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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 18 days
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7997113 - 02/08/08 05:05 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Nowadays we have the gall to think that we can just export our Western democratic institutions as if it were some kind of commodity that would be readily consumed by those who already have their own systems set up...




What is your opinion of some of those other systems? In no particular order:

-- the profoundly misogynistic theocracies of so many of the Islamic states

-- the totalitarian slave states of North Korea, Cuba, and others of their ilk

-- the genocidal tribal warfare endemic to the Balkans and the majority of African states

Kind of makes Western democracies look a tad less frightening, doesn't it?



Phred


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Offlinekriminalelement
"jesus wept."
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Registered: 09/26/07
Posts: 1,201
Loc: Ay! los popos estan aqui!
Last seen: 13 years, 6 months
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7997291 - 02/08/08 05:45 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Misogyny won't go away because we're occupying a country. Misogyny is embedded in cultures. Only a cultural shift occurring WITHIN a culture will eliminate the problem. You can't expect a hundred thousand English speaking soldiers to suddenly change millions of peoples' minds about the role of women and gender in their society. The process will take decades or centuries, as it did in the West.

I don't think anyone would support the states you've mentioned as being wholesome to the people that live under them, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize the problems in our own cultural context.

And as for genocidal tribal warfare, Western democratic society doesn't really have a clean nose on that one either.

No culture is perfect and few nations will likely exist without war. By championing Western culture as a panacea to the civil rights issues inherent in other cultures and governments is not only simplifying the challenges faced by those countries and the global community at large, it is patronizing to people who deserve full sovereignty and are being denied it, by a dictator or by Western occupation.

The people under the rule of dictatorships are plagued by ethnocentrism as well: class centrism (Cuba, North Korea) ethnic and religious fanaticism (Iraq, Uganda, Sudan), etc. Replacing someone else's biases with one's own is just creating a new problem by forcibly asserting one's narcissistic tendencies.


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While there is a lower class, I am in it
While there is a criminal element, I am of it
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Eugene V Debs


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InvisibleVirus_with_Shoes
Pastor of Muppets
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Registered: 01/25/07
Posts: 3,707
Loc: Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7997302 - 02/08/08 05:48 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Phred:

All of those other systems you listed are pretty shitty and democracy (or Constitution Republics in the case of the US) is the most stable, successful system in the world today. You're mischaracterising my position if you think I'm not in favour of Western democracy. If you'd read my post a little more carefully you would have seen that my problem is not with Western democracy but with the effort to install it in other countries that have not invited us. It should not be the role of the US military to overthrow systems in other countries, regardless of how shitty they are. In international law they call that 'sovereignty' and it's a concept that should be more closely respected.

Our effort to export our institutions because we think we know what's best for another country is exactly the type of arrogance that resonates in that ol' Rudyard Kipling poem, "The White Man's Burden."


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Offlinegluke bastid
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7997358 - 02/08/08 05:59 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

I don't think the blatant disregard for a notion of civil liberty among certain so called third world regimes is the question at hand in this thread. Does the totalitarian state of North Korea provide any sort of evidence that would suggest an invasion by a democracy would create a democracy?

More importantly, what gives one Nation the right to determine the course of another? Doesn't that go against the very idea of democracy and itself? I think an important question to ask is "what assumptions is the idea of bringing another country into democracy based on?" I think it is often based on the assumption that we know what the will of the people in a given country is. But how can you know unless they vote or not? How can you know if the government suppresses any dissent with violence? And in the long history of deposing governments (from tribal ones to communist ones) what is the success rate of democracy and western civilization taking root?

What if the EU invaded America and demanded that we establish a universal health care system? What they be justified in their attempt to "bring us up to their level of democracy?" Would it work or would they be met with both resistance and acceptance?


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:hst:
Society in every form is a blessing,
but government at its best is but a necessary evil
 
- Thomas Paine


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InvisibleVirus_with_Shoes
Pastor of Muppets
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Registered: 01/25/07
Posts: 3,707
Loc: Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Re: the white man's burden [Re: gluke bastid]
    #7997381 - 02/08/08 06:08 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

You can't expect a hundred thousand English speaking soldiers to suddenly change millions of peoples' minds about the role of women and gender in their society. The process will take decades or centuries, as it did in the West.




