Osama is gone.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

I'm not sure if you got the reference or not, but you certainly misunderstood it.

I presumed you were discussing Peter Wiggin from the Ender's Game series, yes? You are aware that Orson Scott Card is a fundamentalist Mormon with views bordering on the neofascist who has come this close to calling for military dictatorship of the US in his books and has deliberately created sympathetic characters as stand-ins for Hitler. Since Peter is Ender's brother, and Ender is Card's stand-in for the Fuhrer, then my statement stands.

If you were not referring to that series, my bad. It's just the only one that comes to my mind that involves a psychopathic squirrel-torturer growing up to be Hegemon of the world.

[Alorael at Large]

I'm pretty sure he didn't. Xenocide and genocide are only different by one letter.

 

—Alorael, whose pithy summary was sniped by Dantius's anti-Ender. Oh well.

[Tyranicus]

I certainly won't disagree with your assessment of Card. The man does have some pretty radical views, but I would hardly call Ender Hitler. His actions post-xenocide make that very clear.

[Sudanna]

How would we know Hitler would have done? Hitler didn't finish.

[Dantius]

Did you read the essays? The essential logic behind both Hitler and Ender's actions are identical- both saw their race as being threaded by contamination or conflict with a race of degenerate subhumans controlled by a hive-mind bent on world/galactic domination, so they "heroically" shouldered the responsibility of eliminating that thereat, whether by gas chambers or by destroying a planet. Seeing as Hitler was fortunately unsuccessful in his goal, we have no idea what his actions would be post-completed Final Solution. For all we know, he could have been driven mad by the guilt now that he was no longer driven by his goal and recanted and sought redemption like Ender did. He almost certainly wouldn't have, but I'm sure the argument could be made that he might.

 

Oh, and also a vast quantity of the biographical and psychological parallels between the two are so shocking similar that coincidence can be just about ruled out, since it's obvious that the person writing the book must have had a very firm grasp of Hitler's life and motives, and then clearly and consciously modeled Ender after him. Again, read the essays I linked under "stand-ins" and "Hitler" in the above post.

[Tyranicus]

A major point that I took from the novel was that Ender would have done things differently had he known it was real.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

I don't mind gutting a fish, but I think it's weird that their organs twitch after being removed.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

The drive home after fishing is the worst. You've already killed the fish, but you can still hear them thrashing around in the bag.

Uh... what kind of fish, and how do you kill them? I usually catch rainbow trout (which, admittedly, is probably closer to aquaculture than actual hunting) and then break their necks. They don't twitch or thrash after that.

Dikiyoba also "hunts" any creature that is interesting but not awe-inspiring, foolish enough to come close, relatively defenseless, and likely to be caught and released without harm to it. Dikiyoba isn't any good at it, but at least garter snakes are even worse at escaping.

[Dintiradan]

I was playing Star Wars: Rebellion last night. Now you've got me worrying that all those sabotage missions, assassination attempts, orbital bombardments, and planetary assaults were made against actual Rebel planets.

 

Had I known they were real Rebels, I would have bombarded indiscriminately, rather than make a token effort of only hitting their military facilities.

 

@Dikiyoba: Walleye and yellow perch were the only ones we'd take home, and we would just club them at the end of the day. It's been a long while, but if I recall correctly, there wasn't any twitching or thrashing immediately after we clubbed them. It was only after a period of time (the drive home) that they would thrash. It was definitely a sporadic, muscle spasm thing, not an "I'm not dead!" response.

 

I've never seen the muscle twitching, but then I've never gutted and cleaned on the spot. By the time we got home the spasms would have stopped.

 

Now I'm curious how one "accidentally" puts a fish into a bucket of bleach.

[Alorael at Large]

Another difference: Hitler was head of state. He told his military what to do, and they figured out how to do it. Ender was the (unknowing) commander of a military. He was told what to do and it was left to him to accomplish it. In his case, it was stop the Bugger threat.

 

Buggers, at least, preemptively began warfare against humans. They also stopped and would have stayed stopped if humans hadn't then pursued the war to its end, but the problem was one of non-communication, not malice.

