BCITORGB wrote:
TnT says:
================
the women were grocery shopping at a
Safeway!
==================

Now I have to think you're giving ME a bad time. Women shopping in a
Safeway is a pretty superficial way of measuring liberty, freedom and
democracy.

Back to the history books. Why were American revolutionaries so
****ed
off at King George and the Brits? Weren't they shopping in
fashionable
shops in New York, Boston, etc that were every it as nice as all but
the best London could offer? Why ever were they upset?

Does the notion of a monarchy in 2005 not strike you as archaic? I
suspect it struck many "Americans" as archaic way babk in the 1770's.

frtzw906

I did not mean to imply that a Safeway in Saudia Arabia, marks the
measure of liberty, freedom, and Democracy, but it is a mark that the
invasion has started. It is when the people get enough of these
markers, that they understand that the notion of a monarchy in 2005 is
archaic, obsolete, and are willing to throw off the yoke, all by
themselves. Saves US from feeling like we have to militarily engage
every tin-star dictator or monarch. TnT

BCITORGB wrote:

i was reluctant to bring up the "immigration" issue because, too often
in europe, right-wing rather equates to foreigner hate as opposed to
conservative economics.

this relates, i fear to my earlier post about fundamentalist nutbars of
all stripes. in the cases of denmark and in the netherlands, very
progrssive and tolerant people have been driven into the arms of the
right-wing hate mongers because islamic fundamentalists have abused the
ever-so tolerant welcomes (i'd welcome wilko's perspective on this).

The way I see it, very few Dutch people are actually moving over to the
political right because of the murder of Theo van Gogh. What has been
happening shortly after the murder was that some right wing groups, and
a couple of numb-brained individuals from both muslim and christian
sides tried to ride on the train of dissent by setting fire to a couple
of schools, mosques and churches. That lasted for a couple of days after
the murder, and it stopped completely after those first couple of days,
in part because the Dutch media stopped the media hysteria.

What has become very clear after the murder, which IMHO is more
disturbing than the so called anti-islamic violence rising, is that the
openness of our society has changed. People like Theo van Gogh, who used
very openly hostile remarks towards muslims, like calling them
"goat-****ers" among other things, were slowly considered a normal
phenomenae. As a result, a lot of denegrating things were said about
muslims, and public sentiment towards being permitted to insult
minorities changed.

It's almost as if a magnifying glass has been placed over the muslim
minorities, filtering out what seems worth targeting and ignoring what
is positive.

A good developemnt of all of this has been that no longer the fake veil
of integration is covering all kinds of minority problems, but that they
are now openly discussed.

The negative side is that the government has tried the U.S. scare tactic
and it is now trying to limit the population's freedom with the excuse
of fighting terrorism.

Considering how much support the current government is losing in polls,
I think that their military support of the Iraq occupation and their
willingness to kiss U.S. butt despite the obvious lies and deception
just to stay trade partners with the U.S. will make them lose the next
election.

as i see it, denmark and holland are current manifestations of every
small="L" liberal's dilemma -- we can tolerate just about anything
expect intolerance.

Denmark is actually rather intolerant, with a considerable list of
minority unfriendly and minority intolerant laws and regulations. Think
about regulations not allowing more than a certain amount of minorities
in a certain area, people from minorities without a job being prohibited
to live in certain areas and so on...

Austrian right wing politician Joerg Haider actually tried to shape his
province Kaernten after the Danish model.

as i see the dutch situation (the recent killings of right-wing
politician and playwright) the dutch, with their multi-pillar approach
to society were fairly tolerant of islamic refugees/immigrants...
however, it was when the islamics decided that the system was too
tolerant for their religious belief and started agitating for change
that the dutch populace turned...

That's another side to the story. Because muslims are tolerated and left
to do what they as long as they bother no-one, we expect them to respect
others and not try to force their beliefs onto others as well. Alas, a
few of them fail to understand that. Mind you, that also goes for the
rather irritating U.S. Jehova's witnesses that go from door to door
trying to bring most people something they don't want or need either.

i liken it to someone coming into the usa and trying to change the
constitution (outside of the normal amendment process). this tolerance
was a cornerstone of what defined the netherlands: it was not
negotiable.

Yup, you've got a point there.

my view (and i stand to be corrected) was that the upsurge of the
right-wing can be attributed to pig-headed fundamentalism (in this case
islamic).

There is very little upsurge of the right wing, although I'm positive
that they will gain a couple of seats. A single politician in the
currently right-most party (which are called the "Liberals" here :-) )
has found them not to be anti-minorities enough, and he started his own
faction. Just after the murder he was estimated in the polls at
seventeen seats. That's now down to just a few, several of which are now
more because of him going in against the ruling Liberals than because of
how much he appeals to anti-minorities groups within our society.

Seeing how we have roughly a dozen parties in parliament, and maybe
double that waiting to enter the elections every time, the coalition
that is in the government better be really aware of the sentiments of
the population and not do too many things that are opposing the popular
political opinion (like the invasion of Iraq) or they will lose the next
election to a newcomer to the political arena (which is what happened
here right after the murder of Pim Fortuyn by a crazy environmentalist).

again, i'm of the impression that the danish situation is a parallel.

I think that the difference is a bit more nuanced, but I didn't follow
Danish developments in detail recently. From what I understand the
sitting government gained seats in the recent election, for the most
part because they actually did quite a bit to deal with immigrant
problems in Danmark.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

"BCITORGB" wrote in message
oups.com...
rick says:
=========
Fortunately W isn't directly in charge of the education of a
million kids, mr Kennedy is.
==========

Unfortunately, "W" is in charge of the most powerful nation.

rick, you display an interesting bit of (il)logic. By your
reckoning,
then, a minister of education should be more intelligent than
the
leader of the world's leading economy and military.
=============================
No, didn't say that at all. That's your bit of illogical
projection. But, an education minister should be able to at
least count up to 10 without any problems. Fortunately, W is
running the US instead of a minor backwoods education system.



