I don't know what to say about your first post Krupo except maybe "pick up a history book and start reading".

Firstly, your comment that, "accusing Catholics anti-Semitic is beyond ridiculous" is among the least intelligent responses I have seen on VideoSift.

Archbishop Robert Runcie asserts that: "Without centuries of Christian antisemitism, Hitlers passionate hatred would never have been so fervently echoed...because for centuries Christians have held Jews collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. On Good Friday Jews, have in times past, cowered behind locked doors with fear of a Christian mob seeking 'revenge' for deicide. Without the poisoning of Christian minds through the centuries, the holocaust is unthinkable." Christian antisemitism is well documented. In fact, the main purpose of the Inquisitions (particularly the Spanish Inquisition) was to forcefully convert or kill Jews.

Then you ask, "And what's this about "torturing" Galileo?" Galileo was put on trial and threatened with torture and death by the inquisition for asserting that the Earth went around the Sun. His partner was burned at the stake for the same assertion. He was shown the implements of torture that would be used on him if he did not recant. So he did. And he spent the rest of his life under house-arrest. The Church tortured and killed to stop the furthering of scientific knowledge.

With regards to Fry, as a homosexual he is considered sinful. His homosexual temptation is considered "disordered", thus not sinful, but his acting on those temptations are considered sinful. This makes him, in the eyes of the Catholic Church, in a state of mortal sin (in direct contradiction to what you said).

Those against Catholicism in this debate won it easily. They didn't use lies or falsehoods, just showed how reprehensible the Catholic Church really is.

OK, I don't want to get involved in a religious debate, but I have to make a comment.

First of all, this "street corner preacher" needs to learn that while we Christians must be on the offensive (as opposed to being on the defensive) in order to convince non-believers of the truth, me must do so without being offensive. Jesus did not appeal to His followers by offending them; the only ones he deliberately offended were the so-called religious leaders of the day, such as the pharisees. Christ did not call us to get into a debate with believers of other religions, but to feed his sheep.

It is really too bad the young lady reacted so violently. Muslims claim their religion is one of peace and yet there are so many examples to indicate the opposite is true. I know, there are also examples of Christians acting violently (the crusades, witch hunts, the Spanish inquisition, abortion clinic bombings, etc), so don't think I am stating, "we are better than them" or anything like that. My point is simply this: if you claim to be a peaceful person serving a peaceful religion, prove it by your actions.

Lastly, a word on the young lady's questions and the preacher's inappropriate and incorrect answers. Yes, she was ignorant of Christianity, and perhaps even her own religion, but that is why she was asking the questions. Unfortunately, she was asking the intellectual questions that we as human beings cannot answer. God is not so small that we can put Him in a box and explain Him. There is no adequate definition of the Holy Trinity that any man can give. Perhaps Adam understood it, as he likely had full use of his brain before he sinned, but we as sinners can never hope to fully understand God. Nor can we hope to understand the concept of Jesus being God, coming to earth, living and dying as a man, and then ascending to heaven to be with God. Contrary to the young lady's statement, Jesus did not become God, he has always been God (John 1:1) So how can Jesus be God when he was a man, and vice versa. No man can say, at least not with an intellectual "win the debate" kind of answer. That is why Christianity is a religion of faith, faith that the Bible is true and that Christ is The Truth. More than that, however, Christianity is about having a relationship with God, living in God and having God living in us. Unfortunately there are too many believers that have not yet learned this, such as this street-corner preacher and his cohorts. In fact, I am only beginning to grasp it myself as I daily grow closer to God.

In Christ...

^ I was always led to believe that no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

"Well, I certainly didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition"

Absolutely brilliant.

Terrible argument pennypacker, i'd chip in on the debunk but everyone's doing such a good job..

I'll say this though;
There is no argument about whether this is torture or not. It is. No one can debate or argue their way out of that, this is torture as accepted.

You can sit at a PC and speculate with your crew cut and your reflective sunglasses and a gun slung over your shoulder with a roadkill cooking nicely on the stove, but take a few seconds to take the word of experts. People who have done it, and people who have had it done, people who deal with torturous acts on a regular basis, people who know how to classify human acts:

"It is considered a form of torture by legal experts,[4][5] politicians, war veterans,[6][7] intelligence officials,[8] military judges,[9] and human rights organizations.[10][11] As early as the Spanish Inquisition it was used for interrogation purposes, to punish and intimidate, and to force confessions."
-- Wikipedia, please visit the site and check the sources yourself.

