i'm sure you all heard what happened in texas, i believe these are signs of the coming of the kingdom of god.
state investigators say they have discovered a bedinside thelygamist compound temple that was reserved for husbands -- often middle-aged men -- to have sex for the first time with their underage 'wives.
this is supposed to be a place for worship not sexual acts.
aleman
Actually you seem to be ignorent of the fact your statement, with various details changed, could be made by the believers in ANY religion. And of the history of the Bible (it's a religious book, not a book written by god).
You are as unable to prove YOUR beliefs regarding god are true as a Hindu, a Mormon, a JW or any other believer; yet you have the arrogance to assume you are right.
And where do you get off assuming I don't believe in god or watch the news?
i, as most persons, think a sexual assault of a child is a very horrible thing.
like most parents, i would want to put the person to death that assaulted my child in that way, but is that just?
i'm two ways about it: i feel for the child, and the child's family; but at the same time i am wondering if it is deserving of death?
Tuesday
it seems to just be a personal decision.
Errr... well, I suppose you could allow the convicted person to decide. That's the only way you could make it a personal decison that didn't infringe another's human rights.
lesterd
He is the only one who can pronounce innocence.
Fine. Let him strike dead those worthy of it. Oh... or do you (or someone else who thinks they have the same opinion as god) get to act as a proxy god? Anyway, isn't it INNOCENT until proven guilty? You have it the wrong way round.
I love the thought stopping on display by some people in this. Confronted with the fact USA is out-on-a-limb with Saudi Arabia, China and Iran as an executin' country, do you think about it? Nooooooooooo. You carry on saying that the death penalty is right.
i'm sure you all heard what happened in texas, i believe these are signs of the coming of the kingdom of god.
state investigators say they have discovered a bedinside thelygamist compound temple that was reserved for husbands -- often middle-aged men -- to have sex for the first time with their underage 'wives.
this is supposed to be a place for worship not sexual acts.
How can you say 'what a bunch of religous crazies' AND 'it proves the world's gonna end just like it says in the Bibble' without realising by doing so you are just aligning yourself with ANOTHER bunch of religious crazies?
How many predictions about the end of the world have there been? LOTS.
How many have come true? Zero.
What is lots divided by zero?
Zero! That is the statistical chance of a prophecy about the end of the world coming true.
And YES, it does say 'yeah, they'll say we've always been doing this stuff and then the end will come upon them'...
... but isn't that an OBVIOUS thing for any intelligent prophet to say? An intelligent prophoet would know the world has not ended despite previous porphecies, so he's gonna account for lack of belief of prophecy in his prophecy.
Nasty things happening because of religion is nothing new. To say it is to display the level of historical knowledge held by the person saying it.
People MAKE religions, and because of the religons, or without that as an excuse, sometimes do nasty things.
Remove from your mind any idea that god, whatever it is, and religion have ANYTHING to do with each other, and there is no contradiction.
As no religion has ever proved it has anything to do with any form of god, this is a reasonable supposition.
i, as most persons, think a sexual assault of a child is a very horrible thing.
like most parents, i would want to put the person to death that assaulted my child in that way, but is that just?
i'm two ways about it: i feel for the child, and the child's family; but at the same time i am wondering if it is deserving of death?
This debate is a classic.
As people arriving at an answer typically do so from two different paradigms, very often agreement between the two schools of thought is impossible; it's like the abortion debate.
To some people an unborn baby is a soul and is sacrosanct. The arguments secular people use are irrelevant.
To secular people religious predicated arguments are irrelevant.
Likewise with the death penalty.
Some people believe if killing is wrong, then killing is wrong.
Others believe you can have a good excuse to kill someone (other than self defence in the heat of the moment).
It is an even more curious debate as it is not just a stereotype to say that many pro-lifers favour the death penalty, and many pro-choicers are against it. The image of someone going from an abortion clinic picket to a pro-death penalty vigil outside a prison on an execution night is a strange one, but it probably has happened.
From a European perspective it's an obvious cultural issue.
Grow up in a religiously active violent culture where the death penalty is enforced and you will feel it is right.
Grow up in a secular culture with lower levels of violence and no executions and it will appear barbaric.
This is probable historically; in Germany the new government (after the war) banned the death penalty at a time when most Germans were still in favour of it. Two generations later Germans were one of the countries MOST opposed to the death penalty.
What I find extraordinary is that some Americans do not connect the dots.
There they are, one of the most execution happy governments in the world alongside those bastions of human rights such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. And it never strikes them as inappropriate for a modern democracy and an indication their continuing enchantment with judicial killing is out-of-step with the rest of the civilised world.
Of course, those very people this is directed at come to their conclusions using a different paradigm to me, and will disagree with me.