Quote:

What if the EU invaded America and demanded that we establish a universal health care system? What they be justified in their attempt to "bring us up to their level of democracy?" Would it work or would they be met with both resistance and acceptance?




Quoted for truth. There are some very insightful people in this thread. :awesome::thumbup:

Another question to toss out there is are we truly interested in bringing other countries democracy or is it just a rationalisation for self-serving activities similar to what Rudyard Kipling described in his poem? Certainly our previous and current support of tin-pot dictators around the world along with the overthrow of Salvador Allende's democratically government in Chile in 1972 would be a indicator of this. What do you guys think? 


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Offlinekriminalelement
"jesus wept."
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Posts: 1,201
Loc: Ay! los popos estan aqui!
Last seen: 13 years, 6 months
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7997549 - 02/08/08 06:47 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Definitely a rationalization. We're perfectly happy to support dictators when one hand washes the other. The problem with this policy is that we're screwing ourselves by inviting the ire of dissidents and extremists in those countries where we either support a dictatorship or challenge an existing sovereignty.

In the end I think the argument against the current foreign policy rhetoric should come down to pragmatism. It's nonsensical for us to "spread democracy" and prop up the Saudis or General Musharraf at the same time. We need a consistent message realized with different tactics than those we've already beaten to death in the 15th century.


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While there is a lower class, I am in it
While there is a criminal element, I am of it
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Eugene V Debs


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InvisibleVirus_with_Shoes
Pastor of Muppets
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Registered: 01/25/07
Posts: 3,707
Loc: Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Re: the white man's burden [Re: kriminalelement]
    #7997631 - 02/08/08 07:03 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Absolutely, and is is neither ideologically sound (for the reasons we discussed before) or pragmatic to be doing this as a country. On the pragmatic side, we are not only creating our own enemies via policies that give us "blowback" but we're also depleting our treasury for foreign entanglements that really do us no good in the long run.

This awesome picture says it all:



Quote:

It seems like a lot of people in this forum and the country at large subscribe to Victorian colonial ideals, but have simply replaced some choice words in the rhetoric.




What sort of arguments have people in the forum put forth that remind you of this poem? I haven't seen any yet but then again I'm relatively new.


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Offlinekriminalelement
"jesus wept."
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7997744 - 02/08/08 07:27 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

What sort of arguments have people in the forum put forth that remind you of this poem? I haven't seen any yet but then again I'm relatively new.




I forgot which threads this was inspired by, but there are some people on the forums that have anti-muslim sentiments and have expressed the idea that occupation isn't patronizing or damaging to both cultures involved....

More importantly though it seems to be part of mainstream American discourse, and nobody ever makes a note of it. In our hyper-PC society this borders on the surreal. You'd think with all the ethnic diversity here people would be more angered by the course our policies have taken, but most Americans don't seem to be connecting the dots. They're more interested in the throwaway moments of racism on the radio or sexism in corporate culture. Not that I don't care about these things, but there are larger and more important stories on the exact same topics.


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While there is a lower class, I am in it
While there is a criminal element, I am of it
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Eugene V Debs


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OfflineMalachi
stereotype

Registered: 06/19/02
Posts: 1,294
Loc: Around Minneapolis.
Last seen: 14 years, 7 months
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7997761 - 02/08/08 07:29 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

I think this applies here.
Quote:

Phil wrote:
One of the guys who discovered DNA say..black people are stupid... uh oh.. I hear sharpton and jackson (well not jackson.. no distributorships for his sons involved) warming up the microphones..


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LONDON — A Nobel prize-winning scientist who reportedly claimed Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.

James Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for co-discovering DNA, drew widespread outrage when he told The Sunday Times that Africans and Europeans did not share the same brain power.

The newspaper quoted the 79-year-old American geneticist as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

-------------------------------

so that explains why every time I go to mcdonalds and a black person is waiting on me that I KNOW my order is going to be screwed up.. and sure enough it is..or at the bank, the grocery store... I thought I was just imagining it.. but that is a hell of alot of coincidences...same as when when I call a call center and the person on the other line wants to axe me sumthin...who would have known. this is truly a groundbreaking discovery. Another Nobal prize I guess... he does have a point though.. all of Africa is violent and warlike and dangerous..and guess what so is the inner cities in the US which is populated by mostly Africans...go figure. I guess its that way in Africa why expect it to change here..