 

—Alorael, who should clarify his bleaching exploits. He intentionally put the fish in the bleach. He just wasn't expecting the liquid to be bleach. (Full disclosure: it was a Petri dish, not a bucket, and the fish were being used for research. They were supposed to go into anesthetic, but someone switched the plates around.)

[Jerakeen]

And here I was picturing you at the lake with your trusty rod, reel, and bucket o'bleach.

[Trenton.]

Wow. How the hell did a topic change from ossama to animals to fish killing to hitler?

[A less presumptuous name.]

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha

Wow. How the hell did a topic change from ossama to animals to fish killing to hitler?

Quite logically, in fact. Killing fish - killing squirrels - allusion to Ender's Game books - Discussion of parallels between Ender and Hitler.

[tridash]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

I was playing Star Wars: Rebellion last night. Now you've got me worrying that all those sabotage missions, assassination attempts, orbital bombardments, and planetary assaults were made against actual Rebel planets.

Had I known they were real Rebels, I would have bombarded indiscriminately, rather than make a token effort of only hitting their military facilities.

not sure if this has already been posted and I just missed it, but:

Obi wan is gone.

[Dintiradan]

Originally Posted By: tridash

Obi wan is gone.

As is usually the case with internet satire, half the fun of that article was reading the comments section.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Originally Posted By: tridash

Obi wan is gone.

As is usually the case with internet satire, half the fun of that article was reading the comments section.

Damn, all those comments were spot-on what reading the comments section an an actual news website would be like. Are they submitted by users, or written in as part of the article?

[Trenton.]

...That...What the hell? now it changed to starwars? this has got to be the most chang around topic ever.

[Dintiradan]

We are altering the thread's topic. Pray we do not alter it further.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Originally Posted By: tridash

Obi wan is gone.

As is usually the case with internet satire, half the fun of that article was reading the comments section.

Damn, all those comments were spot-on what reading the comments section an an actual news website would be like. Are they submitted by users, or written in as part of the article?

I'd guess both. Some were probably seeded, but there are far too many, and some are about real-world events and pointing out the parody and such.

—Alorael, who gives it a matter of hours before the comments are filled with exactly the same thing as any bin Laden news article on the New York Times site.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

I don't mind gutting a fish, but I think it's weird that their organs twitch after being removed.

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

The drive home after fishing is the worst. You've already killed the fish, but you can still hear them thrashing around in the bag.

Uh... what kind of fish, and how do you kill them? I usually catch rainbow trout (which, admittedly, is probably closer to aquaculture than actual hunting) and then break their necks. They don't twitch or thrash after that.

Dikiyoba also "hunts" any creature that is interesting but not awe-inspiring, foolish enough to come close, relatively defenseless, and likely to be caught and released without harm to it. Dikiyoba isn't any good at it, but at least garter snakes are even worse at escaping.

I actually have no clue what kind of fish they are, because I am always with someone who knows what he's doing (and I don't). I caught those fish in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, and we kill them by beheading them.

[Death Knight]

Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people.

Hitler? Sure, Osama Bin Laden caused the deaths of many people, but the number certainly isn't in the millions.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people.

Out of curiosity, who are "these people" of whom you speak?

[Death Knight]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people.

Out of curiosity, who are "these people" of whom you speak?

The people with whom i refer to are people that do things for senseless reasons to hurt people. This means people like osama who do things to hurt innocent civilians and get regarded as heros. This doesnt apply just to muslims. There are many many muslims who are excellent people. This also refers to people like tucson county arizona shooting. The nut shot at a congresswoman, and killed a 12 year old girl. He should be killed and pictures of his death be sent to the world. No trial. That way it will give other nuts an idea of what happens to bad people. In the end, Where's frank castle when ya need him.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Excalibur

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

Im glad osama is dead. He was almost our time's version of hitler. They should've posted that death picture in every major city of the world. That would show people what happens when you decide to be a nutcase. It may be brutal, but being nice sure isnt working with these people.

Hitler? Sure, Osama Bin Laden caused the deaths of many people, but the number certainly isn't in the millions.