I think the difference here is flat out ignorance. You have been raised in such a way as to not consider to the fullest extent the impact of your actions on other people (or perhaps certain types of people who you don't class as people). The end result of which is that, whilst i can imagine what it's like, and feel the terror of being tortured on a regular basis for something i don't know, you can't even come close.

"During World War II both Japanese troops, especially the Kempeitai, and the officers of the Gestapo,[64] the German secret police, used waterboarding as a method of torture.[65]"
-- Wikipedia.

Now go and tell your precious war veterans that you salute to your flag every morning on your crisply cut lawn that they didn't suffer torture of any real kind you cunt.

"Is Israel not simply a response to outright hostile actions purported by the States of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon?"

The short answer is, no. Israel is a classic settler nation with all the existential attributes and brutality of a colonial ruler.

Sometimes an article deserves reprinting in full.

(copyfree)

Date : 2004-01-29
''Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler''

By Gabriel Ash - YellowTimes.org Columnist (United States)

Israeli historian Benny Morris crossed a new line of shame when he put his academic credentials and respectability in the service of outlining the "moral" justification for a future genocide against Palestinians.

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

In anticipation of the publication of the revised edition, Morris was interviewed in Haaretz - ( http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/380986.html,
Hebrew original at
http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/objects/pages/PrintArticle.jhtml?itemNo=380119). The major new findings in the revised book, based on fresh documents, further darken the picture.

The new archival material, Morris reveals, records routine execution of civilians, twenty-four massacres, including one in Jaffa, and at least twelve cases of rape by military units, which Morris acknowledges are probably "the tip of the iceberg." Morris also says he found documents confirming the broader conclusions favored by his critics: the expulsion was pre-meditated; concrete expulsion orders were given in writing, some traceable directly to Ben Gurion.

Morris also found documentations for Arab High Command calls for evacuating women and children from certain villages, evidence he oddly claims strengthen the Zionist propaganda claim that Palestinians left because they were told to leave by the invading Arab states. Morris had already documented two dozen such cases in the first edition. It is hard to see how attempts by Arab commanders to protect civilians from anticipated rape and murder strengthen the Zionist fairy tale. But that failed attempt at evenhandedness is the least of Morris' problems. As the interview progresses, it emerges with growing clarity that, while Morris the historian is a professional and cautious presenter of facts, Morris the intellectual is a very sick person.

His sickness is of the mental-political kind. He lives in a world populated not by fellow human beings, but by racist abstractions and stereotypes. There is an over-abundance of quasi-poetic images in the interview, as if the mind is haunted by the task of grasping what ails it: "The Palestinian citizens of Israel are a time bomb," not fellow citizens. Islam is "a world in which human lives don't have the same value as in the West." Arabs are "barbarians" at the gate of the Roman Empire. Palestinian society is "a serial killer" that ought to be executed, and "a wild animal" that must be caged.

Morris' disease was diagnosed over forty years ago, by Frantz Fanon. Based on his experience in subjugated Africa, Fanon observed that "the colonial world is a Manichean world. It is not enough for the settler to delimit physically, that is to say, with the help of the army and the police, the place of the native. As if to show the totalitarian character of colonial exploitation, the settler paints the native as a sort of quintessence of evil … The native is declared insensitive to ethics … the enemy of values. … He is a corrosive element, destroying all that comes near it … the unconscious and irretrievable instrument of blind forces" (from "The Wretched of the Earth"). And further down, "the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms" (let's not forget to place Morris' metaphors in the context of so many other Israeli appellations for Palestinians: Begin's "two-legged beasts", Eitan's "drugged cockroaches" and Barak's ultra-delicate "salmon"). Morris is a case history in the psychopathology of colonialism.

Bad Genocide, Good Genocide

When the settler encounters natives who refuse to cast down their eyes, his disease advances to the next stage -- murderous sociopathy.

