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Politics, religion: was 2008 Elections...? - enter at your own risk
- Thread starter Tom Lowe
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Good point. Lucky for everyone in the world since her (if she is indeed the mother of us all) that she was promiscuous.:whistling:
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
I guess it as the chicken then. 
I guess it as the chicken then.
WehllllllllllllllL... there's still a lot of evidence pointing toward the egg. We may never have a definitive answer for that one, darn it!
Maybe there really is a Deus ex machina.
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
Who shook Lucy senseless?
Was it that Deus guy?
Hmm... he seems to enjoy human girls.
Was it that Deus guy?
Hmm... he seems to enjoy human girls.
No! No! Not Z eus... D eus. I think you are confusing your dieties :turned:
edit: although at the time the phrase was coined, Zee-us WAS the Dee-us... so I guess I'm the one confused.
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
Zeus is the chief Deus,
I know him since childhood... he's a horny little thunder-f*cker.
I know him since childhood... he's a horny little thunder-f*cker.
dalen johnson
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Just read an article today - I believe it was on CBS News - that seemed to say that Obama is now talking about not immediately withdrawing the troops, but hinting at a slower pull out then he initially talked about.
I remember watching the BBC News here in Hungary when the senate and house of representatives were turned over to the democrats on the basis that Americans wanted their troops home...
...and with all that the news showed, you would have sworn if the democrats got in that the next day a resolution would be had...but alas, no. Same things, nothing changed at all.
Obama is related to Dick Cheney. (Said it from his own mouth.)
Point is, if there can ever be a point, if you want change - "change you can believe in", your not going to get it from a republican, democrat, or any elected leader. - True change seems to only take place inside and from individual to individual.
Again, it just seems an irony that no matter who we have in office, its the same stuff...repackaged, but the same stuff.
Some call it a conspiracy - I call it laziness.
It seems its easier to put someone in an office and then point fingers at them when things dont go right. - I suppose I kind of subscribe now to George Carlins philosophy when it comes to voting.
Again, not right or wrong or finger pointing here... just after years of watching this, it kind of gets old and makes one wonder if there is not another alternative.
I suppose in reality the real power is in corporation anyway.
The laws made come because of them, for the most part, in order to affect us as the consumer.
Funny finding this thread here in Red...but it is in the off topic section, and that it is.
Peace
dAlen
I remember watching the BBC News here in Hungary when the senate and house of representatives were turned over to the democrats on the basis that Americans wanted their troops home...
...and with all that the news showed, you would have sworn if the democrats got in that the next day a resolution would be had...but alas, no. Same things, nothing changed at all.
Obama is related to Dick Cheney. (Said it from his own mouth.)
Point is, if there can ever be a point, if you want change - "change you can believe in", your not going to get it from a republican, democrat, or any elected leader. - True change seems to only take place inside and from individual to individual.
Again, it just seems an irony that no matter who we have in office, its the same stuff...repackaged, but the same stuff.
Some call it a conspiracy - I call it laziness.
It seems its easier to put someone in an office and then point fingers at them when things dont go right. - I suppose I kind of subscribe now to George Carlins philosophy when it comes to voting.
Again, not right or wrong or finger pointing here... just after years of watching this, it kind of gets old and makes one wonder if there is not another alternative.
I suppose in reality the real power is in corporation anyway.
The laws made come because of them, for the most part, in order to affect us as the consumer.
Funny finding this thread here in Red...but it is in the off topic section, and that it is.
Peace
dAlen
You're so misinformed I don't even like posting. But here's one for you.
Iraq: Worse for Christians Now Than under Saddam Hussein
Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
July 2, 2008
BAGHDAD (ANS) -- The Reverend Canon Andrew White, affectionately known as The Vicar of Baghdad, says the situation for Christians in Iraq is "clearly worse" than under the Saddam Hussein regime, toppled by US and Coalition forces in 2003.
In a segment of the CBS news program 60 Minutes, originally broadcast on Dec. 2, 2007, updated June 26 and aired on June 29, 2008, correspondent Scott Pelley asked Canon White: "You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?"
"The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.
