You can't pretend to be an economist, after something like this. This is something quite other than economics. Love him or hate him, he is an utter fraud of an economist. "It is important to distinguish between two sets of moral considerations", says the Cold War-era apparatchik. "Our side or theirs", he means.

Oh yes, that's what the war in Afghanistan is about, killing brown people. Sure! I mean, the Taliban "aren't exactly feminists", as this exceptionally morally-discerning creature has noted, but it's not like they refused to turn OBL over for trial after he murdered 3000 innocent people from 80 different countries, its not like the Taliban crushed the minds and souls of hundreds of thousands of innocents under a steel fist of barbarism, and defecated, just for good measure, on the treasures of Bamyan. These Taliban, they are misunderstood, and just because they treat cattle better than women, and believe that democracy and tolerance are evil, this doesn't mean we can't negotiate.

I really enjoyed that Death in Vegas sift. I saw the other you sent up a while earlier. Wonderful tune, particularly relevant for me as I'm eloping to Vegas in a short while. I downloaded some Death in Vegas and I found it to be not nearly as cool as that tune; is there an album of particular value, or is this a group whose Dirge towers above all else?

Also, I really enjoyed the Queen Rania video. This made me recall a BBC production entitled The 50 Years War, in which a speech of Rania's father in law is featured. On the precipice of death by cancer, he had some quite eloquent and benevolent words that truly warrant sifting, if you have the ambition.

Cheers

Zinn's a fool. He means well, but so did Stalin.

"expanding not our military power but our humanity"; This sort of insipid, simplistic idealism is the stuff of Bush.

It's amazing what the Iraq war and two terms of the Bush administration has done to people. Many of these comments are shockingly stupid.

Hagel's the man. Too bad being a Republican with integrity gets you hated by Republicans and Democrats alike, or this centrist Vietnam vet might be wearing McCain's shoes.

This is a fascinating moral question. More opinions welcome!

I have the fuzzy happy urge to do violence on the fellow too. Although I think I already know on some level, that that revenge urge is what evil is.

wow

Looks like a bunch of mental defectives storming the UN, assaulting cops with flags. Sorry?

That is one of the greatest terrible cinema moments I have ever beheld.

Islam does not want to destroy western society. You can't define a billion people in terms of their revolutionaries, terrorists, and criminals alone.

Phrases like "Muslim violence" and even "Islamic terrorism" are propaganda terms, which have become norms because they are endlessly repeated by stupid pinheads like Pat here. These crimes are stamped with "Islamic", "Muslim", etc., despite the fact that Muslims by far suffer the most from ultraconservative or religious-extremist violence: Does it make sense that an 'Islamic' person killing an 'Islamic' person would be considered 'Islamic terrorism'? Does the dead person's conception of Islam 'lose', because that person did not practice political violence? And the victims are overwhelmingly Muslim, the sufferers overwhelmingly Muslim; but their suffering doesn't intrude on our world, doesn't get the headlines.

Do we usually define the whole in terms of the tiny minority? Do we usually define the whole in terms of the worst? Aren't we talking about "Militant Islamists" when we say "Islamic Terrorists"? Why don't we just agree to stop murderers, without lumping hundreds of millions of innocent people in with them?

I assure you, "the Muslims" mostly just want to make families and raise their children to be well and good, because that's what humans do. This fellow is part of the game of muddying the water, crystallizing a sense of otherness, and furthering the alienation of Muslims in Europe, which is quite at odds with making social peace.

"Multiculturalism", it always creeps me out when Europeans use that word, from either the left or the right, because I wonder what their alternative is.

So... macabre.

"a helicopter gunship attack on Las Vegas"

Oh I've seen this series. Absolutely phenomenal. I can't even believe the ending of that last part, I'm staring into flame and stuff to be sure the tape is still rolling...

If you like Metal and you know your Nietzsche...

I want to believe in the mercy of the world a-gain.

I heard a CSpan interview with Nixon dated around the same time, in which he insisted the war was a great idea and not at all a waste of human life. In his autobiography, I believe it was, Nixon argued that America had "won the war" but "lost the peace"--which seems to demonstrate his own confusion, about the possibility of "winning" a pointless contest of mass-killing.

The dominoes never fell. Vietnam went right to war with its ancient enemy China, shortly after the departure of the Quixotic, merciless Americans. And now right-wing scum celebrate the Cambodian Genocide as a gift to vile revisionism, ad infinitum. George W used it not so long ago, in contending that the USA never should have left Vietnam--you can guess what argument he was making with that pretzel logic.