Morris, who knows the exact scale of the terror unleashed against Palestinians in 1948, considers it justified. First he suggests that the terror was justified because the alternative would have been a genocide of Jews by Palestinians. Raising the idea of genocide in this context is pure, and cheap, hysteria. Indeed, Morris moves immediately to a more plausible explanation: the expulsion was a precondition for creating a Jewish state, i.e. the establishment of a specific political preference, not self-defense.

This political explanation, namely that the expulsion was necessary to create the demographic conditions, a large Jewish majority, favored by the Zionist leadership, is the consensus of historians. But as affirmative defense, it is unsatisfactory. So the idea that Jews were in danger of genocide is repeated later, in a more honest way, as merely another racist, baseless generalization: "if it can, [Islamic society] will commit genocide."

But Morris sees no evil. Accusing Ben Gurion of failing to achieve an "Arabenrein Palestine," he recommends further ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, including those who are Israeli citizens. Not now, but soon, "within five or ten years," under "apocalyptic conditions" such as a regional war with unconventional weapons, a potentially nuclear war, which "is likely to happen within twenty years." For Morris, and it is difficult to overstate his madness at this point, the likelihood of a nuclear war within the foreseeable future is not the sorry end of a road better not taken, but merely a milestone, whose aftermath is still imaginable, and imaginable within the banal continuity of Zionist centennial policies: he foresees the exchange of unconventional missiles between Israel and unidentified regional states as a legitimate excuse for "finishing the job" of 1948.

Morris speaks explicitly of another expulsion, but, in groping for a moral apology for the past and the future expulsion of Palestinians, he presents a more general argument, one that justifies not only expulsion but also genocide. That statement ought to be repeated, for here is a crossing of a terrible and shameful line.

Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially. Morris, like most of Israel, lives in a temporality apart, an intellectual Galapagos Islands, a political Jurassic Park, where bizarre cousins of ideas elsewhere shamed into extinction still roam the mindscape proudly.

Nor should one think the slippage between expulsion, "transfer," and genocide without practical consequences. It is not difficult to imagine a planned expulsion turn into genocide under the stress of circumstances: The genocides of both European Jews and Armenians began as an expulsion. The expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 was the product of decades of thinking and imagining "transfer." We ought to pay attention: with Morris's statement, Zionist thinking crossed another threshold; what is now discussed has the potential to be actualized, if "apocalyptic conditions" materialize.

The march of civilization and the corpses of the uncivilized

It is instructive to look closer at the manner in which Morris uses racist thinking to justify genocide. Morris' interview, precisely because of its shamelessness, is a particularly good introductory text to Zionist thought.

Morris' racism isn't limited to Arabs. Genocide, according to Morris, is justified as long as it is done for "the final good." But what kind of good is worth the "forced extinction" of a whole people? Certainly, not the good of the latter. (Morris uses the word "Haqkhada," a Hebrew word usually associated with the extinction of animal species. Someone ought to inform Morris about the fact that Native Americans aren't extinct.)

According to Morris, the establishment of a more advanced society justifies genocide: "Yes, even the great American democracy couldn't come to be without the forced extinction of Native Americans. There are times the overall, final good justifies terrible, cruel deeds." Such hopeful comparisons between the future awaiting Palestinians and the fate of Native Americans are common to Israeli apologists. One delegation of American students was shocked and disgusted when it heard this analogy made by a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in Washington.

Morris's supremacist view of "Western Civilization," that civilization values human life more than Islam, has its basis in the moral acceptance of genocide for the sake of "progress." Morris establishes the superiority of the West on both the universal respect for human life and the readiness to exterminate inferior races. The illogicalness of the cohabitation of a right to commit genocide together with a higher level of respect for human lives escapes him, and baffles us, at least until we grasp that the full weight of the concept of "human" is restricted, in the classic manner of Eurocentric racism, to dwellers of civilized (i.e. Western) nations.

This is the same logic that allowed early Zionists to describe Palestine as an empty land, despite the presence of a million inhabitants. In the end, it comes down to this: killing Arabs -- one dozen Arabs or one million Arabs, the difference is merely technical -- is acceptable if it is necessary in order to defend the political preferences of Jews because Jews belong to the superior West and Arabs are inferior. We must be thankful to Professor Morris for clarifying the core logic of Zionism so well.

