I agree that America's strategical planning has been terribly flawed and definitey does not help to improve our position. It weakens our strategical positons, and wastes precious ressources, and does nothing to prepare for what lies ahead of us. I did not answer to you because of your criticism of Bush and the US, but becasue of your perception of Islam. Islam does not become a better thing just because Bush is an idiot. Both things have nothing do to with each other, and just interact in a time-window of coincidence.

The war you mantiuoned, exists since 1400 years, btw, and it is not exclusively a christian-Islamic war, but essentially an Islamic-non-Islamic war.

No problem. Only reason was not to repeat wellknown debates one more time again in public. That purpose has been served.

True. That's what I should have said - Islamic vs non Islamic.

Somehow this thread went from Bush stole the election to popcorn to religion. :hmm:


I need a beer!

And back to pocorn.....which, btw is reference to a smiley not in use on this forum. In which a smiley is holding up a sign on a chair saying "MORE DRAMA PLS" and eating popcorn. And so......(Eats popcorn).

I'm in general agreement with much of what you've posted throughout this thread, and you have the right sense of it here but backward: strategic and economic resources are at the root of the problem, and the rest is only symptomatic of that conflict.

To elaborate briefly: we, the west, have had our hands mixed into affairs into various parts of the ME, to one degree or another, for over a century and its mainly been about either control of oil (even if only indirectly through making sure its managed by friendly regimes) or strategic positioning (as in both world wars and the cold wars). Everything else has been a consequence of this meddling; we depose a government we don't like and install one we do, which is inevitably repressive and maintained in power with the aid of western "aid" (weapons, technology, etc) which is used to control the local population, disenfranchise them from their own homelands, or government, etc and then we scratch our heads and wonder why they "hate our freedom" ... meanwhile our politicians and media stir the pot through the subtle promotion of ignorance, xenophobia, and intolerance and what we're left with is 9/11 and the endless "war on terror".

Really though, it is not about religion - that is only a distraction. It is about control of us and them, devisiveness of us and them along religious/ethnic lines, and strategic & economic hegemony combined with good old fashioned profiteering (its no coincidence that the bush family fortune, cheney's fortune, and the saudi fortune all come from the same place and they have more in common with each other than they do with us... we are just the sheep to be manipulated).

To be precise, Islam is angry with christian priests for - amongst other reasons - they teach that Jesus (in Islam an important prophet) has been crucified. Islam teaches he has not been killed, but avoided getting executed, and someone else in his place was executed.

While the european churches and their earthly political ambitions have accepted wars as well as murder, the teaching of Jesus has not, and holds no word of accepting war, calling for murder and finding excuses for it, Jesus directly opposed this kind of violance, as to my best knowledge of the four gospels that are holding his teaching. Also, Buddha's teachings never have called for war and violance, quite the opposite. Islam, on the other hand, has the demand to use force and violance, execution and murder against infidels, explicitly codified in the Quran, at several locations, namely in the 2nd, 4th, 8th and 9th Sura.

Not all and everything is equal, some things and some people are of more and others are of lesser worth, and not all and everything is of the same value. That is the socialistic understanding of justice=equality, which is not basing on qualitative, but quantitative and material definitons only. We should learn again that tolerance needs limits to keep us separated from what we should not tolerate and accept as equal, for our own benefit and survival, else we tolerate ourselves to death, getting anarchy only and by that the law of the jungle, and in jungles not the tolerant and reasonable survives, but the strongest. Indeed, here lies the primary danger of the EU's determination to delete people's feeling of historical identites (deleting differences by that), and relativizing values and qualitative judgements so long until the are ripped out of their contexts, have been desintegrated into meaningless, in special contexts sometimes even hindering sub-portions of their former entities and by that have no more meaning anymore that politics need to respect and take care of. Having made anythging "equal" by making flat what was hill and filling up what was vally, the ground is prepared to welcome the "equal" and brotherly values of Islamic immigrants.

Socialists and communists had accepted an alliance with Khomeni to help him to topple the Schah. after Khomeni was successful, he thanked them by having them hanged up at light and telephone masts throughout the country. Westerners do not understand that the system of values summed up in the Scharia eats Western "tolerance" and "equality"in one bite. They are no match for Islam, and hold no attractiveness for true Islam. that's why they did not develope a market economy, and that's why Scandium is wrong thinking that all would be good if they only would get the same share of ressources and wealth. Scandium outs himself as a materialist by that assessment, and he thinks Islam also is only a materialistic ideology, like the West's thinking today is. But the attractiveness and cultural penetration power of Islam lies in it's rigid (interpreted as: strong) ethical value structure which cannot be put asleep by offering it a handful of dollarnotes. it will take the money - and still attract believers for non-material reasons. Corruption and tyranny always has been accepted and are a legitimate part of finding the new leader in islamic societies throughout history - as long as the leader is strong enough to make it to the top, and uses some of his power and wealth to push Islam and Sharia in the world as well. This is the reason why every help offered to islam, every gift given to it, and well-meant advise and assitance - is interpreted as a signal for the giver's weakness and willingness to surrender.

