The slayings of Sergeant Davis and a Marine, Capt. Warren A. Frank, in November were not the only times Iraqis in uniform had attacked American soldiers. Military officials have counted seven such deaths in northern Iraq in the last six months, including two soldiers killed on Saturday at a combat outpost south of Mosul.Constructive Feedback said...
DV:
1) If you were to find out that Sergeant Davis and Capt Frank
served in Iraq WITH PRIDE and commitment to their mission noting the progress along the way you would say what?
I would say 5,000 dead American soldiers
1,000,000 dead Iraqi people
$ Trillions of US Tax Dollars transferred to private corporations like Haliburton
0 WMD's
I would then congratulate him for his service and ask him EXACTLY whom he believes he has "served"?
2) If you found that each of them had killed a hostile Iraqi agent apiece who HIMSELF was a father - you would say what?
hostile? Iraqi? Agent? How can a man in his own country, be considered a "hostile agent"?
3) If they came home to the USA and a Domestic Pirate had killed them both - you would say what?
I would challenge the oxymoronic term "Domestic Pirate".
20 comments:
DV:
1) If you were to find out that Sergeant Davis and Capt Frank
served in Iraq WITH PRIDE and commitment to their mission noting the progress along the way you would say what?
2) If you found that each of them had killed a hostile Iraqi agent apiece who HIMSELF was a father - you would say what?
3) If they came home to the USA and a Domestic Pirate had killed them both - you would say what?
Sadly there'll be many, many more pictures like these as DV's Blind MESS-I-AH escalates the senseless war in AF-PAK.
Why are we in Afghanistan?
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34&Itemid=74&jumival=+why+are+we+in+afgha&search=search
We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism. The home that all too many Americans left was solidly structured idealistically; its pillars were solidly grounded in the insights of our Judeo-Christian heritage.
All men are made in the image of God. All men are bothers. All men are created equal. Every man is an heir to a legacy of dignity and worth. Every man has rights that are neither conferred by, nor derived from the State--they are God-given. Out of one blood, God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. What a marvelous foundation for any home! What a glorious and healthy place to inhabit. But America's strayed away, and this unnatural excursion has brought only confusion and bewilderment. It has left hearts aching with guilt and minds distorted with irrationality.
It is time for all people of conscience to call upon America to come back home. Come home, America. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on." I call on Washington today. I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today. I call on the young men of America who must make a choice today to take a stand on this issue. Tomorrow may be too late. The book may close.
And don't let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine, messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with judgment, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America, "You're too arrogant! And if you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I'll place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still and know that I'm God."
-- M.L King, Jr.
Well, with all due respect to our troops, when you sign your life away to serve as a robot killer slave to our neocon admin - well, that's when you made your choice. You are effectively joining the biggest gang in the world.
It's not all about signing your life away Anon. Ride through any urban center in America and see the thousands of young Black men who cannot find a job. For some the military and crime are the only options.
Black America is in a depression.
Washington, Jan.19 (ANI): With the recession in the United States showing no signs of ending, Americans are looking at the country’s armed forces as a viable employment option, lured by factors such as a steady paycheck, benefits and training.
As of December 2008 alone, 21,443 new soldiers have joined active duty or the reserves, reports the New York Times.
When the economy slackens and unemployment rises and jobs become more scarce in civilian society, recruiting is less challenging," the paper quotes Curtis Gilroy, the director of accession policy for the Department of Defense, as saying.
As a rule, when unemployment rates climb so do military enlistments. In November, the Army recruited 5,605 active-duty soldiers, six percent more than its target, and the Army Reserve signed up 3,270 soldiers, and sixteen percent more than its goal. December, when the jobless rate reached 7.2 percent, saw similar increases in recruitments.
"military and crime are the only options"
With the bar lowered and amount of scholarships thrown at young black men by affirmative action, how can simply mediocre academic performance and a subsequent office job not be a primary option?
That's a good question Byrdeye.
You'd think these young brothers would be allowed to work on Wall St. with the white geniuses and greedy crooks who ran the economy into the ground, so they can share in those $billions of welfare checks euphemistically termed "bailouts".
You are alright with me DV. Just don't allow the facts to bite ya.
Halliburton Financials for 2008
Industry: Oil & Gas Equipment & Services, Products, Technical services to the petroleum industry;
Construction
Revenue ▲ US$ 15.264 billion (2007)[2]
Operating income ▲ US$ 3.498 billion (2007)[2]
Net income ▲ US$ 3.499 billion (2007)[2]
Total assets ▼ US$ 13.135 billion (2007)[2]
Total equity ▼ US$ 6.866 billion (2007)[2]
Employees 55,000 (2008)[3]
I take it that they consumed these TRILLIONS from Bush in the early part of the illegal war and then shrank back down to a $15 billion company.