The color of Jews

Morris assures us that his values are those of the civilized West, the values of universal morality, progress, etc. But then he also claims to hold the primacy of particular loyalties, a position for which he draws on Albert Camus. But to reconcile Morris' double loyalty to both Western universalism and to Jewish particularism, one must forget that these two identities were not always on the best of terms.

How can one explain Morris' knowledge that the ethnic Darwinism that was used to justify the murder of millions of non-whites, including Black African slaves, Native Americans, Arabs, and others, was also used to justify the attempt to exterminate Jews? How can Morris endorse the "civilizational" justification of genocide, which includes the genocide of Jews, even as he claims the holocaust as another justification for Zionism? Perhaps Morris' disjointed mind doesn't see the connection. Perhaps he thinks that there are "right" assertions of racist supremacy and "wrong" assertions of racist supremacy. Or perhaps Morris displays another facet of the psychopathologies of oppression, the victim's identification with the oppressor.

Perhaps in Morris' mind, one half tribalist and one half universalist, the Jews were murdered to make way for a superior, more purely Aryan, European civilization, and the Jews who are today serving in the Israeli army, both belong and do not belong to the same group. They belong when Morris invokes the totems of the tribe to justify loyalty. But when his attention turns to the universal principle of "superior civilization," these Jews are effaced, like poor relations one is ashamed to be associated with, sent back to the limbo they share with the great non-white mass of the dehumanized. In contrast, the Jews of Israel, self-identified as European, have turned white, dry-cleaned and bleached by Zionism, and with their whiteness they claim the privilege that Whites always had, the privilege to massacre members of "less advanced" races.

False testimony

It would be marvelous if Morris the historian could preserve his objective detachment while Morris the Zionist dances with the demons of Eurocentric racism. But the wall of professionalism -- and it is a very thick and impressive wall in Morris' case -- cannot hold against the torrent of hate.

For example, Morris lies about his understanding of the 2000 Camp David summit. In Haaretz, Morris says that, "when the Palestinians rejected Barak's proposal of July 2000 and Clinton's proposal of December 2000, I understood that they were not ready to accept a two state solution. They wanted everything. Lydda, and Akka and Jaffa."

But in his book "Righteous Victims," Morris explains the failure of the negotiations thus: "the PLO leadership had gradually accepted, or seemed to…Israel...keeping 78 percent of historical Palestine. But the PLO wanted the remaining 22 percent. … At Camp David, Barak had endorsed the establishment of a Palestinian state…[on only] 84-90 percent of that 22 percent. … Israel was also to control the territory between a greatly enlarged Jerusalem and Jericho, effectively cutting the core of the future Palestinian state into two…" Morris' chapter of "Righteous Victims" that deals with the '90s leaves a lot to be desired, but it still strives for some detached analysis. In contrast, in Haaretz Morris offers baseless claims he knows to be false.

If Morris lies about recent history, and even grossly misrepresents the danger Jews faced in Palestine in 1948, a period he is an expert on, his treatment of more general historical matters is all but ridiculous, an astounding mix of insinuations and cliches. For example, Morris reminds us that "the Arab nation won a big chunk of the Earth, not because of its intrinsic virtues and skills, but by conquering and murdering and forcing the conquered to convert." (What is Morris' point? Is the cleansing of Palestine attributable to Jewish virtues and skills, rather than to conquering and murdering?)

This is racist slander, not history. As an example, take Spain, which was conquered in essentially one battle in 711 A.D. by a band of North African Berbers who had just converted to Islam. Spain was completely Islamized and Arabized within two centuries with very little religious coercion, and certainly no ethnic cleansing. But after the last Islamic rulers were kicked out of Spain by the Christian army of Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492, a large section of the very same Spanish population that willingly adopted Islam centuries earlier refused to accept Christianity despite a century of persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. 600,000 Spanish Muslims were eventually expelled in 1608.

Obviously, Islamic civilization had its share of war and violence. But, as the above example hints, compared to the West, compared to the religious killing frenzy of sixteenth century Europe, compared to the serial genocides in Africa and America, and finally to the flesh-churning wars of the twentieth century, Islamic civilization looks positively benign. So why all this hatred? Where is all this fire and brimstone Islamophobia coming from?