"There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then," he told Pelley. "Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now."
"Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years," Pelley remarked.
"Yes," White said.
"And it’s now the worst it has ever been," Pelley replied.
In the opening sequence of his report, Pelley remarked that from the time of Jesus, there have been Christians in what is now Iraq. The Christian community took root there after the Apostle Thomas headed east in the year 35.
"But now," said Pelley, "after nearly 2,000 years, Iraqi Christians are being hunted, murdered and forced to flee -- persecuted on a biblical scale in Iraq's religious civil war.
Pelley comments: "You'd have to be mad to hold a Christian service in Iraq today, but if you must, then the vicar of Baghdad is your man. He's the Reverend Canon Andrew White, an Anglican chaplain who suffers from multiple sclerosis and from a fanatical determination to save the last Iraqi Christians from the purge."
White invited 60 Minutes' cameras and correspondent Scott Pelley to an underground Baghdad church service for what's left of his congregation. White's parishioners are risking their lives to celebrate their faith.
"The room is full of children, it’s full of women, but I don’t see the men. Where are they?" Pelley remarked.
"They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped. Some are killed. In the last six months things have got particularly bad for the Christians. Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed," White explained.
"All dead. But we never got their bodies back. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here but it's not easy to get the bodies," said White.
Many Iraqi Christian churches are destroyed or abandoned, Pelley explained.
Pelley continued: "The congregation is smuggled in and out of this secret sanctuary. Even letting 60 Minutes come to the service was a terrible risk. White is among the last Christian ministers here, a savior with crosses to bear. Larger than life, stricken with MS, and by his own reckoning, driven a little bit mad."
White was first sent to Baghdad by the Archbishop of Canterbury nine years ago, well before the Christian persecution, the CBS correspondent remarked.
Pelley said that to understand the history of Iraqi Christianity, start with the Last Supper. One saint sitting to the right of Jesus in Leonardo Da'Vinci's paiting is the Apostle Thomas, who took the gospel and headed east after the death of Christ.
In modern times, under Saddam, Christians were treated much the same as Muslims; Saddam's right hand man, Tariq Aziz, was Christian, Pelley said.
"Before the war," said Pelley,"it's estimated there were about a million Christians in Iraq. They were a small minority, but free to worship, free to build churches, and free to speak the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic. But, after the invasion, Muslim militants launched a war on each other and the cross."
On Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004, five churches were bombed. The Iraqi Christian community, which had survived invasions by Mongols and Turks, was driven out under American occupation.
No one can be sure, said Pelley, but White estimates most of Iraq's Christians have fled or been killed. Those still here are too old, too ill or too poor to run.
"Why are you feeding them all?" Pelley asked Canon White.
"Because, this is the only decent meal they’ll have in the week," White explained.
"They can’t afford food. So we're just moving from every other week to every week because they've got nothing," he said.
Nothing for many, not even their families, Pelley commented. The 60 Minutes team was confronted with one of many stories of depravity as the congregation left.
"Outside the church service this gentleman put these pictures in my hand. I can't show you the pictures. They’re just too much. They’re pictures of his children. His daughter who was 15 years old. And his son who was about four years old. They've both been shot in the head," Pelley said.
The man's children were killed, the father said, because he ran a liquor store. Liquor stores are typically Christian businesses there, legal, except under the Islamic street justice that rules since the invasion.
"So I hear stories of shootings, death, torturing, kidnapping, mutilation. I hear it all," White told Pelley.
The people with those stories once lived in a neighborhood called Dora, where Christians, Sunnis, and Shiites had lived together.
60 Minutes wanted to see what happened there so the TV crew took a ride with U.S. Army Colonel Rick Gibbs. His men picked up Pelley and the team under a rusting relic of Saddam's tyranny, a parade archway made of two enormous swords, and from there they headed to ethnic cleansing's "ground zero."
"We have 13 churches. None of them are operational," Col. Gibbs said.
Asked if this was the worst neighborhood in town, Gibbs said, "It’s the toughest neighborhood in town."
Gibbs commands the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, Kan. In Dora, he set up a combat outpost in an abandoned Catholic seminary.