===============================================================================


Brother Phil, thank you for your honesty. I hope that you don't mind my calling you brother, after all, I am one of the people, inferior Blacks, that you speak of so rudely to put it mildly.

So what should we do about this "inferior" Human species Phil?

Mass murder seems beneath you so may I hazard a few guesses of what you might advocate? Perhaps harsher laws? More executions? Hmmm . . . maybe mass deportations?

BTW, do you think that Jeffrey Daumer, John Wayne Gacy Al Capone and this giant of glorious White Man's History, are intellectually AND morally superior to all Black people or simply intellectually superior? How is intellectual superiority measured?

You said that Africa is violent and warlike and dangerous. Are Africans any more violent and warlike and dangerous than White people? What are your thoughts about the following account about your great King Leo civilizing the savages in Africa;

"Natives had to search out vines through inhospitable jungle. In Leopold's Congo it was an illegal offence to pay any Africans with money, so other more brutal forms of exhortation were employed. The British vice consul in 1899 gave a terrifying example of how the Force Publique carried out this task:

"An example of what is done was told me up the Ubangi [River]. This officer['s]... method... was to arrive in canoes at a village, the inhabitants of which invariably bolted on their arrival; the soldiers were then landed, and commenced looting, taking all the chickens, grain etc, out of the houses; after this they attacked the natives until able to seize their women; these women were kept as hostages until the chief of the district brought in the required number of kilograms of rubber. The rubber having been brought, the women were sold back to their owners for a couple of goats apiece, and so he continued from village to village until the requisite amount of rubber had been collected." (p161)

Companies operating in the Congo used prison stockades to keep hostages. If the men of the village resisted the demands for rubber it meant the death of their wife, child or chief. The Force Publique supplied military might under contract and each company had its own mercenaries.

In the rubber regions, Africans had to gain a state permit to travel outside their villages. Labourers wore a numbered metal disk, so a record could be kept of their individual quota. Hundreds of thousands of desperate and exhausted men carried huge baskets on their heads for up to twenty miles a day.

An account in 1884 describes the actions of an officer known as Fievez taken against those who refused to collect rubber or failed to meet their quota: "I made war against them. One example was enough: a hundred heads cut off, and there have been plenty of supplies ever since. My goal is ultimately humanitarian. I killed a hundred people... but that allowed five hundred others to live." (p166)

The Force Publique had a combined counter-insurgency role: as a force to suppress the natives and as a "corporate labour force." Their murderous assaults against the native population were described as “pacification”, as it was during the Vietnam War. The demand was for labour, and they destroyed all obstacles in their way.

Hochschild quotes the Governor of the Equatorial District of the Congo Free State when the demand for rubber became ferocious: “As soon as it was a question of rubber, I wrote to the government, 'To gather rubber in the district... one must cut off hands, noses and ears'.” (p165)

Following tribal wars, state officials would see to it that the victors severed the hands of dead warriors. During expeditions, Force Publique soldiers were instructed to bring back a hand or head for each bullet fired, to make sure that none had been wasted or hidden for use in rebellions. A soldier with the chilling title “keeper of hands” accompanied each expedition. Force Publique soldiers were slaves who had been press-ganged through hostage taking, or stolen as children and brought up in child colonies founded by the King and the Catholic Church."




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The ultimate meaning of our being can only be fulfilled in the paradoxical leap beyond the tragic-demonic frustration. It is a leap from our side, but it is the self-surrendering presence of the Ground of Being from the other side.
- Paul Tillich


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InvisibleVirus_with_Shoes
Pastor of Muppets
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Registered: 01/25/07
Posts: 3,707
Loc: Zuid-Holland, Nederland
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Malachi]
    #7997874 - 02/08/08 08:01 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

You'd think with all the ethnic diversity here people would be more angered by the course our policies have taken, but most Americans don't seem to be connecting the dots. They're more interested in the throwaway moments of racism on the radio or sexism in corporate culture




I'm somewhat optimistic that average Americans are starting to realise that the Iraq War was a pretty awful idea. This is a start but like you say, people haven't connected the dots, which would lead them to the conclusion that this war is symptomatic of a larger problem- a deeply flawed imperialistic ideology. It's very rare to hear these root causes addressed and the media tends to focus on more salacious stories that get better ratings.