[quote]I call on every man and woman of good will all over America today.[/quote]
Real News Network Referencer:
The day when YOU can say the same thing to the fighters who are brutalizing women, children and their fellow Muslims and ask them to STOP then I will be comforted that you have a message for those who "DON'T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOU THINK" as well as the message that you have for Americans.
Mr DV:
A "Domestic Pirate" is NOT an oxymoron. It is my new term to describe the "Drug Thugs" that are terrorizing our communities.
After years of being frustrated by the Black community's tepid response to standing firm against those who are robbing us, assaulting us, committing terrorist actions in the name of witness suppression my eyes were opened as I saw that many of these same people who had been silent where invigorated when our Commander in Chief Barack Obama gave permission to have 3 White Navy Seals to shoot 3 Black Africans in the head, killing them to save the live of one White man.
Their deaths was called a "VICTORY for Barack Obama"
The trick was to call these Black males "PIRATES" and thus it caused a dramatically different response out of those who would normally protest when authority figures like the police DO THE SAME DAMNED THING.
I was amazed at the power of a LABEL, DV, and thus I adopted the term "Domestic Pirate".
I hope you'll understand.
RNNR to CF, based on your train of thought there is no need to do what is right as long as someone else is doing wrong. In other words if drug dealers and pimps are stuffing dollars into sweaty g-strings at Magic City, then Feed may as well join the fun. Why should Feed sit at home reading the Bible—thou shall not stuff dollars into the draws of strippers—when a lot of other respectable fellows are there enjoying table tops?
Feed, you are too funny!
The RNNR is no more of a supporter of the Taliban and the imaginary Al-Qaeda network than MLK was a supporter of the Viet-Cong.
Besides those folks don’t profess to have a creed which proclaims: “one Nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.”
Not only is America the “greatest purveyor of violence” on the planet, it is a country which literally exudes crime, violence, and immorality from the pores of its social fabric.
“According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States has a higher rate of drug crime suspects than any other country--624 per 100,000 people.
When it comes to specific drugs, the United States ranks first for cocaine use…
America is also home to more criminal incidents, some of which are at least tangentially connected to drug use. Data collected by the UNODC show that the United States ranks sixth in recorded rates of major assaults, 11th in rapes and 21st in robberies. What's more, a greater percentage of the population in the United States (5.1%) is prosecuted for crimes than in any other country for whom the UNODC has such data.
All of these prosecutions have given the United States the largest number of inmates in the world, as well as the highest rate of incarceration: 738 per 100,000 people.” Mark Rice
So Feed, while you’re sitting there in Magic City, watching butts shakin, tits bouncing, and cooties pulsating, you know in your heart that the USA doesn’t have a moral leg to stand on.
America has enabled prostitution to return to Baghdad, and she is looking to do the same thing for Kabul.
As Jim Mora would say: “Morality? Don’t talk about Morality. You kidding me? Morality?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdUr5hF0yGc
ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!
[quote]RNNR to CF, based on your train of thought there is no need to do what is right as long as someone else is doing wrong. In other words if drug dealers and pimps are stuffing dollars into sweaty g-strings at Magic City, then Feed may as well join the fun. Why should Feed sit at home reading the Bible—thou shall not stuff dollars into the draws of strippers—when a lot of other respectable fellows are there enjoying table tops?[/quote]
Real News:
We are supposed to "be fruitful and multiply", aren't we?
My point, however, was to slap against the "abstract theorists" who pride themselves of their CLEAN HANDS all the while eating the fruit from someone else's conquest that they have protested.
Real News - just let a Native American knock on your door and make the case to you that your house sits on their holy land and he wants it back. The next "Indian blood" that is shed into the earth will you after you punch him in the nose.
[quote]
“According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States has a higher rate of drug crime suspects than any other country--624 per 100,000 people.[/quote]
Real News - You point to America's CRIMES but I get the strange feeling that you are one of the biggest backers of the Criminal Defendants.
I keep hearing about all of these wrongly convicted individuals but I keep seeing so many murders and assaults along the way.
And by the way RNN - I DON'T DO "MORALS".
Take morals and throw them out of the window. They are nothing more than arbitrary means toward judgmentalism.
Instead let's inspect FUNCTIONALITY or DIRECTED OUTCOMES.
All societies and cultures need to be conscious of the ENDS THEY ARE SEEKING TO ACHIEVE. They should then seek to REVERSE ENGINEER their way back from this end and thus define the general behavior among the masses that are necessary to obtain this end.