Being elsewhere

From Europe, of course, but with a twist. Europe has always looked upon the East with condescension. In periods of tension, that condescension would escalate to fear and hate. But it was also mixed and tempered with a large dose of fascination and curiosity. The settler, however, does not have the luxury to be curious. The settler leaves the metropolis hoping to overcome his own marginal, often oppressed, status in metropolitan society. He goes to the colony motivated by the desire to recreate the metropolis with himself at the top.

For the settler, going to the colony is not a rejection of the metropolis, but a way to claim his due as a member. Therefore, the settler is always trying to be more metropolitan than the metropolis. When the people of the metropolis baulk at the bloodbath the settler wants to usher in the name of their values, the settler accuses them of "growing soft," and declares himself "the true metropolis." That is also why there is one crime of which the settler can never forgive the land he colonized -- its alien climate and geography, its recalcitrant otherness, the oddness of its inhabitants, in sum, the harsh truth of its being elsewhere. In the consciousness of the settler, condescension thus turns into loathing.

Israeli settler society, especially its European, Ashkenazi part, especially that Israel which calls itself "the peace camp," "the Zionist Left," etc., is predicated on the loathing of all things Eastern and Arab. (Now, of course, there is the religious, post-1967 settlers who relate to the Zionist Left the way the Zionist Left stands in relation to Europe, i.e. as settlers.) "Arab" is a term of abuse, one that can be applied to everything and everyone, including Jews. This loathing is a unifying theme. It connects Morris' latest interview in Haaretz with Ben Gurion's first impression of Jaffa in 1905; he found it filthy and depressing.

In another article, published in Tikkun Magazine, Morris blames the "ultra-nationalism, provincialism, fundamentalism and obscurantism" of Arab Jews in Israel for the sorry state of the country (although Begin, Shamir, Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and most of Israel's generals, leaders, and opinion makers of the last two decades are European Jews). For Morris, everything Eastern is corrupt and every corruption has an Eastern origin.

One shouldn't, therefore, doubt Morris when he proclaims himself a traditional Left Zionist. Most of what he says hasn't been said already by David Ben Gurion or Moshe Dayan. Loathing of the East and the decision to subdue it by unlimited force is the essence of Zionism.

Understanding the psycho-political sources of this loathing leads to some interesting observations about truisms that recur in Morris' (and much of Israel's) discourse. Morris blames Arafat for thinking that Israel is a "crusader state," a foreign element that will eventually be sent back to its port of departure. This is a common refrain of Israeli propaganda. It is also probably true. But it isn't Arafat's fault that Morris is a foreigner in the Middle East. Why shouldn't Arafat believe Israel is a crusader state when Morris himself says so? "We are the vulnerable extension of Europe in this place, exactly as the crusaders."

It is Morris -- like the greater part of Israel's elite -- who insists on being a foreigner, on loathing the Middle East and dreaming about mist-covered Europe, purified and deified by distance. If Israel is a crusader state, and therefore a state with shallow roots, likely to pack up and disappear, it is not the fault of those who make that observation. It is the fault of those Israelis, like Morris, who want to rule the Middle East from behind tall walls and barbed wire.

Morris is deeply pessimistic about Israel's future; this feeling is very attractive in Israel. The end of Israel is always felt to be one step away, hiding beneath every development, from the birthrate of Bedouins to the establishment of the International Court of Justice.

Naturally, every Palestinian demand is such a doomsday threat. This sense of existential precariousness can be traced back to 1948; it was encouraged by Israel's successive governments because it justified the continuous violence of the state and the hegemony of the military complex. It may eventually become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

But this existential fear goes deeper. It is rooted in the repressed understanding (which Morris both articulates and tries to displace) of the inherent illegitimacy of the Israeli political system and identity. "Israel" is brute force. In Morris' words: "The bottom line is that force is the only thing that will make them accept us." But brute force is precarious. Time gnaws at it. Fatigue corrodes it. And the more it is used, the more it destroys the very acceptance and legitimacy it seeks.

For Israel, the fundamental question of the future is, therefore, whether Israelis can transcend colonialism. The prognosis is far from positive. In a related article in The Guardian, Morris explains that accepting the right of return of the Palestinian refugees would mean forcing Israeli Jews into exile. But why would Jews have to leave Israel if Israel becomes a bi-national, democratic state? One cannot understand this without attention to the colonial loathing of the Middle East which Morris so eloquently expresses.

