Aileron

Um, that would be quite a resume, especially how Bush simultaneously made a mockery of the Prohibition amendment AND the amendment that removed the Prohibition amendment. Please don't exaggerate. The only amendment Bush has ever been accused of violating is the fourth, and putting someone's phone number on a list just doesn't count as a "search and seizure".

I think the appeal will be under the grounds that Saddam thinks he is above any and all legal systems.

Well, keep in mind that "Should Turkey be allowed into the EU?" and "Should the EU admit Turkey?" are two different questions. The former is asking what's best for all parties, wheras the latter is what's best for the EU. Clearly letting Turkey in the EU is what's best for everyone.

Just say no to finite ammo. Yes its unrealistic, but has anyone ever played a game in which ammo conservation did anything other than annoy the heck out of you?

Well, the Turks coming in to Europe are moving in legally. If they are going in legally and !@#$%^&*imhilating they benefit the economy.

Well, as for ABCs' "docudrama", I hate it. There are works of fiction and ther are works of non-fiction, but writers really should avoid going back and forth. The First Amendment was never meant to take this kind of abuse, and if allowed to continue it is clear that future writers will use "fiction" to get around such inconveniences as the facts. I think the "libel and slander" restriction in the first amendment should apply to such docudramas, and only ask that whatever is done to "Path to 9/11" is also done to liberal docudramas like "Fahrenheight 9/11"

Nah, I just did a report on the Abbasid Empire. al Ma'mun started the conflict between Shi'ites and Sunnis in the 10th century. The fighting has been going on ever since. Its sort of a cultural anomoly between the west and the Middle East. In the west we had distinct organizations called "government" and anything outside of which was considered something else. The Middle East is structured with a bunch of tribes, each consisting of a couple families. Each tribe has some sort of chief. Leaders were just people who had the support of a lot of these chiefs. They never really had direct control, just the loyalty of a bunch of small leaders who had. Historically during the Caliphate, tribes could fued over local control, but both would claim loyalty to the Caliph, so the greater government would stay out of the fued. This was a necessity, because the greater government was needed to maintain the irrigation system in the sawad region. The current "civil war" in Iraq is just one of these fueds. They have been going on for thousands of years, but under the Sunni government of Saddam we in the west labled the attacks by Shi'ites on Sunnis as "rebels" and attacks by Sunnis on Shi'ites as "government reprisals". Truly the best thing to do is just let them kill each other, keeping ourselves, civilians who want nothing to do with it, and the new democratic government of Iraq from being caught in the crossfire. In a couple of years, the local leaders will know where their bounds are and will stop.

Well, I said "Yes" being a citizen on the United States. The reasons why a European might not want Turkey in the EU are as follows: 1) Turkey's "European" status in terms of geography is questionable. One can justify both letting the country in and not letting it in, so it comes down to other reasons. 2) Turkey doesn't bring in as much wealth per capita as most current EU members. Those EU members that bring in less than Turkey are clearly in Europe geographically. They are poor, but don't fall under reason #1. 3) Turkey is also a Middle Eastern country. If Turkey joined the EU, than the EU would have political relevance to the Middle East, which would drag the EU into day to day Middle Eastern politics. For instance, the current war in Iraq would suddenly become very important to the EU, because Iraq has Kurds, Turkey has Kurds, and if Turkey was part of the EU the fate of the Kurds would be important to the EU. 4) The EU has free border agreements, meaning people can p!@#$%^&* freely from any EU nation to any other EU nation. If Turkey was in the EU, the difficulty for an Islamic Terrorist to infiltrate any EU nation would be at most the difficulty for an Islamic Terrorist to infiltrate Turkey, which would mean a lot less cultural understanding is necessary from the infiltrator's part. As a US citizen, reason #2 means down to better distribution of wealth, and reason #3 would mean more European support for my country in the Middle East.

