indirect, of the decision making person. You cannot choose your parents, nor can you choose your upbringing. You may believe that you can choose some aspects of your environment, yet these are choices based on aspects of your disposition/previous environment that you were unable to choose.

Conclusion:

Choice does not exist in any way that implies ultimate responsibility for said choice. Free will is an illusion.

Final conclusion: If god does exist, hes a sick fucking asshole.

[Escalate]

Originally posted by Bioture
As for the politics part, i gave up trying to understand them when Bush was elected president.

All that you need to understand is that the average person is not intelligent enough to prevent themselves from being taken advantage of. The above average person is not kind enough to refrain from doing so.

The Republican party has a particularly difficult task in that they must convince a nation made up of mostly middle and lower class families to elect their representatives who, to the eye of someone who has a reasonably fuctional brain, do not act in their best interest.

Yet they are amazingly successful. I'm not sure which is more responsible, the manipulative ability of the party, or the idiocy of the average person. Judging by the fact that much of their support comes from the bible-thumping right wing, I'd go with idiocy.

[Mayo Inc.]

nader4prez

They want you to believe the war is over, but it's still going on. Regime change begins at home.

[Material Girl]

Ralph Nader is a f*cking revolutionary!

[adastalin]

Originally posted by Bioture
"GOD IS DEAD...WE HAVE KILLED HIM!"

No one else seems to have said who this is so I will. Would it be Nietsche? Browny points plz

Originally posted by Cylor
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

Not necessarily true. Hedonism or Existentialism are philosophies that an atheist can enjoy his life through. Hedonists would argue that the point of life is to enjoy yourself and as such hedonists seek pleasure, nothing more. In other words, go have sex ppl!
Existentialists understand that if there is no God then life is meaningless unless you give it meaning. In other words a person decides what he wants out of life and makes that his purpose. Of course if that purpose is fulfilled, the person can either set another mission or die happy.
The negative view on life is that of Nihilism. They view life as having no purpose. From this is could be reasoned that there is not really any point in doing anything, so why bother? In fact why live? Many people have been there and commited suicide in the past.

Originally posted by HeavenSent
It's a proven fact that where societies bare arms, the crime rate is low

If everyone has guns there will be less shootings then? This is somewhat illogical. Even, hypothetically, if there is less crime in the USA then, say in the UK, surely the crimes individually in the USA would be worse than in the UK since everyone can have a gun. I am not actually against people having guns in principle, just in the your argument. The problem is economic rather than the availability of weapons. The fact is America does not really give a shit about its poor, which is a terrible way to be. Most crimes are commited by poor people. Crime is a way to get the bit of cash they need to survive or is simply an escape from their ways of life. The example I wish to present is Canada. There everyone can also buy a gun, yet crime is a fraction of what it is in the USA. Why? Its because they have a safety net for the poor. The Canadian government at least gives the impression of caring, although this may not be true. Crime is not neccessary for survival.

Originally posted by HeavenSent
It's typical for rebellious atheists to be spawned out of over-bearing, regimented religious homes.

Always an exception to the rule then, huh? My parents are atheist and I see no reason to rebel against that. This is because it makes sense. Whats the excuse for someone who doesnt rebel against his parents over the issue? Have liberal parents somehow brainwashed me while overbearing parents cannot do so?

About world politics:
Bush is a mega brainless oaf. How a country such as America could have elected a man like that as president is a mystery. Oh i forgot, they didnt.
Bush is just making more and more enemies internationally. These enemies will still be enemies after Bush is gone. How does invading countries fight terrorism? War is very useful for Bush. It diverts attention from problems at home in the economy without war such problems would damage Bush's career. War obviously helps USA secure more oil as well. This is of course particularly true in Iraq, although the war with Afghanistan enabled an oil pipeline to go through the country. Weapons of mass destruction were just a pretext to attack Iraq, nothing more. If Saddam had them then why didnt he use them on the american soldiers? What did he stand to lose by doing so? Notice how careful Bush is being with North Korea. This is simply because N.Korea actually has the weapons. Bush is a bully. I also believe he has a mega unresolved Oedipus Complex, requiring that he beats his his father at anything possible. He had to go to war and remove Saddam, nothing else would do because daddy had left Saddam. Bush even married a woman who looks like his mother. Now I am not saying that all people dont go through the Oedipus Complex, they do. But it is resolved in most people. Add to that that most people are not running a country and did not have fathers who ran a country. Its a very dangerous mix.

[MaGi kOz]

Can't wait till I turn 18 so I can vote Bush's ass OUTTA THERE!




+ I think Bush got presidency cuz he cheated. IT'S A CONSPIRACY I TELLZ YA!

[genocidal]

Re: continued . . .

Originally posted by Material Girl
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

i'll take 'your' rant as an expression of your disillusionment with US foreign policy by the both the democrats and republicans. you touch on this in your article thing but i just want to clarify: democrats are NOT liberal...the democratic party represents a more overall liberal platform than the republican party. also, the republican party is NOT conservative except for a few crazy right-wing old guys who nobody feels like running against for a congress seat.

now as a fairly liberal moderate (if that makes sense) i interpret your article as a criticism of the theory of realism present in US foreign policy. i have read much about realism so don't lecture me and i can assure you we aren't the kind of state that all those realist authors (lipshultz, etc) talk about. sure US foreign policy has some characteristics of a realist mindset in foreign policy but in no way is foreign policy totally dominated by realism. realism is the belief that every country only wants what is best for its own personal gain and that it will do anything to anyone to get what it wants/needs. i'm not questioning that US internation relations are a mild form of realism but i would argue that the US is totally entrenched in a realist, imperialist, and threat constructionist mindset. sure we went to war mainly because it would help our economy and be good for GWBUSH's agenda but it's not like we invaded venezuala or anything. at least the bush administration could SOMEWHAT justify their invasion by citing the human rights abuses, etc. (the bush adminisration also cited possible WMD possession but i won't count this as a legit reason because i think US WMD policy is bullshit anyway but i won't get into that). granted, human rights abuses happen everyday in 'the powder keg of europe' or eastern eurpoe (bosnia, serbia, etc.) as well as much of africa. does the US care? not really. we care about human rights abuses when caring is beneficial to us as well. the US funded many coup d'etat's in the 80s under reagan because it was in our best economic interest (there's the good old roosevelt corallary for ya) but some of these assasinations and stuff could arguably be beneficial for the human good of the residents of the nations. yeah i just went off onto a tangent but the point is if the US were totally consumed in self-interest we could invade venezuala among many other countries that could benefit us economically.

just because the US doesn't pursue a total realist foreign policy doens't mean that the shit we do is good. in fact, many south american countries exist only to fuel the US economy. (haiti, panama, etc). and i'd argue that since the US has the money we can pretty much tell oil producing countries what to do. i mean, OPEC is the largest exporter of oil while the US is the largest importer yet we told OPEC to shove their fists up their asses because we were going to diversify our sources (ie create jobs in domestic oil production, buy from bitch countries like russia and venezuala, etc) this type of policy isn't necessarily good, it just isn't realist. enough.

[DoTheFandango]

God hates USA. I hate USA. I live in USA. I'm moving to Canada next spring.

[Material Girl]

Uh, just to clarify... I didn't write that article.


Some dude wrote it.


For real.