Pelley remarked: "I was at a secret church service yesterday. A man came up to me and handed me some photographs of his children. They’d been shot to death. Somebody had come by their house and murdered his children because they were Christians."
"What are you seeing?" Pelley asked Gibbs.
The colonel responded: "I don't see a lot of that anymore. But when we first arrived we saw lots of that. We have 500 a month. That's what we were tracking. It would not surprise my soldiers to walk down a street on a patrol and see three or four bodies laying in the street with a bullet behind their head."
U.S. forces do not protect the churches, Pelley explained, adding that there's a hands-off policy for all religious sites.
Col. Gibbs says there's another reason.
"The Christians do not what us to guard the churches openly," he said.
Why wouldn't the Christians want Gibbs and his soldiers to protect the churches? Pelley wanted to know.
"They feel that if we are overtly protecting the churches that someone underground covertly will come in and murder the Christians because they’re collaborating with the U.S. forces," Gibbs explained.
The CBS reporter said there seems to be less violence now in part because of the surge of U.S. forces but also because the purge of Christians from Dora is largely complete. Gibbs says Islamic militants are on the run now.
"We hear that through our intelligence sources on the ground people telling us they’re running that’s how we knew to come down here with our next big fight to keep getting after them," Gibbs said, as shots could be heard in the background. "And that's what you hear over there is us in that fight trying to go get them."
60 Minutes wanted to see one church that had been destroyed but Gibbs couldn't take them there -- roadside bombs blocked the way. So he walked the TV crew over to a church next to his combat outpost. Because of the proximity, it hadn't been looted. In fact, it hadn't been touched by anyone for a very long time.
"This is one of the abandoned churches of Dora," Pelley remarked inside the church. "It looks like it was left suddenly and completely. There’s a fine coat of dust over everything in the church. It was all left just as it was. One of the reasons these churches have been abandoned is in this letter, a letter that went out to the neighborhoods of Dora about a year ago. It reads like this: 'To the Christian, we would like to inform you of the decision of the legal court of the Secret Islamic Army to notify you that this is the last and final threat. If you do not leave your home, your blood will be spilled.' And in case there was any chance that anyone would not get the message, the letter ends like this: 'You and your family will be killed.'"
Pelley talked to a young man, a Baghdad Christian, whose name he could not use. He told Pelley that after the invasion, posters appeared near his home.
"They were like telling us that Christians were against Islam, that we're infidels, that women shouldn’t drive and a woman that doesn’t wear a scarf would get her head cut off," the man told Pelley. "And I thought, 'What, are we going back to the Middle Ages?'"
He told 60 Minutes his family began going to Mass in shifts. Asked why, he told Pelley, "If like the church gets bombed on like one of the Masses, so like half of the family will be there and half will be safe."
Ultimately, the church was bombed.
Asked what has become of the people he used to worship with in that church, the young man told Pelley, "I simply don’t know. A lot them are in Syria. I don’t know any of ‘em that stayed in Baghdad."
His family, unharmed, fled to neighboring Jordan. But most Christians ran north to Syria where they've filled a Damascus neighborhood. Knock on any door and you'll find a story.
"They threatened this young girl," one woman told 60 Minutes. "They want her to become a Muslim. The boy is in danger of being kidnapped. My other boy is in danger of being kidnapped because we’re Christians."
Pelley talked with another woman was on a bus outside Baghdad, when gunmen boarded and demanded to know her husband’s faith. "They told him, 'How come you have not embraced Islam yet?' He said, 'To each his own religion,'" she recalled.
"He told him 'I am a Christian.' He told him to get off the bus," a child added.
They never saw him again.
Pelley reported that Christian refugees are now swept up in an exodus of historic proportions. The U.N. estimates more than four and a half million Iraqis of all faiths are running from the war. The United States has promised to help, but so far about 2,000 Iraqis have been allowed into the U.S., less than one tenth of one percent of all the refugees.
Those who remain in Iraq are bound together by a particular kind of faith known only to those under siege, Pelley said.
Why is this happening? he asked Canon White.
"It's happening because religion has gone wrong," White told Pelley. "And when religion goes wrong, it kills others."