A lot of how people view the current conflict is tainted by the way Iraqis are portrayed by the media, which calls them things like "insurgents" and "terrorists." All we hear on the news is something like "15 insurgents killed today by US bombing." This dehumanises the Iraqi people and reduces them to labels instead of what they really are: mostly ordinary people who want their country back from a foreign invader. It's also interesting to note that our country was founded by those considered to be insurgents and terrorists.


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Invisiblewps
Well-PaidScientist
Male

Registered: 09/22/07
Posts: 579
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7997921 - 02/08/08 08:16 PM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Quote:

Phred said:
Quote:

Nowadays we have the gall to think that we can just export our Western democratic institutions as if it were some kind of commodity that would be readily consumed by those who already have their own systems set up...




What is your opinion of some of those other systems? In no particular order:

-- the profoundly misogynistic theocracies of so many of the Islamic states

-- the totalitarian slave states of North Korea, Cuba, and others of their ilk

-- the genocidal tribal warfare endemic to the Balkans and the majority of African states

Kind of makes Western democracies look a tad less frightening, doesn't it?



Phred




I think that the systems you describe suck.

but why the fuck would I want to pay taxes and inflation to 'fix' these foreign countries with military force?

I don't own stock in Lockheed Martin. Do you? Cuz that's the only reason I could come up with for a lassiez faire capitalist to all the sudden take an interest in the poor, oppressed peoples of impoverished foreign countries. You can't claim to be lazzies faire and then stick up for the PUBLICLY FUNDED war effort out of professed compassion. I don't buy it.


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"America touts itself as the land of the free, but the number one freedom that you and I have is the freedom to enter into a subservient role in the workplace. Once you exercise this freedom you've lost all control over what you do, what is produced, and how it is produced. And in the end, the product doesn't belong to you. The only way you can avoid bosses and jobs is if you don't care about making a living. Which leads to the second freedom: the freedom to starve."

- Tom Morello


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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
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Last seen: 9 years, 18 days
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7999201 - 02/09/08 06:11 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Virus_with_shoes writes:

Quote:

If you'd read my post a little more carefully you would have seen that my problem is not with Western democracy but with the effort to install it in other countries that have not invited us.




Examples of such countries, please.

Quote:

It should not be the role of the US military to overthrow systems in other countries, regardless of how shitty they are.




I agree. That's why I have long maintained the US should not have invaded Hitler's Europe in 1944. It was up to the Polish and French and Belgians and Dutch and Norwegians and Austrians etc. to handle it on their own.

Quote:

In international law they call that 'sovereignty' and it's a concept that should be more closely respected.




So you hold the same opinion as the United Nations -- once any random thug (or group of thugs) has managed to murder his way to the top of the food chain in some country somewhere, enslaving the populace (Tibet, North Korea, Cuba, Afghanistan) and murdering them by the hundreds of thousands (Iraq), or even starting genocidal programs (the Balkans, Darfur, Congo) the rest of the world must sit back and do nothing.

Quote:

Our effort to export our institutions because we think we know what's best for another country is exactly the type of arrogance that resonates in that ol' Rudyard Kipling poem, "The White Man's Burden."




Would the world be a better place if every country in it were to adopt the Western version of governance? Yes or no?



Phred


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InvisibleLuddite
I watch Fox News
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Registered: 03/23/06
Posts: 2,946
Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7999217 - 02/09/08 06:21 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Hey nigga! Read this.


AmericanCivilWar.com

DIXIE'S CENSORED SUBJECT
BLACK SLAVEOWNERS

By Robert M. Grooms

© 1997
(THIS ARTICLE IS COPYRIGHTED AND IS PROVIDED HERE COURTESY OF THE BARNES REVIEW)

In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.

The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).

In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).

According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.

To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.

The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.

More here http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm


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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: kriminalelement]
    #7999221 - 02/09/08 06:24 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

kriminalelement writes:

Quote:

Misogyny won't go away because we're occupying a country. Misogyny is embedded in cultures.




But it need not be embedded in the law of the land. Attitudes are one thing, legislation another.

