+- Qbasicnews.com (http://qbasicnews.com/newforum)
+-- Forum: General (http://qbasicnews.com/newforum/forum-6.html)
+--- Forum: General/Misc (http://qbasicnews.com/newforum/forum-18.html)
+--- Thread: death penalty (/thread-3242.html)
death penalty - Rhiannon - 02-27-2004
Quote:Rhiannon Wrote:Look at the Native Americans now. No lands, no culture, no nothing.
As is the same with every culture in "New World". You can thank every Euro expedition that came over. I won't say Euro nations because a great deal of the exploration was funded by the Catholic Church.
I agree to an extent. The Europeans did kill the "infidel" Natives to save their soul or for any other twisted reason they had in mind. There is a book by Bartolomé de las Casas (it's in Spanish but there may be an English translation) about how the Spanish treated the Natives, quite bloody. But after Canada and the US became established nations, they subjected the Native Americans to torture, abuse and isolation in an effort to integrate them into society, trying to make them abandon their customs and traditions to make them more "Western". Since that didnt work too well, they invented the idea of reservations, and shoved all the Natives there. From Mexico down, there is more Native presense, and are not isolated like in US and Canada. Of course, they are as poor as the rest of the population, but their customs and traditions are well preserved.
death penalty - toonski84 - 02-27-2004
That's sad, but that's life, Rhiannon. If we fought gentlemen's wars, there wouldnt be war to begin with. That same motivations that drive people to either start or defend against war are the same ones that leave them ignorant of innocent people's lives.
Picture yourself in a soldier's shoes. Around you, people are trying to kill you. If you hesitate, you could and probably will die. So if a car runs past a check point or a soldier fires on you while standing near civilians, it's either you die or they die. Humans are self-serving, they won't die for a stranger.
As far as the bombs go, there was radiation, though more torturous, was not quite as devastating as the fires that ravaged the cities after the explosion. Nonflammable was not exactly the theme of Japenese architecture at the time, and people on the outskirts of the city had to deal with not only radiation but fires as well. Like in most earthquakes, the fires caused by the disaster can be much more horrifying than the disaster itself. This is why the incindiary carpet bombings of London, Dresden and Tokyo are even bigger atrocities in my mind than Hiroshima, because these we targeted, blind killings of civilians with complete and total knowledge of the aftermath.
death penalty - Seker359 - 02-27-2004
Quote:The Europeans did kill the "infidel" Natives to save their soul or for any other twisted reason they had in mind.
I was actually referring to disease. European diseases killed far more native americans than sword or musketball.
death penalty - toonski84 - 02-28-2004
True dat. Smallpox is a cruel mistriss...
death penalty - RST - 02-28-2004
Quote:The "going to Iraq for oil" thing is just a myth. The U.S. will spend more money fighting the war than it will ever benefit from in oil.
Anyone who's paid any attention at all to Bush's spending knows he doesn't care about the U.S.'s finances. However, this doesn't include his own money, nor the money of the cooperations that paid for his election.
BTW: The native Americans do have their own land. My friends go there to buy fire works that would be illegal elsewhere.
death penalty - TheBigBasicQ - 02-28-2004
A nice website I found:
www.bushflash.com
Personally I liked this one:
http://www.bushflash.com/swf/thanks.swf
The US economy is in recession because it has always predominantly been a war economy. Anyway, this is my theory why the Bush govt attacked iraq:
1. After the occurance of 9/11 US destroys Afganistan. It doesnt find anything useful in Afganistan.
2. Bush starts whining about Iraq's hand in 9/11 and WMDs which could be deployed and can destroy targets deep within the US in a matter of 45mins.
3. US & Britain(poor Tony =() attack Iraq while destroying almost all infrastructure.
4. US tries to contain the situation but there are too many suicide bombings which results in killing ~2 US soldiers per day.
5. Bush panics and asks UN to step in.
6. UN refuses.
7. Bush begs for troops from countries whose militaries have more experience.
8. He fails to get anything useful that will allow him to withdraw his troops and have a remote control on the situation.
---------Heres the interesting part-----------
9. Bush declares that rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done by corporates of the coalition countries viz. US & Britain.
10. Now since Iraq is bankrupt, all it can do is sell its oil to get money to pay off for the rebuilding of its own country and guess whose going to buy it?
11. So Oil + Money is going to come back to the US =P.
US will prolly disallow Iraq from selling oil to the 'non-coperative' countries.
Gist: US rebuilds iraq but at a price. The money for which iraq will get from selling oil to the US.
And for all those who will start whining about how the US is spending on war and compensation to the families of the dead US soldiers, I am sure Bush will extract enough oil from Iraq to cover that cost plus gain good profits off it.
The thing that appalls me the most is that the US citizens arent realizing that their troops are unnecessarily being killed in Iraq. Blind support is bad.
death penalty - Agamemnus - 02-28-2004
Quote:Blind support is bad.
...and so is blindness.