On Topic...

Ahhhh, that makes sense now! :know:

I love Canada! I shall move there I do think! :yep:


Off Topic...

BTW, how are you doing from the car accident? How is that situation coming along? I hope everything is going well!

:doh: :hmm: ...............:doh:

Me thinks SkyBird knows his extremist!

I like both our countries, but (naturally I'm biased and freely admit it) could not live in the U.S. Too many guns, too much violent crime, inadequate healthcare coverage for too many people, and the current government there is out of control.

Here in Canada we also have our problems, but they are ones that I'm used to so I guess they don't matter quite so much. I'm becoming increasingly wary of our conservative government, mainly because of its Reform Party roots and the influence Bush may have over our own PM in adopting similar policies. I think soon I may, for the first time, become involved in the political process beyond just voting; I just haven't decided which party I want to throw that level of support at, either the NDP or the Liberal party (I am ideologically closer to the NDP, but the Liberals tend to be more electable and they served us well during the 13 or so years they were in power).

I've made a lot of progress there in the last 10 days; I'm not sure how much is due to just passing a certain threshold in the healing process, and how much to these "miracle meds" my doc had me on. I think I will make even more progress once physiotherapy starts, but that is delayed while I still wait on the insurance company to see if they will pick up the tab or not.

That actually sums up the good and the bad of our healthcare system; I happened to be hit by an SUV at a time when I was no longer insured (despite popular misconceptions, Canada has a mixed public/private two tier system and not a single tier socialized system), having lost my health insurance when I quit my old job and having to pay into the different insurance policy at my new job for 90 days first just for partial coverage, and then 180 days (total) for full coverage.

But despite that, the medicare insurance program that every Canadian has still automatically paid the emergency room bill, the surgical consult, the icu, the x-rays and ultrasounds, ct-scans, inpatient medication, and the cost of the private room I was given. I would not want to see the bill for that. I'd imagine it is well up into the 5 figure zone. And my lack of private coverage had no impact on the type and quality of care I was given, nor did it cause any delays (in fact throughout my entire hospital stay I was never asked if I had additional insurance coverage). Private, secondary insurance here is something most of us also opt into and its very cheap when its offered through your place of work and useful for everything not covered by medicare. But there is no substitute for medicare, and I would put all my energy into throwing out of office any politician who threatened to eliminate or undermine it (as would millions of other Canadians, it is so deeply embedded into the national fabric).

But anyway, to make a long story short its going pretty well all things considered. And having that routine brush with death that is so common, along with all other kinds of accidents and violence that routinely injure, maim, and kill, its served only to reinforce my belief in just how out of all proportion this terror war is. Its all just so much hyped up nonsense and BS. Millions more people died just last year in the US alone from any one of Heart Disease, Stroke, Cancer, AIDS, etc - imagine what the $1 trillion plus wasted on Iraq, which has only served to create terror where it never existed before and kill tens of thousands in the process, could have done if even a quarter of it had been spent on any of the above causes. Yet millions of obese Canadians and Americans are so caught up in events in the ME and the Muslim boogeyman under the bed that they don't realize they'll be dead first of a heart attack, stroke, shooting, stabbing, or traffic accident. Yes, terrorism is a problem, but the US isn't doing squat to address the root causes other than to further inflame them while pissing away billions that could be better spent on police, intel, domestic security, and still have hundreds of billions left to spend on projects that would actually save lives instead of indiscrimately taking them. But then that would be too pro-life, and this US government is very anti-life as shown by the only bill Bush ever used a veto on - federally funded stemcell research, which has shown the promise already, even in its infancy, to cure all manner of diseases. But then that would piss off the fundie base and alienate the pharmaceutical lobby and cut off their campaign contributions, since government funded cures would undermine the profits they make on expensive treatments.... anyway, that is another tangent I am off on ;)

@Scandium,

Good to hear you're doing better. I agree, the US healthcare system is crap. This is a problem long overdue to be fixed by both Democrats and Rebpulican't parties. I guess there are too many wealthy young americans that refuse to help out the old, sick, disabled people here because of their greedy little ways. That's ok though, they themselves will one day become old, sick, or disabled, and without the money to cover it all and have to die a rotting miserable person.