If you're representative of American voters, I'm beginning to
see why
Americans voted as they did.
=====================
Really? Your lack of logic says you have nothing to say about
it. maybe US voters believe more in their country and themselves
than those like you that depend only on what the government will
give you.

Just in case you're also too stupid for sarcasm, my daughter is
in an Ontario school.

frtzw906



Canoe North
http://home.earthlink.net/~etterr/

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tovarich Weiser says:
===========
I'm merely supporting price controls and subsidies
============

Which implies central planning insofar as a central government decides
on the allocation of scarce resources, not Adam Smith's "invisible
hand".

True, but limited government planning regarding the allocation of scarce
resources and subsidies to strategic industries is a far cry from socialism.


As to how this is different from welfare to the poor, you have not made
clear.

What's unclear about "Government support of industry is government support
of industry, which produces things that add to the nation's prosperity in
return for the economic protection and support. Welfare is a drain on the
system consisting of money given to people who produce nothing in return."

This is corporate welfare

Buzz-word. "Welfare" is a grant of money to poor individuals with no
expectation of repayment. Subsidies to "corporations" involved in
agriculture are grants of money made with the express purpose of keeping the
agricultural capacity of the US strong, with an expectation that these
businesses will continue to farm and provide agricultural products to the
economy and the GNP. It's sheik to call subsidies "corporate welfare," but
it's also factually incorrect.

which, in the specific case of
agri-business, may well be driving TnT's sugar beet in-laws and other
ma and pa farms out of existence.

What's driving small farmers out of business is the aging farmer population
and the fact that most young people have no interest in being farmers, which
is, and has for a long time, been a hardscrabble, below-poverty-line
existence that's only attractive to some because of the lifestyle, which
requires great sacrifices in terms of comfort and wealth. Fact is that more
than 60% of small farmers must take off-farm jobs to survive at all.

As for large "corporate" farming, it's simply the wave of the future.
Economies of scale dictate that agricultural crop production be done on a
massive scale, which requires a large investment in both land and equipment,
not to mention huge costs of production. Only a corporation that has
significant capital can really afford to farm these days.

Fifty years ago, a corn harvesting machine might cost $2000. Today, a wheat
combine, a corn harvester or even a tractor may cost $100,000 to $250,000 or
more. It's economic suicide for a farmer with a few hundred, or even a few
thousand acres to try to buy new equipment. Only someone with tens to
hundreds of thousands of acres, who can move equipment around efficiently to
cultivate enormous fields and benefit from the economies of scale can afford
to buy modern farm equipment.

That means large corporations. The "family farm" is, by and large, on the
way out, and people interested in farming will end up working for large
corporate farms by necessity.

That's the sad, hard truth.

But that doesn't mean that agriculture, including large corporate
agriculture, does not deserve subsidies and price protections against
low-cost foreign crops to prevent the decline of agriculture overall.


Further, we have yet to establish that orange groves in the desert
serve some sort of national interest. Seems like a bad idea if the the
price of the oranges doesn't reflect the true cost of growing them.
Wouldn't we be better off eating apples?

People like oranges, and I'd certainly rather they come from the US than
from a foreign nation. Whether oranges are worthy of price supports and
protections is, of course, a matter of government policy, and government
policy reflects the will of the people, however remotely. I'm more
interested in supporting production of food staples like wheat, corn, beef
and other "non-luxury" crops. But, if a farmer wants to raise oranges, it's
better to subsidize him and keep his land in production than it is to end up
with him selling out to a developer. Once the land is converted from
agricultural use, it's gone forever.


Ultimately, somebody has to pay the price of the water.

Yes, so what? Everybody has to pay for water, one way or another.

Most likely it
is Henry Homemaker when he pays higher residential water rates.

Why is Henry Homemaker any more entitled to low-cost water than the
agriculturalist? Henry Homemaker has to eat, and the vast majority of the
water he consumes comes directly from the food he eats...water put there by
the farmer.

This
would be tolerable if our agri-business firms operated as non-profits.
As they don't, Henery Homemaker is subsidizing those who hold shares in
agri-business. That sounds like WELFARE to me.

We all subsidize agriculture because we pay taxes that pay subsidies. So
what? It's not welfare because those subsidies are not simply given away,
they are invested in American agriculture, which, as I said, is a strategic
resource that once destroyed, cannot come back.


Welfare to the poor further serves the purpose of reducing the nation's
income disparity.

No, it merely disempowers and enslaves those who take it. They become
dependent on the dole, and they adjust their lifestyles to live on the dole,
and never seek to better themselves or become productive members of society.
Thus, they become permanent, useless drains on the economy. Our system
rewards hard work and innovation, not selfish laziness.

Check your history books for the consequences of
income disparity, Tovarich. You'll then understand why this is of
strategic importance to your government.

I grant you that CEO salaries are out of control in the US, as they are
everywhere, but such salaries comprise a minute fraction of the GDP and
"income disparity" is not resolved or reduced by simply giving people money
from someone else's pocket. It's reduced by putting people to work so they
become producers instead of leeches. That's why welfare-to-work reform in
the US has been so successful.

The real problem is that many welfare leeches simply do not WANT to work,
they prefer to take the dole and spend their lives sitting on the stoop or
dealing drugs to each other.