Quote:After the occurrence of 9/11, the US begins heavily supporting the northern groups in its war with the Taliban and establishes a provisional coalition government, where Hamid Karzai is first installed and then later elected in a new Afghan government. The old laws against women are abolished and more people start going to school. Freedom of communication becomes the norm. Elements of the Taliban still hide in the countryside and later the foothills.
Quote:After the occurrence of 9/11, the US destroys the majority of the Taliban's presense in Afghanistan, later installing its own government there.
Quote:After the occurrence of 9/11, the US destroys the majority of the Taliban's presense in Afghanistan.
Quote:After the occurance of 9/11 US destroys Afganistan.
Quote:After the occurance of 9/11 US destroys Afganistan and makes slaves out of those who survived the ruin to build its weapons that kill people.
death penalty - toonski84 - 02-28-2004
Blindness is also following vague conspiracy theories. While I dont support the war, some of the suggestions being thrown around are ridiculous, likening GWB to a scheming cartoonish megavillain trying to build a magnet to evaporate the world's leaders.
Any probable political intent for the war is more domestic than the oversimplified reason "oil." We have good relations with OPEC right now, and the presend administration is more interested in tapping into the untouched oil reserves northwest than importing more foreign oil.
The war extends from a number of reasons:
1) A preexisting desire to remove Saddam Hussein.
2) Genuine assumptions of evidence made from vague intelligence.
The rest, no matter how likely, are only theories. The Bay of Tonka fallacy was exposed over a decade after the Vietnam war. Whatever truth remains will be exposed in time, but only in time.
Another thing to recall is that the war is, or at least was a popular one. At its start there was a 70% favor to it, and congress approved with an even higher percentage. And even though that has dropped in the following months, to back out of Iraq now would be a bigger sin than starting the war. What's done has been done, and the only option now is to stay in Iraq, ensure that the new government is stable and slowly back out.
As for humanitarian issues, yes, it's sad. But I can't blame the military, they've fought a textbook war avoiding civilian casuaties as best as humanly possible. Given a clear situation, it has not been the army's objective to kill civilians as a display of power, in fact, not to kill civilians at all.
Think of the situation this way. A child stumbles upon his father's gun and kills himself. To one side of the spectrum, while terrible, it was unintentional. Therefore the fault lies in coincidence, and is unavoidable. This is how accidents happen but it is not the parent's fault for owning the gun. After all, the odds were completely against it, and if the parents did something to aggrevate the situation, such as leave the safety lock off, only then does it become their fault.
On the other side you have people who say that the mere ownership of the gun made the accident possible.
And here you have the political divide of ethics of war. Civilians die in wars, you can't throw artillery around without it happening. But depending on who you are, you see it as the direct consequence of the decision to go to war or as a terrible accident. The current administration sees it one way. You may or may not see it the other. This does not make the bad people, but in my perspectve it makes them bad leaders, which I settle with my vote, not with extremely negative accusations.
death penalty - TheBigBasicQ - 02-28-2004
Vague conspiracy theories? Only time will tell whether what I have said is a vague conspiracy theory or not. While the war was going on I had predicted that US will destroy major infrastructure(which wasnt needed, only military targets would've sufficed) and then the reconstruction contracts will be awarded to coalition nations only viz. US and Britain.
Aga, US took support of Pakistan against its so called 'war against terror' (complete BS). Pakistan is a known rogue nation. It imported nuclear technology, material from China. It proliferates. It supports terrorists. It allows terrorist training camps in its territory. It arms them, gives them money, uses its military to open fire at Indo-Pak border to allow these terrorists to get into India. It supports insurgency into neighboring countries. It is still hiding Osama. Oooooh yeah this is surely the war against terror. Talk about being blind.
death penalty - SJ Zero - 02-28-2004
tbbq, let me first remind you that all americans, especially gulliable conservatives, are experts on terrorism. Even though there's only been two or three major terrorist acts in the past decade, even though there are countries that have to deal with terrorism on a daily baisis by neighbouring nations, they know the most about terrorism. I don't really know why, but I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that they feel they're special because their entire anti-terrorist/anti-hijacking infastructure proved to be completely incompotent and ineffectual, costing thousands of innocent lives. Since they can't admit they were partially to blame(because that's just awful! I man....they ATTACKED! US! Our complete lack of defences can't be blamed for not stopping an easily prevented attack!) and launch a probe into the massive and quite OBVIOUS failures(vague conspiracy theories indeed) on 09/11/01, so they just start attacking various regimes they installed themselves, jusing a nice propoganda campaign to tell about how horrible and awful these folks are. (after all, if they had installed PEACEFUL DEMOCRATIC governments in their battle between democracy and communism, they wouldn't have anyone to go to war with!)
Anyway, election year this year, so hopefully Americans have had enough of both parties crap (though clintons penis wasn't really all that important in the grand scheme of things...funny, that.), and will vote for someone who can lead them in the direction they'd like their country to go, and act in such a way that they might start to recover their shattered world reputation.