But taking that into account, I'm afraid Morris is right. Many Israeli Jews, especially European Jews who tend to possess alternative passports, would rather emigrate than live on equal terms with Palestine's natives in a bi-national state. It is to Frantz Fanon again that we turn for observing this first. "The settler, from the moment the colonial context disappears, has no longer an interest in remaining or in co-existing."

Gabriel Ash was born in Romania and grew up in Israel.

The 9/11 attacks were carried out for explicitly religious reasons?

I disagree with that, Al-Qaeda like the Taliban uses a very nuanced and selective reading of the Islam, subverting almost all the conduct rulings mentioned in the Qu'ran with regards to warfare, specifically that you do not attack civilians. The 9/11 attacks were carried out because AlQ wanted to nullify the American status of being a world power untouched by violence, hoping that it would illicit a reaction which it and much more given that it allowed AlQ to increase recruitment through the way the US invaded Iraq and the implementation of torture.

Religion has always been used as an ideological system used to brain wash people into committing horrible violent acts, Islam doesn't really advocate subjugation of other religions, if it really did you would see the entire Islamic world rise up against the West. But it does do it? No because the actual teachings of Islam does not support terrorism. Neither does the Bible or Torah support violent attacks yet whole nations carry them out while praying to their gods.

Just as Christianity was used to fuel the Spanish Inquisition to get rid of whole swathes of people from Jews and Muslims to other civilians in Spain, so is Islam used to push forward violent acts. Religion is always used to reach a means to an end.

Furthermore it basically nullifies the actual issues the Arab world has against the US, specifically their continuous support of corrupt dictatorships in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the unlawful invasion of Iraq and its continuing problems and the staunch defense of Israel in the peace process with Palestine.

Favourites

1) Season - Spring, while the blossoms and leaves are still budding
2) Place in the world - Amsterdam
3) Children's book - "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
4) TV Series - Northern Exposure
5) Word - zesty
6) Film - Year of the Dragon
7) Curse - shitstain
Creature - The Faun
9) Past time - beers and shots in a Denver dive bar with musician friends
10)Person - Anais Nin or Shophie Scholl

Which one?

11) Dog or cat - both, but I prefer taking a walk with my dog
12) Sweet or savoury - both, but I'll take steak before chocolate
13) Cereal or Toast - both, Lucky Charms must never be underestimated
14) Tan or pale - pale
15) Shoes or barefoot - shoes, due to tender feet
16) Desktop or laptop - desktop for work, laptop for fun
17) Drive or walk - walk whenever possible
18) Drama or comedy - both, but good comedy is hard to find
19) Sex or food - fooooood
20) Futurama or Simpsons - The Simpsons is my #1 weakness

The Sift

21) Your fave personal submission - Blondie - Dreaming
22) A great comment on one of your vids - can't say; everyone here has their moments
23) Most off the wall member - quantumushroom; at least choggie had a heart
24) Favourite user name - too many; many clever names here
25) Your most used channel - not a channel guy
26) Personal dumbass moment - blowing my top or misunderstanding a post
27) Best avatar - they're all good - the avatar really frames the way you hear a comment being said in your head
28) Partner in crime - none, unfortunately
29) Do people offline know of your sift problem - no
30) Idea for the site - a way to subscribe to comments on a specific thread

About you

31) Where do you live - a hell-hole called Roswell, NM
32) Smoker/non-smoker - love the weed, hate the tabacco
33) Left or right handed - ambidextrous, right dominant
34) Hair colour - is thin a color?
35) Relationship status - a single liberal stuck in a conservative desert
36) How tall - sixish.
37) Children - no, unfortunately
38) Ever had an operation - no, thankfully
39) Best feature - generally patient and usually considerate
40) Use four words to describe yourself - complex, loner, creative, sensitive

If you could...what, who, when etc

41) Bring a famous person back from the dead - Henry Miller, with the hopes we'd be beer buddies
42) Give 50 grand to any charity - something for the children of Iraq
43) Send someone on a one way ticket to the moon - Bill O'Reilly
44) Relive a moment in your life - when I met a certain girl in college and fell in love
45) Have a superpower - precognition
46) Find out one thing you've always wanted to know - who pulled off 9/11
47) Have the opposite gender deal with something you have to - can't say, we've both got it rough in our own funny way
48) Be president for one hour - arrest the Bush Administration and launch an investigation into their activities
49) Delete a period in history - the Spanish Inquisition
50) Achieve one thing - publish a great book that was loved by all who read it

i flashed on Michael Palin as well, would have been a better choice because...
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Oh i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok...
http://www.videosift.com/search?q=python+lumberjack
tell me he wouldn't have been much better than this silly sarah person!