Au contraire, it may be pushing the millions, just no on the US's side. Way more Iraqi civilians died during the US's occupation than were killed by every terrorist attack against the US and multiplied by a factor of 10. The occupational death toll usually gets pegged anywhere from 100,000 to over a million. Speaking from my "disinterested utilitarian" soapbox, 3,000 dead Americans don't mean jack compared to a million dead Iraqis. People really need to get 9/11 in perspective. More people die in drunk driving accidents every month, and yet you don't see much public outcry about that.

[Callie]

9/11 caused a change in Bush's foreign policy, but I think it's a stretch to say that Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the Iraq War. The United States invaded Iraq out of its own free will, and was fully aware that it could lead to grave consequences. The deaths of Iraqi civilians were the result of bad government, not terrorism.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

The people with whom i refer to are people that do things for senseless reasons to hurt people. This means people like osama who do things to hurt innocent civilians and get regarded as heros. This doesnt apply just to muslims. There are many many muslims who are excellent people. This also refers to people like tucson county arizona shooting. The nut shot at a congresswoman, and killed a 12 year old girl. He should be killed and pictures of his death be sent to the world. No trial. That way it will give other nuts an idea of what happens to bad people. In the end, Where's frank castle when ya need him.

I am sorry that you feel that way.

People like Osama and those who engage in "senseless reasons to hurt people" are not actually doing so for senseless reasons. Osama and other so-called terrorists have political agendas, and in fact they are trying to create what they view as a more perfect world, rather than just utilize violence for violence's sake.

Labeling is the first game of power. When we label people as terrorists, nuts, crazy, etc. we otherize them, make them less than human. This is bad for everyone in the situation; the ones who label lose their recourse to peaceful means of diplomacy and discussion to address the grievances of the labeled, and indeed this justifies greater acts of violence against the labeled than would be seen as reasonable against those deemed rational; the labeled are forced to the margins to have their voices heard, radicalizing and fighting violence with violence. It's a race to the bottom.

In the rare cases where there are cases of psychological disorder that people lose all senses of morality and do, in fact, just want to cause violence, such as in Antisocial PD, deterrence is rarely effective. Therefore, if one's goal is to stem the flow of violence, broadcasting brutal executions like this are ineffective. The people who we view as nuts who are actually perfectly rational only get driven to further extremes, while the people with genuine mental issues are beyond recourse to the effects of deterrence.

[Sudanna]

Perfectly rational may be stretching things. Perfectly sane, more like.

[Lord Safey]

You be may be able to say he was sane and perhaps rational. I doubt however the he and the US could have found grounds to negotiate. My understanding of what cause him to attacked us is we provided evidence to the saudis that iraq was going to attack them and then asked for our assistance which we gave and what set him off was he didn't want American troops in a Muslim nation.

 

The issue is that people can have vastly differently world views and while there views make sense in there own mine it makes for having sympathy of another situation more difficult. Also peaceful negotiations will never happen if both sides don't think the have any to gain. I see little that the US could gain from negotiating with Al Qaeda and vis versa.

[Trenton.]

The thing is why not be happy, there are the poor that are desperate and steal, i can understand tthat when there children are starving, but murder...And then theres dictatorship. Not every thing is sussposed to be good. The point of us on the earth is to exist, And we can enjoy life as what we are, Wether we are christan or bhudist, or jewish. Or black or white or indian. I say why do all these horrible things? I know that it all dissapearing is a 1 chance in a million. And you cant change people that want to be changed. The point is why do dictators do the things they do, or terrorist? Just to cause fear in the world? To get anything you want? This is earth, you not sussposed to get everything you want.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Death Knight

The people with whom i refer to are people that do things for senseless reasons to hurt people. This means people like osama who do things to hurt innocent civilians and get regarded as heros. This doesnt apply just to muslims. There are many many muslims who are excellent people. This also refers to people like tucson county arizona shooting. The nut shot at a congresswoman, and killed a 12 year old girl. He should be killed and pictures of his death be sent to the world. No trial. That way it will give other nuts an idea of what happens to bad people. In the end, Where's frank castle when ya need him.

There are lunatics who shoot people for reasons that make no sense to anyone but themselves. There are sane people who, for whatever reason, choose to enact senseless violence. The two are not the same, and that's part of why we have trials. Another is that it's not always so obvious who did what. Lynch mob justice is no justice at all, and that is the reason for the judicial system. If someone acted with malice, they will be convicted, and they will be sentenced.