"The Muslim religion has gone wrong, is that what you're saying?" Pelley asked for clarification.
"It has. And in the past, Christianity has gone wrong," White says. "And what I say to people very clearly is that the history of Christianity is no better than the history of Islam."
"Some of your parishioners must ask you, 'Why is God allowing this to happen to us?'" Pelley asked.
"To them I say, 'God is with you and he is with me and I am with you and I'm not going away,'" White replied.
Since 60 Minutes first reported this story in December 2007, the purge of Christians in Iraq has continued.
In February, gunman ambushed, kidnapped and eventually murdered Iraqi Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho.
Canon Andrew White is still ministering to what's left of his congregation.
**This story was based on a transcript of the 60 Minutes program that aired on CBS TV, June 29, 2008. It has been adapted for use by this news agency.
Copyright 2008 ASSIST News Service
"We hear that through our intelligence sources on the ground people telling us they’re running that’s how we knew to come down here with our next big fight to keep getting after them," Gibbs said, as shots could be heard in the background. "And that's what you hear over there is us in that fight trying to go get them."
60 Minutes wanted to see one church that had been destroyed but Gibbs couldn't take them there -- roadside bombs blocked the way. So he walked the TV crew over to a church next to his combat outpost. Because of the proximity, it hadn't been looted. In fact, it hadn't been touched by anyone for a very long time.
"This is one of the abandoned churches of Dora," Pelley remarked inside the church. "It looks like it was left suddenly and completely. There’s a fine coat of dust over everything in the church. It was all left just as it was. One of the reasons these churches have been abandoned is in this letter, a letter that went out to the neighborhoods of Dora about a year ago. It reads like this: 'To the Christian, we would like to inform you of the decision of the legal court of the Secret Islamic Army to notify you that this is the last and final threat. If you do not leave your home, your blood will be spilled.' And in case there was any chance that anyone would not get the message, the letter ends like this: 'You and your family will be killed.'"
Pelley talked to a young man, a Baghdad Christian, whose name he could not use. He told Pelley that after the invasion, posters appeared near his home.
"They were like telling us that Christians were against Islam, that we're infidels, that women shouldn’t drive and a woman that doesn’t wear a scarf would get her head cut off," the man told Pelley. "And I thought, 'What, are we going back to the Middle Ages?'"
He told 60 Minutes his family began going to Mass in shifts. Asked why, he told Pelley, "If like the church gets bombed on like one of the Masses, so like half of the family will be there and half will be safe."
Ultimately, the church was bombed.
Asked what has become of the people he used to worship with in that church, the young man told Pelley, "I simply don’t know. A lot them are in Syria. I don’t know any of ‘em that stayed in Baghdad."
His family, unharmed, fled to neighboring Jordan. But most Christians ran north to Syria where they've filled a Damascus neighborhood. Knock on any door and you'll find a story.
"They threatened this young girl," one woman told 60 Minutes. "They want her to become a Muslim. The boy is in danger of being kidnapped. My other boy is in danger of being kidnapped because we’re Christians."
Pelley talked with another woman was on a bus outside Baghdad, when gunmen boarded and demanded to know her husband’s faith. "They told him, 'How come you have not embraced Islam yet?' He said, 'To each his own religion,'" she recalled.
"He told him 'I am a Christian.' He told him to get off the bus," a child added.
They never saw him again.
Pelley reported that Christian refugees are now swept up in an exodus of historic proportions. The U.N. estimates more than four and a half million Iraqis of all faiths are running from the war. The United States has promised to help, but so far about 2,000 Iraqis have been allowed into the U.S., less than one tenth of one percent of all the refugees.
Those who remain in Iraq are bound together by a particular kind of faith known only to those under siege, Pelley said.
Why is this happening? he asked Canon White.
"It's happening because religion has gone wrong," White told Pelley. "And when religion goes wrong, it kills others."
"The Muslim religion has gone wrong, is that what you're saying?" Pelley asked for clarification.
"It has. And in the past, Christianity has gone wrong," White says. "And what I say to people very clearly is that the history of Christianity is no better than the history of Islam."
