Iran Fears Attack from Four Directions

[Xavier_Onassis]

I would say that it is not entirely logical to say that there is no God, just because He has failed to punish the US for its infractions and acquisitive nature. It took Him a really, really long time to get around to punishing the Brits for forcing opium on the Chinese. I am not sure who was actually punished for the slave trade, either, and there are a lot of Armenians who are certain that the Turks require more punishment.

Perhaps the Universe, is really too big for one Deity. Perhaps the Prime Mover is occupied elsewhere, prime moving other galaxies, or even other universes. Omnipotence may not be all of what it is cracked up to be.

Perhaps God was deafened by the Big Bang and cannot hear all that well anymore. People who play with explosive things are often inflicted with deafness. As I recall, that happened to Rudolph Diesel, who was deaf in one ear from an explosion involving coal dust.

Or perhaps God is asleep, or maybe even deceased. The universe being what it is, I would say that this could be, because nothing else is really eternal.

It could be that God is just not into punishment. Lots of evil people get away with it, after all. Hitler may have gotten what was coming to him, but Stalin certainly stuck around for a goodly while, as did Mao, and look at Fidel: he is still around despite his unpleasant bowel problems.

I'd say that Mao and Stalin were far more evil than Fidel, anyway.

Need we remind the reactionaries who were all sounding off about how evil Robert Byrd was, because he was a kluxer once, that he now holds the absolute record for permanence in the Senate? God too a long time to punish him, didn't he?

And God is most famous for punishing Hebrews, and Israel gets away with all sorts of stuff.

So I do not think that God is really into punishment anymore, even if He once did little else. Maybe all that was an exaggerated illusion as well.

[Plane]

I would say that it is not entirely logical to say that there is no God, just because He has failed to punish the US for its infractions and acquisitive nature. .............

Below are listed the quotations shown on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington.......

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish a law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state and on a general plan."


http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html

[Plane]

Excerpts....


<<  You support the subjugation of the individual to the state.  That's oppression. >>

Not when the state IS the people.

<< I support the right to worship God, protect my family and do what I choose to do.  That's freedom.  >>

You can worship anything you like, the state will protect your family, and you can do what you choose to do so long as it's not some kind of anti-social activity that hurts others.

<<You support the abolishment of religious freedom . . . >>


<<and giving the state the right to dictate my choices. >>

 Depends on the choice.



<<What you support has only to do with oppression.>>

I support the Revolution of the peasants, workers and oppressed against the rich and the oppressors.  

These look like central points.

Why is it less virtuous to declare the mentally deficient as drags on the prosperity of the nation than to accuse bankers of the same?

What makes it less appropriate to declare Jews enemys of the people than Kulacks?

Pol Pot never did anything that Mao didn't do , or Hitler also for that matter Distinctions based on the habits of the chosen scapegoats are no more pertanent than comparisons of the leaders favoriate hairstyle.

Brownshirts , KKK, red bregades  etc.. need scapegoats ,if not one scapegoat then another , there will be a scapegoat chosen- not only to suffer the needed violence but also to justify the violence. The violence itself being the real point

[Xavier_Onassis]

I do not deny that Jefferson mentioned God, or that God is mentioned on US government buildings. But that is not proof of anything concerning the actual nature or existence of an a Prime Mover, Demiurge, Divine Being, Allah or God.

[Plane]

I do not deny that Jefferson mentioned God, or that God is mentioned on US government buildings. But that is not proof of anything concerning the actual nature or existence of an a Prime Mover, Demiurge, Divine Being, Allah or God.

You were already aware that TJ was worried about God and his justice?

[Stray Pooch]

Well, MT, you're gonna win this debate by electronic default.  I spent about an hour and a half crafting a response to your latest.  I looked up the Stalinist purges, the writing of Herr Goebbels, direct quotes from the Communist Manifesto, and I addressed your points one by one.  I gave you all kinds of hell for "selective execution."  I smacked you in the face with it about a million times after that.  Man you shoulda seen the result.  You ain't never seen a post that good.  You woulda renounced Communism as a fraud and begged to be forgiven for your sins, I'm telling ya!

Turns out, that non-existent God (or at least the cyber-Gods) had other ideas.  I went to post it, and it was stopped because there had been 4 other responses since I started typing.  So I decided to try again.  But this time I wanted a preview, which I had forgotten to ask for and I always like to do before a big cut-and-paste to avoid confusing missed HTML tags.  So I hit the "Preview" button and IE committed harakiri.  I mean it just up and died on me.  Gone with the Goebbels quotes.  Gone with the Marxist raves.  Gone with the cult of personality.  Apparently, my entire masterpiece was "selectively executed."  (At least I got ONE in on ya!)

I have already vented my overarching brilliance in that now-deceased diatribe.  I lack the energy, the will or the motivation to recreate it.  I am old, and suffering from intellectile dysfunction.  I just can't keep my brain "up" that long.  So you are left with the last word ont the subject, and I am left with sad stories about the post that got away.  It was [-----THIS BIG------] I'm tellin' ya!

[Xavier_Onassis]

I have always thought that Thomas Jefferson was a Deist, by which I mean that he set up the world as a clockmaker makes a clock, and walked away, allowing his clock to run by itself with no further watchmaker actions needed. He created men free, and if they got enslaved or conquered by a monarch, then it was men's job to free themselves, as the Americans did in their Revolution. I would not call this "worried".

Several nights ago, they had a BBC program on King George III, who was presented as a really, really nice guy who just had a few crazy moments due to "pleuresy" and was not mad at all, no, sir. At the end, it gave thanks to Her Royal Majesty for Her Royal Cooperation.