Contrast this with the hordes of illegal aliens flooding into this country
to work extremely hard at jobs that "Americans won't do." Americans won't do
those jobs because they are a) being paid to be idle, b) they are lazy bums
who don't want to sweat and c) the jobs they could be doing are filled with
illegal aliens. Remove the illegals and there would be plenty of jobs for
Americans...albeit low-paying stoop-labor jobs that aren't much fun at all.
Still, as the illegals know, stoop-labor beats starvation...something that
is almost entirely unknown in this country. (Note: being hungry is not the
same thing as starvation...Please try to find the last time someone in this
country died from starvation because no food was available.)

If we put people in the position of either working or starving, chances are
they will work, if they can. Hunger is a great motivator. Just look at the
Depression. Welfare was started during the Depression not because of "income
disparities," but because, due to the crop failures and drought, combined
with the stock market crash, there simply was no work available because
there was no money to pay workers. That resulted in the CCC and the great
public works projects of the 30s. We could do the same thing today, and
improve our infrastructure (such as the 70% of highway bridges that are
deteriorating and are unsafe) by requiring welfaristas to put in some sweat
equity for their paycheck. There's plenty of things for them to do, and you
can build a road with 20,000 men with shovels as well as you can with
bulldozers, albeit not as efficiently. Still, I'd rather pay a bit more and
be less efficient in order to see the indigent at work than use modern
"labor saving" devices and have to pay for welfaristas to sit around idle.
Idle hands are the devil's playthings...an aphorism that is indisputably
true.

My other theory for welfare reform involves appropriating all the
professional sports arenas in the nation under eminent domain and turning
them into Welfare Training Centers. I believe that if I have to report to
work eight hours a day to receive a paycheck, so should welfaristas. So, in
order to get a check , you are required to report to the stadium at 8 am
each day.

Once you've been logged in, you find a seat and you sit in it, and do
NOTHING, and I mean nothing, including talking with your friends or moving
about, for the next eight hours. If you violate the rules, and are caught
(by one of the legions of TV cameras and security monitors) you are ejected
from the stadium and you don't get paid for that day. Too many violations
and you're out for some extended period, like a month. Repeat offenders can
be dumped permanently.

Your alternative to sitting quietly in your seat (with potty breaks and
lunch...at your expense) all day is to attend educational seminars and
classes to learn a trade, or to go to the recruiting center, where employers
go to find day laborers and permanent employees.

At the end of the day, if you haven't found work, you get a paycheck.

The next morning, the same thing. You go and sit there in stultifying
boredom, educate yourself or go to work.

At least that way, the taxpayers know that some good, or at least no
mischief, is coming from their enforced income redistribution to the
indigent.

The other upside of this idea is that professional sports athletes will also
be unemployed, and their exorbitant salaries can be used to build new
businesses to employ the poor, and taxpayer-funded stadiums will finally be
used for something beneficial to the country.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Tovarich Weiser says:
==============
In socialism, there is no reward for hard work, and the fruits of your
labor are taken from you by the government and are distributed to
others without your input or approval, and without compensation for
your work. All persons in a socialist regime are required (in theory)
to give their all with no expectation of reward for the benefit
of the proletariat.
==============

What in hell are you talking about?!

Socialism, of course.

This is not to say that a socialist government cannot decide to provide a
dole, or wage, or "redistribution" or whatever, it's that the essential
feature of socialism is that it is not *required* to do so. A Socialist
government may take everything from you without regard for your desires or
needs and give it to someone else "more deserving" than you, and you have
no recourse because nothing "belongs" to you in the first place. Everything
is owned by "the people," including the land you may be working, and it can
be taken and given to someone else at the whim and caprice of the leaders of
the society.

In short, in socialist systems, there is no concept of "private property,"
and thus you have no claim on what you possess.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Weiser says:
==========
If you twits would quit letting terrorists in, we might not have to.
===========

I know it is painful to be reminded of this but: the 9-11 guys trained
in the USA... it seems you twits let them in.

Indeed. But Canada is *still* letting terrorists in, carte blanche.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
=========
"If you have two operating feet, get up and walk
out of the ghetto.
=========

did i say something about a ghetto here?

and, frankly, i don't give a **** about what the people in kansas want
to teach their kids. but from where i sit, their actions and similar
"ban the books" from literature classes actions in the US bible belt
look awfully similar to what the taliban was up to.

Look awfully similar? I think they are basically the same thing.

The Taliban weren't exactly the most creative of folks, they got a lot
of their ideas from those who came up with a religion before them, the
christians and jews.

It's amazing how well they copied the ideas of some person forcing other
to do as they wish all because that one person claims to be more in
touch with something bigger than us all than the other person. Religion
is basically a power game, with just enough spirituality to keep the
simple people from seeing the truth. The truth is that by using religion
to make people conform to an idea, you can make those people do things
they would never do for money or by threat of direct force.

Freedom would be allowing people to believe in what they want, without
being worried that some religious leader immediately convicts what they
want or believe as herecy. Funny how the church still advocates
abstinence (sp?) as a way to prevent AIDS or how it prevents the use of
birth control in countries where the population explosion is causing
gigantic problems.

Also interesting how in most developed countries there is a direct
correlation between the level of education of the population and the
amount of people still believing in some kind of higher being.
In most of Europe the amount of people still going to some kind of
church dwindles by the day, although a lot of people discover other, not
related to some church or constricting religion, forms of spirituality.

great! have your
regious freedom (if that's what you think it is)! i think it's a
purposeful dumbing down of your children.

That reminds me, funny how the catholic church in essence kept the
population dumb for centuries by picking the brightest people as their
priests, and letting everyone else procreate, effectively eliminating
many of the smartest people from every generation from adding to the
gene pool.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser:
=======
Well, first, it's an extremely recent thing.
========

not so recent: the first time i crossed borders in europe without being
stopped was 1972

Only between select countries who had travel agreements. Not EU-wide. That
didn't happen till recently. You didn't get in to East Germany that way in
1972 did you?