Osama bin Laden is a different case. He didn't act out of insanity or out of senseless malice. He enacted religiously-motivated assymetric warfare. Evil, maybe, but not senseless: there was a purpose to his actions.

And really, we don't win by being more brutal than those who choose violence, because brutal people are potentially limitless and we don't need to go inspiring more. We win by being better than they are, and by offering an alternative to violence that seems worth pursuing.

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

My understanding of what cause him to attacked us is we provided evidence to the saudis that iraq was going to attack them and then asked for our assistance which we gave and what set him off was he didn't want American troops in a Muslim nation.

That was one justification among many. Support for Israel has come up repeatedly and prominently as well. Probably, from al-Qaeda's perspective America is evil, and that is the justification for their actions.

—Alorael, who especially doesn't see the need to glorify the architect of 9/11 by plastering gory photos of his death everywhere. He was a dangerous figure, and he was killed. Now he is no longer dangerous; the end. No need to grant him any more status.

[Trenton.]

Osama may be gone, but that doesnt mean the organization is. Al queada was it? You better expect some sort of retallitation. Its like a body without no head, The head may be gone, but the body is still standing tall.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha

Osama may be gone, but that doesnt mean the organization is. Al queada was it? You better expect some sort of retallitation. Its like a body without no head, The head may be gone, but the body is still standing tall.

Not really, the organization itself will probably collapse without fairly strong central leadership. No matter how decentralized and organization is, it still needs a leader, and with Bin Laden dead and no clear chain of command, I think it's fairly clear that the organization will simply no longer be able to pose a threat to the US, especially considering the SEAL team also got tons of operational and organization data that should be quite enough to obliterate Al Qaeda permanently.

That doesn't mean Islamist terrorism is finished, mind you. All it means is that the most powerful anti-US group is gone- plenty other powerful groups and plenty other anti US groups exist, it's just that the powerful ones have their attention focused elsewhere, like India and Israel and Chechnya (are they still focused on Chechnya? It's so hard to tell...).

I don't expect retaliation. I do expect further attacks down the road, probably from a different organization, and probably even more devastating. But those are issues out of my control, so I see no reason to worry about them, that's the government's job.

[keira]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I do expect further attacks down the road, probably from a different organization, and probably even more devastating.

In related news, the Montana Department of Justice, Motor Vehicles Division just gave me a driver's license

[Trenton.]

Curse you It's a trap. I have to wait another 4 years before im even allowed to drive.

[Alorael at Large]

If al-Qaeda or anyone else were truly a threat, it would have been delivered on by now. No, America isn't completely safe from terrorists; that's an impossible goal. But terrorism isn't easy, and if the biggest player couldn't pull anything off for a decade with its leader, it's probably not going to do better leaderless.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't really think driving is all it's cracked up to be. Walking is where it's at. You should be on foot as much as possible.

[Callie]

Getting a driver's license only meant that my mom made me shuttle my siblings around. I've never owned a car, so it's more practical as identification.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Orange bottles all the way down

—Alorael, who doesn't really think driving is all it's cracked up to be. Walking is where it's at. You should be on foot as much as possible.

Especially walk past Alorael's house.

 

It depends where you live for driving. Some places have such bad public transportation and/or great distances to travel that driving is the only practical solution.

 

But the driver's license is considered the universal identification in the United States. When Arizona passed it's identification requirements to vote, senior citizens in nursing homes were outraged that it disenfranchised them from voting since almost every acceptable form was no longer available to them.

[Niemand]

Quote:

When Arizona passed it's identification requirements to vote, senior citizens in nursing homes were outraged that it disenfranchised them from voting since almost every acceptable form was no longer available to them.

Surely Arizona, like other states, has a non-driver's identification card. I know that both Missouri and Wisconsin have such things, and while most people don't know about them, but if you hear that you won't be allowed to vote without a government issued photo ID you will surely care enough to look, or if one person hears of it the information would surely spread by word-of-mouth. Right?

