Good article. And it's something the politicians should have been debating roughly 35 years ago. It's unfortunate that the Bush Administration marginalized any serious thought on this. I believed he should be impeached starting with this very reason. If he gets impeached for other reasons, I don't think I'll be satisfied. He's made us less safe by lying people into war. Most people are coming around to this idea. Why congress is being nice about any of it is mind-boggling. They're accomplices by doing so.

yaledelay wrote:

Earwicker wrote:Should I dismiss the majority of this board because they live in a country that sends mentally handicapped people to be executed?

Totally off subject, but people in other parts of the world understand that the U.S. death penilty is a state by state law correct? you can not be put to death in Wisconsin thank god...

Not off subject.

Idiot, up there, decided you couldn't take someone seriously if they lived in a country whose government enforced (generally considered) morally reprehensible laws.
In America the mentally handicapped can be executed. If you want to insist on pedantry then would it be on topic if I just said anyone from Texas shouldn't be listened to because of this?

Note - I am not saying that - I was drawing what I consider a pertinent comparison to STFs bigoted thought process (and I'm being generous calling it that)

Earwicker wrote:

yaledelay wrote:

Earwicker wrote:Should I dismiss the majority of this board because they live in a country that sends mentally handicapped people to be executed?

Totally off subject, but people in other parts of the world understand that the U.S. death penilty is a state by state law correct? you can not be put to death in Wisconsin thank god...

Not off subject.

Idiot, up there, decided you couldn't take someone seriously if they lived in a country whose government enforced (generally considered) morally reprehensible laws.
In America the mentally handicapped can be executed. If you want to insist on pedantry then would it be on topic if I just said anyone from Texas shouldn't be listened to because of this?

Note - I am not saying that - I was drawing what I consider a pertinent comparison to STFs bigoted thought process (and I'm being generous calling it that)

my asking of that question had nothing to do with your argument... it was more to ask something of the effect of "hey you across the pond, you realise that alot of us over here not cool with the state killing off of anyone much less people in the low IQ bracket" you don't think we are all for this practice do you? as a matter a fact many of us find it horrid, however we do not vote in Texas/Florida and can't do much about it...

each state is able to determine what is "cruel" punishment under our bill of rights.

sparky wrote:

STF wrote:I'll take something written by someone from a country where the penalty for getting raped is being stoned to death with a grain of salt.

Get stuffed, will you? How many Pakistanis do you know? I'm half-Pakistani myself, so I guess that you'll choose only to believe half of what I'm writing, O civilised one. Bigot.

I think you need to ask yourself if what Sparky said has any truth in it, and there is.

The Observer UK.
Zafran Bibi was raped, but a Pakistan judge decided it was adultery - now this young mother will be stoned to death

An international campaign site.
Stop Honour Killings

I'm no fan of US foreign policy but I think you shouldn't be propagating the popular perception of a total lack of the ability to accept criticism within the Muslim and Asian communities. People in New Zealand do fucking stupid thing sometimes... if someone says, "Hey, someone in New Zealand did a fucking stupid thing." I don't call them a bigot.

The reality is that Pakistan has an atrocious human rights record that can evenly spread across the current US backed dictatorship and barbaric Islamic morality laws.

Try calling a spade a spade and see if you can without the usual, "but the Yanks are total fuckers too!"

Two wrongs never make a right.

caix wrote:Good article. And it's something the politicians should have been debating roughly 35 years ago. It's unfortunate that the Bush Administration marginalized any serious thought on this. I believed he should be impeached starting with this very reason. If he gets impeached for other reasons, I don't think I'll be satisfied. He's made us less safe by lying people into war. Most people are coming around to this idea. Why congress is being nice about any of it is mind-boggling. They're accomplices by doing so.

Hmm. Here is a depressing quote that doesn't exactly contradict what you say, but...

MSNBC (June 23, 2007) wrote:Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in 10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11, even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.

link
Hard to be optimistic about the public coming to an accurate perception of what the Bush administration has done..