McCain to senior staffers: "damnit i said michael palin!!"

This video has been featured on game politics, so congratulations I guess, since at least the view count should shoot upwards.

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/09/01/spanish-inquisition-shows-violent-games-have-been-around-long-time

osrry for the delayed feedback. i went to the pub next door, got wasted, smoked a couple of joints... you know, celebrating totaly forgot where this thread is going. so please, beer with me, mkay?

NordlichReiter-> I'm a LHC groupie as well but it's kind of a narrow field, atheist sounds nice cause I am one but don't feel I'm up for the Spanish inquisition right now

MGR-> medical? I've abused my body for 34 years, man - I don't think I'm the right person for the job

mintbbb-> "fire, fire FIRE F-I-R-E f•i•r•e" (excerpt from *drugs talk)

bluecliff-> not much need for the *balkans channel now that yugoslavia is an ex-parrot

jonny-> thanks for reminding me of spacy... now what? so, *wings is off then

Fjnbk-> insidejokes is a good idea. we'll need that with the rate this place is filling up with ass gravy. but I'm not willing, maybe someone else could try that...

blankfist-> you are my sunshine, my only sunshine...

Eklek-> presentation sounds nice. right now, everything sounds nice

gwiz665-> my time just ran out.

i'm fucked up, stoned, drunk and quite pleased with the way this day went by. it's not everyday you find a diamond, even if it is made of bronze. i'm off to bed. thanksforallthefishandgoodnight

...with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!

With God, everything is doable, but there are consequences. Once again, atheists are choosing the parts of religion(s) they don't like and using them as walls to push against and build strength. You're trying to play the game with half a basketball.

Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world.

The monsters of history were mostly atheists or believed they were God(s). That's fact. Now, once again, a disclaimer: there are good atheists and bad religionists.

Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel).

Semantics. You knew what was meant by "devil" in this context: someone who is out for themselves alone at the cost of all others.

Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.

And, per your uncreative insults, it's obvious that being an atheist lends no one automatic wisdom.

Since you have it All figured out, let me ask, since the limits of your behavior are defined only by getting caught or the fear of same, why aren't you out murdering people and taking their wallets when you need money? Why don't you kick children who are in your way? After all, since you're not a kid you can't be easily kicked back. Why don't you cut lines and jump subway turnstiles? Eat food off the shelves as you walk through the supermarket? After all, rules and laws are just made up by other people, as long as they can't or won't stop you (or don't see you) you're free!

To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.

Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though.

That's referencing the mortal body, not the eternal soul. Genesis in this case, is not a new brand of Axe Body Spray or Phil Collins's old gig.

As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.

So Hitler was just a "bad example" while Mother Teresa cannot serve as even a good example?

More people died under atheist-led regimes than in all the religious wars of history. The peaceful "philosophy" beyond-all-gods is swimming in an ocean of blood.

If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.

This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning.

You're building a straw man. I'm not telling anyone to believe any particular way, except to suggest that in this Age of Stupidity, one's own judgment and values may not be the wisest, and certainly not at all times. Atheism, in that way, has no room for growth. If you're a mote in a pointless universe, then what? You've narrowly defined who the representatives of God might be and also Who or What God is. You've made the God-concept in your own image so you can knock God down. I freely admit my words don't prove there's a God, but yours don't disprove either.

What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.

FAITH IS NOT LOGICAL. That's why it's faith. People who have only their own hearts to follow are angered when told they're tricked--constantly--by their own emotions. Religion addresses the forest of emotions. Logic addresses the acorn of reason.

What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).