Quote:

By championing Western culture as a panacea to the civil rights issues inherent in other cultures and governments is not only simplifying the challenges faced by those countries and the global community at large, it is patronizing to people who deserve full sovereignty and are being denied it, by a dictator or by Western occupation.




I think you use "patronizing" differently from the rest of us. How is coming to the aid of a thoroughly oppressed and dominated populace by removing the source of their oppression and facilitating free democratic elections so the populace can actually achieve sovereignity "patronizing" them?

Note that I don't say the Western countries or any countries at all have the obligation to come to their aid -- it is perfectly acceptable to me to sit on our hands and do nothing. It's not our fault they're in the plight they are. Sucks to be them, but hey... shit happens. But I do say that those who claim that (for example) the Allies had no right to invade Hitler's Europe in 1944 are mistaken.

Quote:

Replacing someone else's biases with one's own is just creating a new problem by forcibly asserting one's narcissistic tendencies.




It is true that countries which have adopted the Western model of governance (or had it forced upon them) differ from one another. There is a lot of difference between the way things are done in France and the way they're done in Japan. What's your point?




Phred


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InvisibleLuddite
I watch Fox News
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Registered: 03/23/06
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7999236 - 02/09/08 06:38 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

June 15, 2006:

Bill Gates announces that he will leave Microsoft to persue a role playing Santa Claus to third world nations (which remain impoverished because so much of world resources have been handed over to Microsoft). It was the meteor explosiion on the Moon last month, and the Norway crater last week, that made an impact on Mr. Gates. Following the Indian Ocean "Tsunami" meteor a year and a half earlier, astronomers are now aware that the Earth is entering into a prolonged period of increasing bombardments from a hail storm of space rocks that are starting to swarm past our planet.

While this information is concealed from us, the handful of moguls who control our governments are all aware of the situation. Any casual search of the web will reveal the number of billionaires who today are racing like madmen to follow Paul Allen's example and errect their own private space crafts as escape vehicles to the space station, where they'll all watch us perish from impacts, safely aboard their orbiting penthouse suites.

June 25, 2006:

The third, and most bizarre, reaction to the Moon and Norway explosions, came from Warren Buffet, who, in a fit of religious "born-again-ness," became delusional and was "relieved" of his $30 billion fortune by Bill Gates. These people realize that as the Rock nears, money will become worthless. And as masses of their victims realize that it was because of the hoarding of world resources among the so-called "rich" that we have no defense against asteroids, people like Gates and Buffet will be hunted down by the waiting crowds.

September 19, 2006

CNN reports an Associated Press story: "Scientists: We Must Return to the Moon…A panel of scientists strongly endorsed NASA's plans to return to the Moon, saying in a report Tuesday that lunar exploration will open the way toward broader studies…'The moon is priceless to planetary scientists,' declared the special National Research Council panel of the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists were asked to evaluate and give guidance to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's plans for…human exploration of the Moon over the next two decades.

"President Bush two years ago vowed to return astronauts to the Moon and establish an 'extended presence there'…He called on NASA to devote $12 billion over five years for the beginning of the program with a goal of landing on the moon between 2015 and 2020…The Academy panel said the moon…provides great opportunities for a sustained program…'Only by returning to the Moon to carry out new scientific exploration can we hope to close the gaps in understanding'…the 15-member panel said. Among the priorities the panel outlined were determining the composition and structure of the lunar interior, better understanding the lunar atmosphere, evaluating the Moon's potential as 'an observation platform'…Among the priorities the panel outlined were…better understanding the lunar atmosphere, [and] evaluating the Moon's potential as 'an observation platform.'

"Tuesday's report was described as interim, with a more detailed report to be released in mid-2007…Two weeks ago, NASA announced it had awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. the multibillion-dollar contract to build the Orion manned lunar space craft. NASA anticipates building eight of the reusable spaceships through 2019, replacing the space shuttle."