Earwicker wrote: If you want to insist on pedantry then would it be on topic if I just said anyone from Texas shouldn't be listened to because of this?
)

also if you exclude people on this board in that statement I am cool with the idea or writing off the whole state of Texas... as I bet many people here would be also...

yaledelay wrote:each state is able to determine what is "cruel" punishment under our bill of rights.

I am aware of this.

But you have missed a big point - which i thought I clarified clearly in my last post.

I do not think all Americans (or even all Texans) should be dismissed because of a (generally considered) morally reprehensible government policy.

But nor do I think all Pakistanis should be dismissed because of their governments (generally considered) morally reprehensible policies.

Holding either view would make you a fucking idiot.



jesus.

Gramsci wrote:

sparky wrote:

STF wrote:I'll take something written by someone from a country where the penalty for getting raped is being stoned to death with a grain of salt.

Get stuffed, will you? How many Pakistanis do you know? I'm half-Pakistani myself, so I guess that you'll choose only to believe half of what I'm writing, O civilised one. Bigot.

I think you need to ask yourself if what Sparky said has any truth in it, and there is.

The Observer UK.
Zafran Bibi was raped, but a Pakistan judge decided it was adultery - now this young mother will be stoned to death

An international campaign site.
Stop Honour Killings

I'm no fan of US foreign policy but I think you shouldn't be propagating the popular perception of a total lack of the ability to accept criticism within the Muslim and Asian communities. People in New Zealand do fucking stupid thing sometimes... if someone says, "Hey, someone in New Zealand did a fucking stupid thing." I don't call them a bigot.

The reality is that Pakistan has an atrocious human rights record that can evenly spread across the current US backed dictatorship and barbaric Islamic morality laws.

Try calling a spade a spade and see if you can without the usual, "but the Yanks are total fuckers too!"

Two wrongs never make a right.

Now I need to be walked through the meaning of a post. I don't understand this Gramsci.

Did you think Sparky made the all Pakistanis should be dismissed remark?

Or are you agreeing that Pakistanis opinions should be dismissed because of their government's poor human rights record?

Do you agree that the initial - no one should listen to Pakistanis - statement was an idiotic and bigoted statement to make?

I posted a link to this article because I thought it took a middle position which is closer to the truth than most of the shrill voices on either extreme.

Earwicker, I've said now any number of times that I think the US has to stop backing tyrants useful for short term goals because (1) tyrants do bad things and we shouldn't support that and (2) it usually ends up biting the US in the butt anyway, so in the long run it's not even in our own selfish interest. (I hope that's responsive to your question some posts back.)

Somehow we have to get past the notion that the US is either good or bad. It's both. There are so many beautiful wonderful things about this country, but there are also so many terrible things that need to be fixed.

But I remain an optimist. The American dream isn't just about being able to buy stuff. It's about people from all over the world living here as equals. It's about the right to be an atheist or a Muslim or Christian or whatever and still feel at home. It's about finding the humanity in ourselves and others.

It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to find this or that hypocrisy and to claim the whole thing is a fraud. But that's short sighted, lazy, not helpful, and just plain incorrect.

The genius of the framers of the constitution wasn't that they created the perfect country and then they were done. It's that they created a *process* that would yield increasing freedom and justice over time. They *knew* USA Version 1.0 wasn't perfect. But they also knew that given a critical mass of freedom to discuss, explore, disagree, and grow each subsequent version would be an improvement over the last.

So yes the Indians were virtually wiped out by something that could only be called genocide. Women and non-land-owners were initially second class citizens. And in many states Blacks were considered subhuman property. But over time the genocide stopped, women and the poor were given the vote, and Black slaves were freed, considered equally human, and so on.

This process is not over. That means that some people are still suffering. But that also means hope and optimism for the future is not naive, it's an empirical truth. But it requires, as it always has, hard work and a degree of faith.

not that interesting. everything has been said before, many times.