Its cultural and historical. Europe has historically believed in a balance of power...when one nation rose in strength the others would form alliances to unite against them. When over time another nation rose to power, old alliances would collapse and the nations would reorganize themselves to balance the new strength. This mindset is basically what caused World War I to be World War I- all the powers of Europe allied themselves with each other to form two equally strong factions, and when hostilities started, neither side could defeat the other until the US got involved and tipped the balance. It absurd to think that in the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union that Europe has forgotten centuries of policy which all in all was mostly successfull. Its only logical for those in the European condition to unite, because it would be impossible for individual European nations to compete with the US one on one given population and landm!@#$%^&*. It takes a continental economy to compete with a continental economy. This isn't to say that Europe is uniting to "make war" with the US. They are only doing this to avoid economic domination. That means that they want to help European economies. A good example of this would be the newest Airbus jumbo jet, which has parts constructed in about a dozen countries not one of them being the US. Not that I criticise...it would be incredibly stupid for them not to have a policy of unification. As I said, the Balance of Power policy was typically successfull historically.

No, not always. Sometimes people lie, but the lie is popular enough that lots of people believe it. That's how urban legends are created.

Well, its weird internationally, because almost no-one in un-biased. Europe's goal is to create an EU to become the anti-US, and their media is anti-US to cater to that opinion. The bias in Middle Eastern news is obvious. Latin American news also has an anti-US flavour because of economic resentment. I'd guess the best example of un-biased news is Japanese news, because they are strong enough economically that they don't resent the US and their culture hasn't developed with the idealogical need to always attack the big guy as Europe's has. When I said Fox was un-biased I meant in the US-domestic political scene. Worldwide it is not, but I for one a, a US citizen. That means I'm on a side and shouldn't take a position in the middle. News for the un-biased internationally only appeals to those with no nationality or to marxists. The former doesn't exist and the latter is such a small minority that I've only met one of them online in a political forum.

Oh long time no post here... Back to an old point...drug smuggling and human smuggling are related, though it is indirect. Truth be told, any and all security systems in the world can be breached. The only variable is how expensive it is to breach said system, though the costs are not-necessarily monatary. Generally, a system will be breached by somebody if the rewards outweigh the costs. However, once a system is breached, it is also breached to other criminals for free...the second criminal merely has to follow the path paved by the first. Illegal immigrants are poor...it is not worth it to pave a smuggling route for them. However, there is tons of money to be made smuggling drugs. The high profits make it worthwhile for smugglers to expand their routes. Once those routes are paved, human smugglers learn them from the drug smugglers and use the routes to smuggle their less-profitable product. The stretch I was referring to was the degree of problems illegal immigrants cause...they magnify existing problems, but the stated issues weren't caused by illegal immigration. I waited until I was 21 actually, and my father had tried to start a brewery and had dozens of cases of beer in the basement after the business failed. I could've easily taken one or two, or a hundred or so bottles out without anyone noticing....too bad I'm a math geek. I came from a pretty "Bible Belt" like area and EVERYONE (except me) drank before 21. Being religious and being a prick are two entirely seperate things and too many people confuse them.

Ofcourse once you become sysop ur skillz deteriorate, you can't get kills and you feel bad. Then people pick on your bad rec and you feel worse. Then your squad kicks you out and you feel terrible! next comes a year to infinity managing and refereeing squad matches...Now for many they can't take losing so much so they say "stop that or I ban you" or "apply for staff again and you get banned" or "I CAN BANZORS YOU ALL!!!! MWUAHAHAHAHA!!!" ...and then your zone dies because you banned too many people and let the settings go to the craphole

yes and...ur racist

To rank the US new programs (In my opinion) by quality from best to worst, its: Fox, The Daily Show, CNN, local news, then MSNBC. Fox is actually quite balanced. As a rule their talk shows feature two speakers of opposite opinions. Liberals think this is conservative because the liberal definition of "balance" is "interview the liberal and spend one sentence stating a straw-man version of the conservative opinion". Just last month, Fox interviewed Bush, the conservative president, and Clinton, the most recent liberal ex-president. Objectively, that is the highest possible balance possible without having two simultaneous presidents running the country. And MSNBC are idiots. They interview no-name radicals, feature idiot topics even as important news is happening, and their journalists can't go 15 minutes on the air without saying something so prfoundly stupid as to embar!@#$%^&* themselves. Back to the topic, both sides have their points, but the supervisor is being a prick. That cross isn't going to affect customer service or their professional image. Astro, to answer your question, it all started on the Sunday before last. I was playing in Chaos Zone when I respawned, had a nearby 6 man turrent try to neg kill me and ran into a stray bomb. Being lamed three ways at once caused me to slightly lose my cool and when that happens I like to make a "agfpauiafa" type message. Unfortuneatly I depressed upon the keyboard of my laptop computer with a little to much force and damaged my hard-drive. Thus I no longer have access to a home computer and needed to step down as moderator pending a new computer or change in schedule to allow greater access to public computers. As such the admins are making this forum overcomplicated.