I try to avoid JUDGING people. Instead when I see a challenge that they face I also REVERSE ENGINEER from their present circumstances and make note of how they got there. Thus it is their responsibility to employ CORRECTIVE BEHAVIOR.
I try to avoid JUDGING people.This is where I have to step in. Statements like that are the largest, stinkiest piles of horseshit that silly hypocrites spew ad nauseum. Everyone judges everyone else. You judge them to be good, you judge them to be bad, you judge them to be tall, thin, smart, dumb, ugly, pretty, etc. and you act accordingly.
Judgment is how we survive. Judgment keeps you from walking in the wrong neighborhood, giving your money to the wrong person, hanging out with the wrong crowd.
You must stand for something or you'll fall for anything.
Do not judge lest you be judged does not mean don't judge. It means you better be able to take what you dish out.
Intellectual Insurgent:
It is interesting that you have chosen this point of semantical nitpicking to extract out of my broader message.
For years I have heard Congressman John Lewis, Russell Simmons, Al Sharpton and many other Black Quasi-Socialist Progressive-Fundamentalist Racism Chasers use their revulsion of the JUDGEMENTALISM that the conservative forces in society put upon others. I take it that I must have misunderstood their words.
In all seriousness I agree that for them it is not a matter of being "Judgement Free" but instead seeking to define the reference framework by which to evaluate others by.
What about my comments about FUNCTIONALISM?
Is it out of line to have a set of leaders doing "reverse engineering" and then base their management principles based on this framing?
Real News - just let a Native American knock on your door and make the case to you that your house sits on their holy land and he wants it back. The next "Indian blood" that is shed into the earth will you after you punch him in the nose. -- Feed
Africa for the Africans. Europe for the Europeans. America for the Native Americans would be fine with me.
Real News - You point to America's CRIMES but I get the strange feeling that you are one of the biggest backers of the Criminal Defendants. -- Feed
"In 1964, 65% of all prison admits were white, while only 35% were people of color. By 1991, these figures had reversed. Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years, while Black and brown folks went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the percentage of crimes committed by African Americans has remained steady over the past 18 years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed." -- Tim Wise
"Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years..."
One would have to be totally asinine to believe that the world’s greatest historical criminals suddenly stopped committing crimes.
How interesting that the incarceration rates of Black people began to climb as civil rights laws were being passed.
That says to me that the White Power Structure could no longer rely on segregation and discrimination as their primary “containment” weapons so they changed the focus of law enforcement, and prison became a primary weapon.
[quote]Africa for the Africans. Europe for the Europeans. America for the Native Americans would be fine with me.[/quote]
And you live WHERE right now? ...............I rest my case.
Why wait for this "America for the Native Americans" policy to be ratified? Every journey starts with a single step. Every mass movement begins with the first person departing to their spiritual homeland.
[quote]Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years, while Black and brown folks went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the percentage of crimes committed by African Americans has remained steady over the past 18 years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed." -- Tim Wise[/quote]
RNN - you just lost credibility and my respect with the use of the name "Tim Wise" - the functional middle man between the "Black victim" and White folks. If you notice his focus is on CHANGING WHITEY so that the Black man will live in comfort. Ask HIM "WHAT BLACK PEOPLE NEED TO DO TO IMPROVE OUR LOT IN LIFE".......he would likely say "JOIN ME ON MY BATTLE AGAINST WHITE FOLKS AND WHITE SUPREMACY is what you Blacks should do". Circular reference indeed.
Seriously RNN - please find a single word that the "Black Leader by Proxy" Tim Wise has EVER spoken which told BLACK FOLKS WHAT WE NEED TO DO FOR OUR ADVANCEMENT. I would love to hear it.
RNN - You would benefit from watching 2 valuable points of reference that serve to answer your quetion: History Channel's "Gang Land" and BETJ's "American Gangster". Both of these documentary series detail the MURDER and VIOLENCE and CONSPIRACY that distinguishes the Urban Drug Trade. The argument "Since White folks use more drugs than us and yet Black folks are being locked up more thus it must be RACISM" falls flat when you factor in the VIOLENCE element. In the areas that I am most familiar with - the communities that wer over run with drugs and violence made great protestations against the POLICE and the ELECTED OFFICIALS to "DO SOMETHING!!!!" about the rampang violence and drugs in their community.
"Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years..."Using your argument - WHITE FOLKS are so racist that they'd allow their own communities to be overrun with drugs and violent drug dealers BECAUSE they hate Black folks so much and thus focus upon us. Secondly - you fail to mention the realities of our cities. More PROGRESSIVES now run these large cities where Blacks live and they preside over the POLICE and the LOCAL COURTS. How is it that the "racists from the suburbs" are allowed to have so much power over these central city areas?
