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Banned
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Originally Posted by matthew330
that's funny. I'll give it a go. there's a fundamental difference, clearly, in the way the liberal mindset works as opposed to someone more "normal", like myself for instance......
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It could be that the more "normal" folks have been influenced by the recent election results to begin to take the first tiny steps in the painful process of examining how they "know what they know".....they are an unquestioning, thoroughly resolute "bunch".....you hafta be....if you support the notion of pre-emption, and a "long war on terror", because, otherwise, you might ask yourself questions....questions like, "where would the US be today if it's government had responded to the 9/11 attacks with....no response, (save for finding out where the USAF was....that morning.....) if it had opted for restraint and the sympathy, solidarity, and support of other nations. Nations like France....
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http://www.slate.com/id/2088113/
......Remember? The French newspaper Le Monde, never one for trans-Atlantic sentimentalism, proclaimed, "We are all Americans." The band outside <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/14/nbrit114.xml">Buckingham Palace</a> played "The Star-Spangled Banner" during a changing of the guard, as thousands of Londoners tearfully waved American flags. Most significant, the European leaders of NATO, for the first time in the organization's history, <a href="http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm#Art05">invoked Article 5</a> of its charter, calling on its 19 member-nations to treat the attack on America as an attack on them all—a particularly moving gesture, as Article 5 had been intended to guarantee American retaliation against an attack on Europe.
But the Bush administration brushed aside these supportive gestures—and that may loom as the greatest tragedy of Sept. 11, apart from the tolls taken by the attack itself.........
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<b>If being less "normal", is being like me....born in the same state as George W Bush....and raised in and around his birthplace, and the place where he received his college education....New Haven, and Yale University, but not having any interest in seeing his presidential "library" built in the city of his birth, I seem to enjoy plenty of company, including Bush, himself:</b>
Please consider that the more "normal" may no longer post much in this forum, because they have been fed so much bullshit by the "leaders" who they trusted and supported, that they don't "know what they know". Take for instance, what they have been told about Iraq:
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http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002182.php
DoD Report Spins Water Shortage in Iraq
By Justin Rood - December 19, 2006, 11:05 AM
Water is hardly a topic that holds one's attention for long, until you don't have any.
As it happens, Iraq is short on drinkable water. Although you might not pick up on that fact by reading the paltry two sentences on the topic in the Defense Department's <a href="http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/9010Quarterly-Report-20061216.pdf">new report</a> on the country, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq."
"New projects have added capacity to provide access to potable water to approximately 5.2 million Iraqis—an increase of 1 million people since the August 2006 report," the document reports in a somewhat boosterish tone, giving no benchmark to compare those numbers to. The report acknowledges that "direct measurement of water actually delivered to Iraqis is not available."
A GAO document <a href="http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0730r.pdf">released</a> Friday on the same topic tells a slightly different story. While reconstruction efforts are more than half-completed in areas like energy generation, oil production -- even school rebuilding and train station renovations -- the amount of potable water currently produced in Iraq is at less than half the target amount. Like the DoD report, GAO notes that such water statistics are inaccurate; unlike the DoD report, it says why: "U.S. officials estimate that 60 percent of water treatment output is lost due to leakage, contamination, and illegal connections."
But didn't the Pentagon state that rebuilding efforts are providing water to 5.2 million Iraqis now? Read it closer: DoD says efforts have boosted "capacity to provide access to potable water" to 5.2 million Iraqis. Can we assume that such "capacity" is what's measured before 60 percent of the usable water is lost to the problems identified by GAO?
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<b>For the less "normal", in Bush's birthplace, Connecticut, it has been a "no brainer", from the start. Connecticut voted for Gore in 2000 and for Kerry, in 2004. For the more "normal", there seems to be some stirring....and IMO, it's about fucking time!</b>
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http://www.insidehighered.com/index....2006/12/18/smu
Dec. 18
Scholarly Archive or Ideological Center?
.....But now, as President Bush prepares to decide among SMU, Baylor University and the University of Dallas, a new issue has emerged. Professors at SMU are circulating an open letter calling for the university to have a full discussion of the implications of being host to the Bush library. Several recent press reports have quoted Bush advisers as saying that SMU has the edge and that the library’s affiliated think tank will encourage scholarship with a specific political agenda........
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Quote:
http://www.reporterinteractive.org/m...9/Default.aspx
Letters To The Editor
The George W. Bush Library: Asset or Albatross?
For some time administrators and trustees of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, have pursued the George W. Bush Presidential Library, competing with close contenders, especially Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
We respect SMU’s present leaders and their remarkable achievements. At the same time, we want to raise questions we regard as healthy for public conversation. While in this piece we speak for ourselves, we know that the SMU faculty resents and does not support the prospective Library. Just what does it mean when an administration ignores its greatest asset: the abiding loyalty of its own faculty?
Some say a presidential library is not about the specific policies and practices of a given administration, or about the outcomes and consequences of those policies. Rather the issue is said to be the provision of a permanent historical repository for presidential papers, documents and artifacts. Presumably such a library becomes a prestigious center where scholars, historians and interested citizens can study, participate in programs and conduct serious research and inquiry. This is to say nothing of enhancing area tourism and thus the local economy.
In spite of these expectations held by some, we are concerned with short- and long-term implications of the prospective library for the city of Dallas and the University alike.
Much has been said and written about Dallas becoming a world-class city of charm and culture, attractive to domestic and international tourists. At this very moment, the Dallas Arts District is coming further alive with new facilities that will enhance the city as a respected center for the performing arts; exciting and extensive downtown revitalization is underway.