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
==========
you just fail to understand socialism
=========

you confuse socialism with communism

Two sides of the same coin. Socialism inevitably turns into communism.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser:
========
In a capitalistic health care system such as the US, you can obtain the
best
health care in the world, if you can afford it..
==========

who was it that said something to the effect: "all men are created
equal...." except, of course, when it comes to healthcare

You misconstrue. The Constitution guarantees that you are CREATED equal, not
that you are guaranteed equal outcome, equal opportunity or equal access to
anything, including health care. This is the most common error made in
interpreting the Constitution.

All you have a right to in the US is life, liberty and the PURSUIT of
happiness, not the acquisition of it by government mandate or fiat.

If you fail in your pursuit, then you may die alone, penniless and an abject
failure in life. That too is your right, and the government has no
obligation to provide for you or ensure that you do not fail. Nor should it,
because, as Linda Seebach said the other day in her column , "The only way
for everyone to be equal is to flatten everyone."

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
============
Just look at places like
Denmark, where the marginal tax rates are above 50%, and half the
nation is
on the dole, paid by the other half.
==========

why then do the danes keep electing governments that support what you
purport to be the case?

Because, as someone famous once said, (I paraphrase) Democracy will survive
only until the citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse out
of the public treasury. Once that happens, the person promising the greatest
amount of largesse will always be elected. When you give the 50+% of leeches
who are on the dole the right to vote, of course they are going to vote for
whomever will continue the dole.

Now, if you *remove* the right to vote from those on welfare, I'd be a bit
more willing to grant them largesse from the public treasury...but not much.

have you ever been there? great education
system. great healthcare system. great elder care. clean streets.
relatively few ghettos. all in all a pretty awesome place to live.

Unless you happen to be a working stiff who has to fork over half your
income to pay for free drugs and healthcare for addlepated zombies and
useless leeches.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
======
Giving money to the poor is like giving a fish to a hungry man. He'll
eat
the fish and be hungry again in six hours
.====

give a corporation a subsidy, and it will only operate and provide job
creation so long as the subsidy is in place. as soon as the subsidy
stops, the firm packs up and moves to mexico.

That's why the subsidies are necessary. If a business can't compete against
Mexican crops raised by people who get paid 50 cents an hour, then it's
unsurprising they would seek to cut costs when their labor costs ten times
that.

And once the firm moves, and the land is developed, it's gone forever.

Thanks for making my case so clearly.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:


get the offenders to fix the problem
themselves


But they're only offenders in your eyes. Extraterritorial enforcement
of laws is against international law.

If Canada decriminalizes pot possession, it has no direct effect on the
US. However, they keep getting cranky and threatening every time the
topic comes up. Most countries treat drug addiction as a medical problem;
the US holds to obsolete ideas about it being a criminal problem. Fix
it in your own country and stop trying to export your backward problems.

They can't fix it, Michael. It's an integral part of their system to
criminalize use of soft drugs, to hand out ridiculous sentences to those
who use soft drugs, so that those people can be used in the
commercialised prison industry as a kind of legalised slave labour.

Of course, this very ineffective symptom solving keeps the drug trade
alive, while the U.S. DEA keeps pointing fingers everywhere, without
anyone in their right mind thinking about what does lessen the problem.

That would be done by taking the drug users out of the criminal system,
educating people about drugs, trying to setup a system to provide clean
needles, medical care and medically prescribed drugs to those who fail
to detox time and again. By making it possible for the drug addicts to
have a somewhat normal life in which they can live and be in touch with
their family and freinds and have a job instead of having to live with
the ever present fear of where they will have to find money (usually by
commiting some crime) to pay for their next shot.

The enormous amounts of money wasted by the DEA and other agencies to
try to stem the flow of drugs have not worked at all in the past
decades, and I doubt that the so called "War on drugs" has been
beneficial for anyone but the increasing budget of the DEA and the
increased income of the drug cartels due to the very high price of drugs
on the street.

--
Wilko van den Bergh wilko(a t)dse(d o t)nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
---Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.---
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser says:
=========
"If you have two operating feet, get up and walk
out of the ghetto.
=========

did i say something about a ghetto here?

No, I did.


and, frankly, i don't give a **** about what the people in kansas want
to teach their kids. but from where i sit, their actions and similar
"ban the books" from literature classes actions in the US bible belt
look awfully similar to what the taliban was up to.

Except that I think you'll find that in almost every case, certainly in
those which have come to public attention, those calling for book banning
have been soundly thrashed by the press and the ACLU has come to the defense
of the First Amendment and those book bans have been quickly
reversed...often times with the offending public official being ejected in
disgrace.

Nobody's going around chopping the heads off of people reading Catcher in
the Rye in Kansas.

great! have your
regious freedom (if that's what you think it is)! i think it's a
purposeful dumbing down of your children.

Well, there is some purposeful exclusion of so-called "educational
materials" going on, but it mostly has to do with sex, deviant sex and
drugs, and I'm not sure that protecting children (whom I define as young
persons under about age 16) from the potentially harmful effects of
out-of-context sex and drug information that may actually cause them to
experiment before they understand the consequences of doing so.

This is certainly within the purview of the parents, through their
elementary school boards and curriculum control. Once a student goes to
college, they can, and should, study these things carefully. But giving 10
year olds instructions on how to use condoms and engage in oral sex is not
something that most middle-America parents want their schools engaged in.
Those are strictly matters for families to deal with.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser:
=========
Don't discount the effectiveness of insurgents.
============

shouldn't that read "freedom fighters"?