Arguing with a fervent supporter of the death penalty is like convincing a supporter of Sharia Law it's not a good idea to execute people; your arguments are meaningless to them, just as theirs are meaningless to you.
san francisco is just one of many sanctuary cities in this country.
as a permanent residence to the usa having had to go through immigration meetings, medical tests, means tests and a pretty good dose of fear - it bothers me that the same city that i had to go to for my hearing, past armed guards to prove my worth, wants illegals to come out of the woodwork and take advantage of the services the city has to offer, with a promise that they won't be rounded up or harmed in any way.
i don't seem to understand this system at all - i feel penalized somehow for doing what was right yet, i can still feel badly for those who are scared while here illegally.
The jobs were done before and they'll be done again. Maybe if employers were forced to pay real wages and not hire illegals for 'slave' wages and no protections and benefits, then the prices would rise accordingly and the excesses would stop.
Which is the point I was making bringing China into the discussion.
The great American consumer will ALWAYS (and has always on a historic basis) put their wallet before their political principles. That is far from an American weakness by-the-way.
So yes, you could have a KrystaalMaand where the authorities rounded up hundereds of thousands of people and intered them in camps or pushed them back over borders. Not particulary practical or acheivable, but you could do it.
And then prices would go up. And the polticians who had forced through the 2nd ethnic cleansing of America would not be re-elected, as they would be blamed for the price rises.
As the politicians know this, they will never do it, as under current political systems politicians don't exist to givern effectively but to get re-elected.
That is simply an excuse for the greedy and corrupt to continue on their merry way by exploiting their fellow human beings.
Yes, and like I pointed out EVERY person, American or otherwise, who take advantage of work done for less than a living wage is doing that, which means virtually all of us are guilty.
It has nothing to do with race by the way. That's such an old tired reasoning most people just ignore it and move on. Again - it's got to do with THE LAW. If you believe in open borders then you cannot believe in the LAW.
Yes, it has to do with race. Poor, badly educated Canadians integrate far more easily into American society than poor, badly educated Mexicans and other Latin Americans. So it has everything to do with race.
Canadians are invisible (until the say 'eh' or 'about'). Mexicans and other Latin Americans are not.
They are so visable to white American sensibilities Americans have created a term specially to describe them when Europe doesn't bother to use one to describe similar people as they are just seen as white European. Ignore this all you like, it is a fact.
There are about 300,000 people in line with papers filed now for legal status in this country. If you believe in open borders, then you should be lobbying to have all the immigration services dismantled and every person who has paid to enter and remain legally, reimbursed for those costs.
That's far cheaper than building a wall, so what's the problem? It's not a problem, it's an excuse.
As for Mexico - it is a wealthy country in terms of natural resources and ability. At least half of the millionaires listed in Latin America come from Mexico. The issue is one of corruption and no taxes.
And so rather than attacking the poor who try to escape this situation, the US should target those who CAUSE the situation. Why not deal with the cause instead of putting a band-aid over the sympoms?
The Mexican government is selling so much corn to the USA for it's biofuel plans that the poorer Mexicans can't afford that staple.
Ah, so blame the Mexican government for the Enviro-PR bullshit the American voters fall for. Where does the responsibility of the buyer come in?. Just like we should blame Iraq for the WoMD-PR bullshit the American voters fell for?
Oh, do you guys need any International Monitors for the next election? They should be done with Zimbabwe by then.
san francisco is just one of many sanctuary cities in this country.
as a permanent residence to the usa having had to go through immigration meetings, medical tests, means tests and a pretty good dose of fear - it bothers me that the same city that i had to go to for my hearing, past armed guards to prove my worth, wants illegals to come out of the woodwork and take advantage of the services the city has to offer, with a promise that they won't be rounded up or harmed in any way.
i don't seem to understand this system at all - i feel penalized somehow for doing what was right yet, i can still feel badly for those who are scared while here illegally.
It seems there is some blinkered thinking going on.
First of all, I think the fact the America has to come up with a different term for people who in Europe would either been seen as just another white person, or MAYBE, 'mediterranian' is interesting. Hispanic, Latino, whatever, it's just needless differentiation that underlines how heavily some issues in the US revolve around race. Where many Americans see a Hispanic, a European would see a European. Think about that.
Second, without illegal workers the US economy would not work. Just like without Chinese imports the standard of living would be impossible to maintain. But 'Made in America' means 'paid an arguably decent wage' and force the cost of many items to a point where the biggest patriots buy Chinese. Given a lower standard of living and a thriving US based manufacturing industry as choices we all know how people have voted; wallets first, principles second.
Third, American education is ghetoised by its funding system, assuring those from poor areas get poor educations and contributing to multi-generational poverty. If this is not true it means that people who just happen to come from poor areas are gentically lazy because of that, and this genetic laziness is racially mappable, as you're far more likely to be poor if you're not white. I don't belive that for a minute so it must be the funding. But the often religious-based obsession with local educational control means fair Federal funding of schools to eliminate such disparities is an impossibility.
Four, decent minimum-wages would speed up integration. Reduce poverty - of the poor whites too as god knows there's poor white people too. But the rich would have to pay more for maids and agricultural costs etc., would have to go up. So, that's a no-no.