[NOTE: For the past two years the public has been brain-trained by dominator media to believe these scientists ARE CERTAIN that Apophis (a/k/a Jimi's "Electric Love" asteroid) will miss Earth. Media has been ORDERED to persuade us this is the case because a load of billionaires need to keep everyone's morale and production up so we can follow orders to build their escape vehicles and condos on the Moon and Space Station, from where they'll all watch us perish after the impact. Look at the next sentence in this report:]

[NOTE: Moral of the Story: WE'RE TOAST! This U.N. effort is a double-layered play charade staged to sway our opinions and attitudes towards upcoming massive expenses. These "treaty meetings" are a desperate attempt at pre-disaster "damage control" - the bottom line is that they already know the Rock is coming and are preparing to allocate all world resources and funds into special projects aimed to save a handful of "billionaires" who're pulling strings behind the scenes. These "U.N." meetings will be closed door with an agenda to spell out ways that populations of nations will be enslaved/removed and at which intervals leading up to the month of impact. The trick is: the massive expenses that are about to be diverted must appear to the public as if there are "results" that are keeping the situation under control. It must appear to everyone that NASA will save us. But the reality is that all of the funds are going into escape vehicles and safe havens on the Space Station and Moon for the super "rich." The really disgusting thing is how they've used their media to so dumb down the herd to obsess on "celebrities" that, if you explain to Joe-six pack on the street that these billionaires are all going to save themselves at everyone else's expense, cheerfulized Mr. six-pack will slobber back at you (Fred Flintstone voice:), "Gee, reeeeaaal winners, I'm soooo impressed, lemme shine yer shoe, more power to ya, God bless ya, baby, we're NUUUUMBER ONE!!!" (with erect index finger pointing towards heaven).]

[NOTE: The "search" for life on Mars is a disguised re-enactment of the Noah's Ark effort - build a safe haven where a few of our species might survive the long term unlivable conditions that will envelop Earth after the Rock hits. Build bases on the Moon and Mars for a few billionaires to inhabit while the rest of us perish.]

[NOTE: Michael Griffin is also the Bush Administration's think-tank point man who was used to announce that NASA had "made a mistake" by ending its Moon missions in the 1970s. That announcement is related to Griffin's new statement about the climate because Griffin's relaxed attitude about the future effects of global warming reflects the concealed policy that our leaders are not concerned with saving Earth's atmosphere - they realize the atmosphere is going to intercept an asteroid and become veiled for decades with impact-winter debris, so Griffin's unstated hidden priority is really Bush's "Noah's Ark" project - build bases on the Moon to shelter the world's billionaires before the asteroid hits, and conceal news of the coming impact from the sheeple herd of workers whose tax money will pay for building condos on the Moon for the "super-rich." This "hidden spin" is actually hinted at in the ABC News paragraphs below:]

[NOTE: NOT ANY MORE! Hansen doesn't seem to get it - ESCAPE FROM EARTH FOR BILLIONAIRES is today "central to NASA's science."]

[NOTE: - RIGHT! RIGHT! - C'mon - where's Fred Flintstone? It's obvious that dominator mass media realizes their Mr. Potato Head audience will just sit back and say, 'but yes, let's stop funding atmosphere clean up to save our biosphere and instead spend all our energy and resources to build condos on the Moon for billionaires! What could be more sheeple?]

http://www.rockprophecy.com/time7.html#compete


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InvisibleLuddite
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Luddite]
    #7999240 - 02/09/08 06:45 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)



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OfflinePhred
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: gluke bastid]
    #7999250 - 02/09/08 06:50 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

gluke_bastid writes:

Quote:

Does the totalitarian state of North Korea provide any sort of evidence that would suggest an invasion by a democracy would create a democracy?




Did the imperial feudal state of Japan provide any sort of evidence that would suggest an invasion by a democracy would create a democracy?

How much evidence was there that the Afghanis and Iraqis would embrace a democratic form of government? Yet both did. Judging from their voter turnouts, more enthusiastically than the average American does.

Quote:

More importantly, what gives one Nation the right to determine the course of another?




Morality. Note that "right" is not synonymous with "obligation".

Quote:

Doesn't that go against the very idea of democracy and itself?




Nope.

Quote:

I think an important question to ask is "what assumptions is the idea of bringing another country into democracy based on?"




If by "democracy" you refer to the system of governance currently practiced by the Western nations, and not Democracy in it's purest sense of majority rule trumps all, then the benefits of having as many countries as possible adopt that type of governance are apparent -- the most obvious benefit being that such countries do not start wars with one another.