One man's freedom fighter is another's insurgent.

History is written by the winner.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

weiser on:
========
theories of intelligent design
==========

look, you seem to know something about this. at some level of inquiry,
it may make for an interesting debate.

but you likely heard the kansas school board officials as i did. most
(all?) of them wouldn't recognize theories of intelligent design if
they jumped up and bit them in the ass! as you well know, the agenda
was not about broadening the intellectual base. this was about
religious dogma.

Perhaps the issue has never been posited to them.


if the people of that community think religion is important, i say go
ahead and have religion classes where you can promote this doctrine. it
very clearly does not belong in the science class.

When religion and science touch on the same issue, why is it inappropriate
to address it in either or both? Presenting information about various
theories is never harmful, so long as it's done in an objective manner.


when it is accepted as part of the science canon (determined by the
science community), then by all means. I don't think your local school
board officials who have a background in, say, used car sales, farming,
insurance, or whatever, are in any position to determine what is or is
not "scientific".

You put "science" up on too high a pedestal and you discount religion too
much. Again, presenting opposing theories does not constitute
indoctrination, it is an academic necessity if students are to learn
critical thinking. Indoctrinating them into the cult of secular scientism is
a bad as indoctrinating them into the cult of Scientology...or Catholicism.

All sides of the debate must be presented openly, accurately and
objectively, and students must be taught to sift through the available
evidence to reach a reasoned conclusion. Excluding religion from discussions
of evolution is merely anti-religious bias and censorship.

next we'll be asking them to write revisionist
history for the history classes. recommend projects for shop class,
perhaps? decide which language ought to be taught in computer classes?

Amphigory.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Since when does providing students with more information rather than less
make things worse?

Unless you're providing more time to teach, they are getting less. You can't
teach two things in the space of one.

Sometimes, less is more. Teaching critical thinking by presenting all sides
of an argument is much more valuable than indoctrination into *either* side
of the issue.

Creationism also blinds them from the
truth.

Again, you make the erroneous presumption that the theory of evolution is
"the truth."

If it is, care to explain why sharks are still sharks 400 million years
later? It only took 2 million years or so for man to evolve from monkey,
according to evolutionary theory, so why haven't sharks changed appreciably
in 400 million years. If evolution is "the truth," then the world should be
being run by incredibly intelligent sharks, who ought to have evolved far
beyond what they are today. They haven't.

Interesting conundrum, isn't it?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

The key word is "allow."

You silly, naive little man. Your precious constitutional right
to bear arms is an _amendment_.

You silly, naïve little nitwit, you don't even understand our Constitution,
so how would you know?

American history shows that
constitutional amendments can come and go - e.g. the prohibition.

You might want to note that this was the ONLY amendment ever overturned.

So in reality, your "right" to bear arms is at the discretion
of the "majority" of the citizens and the politicians you elect
(and elect typically by minority, since so many Americans don't
bother to vote).

No, it's not. You don't understand the nature of rights or the function of
the Constitution. Rights are not granted by the Constitution, government
powers are limited by it.


If that constitutional amendment is revoked, you and your pop
gun buddies will be hiding in the woods.

True, but it's extremely unlikely to be repealed, and if it is, repealing it
does not impeach the RIGHT to keep and bear arms, which pre-exists, and
exists independently of the Constitution.

Should the 2nd Amendment ever be repealed, that would likely be the trigger
for revolution to restore the rights of the citizenry and put down a tyrant.
That's why the 2nd Amendment exists. The Framers recognized the fundamental
right to keep and bear arms and enacted constitutional restrictions on
government infringement of that right specifically to ensure that the
citizenry always would have the physical capacity to put down a domestic
enemy or tyrant.

And, "hiding in the woods" is a fine tactic for removing tyrants and their
sycophants, particularly with silenced, long-range firearms. Just ask any
USMC sniper.


Don't discount the effectiveness of insurgents. Just look at what perhaps
20,000 hard-core insurgents are doing in Iraq.

More like 100-200,000.

Still a small fraction of 18 million.


BTW, do you know where your local National Guard armory is?

There is no National Guard in this country. It's a US thing.

Well, there you go. You're a slave who doesn't even know where to find the
arms needed to put down a tyrant. Ipse dixit, quod erat demonstrandum.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Thus, we rarely have to exercise
military force, because the threat is usually sufficient.

Name one other country that has been involved in more wars and
invasions than the US since WWII.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

science-fiction book

You get your information from science fiction? No wonder you
don't understand anything in the real world.

Ever wonder why they call it "science" fiction? There's often a lot of
science woven into the fiction.



BTW - creationism isn't an alternative theory; it's bull****.
"Intelligent design" is just a refusal to accept reality.

Many scholars and other people on the upside of the bell curve from you
disagree.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:


After all, nations (including the
entirely of Europe) who owe the US commonly default on repayment of their
debts.

Name one country in Europe that has defaulted on a loan to the US since WWII.

All of them. (Nice try at setting a starting date, but it won't work.)


Or, maybe we'll call in
all those WWI and WWII debts that Europe owes us, with interest.

When did those countries sign up for a loan? It was a gift.

Nope. It was called "Lend-Lease."


You make this stuff up as you go along and you expect us to take
you seriously?

I don't expect you to be able to tie your own shoes.



Do you think that either Japan or China is willing to engage in nuclear war
with the US in order to try to collect those debts? I think not.

If they call in the loans and the US defaults, the economy goes down the
toilet.

Whose economy? Not ours.