The film "The Madness of King George" was a much better presentation than this watered-down thing. The film was originally named "The Madness of King George III" in the UK, but they took off the III when they showed it in the US, because they were afraid that too many Americans would not pay to see it because they had missed "The Madness of King George I" and "The Madness of King George II", like the Rocky and Die Hard flicks.

A lot of the British still have this weird attraction for their nobility. In 1983, I visited Westminster Cathedral. There was a prim, yet rather dumpy English lady telling us all about all the history of the place when... horrors! I actually SAT DOWN in a pew. It was a Wednesday around 5:00 PM and no one was saying mass or anything and there were maybe a dozen people in the place. This woman got all emotional and told me that I was not allowed to sit there because that pew BELONGED to some Earl or something and no one but the buns of his noble family must ever sit there. I said "you are kidding me, right?", being as after all, it was a church, and I was even wearing a coat and tie. "No!No! No!" she said, and after she made me get up, she pulled out a hankie and dusted off my commoner cooties.  I started laughing and she got even more dismayed.

I bet one of her relatives made that George III documentary. Or someone like her, at least.

[Michael Tee]

<<Oh , and has Canada had this problem?  [Americans killing them for oil?]>>

No they've got a better hold on us - - they buy 80% of our exports.  If we started selling that 80% to the Chinese before they become militarily able to protect us, we very well might have that problem.

<<Does Canada sell oil at less than current price?>>

I got a feeling the Chinese would pay more, but that 's not the problem.  As long as corporations own the oil wells, we're fucked.  That oil belongs to the Canadian people and it should have been expropriated years ago.  The government had no fucking business selling oil concessions that we could have drilled out ourselves without enriching a bunch of God-damn capitalists.

<<Do you mean that you don't think that frightened Americans shoot?>>

No I don't.  What do you think America was frightened of?  Iraq?  Viet Nam?  Panama City?  Iran?  The elephant is always being frightened by some mouse or another, attacks and kills it, yet always finds another mouse to be "frightened" of.  Frankly, I don't buy it.  It's a load of horse-crap.  They find somebody who has something they want, scream about the "threat" that they are facing until they are "forced" to invade and get what they want.  Nobody believes in that shit anymore except the American public itself.

[Michael Tee]

<<Well, MT, you're gonna win this debate by electronic default.  . . . .  So you are left with the last word ont the subject, and I am left with sad stories about the post that got away.  It was [-----THIS BIG------] I'm tellin' ya!>>

LMFAO.  I believe ya but - - Pooch, that is almost word for word the post I was gonna send YOU if I got another in-detail rebuttal from you, which I am sure was on its way. 

Well there may be no God to punish the U.S.A. for its multiple "infractions" (as XO terms them) but there sure as hell are gods of the internet and this time they were on my side.  Let's call it a draw because I surely would have defaulted from sheer exhaustion had you actually been able to hit the SEND button at the right time.  And BTW, I certainly did not intend any personal disrespect in my sarcastic remarks about long study of Iran etc., only that neither of us knew enough about the situation to formulate such hi-falutin ideas about what (beneficial) results would come to Iranian domestic politics out of the invasion. Hope there are no hard feelings on that account
.

[Stray Pooch]

<<Well, MT, you're gonna win this debate by electronic default.  . . . .  So you are left with the last word ont the subject, and I am left with sad stories about the post that got away.  It was [-----THIS BIG------] I'm tellin' ya!>>

LMFAO.  I believe ya but - - Pooch, that is almost word for word the post I was gonna send YOU if I got another in-detail rebuttal from you, which I am sure was on its way. 

Well there may be no God to punish the U.S.A. for its multiple "infractions" (as XO terms them) but there sure as hell are gods of the internet and this time they were on my side.  Let's call it a draw because I surely would have defaulted from sheer exhaustion had you actually been able to hit the SEND button at the right time.  And BTW, I certainly did not intend any personal disrespect in my sarcastic remarks about long study of Iran etc., only that neither of us knew enough about the situation to formulate such hi-falutin ideas about what (beneficial) results would come to Iranian domestic politics out of the invasion. Hope there are no hard feelings on that account

Didn't I just tell ya that I didn'thave any "hard" feelings left?? 

[Plane]

<<Oh , and has Canada had this problem?  [Americans killing them for oil?]>>

No they've got a better hold on us - - they buy 80% of our exports.  If we started selling that 80% to the Chinese before they become militarily able to protect us, we very well might have that problem.

No , that sounds like a possibility and perhaps a good idea.

If China was a little more advanced they might be more of a buyer , they are getting better advanced all the time.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Every batch of petroleum is somewhat different: all are mixtures of hydrocarbons varying from gas to light (heptane) to heavy (bunker oil), and so the yield in fuels and lubricants vary rather a lot from one field to field and well to well, and even from month to month. North Sea Brent and West Texas Crude are given as the usual "benchmarks" that the prices are quoted at, and I believe that these two are the highest in cost and quality. Prices for other grades are generally lower,and there is some sort of scale that they have agreed on in each oilfield. I believe that they bid on prices at varying intervals.

There is a huge amount of chicanery in the business and always has been: disputes on the quantity pumped and the grade extracted.

[Amianthus]

I have already vented my overarching brilliance in that now-deceased diatribe.  I lack the energy, the will or the motivation to recreate it. 

That's why I always select all the text and hit "Copy" (Ctrl-C) before clicking on either Post or Preview for long posts. This way, if something dies, I can always "Paste" the original back in. If the "something" requires a reboot to fix (which is sometimes the case with Windows computers), you can always pop up notepad or wordpad, paste it there and save it to a temp file before doing the reboot.

[Xavier_Onassis]

A wise solution, I recommend doing this with anything you don't want to retype. There is some key on my computer that erases everything when I hit it sideways somehow. I have no idea what it is or how it occurs, but it happens about once a week. It does not do this when I am using a word processor.