[quote]One would have to be totally asinine to believe that the world’s greatest historical criminals suddenly stopped committing crimes.[/quote]
When such a fraudulent framing is made indeed it is hard to believe.
[quote]How interesting that the incarceration rates of Black people began to climb as civil rights laws were being passed.[/quote]
Again it is interesting that you aren't able to speak to the growth of the Black Power Structure and the Progressive Power Structure during this same period.
[quote]That says to me that the White Power Structure could no longer rely on segregation and discrimination as their primary “containment” weapons so they changed the focus of law enforcement, and prison became a primary weapon.[/quote]
RNN - could you articulate for us WHAT the entities of the WHITE POWER STRUCTURE are today in the streets of America?
If the drug incarcerations DO NOT decrease under Obama and in the Northeast in which PROGRESSIVES dominate this nation both at the national level and as the NORTHEAST becomes a CONCENTRATED DEMOCRATIC,PROGRESSIVE REGION what will this say about your abstract theory and would it cause YOU to go back and find a new MODEL to explain this reality?
Feed, Feed, Feed, Feed………….
Redundancy is a clear manifestation of ignorance!
You are repeating the same mistake made by so many, so often—attacking the messenger, rather than offering a rebuttal of his analysis: "In 1964, 65% of all prison admits were white, while only 35% were people of color. By 1991, these figures had reversed. Did whites decide collectively to stop committing crimes in the intervening years, while Black and brown folks went nuts? Or was something else at work? According to FBI data, the percentage of crimes committed by African Americans has remained steady over the past 18 years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed."
I don’t have to watch television; I see the effects of the economy, crime, drug abuse, and they way my community is policed every day.
I have no idea how DV’s MESS-I-AH will proceed to reduce the racial disparities for drug incarcerations, but this is a step in the right direction:
Today the Justice Department announced that it supports eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine powder, under which five grams of smokable cocaine triggers the same sentence as 500 grams of the snortable form. The DOJ's position is not surprising, since President Obama has repeatedly criticized excessively long mandatory minimum sentences and Vice President Biden (a semi-repentant hardline drug warrior) sponsored legislation as a senator that would make crack penalties the same as the penalties for cocaine powder. Still, the Obama administration's early and strong support for sentencing reform is a welcome contrast to the Bush administration.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/133171.html
And so is this:
http://www.upi.com/news/issueoftheday/2009/03/20/New-priorities-drive-Holder-Obama-to-permit-medical-marijuana-use/UPI-54261237563338/
Feed, there is nothing abstract about facts:
The marked racial disparities in drug arrests did not reflect racial differences in violations of drug laws prohibiting possession and sale of illicit drugs. Statistical as well as anecdotal evidence indicate drug possession and drug selling cut across all racial, socio-economic and geographic lines. Yet because drug law enforcement resources have been concentrated in low-income, predominantly minority urban areas, drug offending whites have been disproportionately free from arrest compared to blacks.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services calculates drug use trends from data gathered through the federal National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA). In a report based on NHSDA data for 1991, 1992, and 1993, SAMHSA estimated that 3.1 percent of non-Hispanic blacks and 2.4 percent of non-Hispanic whites over the age of 12 had used cocaine in the past year. Because there are far more whites than blacks in the national population, these use rates translate into 3,727,680 non-Hispanic whites who had used cocaine compared to 720,130 non-Hispanic blacks. That is, there were five times as many non-Hispanic whites as blacks who were cocaine users.
According to the most recent NHSDA survey, in 1998 there were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users) and 2.0 million blacks (15 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998. There were almost five times as many current white marijuana users as black and four times as many white cocaine users. Almost three times as many whites had ever used crack as blacks. Among those who had used crack at least once in the past year, 462,000 were white and 324,000 were black.
Only among current crack users did the number of blacks exceed the number of whites -- and this was a change from previous years in which the number of current white crack users had exceeded the number of black users. SAMHSA also estimated that in 1998 there were 4,934,000 whites who used marijuana on 51 or more days in the past year, compared to 1,102,000 blacks, and 321,000 whites who had used cocaine on 51 or more days in the past year compared to 171,999 blacks.
The comparison of racial proportions of drug users and drug arrests in the period 1979 to 1998 reveals a markedly higher arrest rate of black drug offenders compared to both whites and to the black proportion of the drug using population. The percentage of current drug users who were black and white did not vary significantly in this twenty-year period. Among those arrested on drug charges, however, the percentage of blacks rose markedly, and the percentage of whites decreased correspondingly.