Since you live on debt, you'll be broke

Don't be silly. Who gets shafted in a bankruptcy? Not the bankruptee, but
the creditors. Worst-case we just repudiate the debts (as so many others
have done to us) and tell China and Japan they can pound sand, then we go on
with what we were doing without their imports, which we can easily do if we
need to.

and since you import more than you
export, you have little useful collateral.

Which (if true, which it's not) makes it all the harder for China to
collect.

The fact that we import a lot does not mean that we *have* to import a lot.
The vast majority of those imports are luxury goods, not necessities or
staples. We can get along without them just fine.

The Euro is stronger than the
US dollar and is backed by more people.

And it's that way because the US created the economic engine that drives the
Euro by spending trillions of US dollars over decades to provide for the
defense of Europe against Soviet aggression. I'd say that moves the balance
point rather radically our way.


Start thinking more globally and
stop thinking so insularly.

First we protect our own interests, then we might think about yours.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Welfare is a drain on the system consisting
of money given to people who produce nothing in return.

Like the military-industrial complex.

Which produces many products the government uses, and provides us with peace
through superior firepower, something the EU can be thankful for, given how
much of our military technology they use.


it places our nation at
strategic risk for us to be dependent on other nations for our basic food
supplies.

But not oil. Bizarre contradiction.

Oil is a concern because we don't have sufficient domestic supplies to meet
our needs. So, we secure our external oil supplies other ways.


Government protection of agriculture merely
ensures that American farmers don't go out of business because of low crop
prices.

Even if it means that the products are simply stored and never consumed?

Oh, it usually gets consumed, eventually. There's nothing wrong with
stockpiling food, and if it isn't needed, we usually export it or turn it
into something else we can use.

That's not support, that's corporate welfare.

Wrong.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Tinkerntom wrote:


Michael Daly wrote:
Snip...

There is no National Guard in this country.

Nothing to guard maybe, that anyone would invade to take from you. And
if they did, you could always fall back on Nato or UN to intervene.


It's a US thing.

Maybe lots to guard that many would love to have. And Luckily for you,
your neighbor to the south is content to have you as the neighbor to
the north. That's a US thing also!

Yeah. What's he going to do when the US decides to annex Canada? Throw river
sandals?
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 15:22:54 -0700, Scott Weiser
wrote:

Again, you make the erroneous presumption that the theory of evolution is
"the truth."

If it is, care to explain why sharks are still sharks 400 million years
later? It only took 2 million years or so for man to evolve from monkey,
according to evolutionary theory, so why haven't sharks changed appreciably
in 400 million years. If evolution is "the truth," then the world should be
being run by incredibly intelligent sharks, who ought to have evolved far
beyond what they are today. They haven't.

Interesting conundrum, isn't it?

Not really. Sharks may well be more intelligent than man. They may have
such great intelligence that they thought about running the world, rejected
the idea, and then stayed in the sea, masking their far superior
intelligence from creatures like man. It's kind of easy to score highly on
"intelligence tests" that you make up the questions for, grade, referee,
etc.

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
Illiterate? Write for FREE help

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

If you twits would quit letting terrorists in, we might not have to.

None of the Sept 11 terrorists came from Canada. The claim that
Canada lets in terrorists is absurd.

Hardly. It's one of our major concerns. Your lefty-liberal "open border" and
"political refugee" policies are very scary, and it's been proven several
times that terrorists and other criminals have entered North America via
Canada. The 9-11 terrorists are hardly the only concerns here.


We may not have utterly unguarded borders with Canada or
Mexico, but not only CAN you travel freely from state to state in the US,
you have an absolute constitutional right to do so, regardless of what any
particular state may say.

You don't seem to know the difference between countries and states. Bizarre.

Well, let's see...the "countries" in the EU are now pretty much "states"
like those in the US, aren't they? You do know that an alternative term for
an independent nation is "state," don't you? Where do you think the EU got
the idea? From us.


Which is fine, except that socialized medicine has been proven to be a death
sentence for the seriously ill because underpaid, overworked doctors have no
reason to extend themselves and because health care is free, people with
minor complaints feel free to clog the system with petty complaints.

Total bull****, seen from my position as a person living in a country with
government provided health care.

Uh huh. Do you have heart disease? Diabetes? Cancer?



fund public transit.

So do we.

What Americans call public transit is a joke in the rest of the world.

It's a big country, and we like cars. Big deal.


When you give subsidies to companies to help them succeed, excel and become
larger, the immediate return is more jobs that the poor can take, thus
becoming productive and self-sufficient members of society rather than
leeches.

But the inevitable outcome is actually a transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich.

True. So what? If the poor want to buy consumer products, why shouldn't the
producer of those products make a profit? That's why he produces the
products.


Corporate subsidies prop up ineffective and obsolete companies.

Sometimes. It's true that the programs have to be carefully assessed and
monitored, but the occasional abuse of the programs doesn't impeach the
overall benefits.

US steel
companies are a perfect example. They saw the competition as the offshore
companies and got government support.

Steel is a strategic resource. It's what caused Japan to go to war with us.

Instead of modernizing and competing,
the share holders got rich from the subsidies and the companies wallowed in
inefficiency.

Yup, many old-school steel mills did just that, then went out of business.
Some steel producers, however, adopted the efficiencies of automated
steel-making and excelled, becoming great companies.


Now it turns out that those American steel companies that
were not subsidized are the real threat to the subsidized ones.

Indeed. Capitalistic innovation triumphs.

BUt the
old companies still can't compete because they are more obsolete than
ever. Full analysis in The Economist (www.economist.com) 'coupla years ago.

Very true. And many of the old-line steel companies no longer exist because
the subsidies were not enough to compensate for the technical innovation of
companies like Nucor.