Given the extent to which the vast majority of the world resents and resists the Bush administration, we believe the library will be a step backward in terms of international respect for the city and the university. Does the city really want in its midst a throwback to the mentality of U.S. Manifest Destiny in a world that so desperately needs global cooperation?
On another note, we wonder if it is prudent for a university to situate on its campus a symbolic magnet for would-be international terrorists or small-time copycats. Because of intense global disdain of Bush, this library may never enjoy respect equal to that for other presidential libraries, besides being an ongoing security risk to the campus and surrounding neighborhood.
The Bush library raises additional ethical issues. What does it mean for universities bidding for a particular presidential library to claim that the outcomes of a given administration are inconsequential to the value of that library for their campus?
What does it mean ethically for SMU trustees to say that a pre-emptive war based on false premises and destined to cost more American lives in Iraq than 9-11 is beside the point?
What moral justification supports providing a haven for environmental predation and outright denial of global warming, for shameful exploitation of gay rights, along with the most critical erosion of habeas corpus in memory? Given the secrecy of the Bush administration and its refusal to engage with those holding contrary opinions, how can there be any confidence in the selection of presidential papers turned over to the library? Our conviction is that these ethical issues transcend partisan politics.
SMU does not need a presidential library in order to host renowned scholars and events whose purpose is to analyze the Bush legacy. The University already has the prestigious Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility which sponsors first-rate conferences on key issues and promotes ethical inquiry into complex contemporary concerns.
Asset or albatross? The question deserves open debate and dialogue among residents of Dallas; faculty, staff, students, and alumni of SMU; and others -- far and near--who love Dallas and the University. Democratic and academic principles alike will be well-served, regardless of the outcome of such dialogue.
William McElvaney,
Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Worship, SMU
Dallas, Texas
Susanne Johnson,
Associate Professor of Christian Education, SMU
Plano, Texas
Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 @ 3:46:47 PM (Archive on 12/25/2006)
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Quote:
http://www.reporterinteractive.org/m...9/Default.aspx
Letters To The Editor
Methodism, torture and the Presidential Library
Methodism began as an 18th century spiritual renewal movement in the Church of England. At the time of the American Revolution only a few hundred Americans identified with Methodism. By the Civil War, Methodism was by far the largest church in the United States with one in three church members calling it their faith community. No other institution has done more good in shaping the ethos of American religion and culture than the Methodist Church.
Southern Methodist University is one of 123 educational institutions that are related to the modern day United Methodist Church. SMU is the only major university that has Methodist in the name. Because of this fact we were particularly troubled to read the Nov. 27, 2006, report by United Press International that associates of George W. Bush are in the process of raising $500 million for his presidential library and think tank at SMU.
Anyone who thinks that the name Methodism or Southern Methodist University should be associated with George W. Bush needs to read the book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror by Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Professor Miles has based this volume on painstaking research and highly-credible sources, including eyewitness accounts, army criminal investigations, FBI debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports and prisoners’ medical records. These documents tell a story strikingly different from the Bush administration version presented to the American people, revealing involvement at every level of government, from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prison health-care personnel. The book also shows how the highest officials of government are complicit in this pattern of torture.
While much of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces troops remains concealed, Dr. Miles documents how 19 prisoners have been tortured to death by American military personnel.
Up to 90 percent of the prisoners detained in the Bush “war on terror” have been found to be unjustifiably imprisoned and without intelligence value. In addition, much of the hideous work of torture is out-sourced by the Bush administration to countries like Uzbekistan, Syria and Egypt, where torture is a long-standing and common practice. In July 2004, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who grew up in a devout Methodist home, protested the Uzbek intelligence service's interrogation practices: "Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the U.S. and U.K. to believe. . . . This material is useless -- we are selling our souls for dross."
Torture is a crime against humanity and a violation of every human rights treaty in existence, including the Geneva Conventions which prohibit cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. Torture is as profound a moral issue in our day as was slavery in the 19th century. It represents a betrayal of our deepest human and religious values as a civilized society.
David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Washington's Crossing, how thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors,” during the Revolutionary War. There are numerous accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered and Americans dying in prison ships in New York harbor of starvation and torture.
After crossing the Delaware River and winning his first battle at Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington ordered his troops to give refuge to hundreds of surrendering foreign mercenaries. "Treat them with humanity," Washington instructed his troops. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army."
Contrast this with the Sept. 15, 2006, Washington Post lead editorial titled “The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.” “President Bush rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly.”
If the Bush Library and think tank are placed at SMU, the United Methodist Church should withdraw its association from the University and demand that the good name of Methodism be removed from the name of the school. If the United Methodist Church cannot take a stand against the use of torture and those who employ it, including President Bush, what does it stand for?
Dr. Andrew J. Weaver,
United Methodist minister, research psychologist and
graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU
New York City, NY
Fred W. Kandeler,
Retired United Methodist pastor, former district superintendent and
graduate of Perkins School of Theology, SMU
New Braunfels, Texas
Posted on Monday, December 11, 2006 @ 3:54:29 PM (Archive on 12/25/2006)
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<b>Last I looked, polls show that the more "normal", those who presumably, still back the policies, pronouncements and the actions of the worst president in US history are down to about....30 percent of respondents, but they are still a steadfast bunch who never question, how they "know....what they know". If they did....would that make them less "normal", like.....me??</b> |