I need to step down as moderator due to my broken computer. Without it I am forced to use a public computer which I don't feel I can access often enough. Besides, I have a lot to worry about with college and haven't been able to devote as much time as I would have liked to moderating anyway.

Well, that's not really true. Typically the development of an addiction is just a solution to a person's sucky life. If its not drugs the addiction could be video games, soap operas, or Star Trek. Those things aren't nearly as physically dangerous as drugs, but the idea is the same. The problem is that in our modern society we tend to leave people behind, denying them the proper social network they need for their mental health, and these people need addictions to dull the pain. It is truly amazing the problems drugs cause in our country: The use of drugs is the center of all organized and unorganized crime. This organized and unorganized crime turns our cities into slums. The slums cause people to move out of the cities, causing urban sprawl and environmental loss. The urban sprawl makes people have to commute by car for long distances, causing pollution and massive oil consumption. On a side note, drug smuggling paves the way for human smuggling as smugglers diversify. (Once a smuggler finds a route for one product, he can smuggle other products and/or people as well by that route.) The human smuggling causes huge numbers of illegal unskilled laborers to enter the country. The illegal unskilled laborers increase the supply and decrease the demand for unskilled labor, which causes the total wage/benefits package to decrease. The devaluation of unskilled labor makes the value of secondary education to become very important, which increases demand for college education, which raises tuition rates. On a side note, each illegal unskilled laberer does not pay health care or social security, and displaces a legal worker who would pay those things, causing a dip in the funds that go towards those pools. I admit the second string is a bit more of a stretch than a first, but the point is drug use causes a LOT of problems. As for its medicinal use...most medical drugs are addictive and narcotic, and that is why the modern pharmacy is structured the way it is. If Marijuanna has a medical benefit, there's no reason not to use it.

That at!@#$%^&*ude is at heart, arrogant and underestimates the abilities of our enemies. Neither Bush nor Clinton had any "loud" signs of attack, or atleast any louder than the usual background noise of false threats from misc. fools. We may be a superpower, but we don't know everything that goes on in the world drastically moreso than any other place. I mean, we are a little better at identifying threats than most, but ultimately we can only do so much. For instance, as a superpower our infantry are better equipped, trained, and strategically managed than most, but still at the end of the day our soldiers are as mortal as any other. Our intelligence agencies are similar. We have superior technology and training, yet at the end of the day it is and will always be possible to blindside us. To say either president could've taken steps to predict and prevent 9/11 defensively is just an underestimation of the sneakiness of Al Queda. Now, Clinton did have an effective opportunity to pre-emptively invade Afghanistan, which would've worked. However, that opinion is strictly out of hindsight and Clinton never would have been able to garner support in pre-9/11 America for such an invasion. But, back to the topic, it is ALWAYS in politician's rights to bash their opponants. Such statements are merely business as usuall and don't "stick" often.