Still, the fact that subsidies could not overcome the burden of inefficient
technology (and bad management-- read "Good to Great by Jim Collins" for a
discussion of the steel mill issue.) does not mean that protectionist
subsidies are not necessary or useful. Fortunately, Nucor decided that by
adopting Japanese steel-mill technology, and then improving it (they
pioneered continuous thin slab casting) they could undercut imports because
of the costs of transportation.

What government should be doing is paying subsidies to US steel companies
for the purposes of upgrading their technology to the current Nucor model.
Once accomplished, the companies would be extremely competitive and the
subsidies could be eliminated, while building a necessary strategic resource
capacity.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

I argue that the very best way to destroy myths is
to hold them up to the withering light of reason.

The schools are not holding them up to the light. They are
presenting them as a valid theory.

It is a valid theory. As I said, if evolution is "the truth," why are sharks
still sharks 400 million years later?

Creationism (or at least Intelligent Design) has not been disproven by any
stretch of the imagination. It's merely discarded by anti-religious zealots
because it conflicts with their preferred secularist dogma.

People of intelligence with broad minds recognize that there are few, if any
absolute truths in the Universe, and welcome diverse opinion and debate as
the best way to find what truths do exist.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

Weiser said:
==========
Not EU-wide. That
didn't happen till recently.
=========

yes it was eu-wide... germany, the benelux, france spain, italy etc...
the entire eu in 1972!

frtzw906

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

get the offenders to fix the problem
themselves

But they're only offenders in your eyes. Extraterritorial enforcement
of laws is against international law.

No it's not. It's usually called "diplomacy."



If Canada decriminalizes pot possession, it has no direct effect on the
US.

As long as that remains true, no problem.

However, they keep getting cranky and threatening every time the
topic comes up.

We have a perfect right to get "cranky and threatening" if you Canadians are
doing something we don't like. Moreover, we have a perfect right to impose
economic sanctions against any nation that we perceive as a threat to us,
for whatever reason. Neither Canada nor any other nation on the face of the
earth has any inherent right to trade with us or enjoy the economic or
technological benefits this country provides. If you want to be partners in
prosperity with us, then you have to keep us happy. When you **** us off,
we're perfectly free to take our ball and go home.

Most countries treat drug addiction as a medical problem;

That's why they have a rampant drug problems that cost their citizens
enormous amounts of money to deal with.

the US holds to obsolete ideas about it being a criminal problem.

It's both. At the user level, I agree it's mostly a medical and behavioral
problem. At the distribution level, it's most certainly a criminal problem,
and we should be taking much more pro-active measures to prevent the
cultivation and import of drugs from foreign nations...like shooting down
smuggler's aircraft without warning and securing our borders.

Fix
it in your own country and stop trying to export your backward problems.

Stop sucking at the US teat then. Let's close the Canadian border entirely
and see how long you last without imports from the US, not to mention our
tourist money.


--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

Weiser, referring to Danes says:
==========
Unless you happen to be a working stiff who has to fork over half your
income to pay for free drugs and healthcare for addlepated zombies and
useless leeches.
============

Isn't it strange then, that hundreds of thousands of hard-working Danes
aren't clamoring to get into the free-market haven (albeit with huge
subsidies - corporate welfare -- for shareholders who don't require
them) that you claim is USA?

frtzw906

A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

TnT says:
=========
Maybe, though the typical Christian School educated student scores way
above average on SAT. It is the public schools sector that teaches all
this enlightened scientific stuff to the exclusion of the Christian
perspective, that drags down the test results! You do the math. TnT
=========

No, you do the math. most private schools (christian included) feel no
need to enroll the seriously disadvantaged (physical or mental). those
students are left to the public schools.

Liar.


the meager tax dollars allocated to the public schools must serve to
educate the entire spectrum of students. you're the entrepreneur: you
do the math.

Who do we have to blame for the "meager" amount of money given to public
schools? Why, the voters of the district, of course. If that's what they
want, that's what they should have.


btw, please check the math and science score of most christian schools:
they are atrocious!

This is a baldfaced, blatant lie.

You do realize that most of the most famous and prestigious Universities in
the US are "christian" (specifically Catholic) schools, don't you? The
Catholic church has been vigorously promoting extremely high levels of
scholarship for literally thousands of years. The Jesuits have been teaching
critical thinking since before civilization recovered from the Dark Ages. In
fact, the Catholic church, through the Jesuit order is largely responsible
for dragging the world out of the Dark Ages.


historical sidebar: so long as the catholic church had a stranglehold
of the curricula of irish schools, ireland scored among the poorest of
all western nations in math and science. the irish are now (perhaps
because they've seen the light through membership in the EU) somewhat
less enamoured with the catholic church. Hallelujah, their math and
science score are just fine, thank you very much!

Care to prove these remarkably idiotic assertions?

Ireland wouldn't have had ANY schools if it weren't for the Catholic church.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

weiser says:
=========
Amphigory.
==========

did i miss a comma somewhere?

frtzw906

A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 12-Feb-2005, "Tinkerntom" wrote:

There are some that want more federal involvement, hence more
taxes, and there are some who want less. Less fed, and less taxes. The
first are social liberals, and the second is capitalist conservatives.

Then ther's the current US administration, that has increased government
at a much faster rate than Clinton, but reduces taxes.

War is hell. It's hardly surprising that spending has increased, we're at
war.


In fact, you can't reduce taxes when you run deficits and carry debt;
you can only _defer_ taxes. Someone's going to have to pay the bill,
but the current generations of voters are hoping it won't be them.
Ditto environmental damage - they are "sure" someone will fix the
problem someday.