Since I've been an atheist, I've heard all this before. Atheism doesn't lead nowhere because there's nowhere to go, but because it can only accept Nowhere as the final destination.

This is the problem with religious freaks. They don't even know their own Bible. Hypocrites every one of them, IMHO.

Do you really believe only religion is hypocritical while atheism is "honest"?

In the words of one of my favorite movies, quantumushroom: "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

Well then here's your movie quote reply, "I'm not even supposed to be here today."

I prefer clarity to agreement. Good evening.

>> ^Bidouleroux:
>> ^quantumushroom:
Without God, there is no good or evil. Everything is permitted.
Lol. The mushrooms you're smoking must be really good. While we're making blanket statements, Slavoj Zizek said exactly the opposite, that with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!
Without belief in a Higher Power, the only supernatural being man can emulate is the devil. Even history's greatest monsters thought of themselves as good people doing what they knew to be best.
Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world. Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel). Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.
It's easy to make such proclamations when one is enjoying life and in good health. Those suffering through no fault of their own might not see it that way.
They might not see it your way either, so stfu.
Or read both. Religion is an intertwined driving force throughout history, in a world that demands meaning.
Only sane sentence in your whole post, bravo.
To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.
Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though. As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.
If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.
This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning. What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.

What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).


This is the problem with religious freaks. They don't even know their own Bible. Hypocrites every one of them, IMHO.

In the words of one of my favorite movies, quantumushroom: "You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

>> ^quantumushroom:
Without God, there is no good or evil. Everything is permitted.

Lol. The mushrooms you're smoking must be really good. While we're making blanket statements, Slavoj Zizek said exactly the opposite, that with God, everything is permitted. Why? Because God provides a small number of very general rules. Everything else is fair game. And then you realize God didn't provide an interpretation of how and when to apply those few rules, so now everything becomes fair game!

Without belief in a Higher Power, the only supernatural being man can emulate is the devil. Even history's greatest monsters thought of themselves as good people doing what they knew to be best.

Way to try and wrest your beliefs on the rest of the (sane) world. Without belief in a higher power there is no "devil" to emulate. You fail at basic categorical logic since your devil is himself a higher power (an angel). Atheists are atheist about all gods and "higher beings", whatever you call them. They thus can't emulate them per se, but only emulate the characteristic behaviors ascribed to those entities by religious morons like you. Those behaviors are human, they are universal: they existed before religion and even before language, and they will unfortunately continue to exist for a long time.

It's easy to make such proclamations when one is enjoying life and in good health. Those suffering through no fault of their own might not see it that way.

They might not see it your way either, so stfu.

Or read both. Religion is an intertwined driving force throughout history, in a world that demands meaning.

Only sane sentence in your whole post, bravo.

To be an atheist is to believe that Hitler and Mother Teresa are now both equally dust and nothingness.

Let's see here... "for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." (Gen 3:19) Oh, I guess you didn't read that? It's kind of near the beginning though. As for me I think Hitler, by showing us the darkest side of humanity and uniting the rest of the world against him has done a much better service to the world than the prayers of Mother Teresa or anyone else ever did. And if you really read history, you would know the Spanish Inquisition was more like Nazi Germany than anything else in recorded time.

If people were capable of crystalline reasoning and not tricked by their own hearts, there would be no need to acknowledge a Higher Power.

This could be true if a higher, benevolent power spoke directly to us all at the same time. But as it is now, the representatives of that higher power are human and thus are bound to be "tricked by their own hearts" and incapable of crystalline reasoning. What they say is bound to be tainted by "humanity" even if they received a message from higher up (this is even truer if you think all lay people can be representatives of the higher power, like the protestant churches). Thus, whether or not there is really a higher being is a moot point. What matters is that some people truly believe in this illogical bullshit, for better or (mostly) for worse.


What I said here is probably beyond your comprehension, but I thought it would do some good to someone (starting with me).

>> ^jonny:
discuss
jwray - you need to answer that question. Did you upload the fix and embed your own video? Personally, I think we ought to be able to do that if the original was not a self link, but as it stands now, it's definitely not allowed.


Nobody expects the siftquisition!

I don't know who made it, but the top suspects are Keyser Soze, Rick Astley, Fedquip, Raptor Jesus, and the sift-fairy. Rick knows the rules, and so do I.