I had to drive to get to college when I lived in St. Louis because the city's buses and light rail are virtually useless to anyone living in the suburbs (the vast majority of the population). The light rail system in particular is fairly useful to students at that same college if they live in the dormitories or nearby area since it then connects to useful places like the airport and various malls, but since I needed to travel from a point that wasn't on the system (by a good couple of miles) I have never ridden it.

In Madison (WI) I live in university owned housing, so there's a free bus line which runs practically past my front door, going to the campus. From there it's only an additional mile to the office, so I usually walk, but I could ride another bus. I do still drive to get groceries, but a new bus route has been added which I could use if I switched grocery stores (or I could take a long route involving multiple buses while carrying the groceries).

So, cities in the midwestern U.S. alone definitely vary a lot. Driving really can be just about required, depending on the location and the task.

[*i]

There's always a US Passport. It works, but generally not a good idea to carry that document around with you unless you absolutely have to.

 

As for driving, yes, some places you can get away without it. Other places you really cannot, especially if you live in more rural areas or your work requires you to travel a lot between cities.

[Randomizer]

Arizona has a non-driver's identification card, but for someone with limited mobility in a nursing home you have to arrange transportation to a motor vehicle department and have identification that they will accept. Most of those are driver's license, passport, utilities bills that you don't have in a nursing home, military identification, ....

[Slawbug]

First of all, none of this is unique to Arizona.

 

Secondly, what form of identity verification, exactly, WOULD be convenient for someone with limited mobility who lives in a nursing home? Particularly given that existing IDs can almost always be renewed by mail and without any documentation, this is only an issue for old people who have never gotten proper ID, which is probably a much smaller group than, say, young people who have never gotten proper ID.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Edit Reason: Why is "islamist" not recognized by spellcheck? It really should be...

Because, "Islamist" is not a word. Islam is a word in Arabic that means "submission," making Muslim translate roughly as "one who submits." Words like "Islamist" and "Islamic" are not actually words at all, just crude English adaptations to Arabic words.

[Slawbug]

They are used as words, though. I used to object to "Islamist" being a really stupid choice of ideologically descriptive words, but it is now widespread enough that there's no point fighting it. And "Islamic" has been used as an English word forever. It's pretty standard that English creates adjectives that way, so I'm not sure what your problem is with that.

 

Additionally, "Islam" and "Muslim" are two different forms of the same verb (with triconsonantal root SLM). Given the way Semitic languages pile on the affixes, attaching English affixes like "ic" and "ist" seems pretty in character.

[Student of Trinity]

The real slm shady stands up!

[Trenton.]

So they aren't words. So that just makes the world a tad bit easier or harder, wether your learning a differant launguage or getting a affix right.

 

Edit: Seriously, what the differance between a prefix, suffix, and affix?

[keira]

Originally Posted By: loyal servile of sasuke uchiha

Edit: Seriously, what the differance between a prefix, suffix, and affix?

Affix is the umbrella term containing prefix, suffix, and a couple others. It's just when you attach something onto a root word.

A prefix is an affix that goes on the beginning, like "un-" in "undo".

A suffix is after the word, like "-ness" in "awesomeness".

[Alorael at Large]

They're words. Since we're not speaking Arabic, we could make up a world for Muslim/Islam out of whole cloth or we could adopt the word they have and then treat it as an English word so it's understandable. Even the fact that Muslim and Islam don't share the first few letters trips up plenty of English-speakers.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't try to go a-fixing affixes. Prescriptivism always loses.

[Slawbug]

The Empire always loses?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Edit Reason: Why is "islamist" not recognized by spellcheck? It really should be...

Because, "Islamist" is not a word. Islam is a word in Arabic that means "submission," making Muslim translate roughly as "one who submits." Words like "Islamist" and "Islamic" are not actually words at all, just crude English adaptations to Arabic words.

Um, yeah, it's totally a word. English frequently co-opts words from other languages and then alters their definition, and I'm sure the linguists here will back me up on this one. It's usually used by political scientists and politicians and occasionally the military to denote the set of beliefs usually involving advocation of Muslim rule, sharia law, and return to a caliphate. Essentially, radical political Islam. It's not to be confused with "Islamic", which just means of or pertaining to Islam.

[Trenton.]

Quote:

the empire always loses

 

What does that have to do with anything?