One of the best ways to fix deficits is to cut government spending. We'll do
that as soon as the cowards in the EU start helping out with the war on
terrorism and we can bring our troops home.

Until then, we'll do what we have to to secure peace and defeat the
terrorists...again...while the rest of the world sits by and enjoys the
fruits of our labor.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser

weiser says:
==============
The Euro is stronger than the
US dollar and is backed by more people.

And it's that way because the US created the economic engine that
drives the Euro by spending trillions of US dollars over decades to
provide for the
defense of Europe against Soviet aggression. I'd say that moves the
balance
point rather radically our way.
===========

amphigory!

frtzw906

weiser says:
===========
It's true that the programs have to be carefully assessed and
monitored, but the occasional abuse of the programs doesn't impeach the
overall benefits.
============

i'd say that pretty-much sums up welfare of all sorts. the occasional
"welfare queen" hardly negates the value of giving the underpriviliged
temporary assistance.

frtzw906

weiser says:
==========
It's sheik to call subsidies "corporate welfare," but
it's also factually incorrect.
=========

notwithstanding the current american obsession with arabs, i'm going to
assume you mean "chic" (or perhaps "sheik" is just one more american
way of getting under france's skin. in that case, you ought to know
that in german, sheiks are known as "pariser", but that's another story
completely).

but to the issue at hand: pedantic semantics! welfare is a "lifestyle
subsidy" and subsidies are "welfare for corporate shareholders".

no matter how many times you deconstruct it, it still amounts to "six
of one equals one half dozen of another",

welfare or subsidies: they both represent a government's decision to
redistribute a nation's wealth. welfare has -- in both cases --
positive short-term effects but can be, as you so eloquently point out
in your "what i'd do to wefare recipients" discourse, debilitating in
the long-term. if welfare serves to allow the individual time to
acquire skills necessary to become employable, or to permit a
corporation time to readjust to market conditions, it seems we're on
the same page on this one.

or would that be unbearable for you?

frtzw906

weiser says:
============
That's why they have a rampant drug problems that cost their citizens
enormous amounts of money to deal with.
==========

hmmmm.... i'd check those statistics before going on. where exactly are
rampant drug problems costing citizens enormous amounts of money? or
aren't you counting the money the usa spends keeping people in prison
for umpteen years for minor drug offenses.

the cost of treating drug issues as medical issues and, as in places
like amsterdam, permitting the open use of MJ, is minimal compared to
costs of enforcement and incarceration.

weiser again:
===========
Stop sucking at the US teat then. Let's close the Canadian border
entirely and see how long you last without imports from the US, not to
mention our
tourist money.
==================

and do you think that that trade goes one-way? when it comes to raw
materials, i think we trump you guys.

frtzw906

weiser said:
===========
Care to prove these remarkably idiotic assertions?
==========

check the oecd statistics historically. you'll note that they
currently do quite well. in math in science this was not the case
through the 50's, 60's and 70's.

frtzw906

weiser says:
===========
Ireland wouldn't have had ANY schools if it weren't for the Catholic
church.
===========

do you mean to suggest that without the catholic church, the
gowvernment of ireland would not have provided some level of universal
education? that's hard to believe!

what isn't hard to believe is that catholic propaganda convinced the
irish that the church was best able to handle the job of educating the
masses. the catholic church knew well the dictum of the jesuits: "give
me the boy..."

frtzw906

weiser says:
===========
Until then, we'll do what we have to to secure peace and defeat the
terrorists...again...while the rest of the world sits by and enjoys the
fruits of our labor.
=========

why bark if the dog will do it for you?

frtzw906

Wilko: thank you very much for your insight into what happened in
holland. horrible as it was, i audibly laughed when i read "People like
Theo van Gogh, who used openly hostile remarks towards muslims, like
calling them
"goat-****ers" ". while there is, of course, nothing to laugh at in the
statement i found myself thinking -- and i mean no offense to you --
that the dutch language does not lend itself well to subtlety and
nuance. dutch must be the most direct, honest language around.

like you say "which IMHO is more disturbing than the so called
anti-islamic violence rising, is that the openness of our society has
changed." this, too, is the impression i got. however, reports of these
things in the media tend to concentrate on the sensational rather than
the background.

You say: "Denmark is actually rather intolerant, with a considerable
list of
minority unfriendly and minority intolerant laws and regulations."

This reminds me of a visit we had in the late 80's from a danish
acquaintance. she was by every measure, the poster child/women for the
euro-left. she was a card-carrying member of the danish socialist
party. she went to every rally and march imaginable: peace, anti-nuke,
feminist... you name it. she was active in the teachers' union. she had
not a racist bone in her body (she was married to a greenland inuit).
yet, when we talked about the future of denmark, she expressed only
one concern: radical islam! she was not concerned about the fact that
they were either arabs or persians. even though she was an atheist, she
did not mind the islamic faith in moderation. but what she saw, and
what she abhorred was the growing militancy of the radical muslim
refugees/immigrants. i have lost touch with her, but it wouldn't
surprise me if, in spite of her tolerant tendencies, she would join
such a "right-wing" movement. she foresaw everything the socialists and
feminists had worked for being threatened. for her, that was not
negotiable.

wilko says:
===========
Because muslims are tolerated and left to do what they as long as they
bother no-one, we expect them to respect others and not try to force
their beliefs onto others as well. Alas, a few of them fail to
understand that.
===========

alas, i fear that is the problem with radical fundamentalists: they
don't know when they've pushed far enough. they fail to understand that
tolerance has it's limits. they fail to see that the line in the sand
is the very tolerance that gives them their liberty. by all mean, "do
your own thing", but don't think you can define what "my thing" is!

again, thanks for your insight.

frtzw906,