Alright, now that is flat-out false. Secular leaders such as monarchs, emperor's and dictators have a WAY higher body count in that area. If you account for growing population (because if you don't its never going to be close), I'd say Genghis Khan was the worst, Hitler the second, and the Spanish Conquistadors as third. There is a point in debating religion, because otherwise people just say things in their own little cliques and dialogs don't happen. For instance, since there are no open debates between Baptists and Catholics, Baptists spend their services talking about the supposed evils Catholics do. (I snuck into one of these meetings myself, when I was only 10 friggin' years old.) In these private meetings no one argues, the arguements are one sided, which push the participants to extremes and thus their hatred accelerates. This fact is not only true in religion, but on any issue in which people dissagree, which makes dialog always important. Either we debate this openly or a violent underworld is going to develop from the silence. If for no other reason, that is the reason there should be open religious debate. As for my previous statements, its a deductive proof based upon their observed behavior. The problem with using such a proof is that it opens up the possibility of there being two explanations for the observed behavior and it is possible to choose the wrong one. Still, it is still a logical method that is used quite often in science, and it is indeed true usually. Granted I offered no statistical evidence, but such evidence is not very applicable to such an arguement which was more academic than real-world anyway. A proper disproof would consist of an alternative explaination for observed behavior. Example: The reason Muslims pray three times a day could be _______ If that poll is accurate then that 82% needs to stop giving us lip-service, get off the internet and actually stop the riots. Yes, the US has had similar groups like the KKK in the past, but we dealt with them before they became an international problem. And on a side note, in my personal opinion I will never hold sacred any ins!@#$%^&*ution which trains their children to hate me. The presence of such a system in the Muslim world is obvious, the only debates are whether that system is secular or religious in nature and how big or small it is.

Um, no, the crusades weren't like that. The rallying point was the Turkish invasion of Constantinople, but since it was too hard to retake they went after Israel instead. Infact the third and fourth crusades seemed straight out of the hippy 60s, as they consisted of armies of children holding flowers. The Spanish Inquisition was just what the acjective in front of it implies - Spanish. It was an action done by the King of Spain and his secular army. The point is I, a Christian, argue against your statements with logic, while a typical Muslim would threaten or attack you. Its not as if there is a religion in the world that does not consist of a sinfull population, it is just that healthy religions can admit the mistakes of their members and urge them to improve. It is a shame that so many people in the world are so weak in mind. Too often indeed people use religion as a crutch to compensate for that weakness. True religion is actually a challege for the strong. Muslims react this way because they have no faith in God. They hide this lack of faith under a veil of mandates. They pray three times a day, but if one has faith in God, one realises that God has no end, but we are mortal, so it would be cruel of him to demand our finite time to appease his infinite. It would be like creating a bird, but not letting it fly. (On the other hand, the "keep holy the sabbath day" Commandment in Christianity actually is a demand NOT to work 24/7 and to take a day off on a regular basis.) They also have a code to only pray with clean hands and that if they touch a member of the opposite sex (such as shaking hands), their hands become "unclean". Why? God created man. God created woman. God required that they screw each other to produce more people. If it was God's intention that man and woman not touch or screw each other once in a while, he made a mistake in creating man and woman in the way that he did. Since God doesn't make mistakes, its clear that His intentions on the subject were that we shouldn't treat the other gender as unclean. (Though there are reasons to not be too promiscuous. Like all things in life its a balancing act.) But to get back to the topic, Muslims resort to violence because they do not believe in God's justice. The universe is structured to punish the sinfull; how many great societies had corruption as a major factor, if not the domineering factor, involved in their downfall? Muslims are unsure that God's justice exist, so that is why they seek their own kind of justice by being violent to anyone they hate.

Actually it's just that D.C. is that out of control. Just last year two men attacked my father in broad daylight just outside his apartment. You know what, at this point I agree with what the Pope said. Face it, the general Islamic populace is violent, and through a combination of our desire to be politically correct and their unwillingness to think about their religion we can't even have true dialog on the subject. They say things much worse than anything the Pope ever said on a daily basis and have made a way of life out of commiting atrocities. When the west tries to stop the terrorism, we use our own convention which states that we must exhaust all other dimplomatic actions, so we negotiate. Your typical Muslim fanatic though will not sit down at the table until the western negotiator lies seven times saying: "Islam is a peacefull religion." Only then will the Islamic representative sit down, and then the first thing out of his mouth is "Since everyone here agrees Islam is peacefull, the problem must be with the West." Thus, the only result of the negotiations is a unilateral action by the west, weather its Israel pulling out of the Gaza Strip, the UN not enforcing sanctions on Iran, or whatever. These treaties never work because the first !@#$%^&*umption of the talks was a lie. Islamics are violent, and unless that increasingly obvious fact is dealt with or atleast recognized by the Islamic world peace will elude us. The point of the Pope's comment is this: Until the Islamic world can stomach a statement like that and argue against it in an intellectual manner, true dialog cannot happen. You know, maybe I've grown bitter, but frankly I don't even care if another holy war starts. The west has tried and tried and tried again, and that effort has only been answered by increasing sensitivity and violence.