Quote:

I think it is often based on the assumption that we know what the will of the people in a given country is.




Why do you think that? There was always a very real risk Afghanis or Iraqis would choose the most theocratic possible form of constitution run by nothing but Islamic clerics. Yet they were allowed to make the choice anyway.

Quote:

And in the long history of deposing governments (from tribal ones to communist ones) what is the success rate of democracy and western civilization taking root?




Offhand I can't think of a country whose old government was ousted forcefully by a Western nation or nations, and a democratic form of government set up, where that government subsequently collapsed. But that may be a memory lapse on my part. I'm not as young as I once was. I'm sure you'll be able to provide us several examples, though.

Quote:

What if the EU invaded America and demanded that we establish a universal health care system?




Oh, please. The US lacks socialized medicine because its freely elected Congress has decided not to enact the legislation required to set it up, not because the people of the US are being oppressed. There is a gigantic difference between the very paradigm of governance in place in a country (freedom vs totalitarianism, for example) and the level of services that government chooses to provide its citizens. Try again.




Phred


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OfflinePhred
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Virus_with_Shoes]
    #7999273 - 02/09/08 07:03 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Virus_with_Shoes writes:

Quote:

A lot of how people view the current conflict is tainted by the way Iraqis are portrayed by the media, which calls them things like "insurgents" and "terrorists."




I am certainly no fan of the American mainstream media (MSM) but you are projecting, here. The media doesn't call Iraqis insurgents and terrorists, it calls the folks attacking Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces (army and police) and Iraq's coalition allies insurgents and terrorists. At this stage of the game, many and perhaps most of those doing this attacking aren't even Iraqis, but foreigners. Certainly almost none of the suicide bombers are Iraqi.

Quote:

All we hear on the news is something like "15 insurgents killed today by US bombing." This dehumanises the Iraqi people and reduces them to labels...




Does calling a rapist a rapist dehumanize him? How about calling a burglar a burglar? Look, the fact is, those making these attacks are terrorists. They are enemy combatants. And again, they're not even Iraqi.

Quote:

...instead of what they really are: mostly ordinary people who want their country back from a foreign invader.




The Iraqis have their country back. It was seized from Hussein and handed back to the Iraqis several years ago. It is governed by Iraqis democratically elected according to the constitution drawn up by democratically elected representatives and ratified in a democratic national referendum. The so-called "foreign invader" will leave the instant the democratically chosen government of Iraq requests they leave.





Phred


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OfflinePhred
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: wps]
    #7999291 - 02/09/08 07:16 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

wps writes:

Quote:

You can't claim to be lazzies faire and then stick up for the PUBLICLY FUNDED war effort out of professed compassion. I don't buy it.




You'll really have to do a search of the old posts to confirm this (the oldtimers in this forum will remember this, though), but I've said here perhaps a hundred times by now (and I'm saying it again now) that even after all that has occurred, I remain unconvinced it was the correct course of action for Spain, Australia, Italy, England, the United States and others to resume hostilities in Iraq at the time they chose to do so, for the very reason you mention. If I were one hundred per cent convinced Hussein was a threat to any of those countries, I would not have objected. But I am not a hundred per cent convinced Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq was a threat to all those countries. I'm not even a hundred per cent convinced it was a threat to any of them.

This is the same reason I have long maintained it was wrong (in the sense of being immoral) for the US to have invaded Hitler's Europe in 1944 -- it was a waste of taxpayers money and of American lives (don't forget there was a draft in World War II as well, which makes it even worse than Iraq in 2003) to go after a bad actor who was no threat to the US.

However, my objection to the spending of taxpayer dollars on the project does nothing to invalidate the benefits of having Iraq a democratic country. Incorrect actions can sometimes yield beneficial consequences.




Phred


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OfflineRedstorm
Prince of Bugs
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Re: the white man's burden [Re: Phred]
    #7999362 - 02/09/08 08:15 AM (15 years, 11 months ago)

Democracy is the greatest system in the world, but that does not mean we should force it upon other countries. Democracy best runs when the social, cultural, and economic institutions are in place before the adoption of democracy.

Regarding your strawman about WWII. Germany had violated the sovereignty of numerous countries, who requested help from the United States. This is far different from invading a country and introducing democracy down the barrel of a gun.


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