"Some of your parishioners must ask you, 'Why is God allowing this to happen to us?'" Pelley asked.
"To them I say, 'God is with you and he is with me and I am with you and I'm not going away,'" White replied.
Since 60 Minutes first reported this story in December 2007, the purge of Christians in Iraq has continued.
In February, gunman ambushed, kidnapped and eventually murdered Iraqi Archbishop Paul Faraj Rahho.
Canon Andrew White is still ministering to what's left of his congregation.
**This story was based on a transcript of the 60 Minutes program that aired on CBS TV, June 29, 2008. It has been adapted for use by this news agency.
Copyright 2008 ASSIST News Service
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
Nothing new.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
Candidates offer paradise before the elections and amending their program shortly after they've won. Or shortly before they win. Happens everywhere.
If Americans really want their troops out of Iraq, then they should flood the streets and protest in a civilized but yet - uncompromising manner.
That's the true spirit of democracy, governments are just tools.
Nevertheless, I think that a premature withdrawal from Iraq will result in an instantaneous Apocalypse in the Middle East.
This war shouldn't have been started in the first place. Not in this way.
Now, there's no turning back. Freedom or death.
My 2c.
"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”
Candidates offer paradise before the elections and amending their program shortly after they've won. Or shortly before they win. Happens everywhere.
If Americans really want their troops out of Iraq, then they should flood the streets and protest in a civilized but yet - uncompromising manner.
That's the true spirit of democracy, governments are just tools.
Nevertheless, I think that a premature withdrawal from Iraq will result in an instantaneous Apocalypse in the Middle East.
This war shouldn't have been started in the first place. Not in this way.
Now, there's no turning back. Freedom or death.
My 2c.
Joel, thanks for posting this. I confess to having not read very much of it, but what I read affords insight into your thinking.
I know you are sincere and care about things, so even though we see the glass in a different perspective, at least we care about the level of the fluid in the glass.
But it is obvious to me that you single out one aspect of a problem and make that the theme of your concern. It just seems you try to get all your rounds meticulously into one segment of the target to make your point, while I am more of a shotgunner trying to cover all zones in the target.
But really it is probably more about one's state of mind how we perceive the world. Just guessin' I would say you watch the news channels that continually point out how bad things are.
Try the Charlie ABC evening news or occasionally even the Katie CBS one. I watch them and seem to have a more upbeat and (hopefully) balanced outlook than you. Unless you enjoy doom and gloom reporting.
From their posts, Karapetkov and dalen7 seem to have a better view of what's going on than either of us. But that's understandable, because they get to watch from the spectator seats instead of from the inside looking out. Maybe we should live abroad for a year to gain perspective.
I hear the perspective is very nice in Tahiti. :w00t:
"I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel,
we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."
Ariel Sharon to Shimon Peres, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
THEY LIVE
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
Wow, is this really a real statement?
- Banned
- #497
How about this:
Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975574.html
You mean like pro life people single out abortion?
I tend to look at a lot of things. For instance,
1) Lying a country into a war
2) spending a fortune
3) hiring companies of friends with no bid contracts
4) and letting them move the headquarters to Dubai
5) Paying for it by borrowing from the Chinese and ruining our economy and the price of oil
6) ballooning the deficit beyond all Democratic administrations combined
7) to make life worse than it's been in 2000 years for Christians
8) Needlessly kill 100,000's of Iraqi's who had absolutely no threat to US and had no association with 9-11
9) To give the ones who survived less power and water than under Saddam for the Iraqis
10) and letting the guy who did do 9-11, get away.
11) Worldwide terrorism is up, not down.
And that's just the start of the list.
Number6 - you appear to be the one not looking at the entirety of the disaster.
Oh... and I don't have cable, so I don't watch any news channels. What I do know from my own research is they cover Iraq only a few minutes per week and have always sensored the truth of what's going on over there - which is much more violent than reported. If you don't think American news is sanitized and guided by the Corporations that own and advertise on those stations you're tragically mistaken. The truth is unlikely to appear on your favorite cable station.
Radoslav Karapetkov
Well-known member
- Status