Its true Iran is a theocracy, but the president of Iran is actually an elected position. Its just that one needs approval from the clerics before running for the position. The social identifier that causes Iranians to view themselves as Iranians is religious fundimentalism and violence. Their whole governing system is contingent upon fighting a foreign nation, for without that common enemy the population of Iran would start asking critical questions of their way of life and start revolting. While the elitist clerics are the ones who continue to feed the populace lines on how Israel and the US is the cause of all their woes and that our destruction would bring about happiness for Iran, on the other hand its the entire populace that believes them and inspires the clerics to go to lower and lower extremes. To that end it is both a top-down and bottom-up movement. I guess the best disproof of your position is Iraq, for if you were right and all of it was Saddam and the Baathist government, all the Iraqis would be holding hands in the streets right now and singing kumbaya. The key here seems to be the Kurds in Iran. The Kurds in Iraq are infact holding hands in the streets and singing kumbaya because Saddam is gone. The Kurds in Iran most likely also dislike their government and also have a positive opinion of us. If we can use them to get a voice to the Iranian populace enough so as to create an internal debate on policy, maybe we can diffuse this peacefully. All it would take is a couple TV stations other than Al Jazeera and maybe the populace's minds would change. (Though I'd be skeptical in terms of thinking one can change someone else's mind...it never happens here, and we are reasonable people.)

Jeez, the Bandwagon fallicy is used a lot here...apprantly if you don't agree with their views you are "ignorant". One point about Iran is that unlike most of its neighbors it is not a dictatorship. It is actually a fairly democratic nation, only with radical people who are electing radicals. There also have been several gatherings in Iran in which almost the entire civilian populace pledged their lives as suicide bombers should the US invade. That's not an act of aggression, but it is certainly an act of radicalism. When the Danish print an offensive cartoon or the Pope quotes an offensive sentence, these people riot and start killing people. I've had my religion insulted plenty of times, but I haven't rioted or killed people about it. And most of all, they say their goals are to destroy America. I mean, when a mob has gathered in the streets and chants "Death to America" is it irrational and paranoid to take them at their word? (as they are now after the pontiff's remarks - how does that make sense?) France and Germany aren't stupid though. Their goals are the same as they always have been, balance of power. They seek to create a counterbalance to the US, by creating the EU and ignoring terrorists so that the US must pay the price of fighting them. I think liberals judge people with a bowling handicap. They don't judge people by whether they are right or wrong but whether they are more or less moral from their usual behavior. For example, while the blatent acts of aggression from the middle east are wrong, such acts are typical for this part of the world, so liberals don't recognize it. Also, while the US' methods are still far in the high ground, we act acting less morally than we usually do, so liberals attack the US. I'm just saying that in real life bowling handicaps do not apply, and one shouldn't dismiss radicals' radicalism just because its typical for them and you think they are never going to change.

BTW, I am learning arabic and have studied arabic culture extensively for somone who's day job is going to be math and physics. Sever speaks of Iran as if it were Cuba, a small WMD wielding nation that happens to be at odds politically with the world's superpower. Clearly, while at this point the US doesn't like Cuba, Cuba's goals are self-preservation and self-advancement, which should be the goal of any good government. Because of that, they can be negotiated with and peace is possible. Iran's goals are different though. They view their whole nation as a chess piece in some grand conflict between the West and Islam. What I mean by this is if they had an opportunity to destroy a larger piece at a cost of sacrificing themselves, they would take it. On the other hand, the Cuban government's goal strictly is to protect Cuba and make Cuba better, so they wouldn't make such a sacrifice. Iran isn't dangerous because they disagree with western policy. They are dangerous because the glue that binds Iran to Tehran is religious fanaticism and as such their whole populace is willing to pay any price as long as their political opposition pays a higher price.

Yeah, and don't compaire Steve Irwin to the Grizzly Man. From a Darwinist perspective they are completely different. (Because Irwin lasted long enough to make a contribution to the gene pool)