True story about an elderly couple that I knew awhile back. It's quite sad...


An old man and old woman lived in this house just a few doors down from my parents. It was a middleclass neighborhood in the 1990s and no one in the neighborhood was struggling for money. The old man was a WWII vet that fought on the beaches of Normandy on D-day and lost his only brother there that day as well. He was 78 years old when I met him. He had developed cancer in one of his legs and he became very sick. His wife (about 70) took him to the hospital to try to save his life. Over the course of several months and several doctors visits their bills were pilling up! They had both been retired for over 15 years and the wife had to go out and get another job to help out. She ended up getting a job at a local thread and yarn shop making $7.00 an hour. She worked full time there but she soon found that the constant standing on her feet all day was taken it toll on her. She ended up getting fired by the store owner because she had to take frequent breaks to sit down and one day she fell asleep and was caught.

Her husband's condition got worse and she took him back to the hospital. They refused to work on him for failure to pay several previous bills that they couldn't afford. Their medical insurance was outrageously expensive because it usually goes up a lot the older you get. Finally, they had to sell both vehicles they owned to juet get him admitted again for treatment and admitted to the hospital as a permenant patient. She now had no ride to go and see her husband at the hospital and paying for a cab fair to and from each day is very expensive. I saw her leave her house one morning very early and saw her walk up the street. Later that day my dad and I needed to go to the store for something (this was about 4 hours after I saw that old woman walk up the street). We left the home and drove about 10 miles up the road when I noticed the old woman walking down the interstate. I told my dad that I had seen her leave her house earlier that day on foot. My dad pulled off the road and confronted the old woman. She nearly fainted into my dads arms. It was almost 90 degrees outside and she had literally walked 10 out of 20 miles at 70 years old towards the hospital just to see her husband.

My dad loaded her up in the car and we drove her to the hospital. She needed medical attention too now from heat stroke and exhaustion. She told us on the way to the hospital about her problems and the story that I've told you so far about. My dad agree to help her out and drive her to the hospital 3 times a week for her to check on her husband and she was greatful. My dad also gave her a thousand dollars to use towards paying off her bills at home. She really didn't want to take his money but did and agreed to pay him back one day if she could. Her husband took another turn for the worse one day and finally died at the age of 79. The old woman was now alone. Her childern were all grown up and never came to see her or their father before he died. We attended his funeral funded by the VA and other private veteran foundations. It was a beautiful funeral with a miltary band there to play taps as well. His wife was given the American flag for his military service and I remember her crying as she took it from the Army sergeant that presented it to her. I looked hard into her eyes as she cried and I could almost see her reliving her life with her husband again within them. I could see how she was remembering the times when they were young and happy. When they had kids and were happy parents. I really felt bad for her loss and I'l never forget that day.

A few months went by and me, my dad, and others slowly stopped seeing the old woman. I'd sometimes see her in the front yard of her house watering her flowers and picking up her newspaper. Sometimes I would see her in the evenings slowly swinging on her front porch swingbench that her and her husband used to sit on together just before dark. She seemed to just stare at her front lawn as a waived at her from my bike as I peddled towards home. She never waived back as she still just stared at her lawn. Perhaps she was remebering times in that yard she had with her childern or with her husband when they were young? They only time she ever would wave back to me was when she was watering her flowers or picking up her newspaper if I just happened to pass by her then.

One day the government came in and sold her house out from under her feet with an auction for bills she owed to the hospital for backed up bills. She was now 71 years old and homeless. Some family moved in and destroyed her flower beds and tore down her front porch. I never saw her again after that but I can only assume that she died very lonely and homeless. Her husband's sacrifices at D-day and his military service amounted to nothing in the end. What mattered was the money the rich snob greedy hospital wanted as if they were struggling. What a sick world this is...:nope:

First round is on me. :()1:

Popcorn IS religion! Nothing worse than cold, rubber-like, too-sweet or not-sweet-enough popcorn. It makes me even pray, I pray every time I buy it that they got it right, and I also pray that the bag is huge enough so that it holds enough until I am fed up with it, which usually makes me wishing it to hell for the next six months, so you see, no matter how I hold it with religion, it leaves me as a sinner, who nevertheless is forgiven by buying more popcorn. Eating popcorn is a spiritual ceremony, so do it with devotion: always eat only one piece at a time, and say a thankful prayer after each swallowing!

MGD in the bottle for me! Thanks! :()1:

(hoards popcorn)