When I visit America I am reminded of Romania. In Romania at the end of every broom, in every shitty job, you'll find a Roma, a gypsy. Well dressed young professional Romanians will go on about how terrible they are and make you want to scream RACIST!, but you don't do that on business trips do you? You don't tell your hosts that if they treated the Roma like ordinary people and made sure their kids were educated and had health care the underclass would integrate and cease being an underclass.
In the US there is the same terrible demarkation of jobs by race. Yes, in the US it is escapable for the very lucky and determined, but the fact that forty years after the Civil Rights movement there is still anything for non-white's to escape from is ignored. To accept that the continued race-based lines running through Amerian society are there through lack of political will is too big a condemnation of the American dream for many Americans to make.
Mexico is NOT a rich country by the way. It is a country where riches are distributed even worse than in the US. That is different from rich.
In the EU we had the end of civilisation as we know it predicted as a result of EU enlargment. Hasn't happened. Only the most ignorent and shiftless British people are done out of a job by Poles (for example). Poles work hard, pay taxes, get decent health care, integrate, send their children to decent schools. They often create jobs; god knows I couldn't have my car washed whilst I shopped 10 years ago, now someone for Gadansk will offer.
Immigrants also tend to have more kids, which is great in a welfare system, as the Western European model requires a good percentage of workers to retired people, and the fall in birth rates was endangering the model.
However, both in the UK and the US and NL immigration is used by principless politians looking to use the 'fear' card to garner easy votes. Oooo! Goreigners! Be very scared!!
It is slightly more subtle than Bob Mugabe's version, but still pretty obvious. But it still works. People only have themselves to blame for who they vote for. Ignorance is an act of will.
court shoots down s.f.
gun banstate supreme court rejects initiative to regulate firearms .
posted: 5:57 am pdt april 10, 2008updated: 11:00 am pdt april 10, 2008. san francisco, calif. -- a ruling by the state supreme court has brought an end to san francisco's attempts to ban handguns in the city.
Well, people clapping hands and going 'oh, goody, we get to keep our guns, woo-hoo, we'll be safer' is actually ignoring the underlying issue behind violent crime that makes people want to carry guns.
Peoiple can indulge in in a NRA-esque back-slap-fest if they want.
But to think the right of a locale to control weaponry being overturned will be anything other than a band-aide on violent crime is a joke. At best it's a pill to control a disease only a transplant (of social attiudes) will really address.
Tell me, do you think social violence drives the violence that differentiates American society from European society?
court shoots down s.f.
gun banstate supreme court rejects initiative to regulate firearms .
posted: 5:57 am pdt april 10, 2008updated: 11:00 am pdt april 10, 2008. san francisco, calif. -- a ruling by the state supreme court has brought an end to san francisco's attempts to ban handguns in the city.
Oh god, availability of handguns doesn't drive violence. It is a side issue.
Well-fed, fully employed, educated people with money and security don't run off and cap the mf next door or go gang-banging.
If they do break the law it's white collar crime.
Social inequality drives violence.
Just look at the stats between US and Western Europe.
BIG difference is social inequality, which is FAR higher un the USA than in the EU.
Whilst it is true the super rich (top-10%) in the USA are richer than the top 10% of European rich, the super poor in the US are TWICE as poor as the super-poor in the Scandinavian countries and North-West European countries like the Netherlands.
In the US people have historically voted for systems of taxation and governance that mean they MIGHT be able to get super rich easier than in Europe. Very very few do, and far more people pay for this 'freedom' in the social inequality such a biased soceity generates.
They have been miseducated so they think the social democracy of Europe equals Soviet socialism. By who? Errrr... the super rich... it's a great system, the great middle class, who are worse off than two decades ago, are the pawns of the elite and vote for the polcies that keep the elite getting even eliter. The poor are so hacked off they disenfranchise themselves.
The USA; (slightly) freer to be rich, a LOT freer to live and die in multi-generational poverty.
Ah, land of the free, you must be so proud. No wonder Liberty looks towards Europe...
author c.s.
lewis once wrote that one of three situations exist: .
1) jesus was the son of god .
Funky
Prophet, pillager or paedophile. Discuss.
Well, define prophet. If your definition is of someone who thinks they are or who is thought of as a prophet, then, yeah, he was a prophet. If your definiton is more exacting than opinions, mmmm... don't think so.
Pillager? Yeah, under most reasonable definiton of the word.
Pedo? Under modern popular definitons, yes. Under medical or biological definitons, yes. Under cultural definitons, no.
But then most of us don't have to go back much further than the 16 or 17th C to have grand-pappies that were pedos by modern definitons.
But the Christian god knocks up 14 year-old virgins, so the story goes...
Did the Earth move for Mary? Enquiring minds want to know.
Maybe that's the origin of the expression "oh my GOD!!"
author c.s.
lewis once wrote that one of three situations exist: .
1) jesus was the son of god .
Of course there are other possibilities. C. S. Lewis is vastly over-rated and trite. He should have stuck to children's stories, and even then made them less allegorical.
One other possibility is JC nailed to the tree screaming "Let me down you idiots, 'Son of God' is a METAPHOR".