For each year, the percentage of black drug arrests was at least double the percentage of blacks among current drug users. Whites, conversely, were under-arrested; that is, they constituted a smaller percent of drug arrests than they did of drug users.
There are no comparable annual statistics on the estimated number and race of drug sellers nationwide. Nevertheless, such data as exists indicates whites constitute a far greater share of the drug selling population than of the population arrested for drug selling. For example, during the period 1991-1993, SAMHSA included questions about drug selling in the annual NHSDA surveys. Although the responses are best seen as a rough approximation of drug selling activity, they are nonetheless highly suggestive. On average over the three yearperiod, blacks were 16 percent of admitted sellers and whites were 82 percent. According to research on patterns of drug purchase and use in selected major cities, drug users reported that their main drug sources were sellers of the same racial or ethnic background as they were. A large study conducted in the Miami, Florida metropolitan area of 699 cocaine users (powder and crack) revealed that over 96 percent of the users in each ethnic/racial category were involved in street-level drug dealing, which again would suggest a racial profile of sellers that is comparable to that of users.
General Barry McCaffrey has stated that drug transactions between youth are generally intra-racial, that is, youth tend to buy from sellers of the same race.88 ONDCP's former periodic report on drug trends, Pulse Check, also indicated a high frequency of intra-racial drug transactions, that is, that whites tended to buy from white sellers and minorities from minority sellers. (Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs)
http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/2000/usa/
Feed, if you can manage to offer a rebuttal to this report rather than attacking the organization which produced it, please proceed.
Real News
Real News:
As I engage in these sort of conversations I try to create a framework by which both of us can be constricted to in order to properly align my focus.
I find that in allowing "Racism Chasers" to continue untethered you all will always seek to reframe the issue and thus have me chasing after WHITE FOLKS, even when they have moved out of our community and allowed us to field the policies of our choosing, as long as their are in alignment with the US constitution and federal law.
I have coined the term "Justice Thurgood Marshall Justice" to describe the attempt by some to make criminal defendants into VICTIMS of the system. This provokes those who are smitten as such, as you seem to be, to focus on their unquenchable pursuit of JUSTICE rather than upon the actual state of the BLACK COMMUNITY which they purport to be working for the best interests of.
Real News - I struggle to figure out how the reduction of incarceration rates for a DRUG that HAS NO PHYSICAL PROPERTIES to make it a "BLACK DRUG" advances the goal of making the Black community safe, drug free and our people more productive. Mind you that I AM NOT OPPOSED TO THIS CHANGE....I just believe that the "benefits" are oversold. As usual it focuses on having the GOVERNMENT to change while doing NOTHING to ask 'LIFE'S VICTIMS' to change their behavior.
Real News - CERTAINLY if there is some fundamental value of the relationship between the parent who is incarcerated and the child who is left wanting his parent - THE ADULT PARENTS and the COMMUNITIES which are being impacted the most negatively have a INCUMBENT responsibility to make sure that THE ADULTS don't do anything to sever this bond.
Sadly RNN - you and others can ONLY manage to focus on the GOVERNMENT SANCTION. AS IF - by having the GOVERNMENT to look the other way or to not punish them as severely that all of the community's problems will be solved and thus we will have healthy relationships between these individuals.
How does one become "Afro-Centric" or "Black Community Centric" when so much of their efforts TODAY are focused on THE EXTERNAL FORCES?
Real News - one would think that as the places where our people live become INCREASINGLY RULED BY PROGRESSIVES as the White Conservative is put in check BY LAW....that the tide will shift and thus instead of focusing the EXTERNAL THREAT we would begin to cure our INTERNAL TERMITE PROBLEM.
But you see Real News - THIS IS THE PROBLEM IN AND OF ITSELF. You and others are working ON BEHALF OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY rather than FOR THE BEST INTERESTS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY.
Those working on BEHALF OF do their best work in the legislative bodies, court rooms and school board meetings that reside OUTSIDE of the central nucleus of the community.
When it comes to strategically aligning the behavior that the HEADS OF HOUSEHOLDS or those who possess within the genital areas of their bodies the complementary reproductive cells to MOLD THE NEXT GENERATION OF CONSCIOUS BLACK PEOPLE.....the messages in support of DIRECTED OUTCOMES appear sparse at best.
Thus Real News - I DON'T GIVE A DAMN about how many WHITE FOLKS are being locked up for drugs or NOT BEING LOCKED UP. I can take you into certain communities that exist in EVERY MAJOR CITY where our people congregate. Beyond the fact that the only White person they see in the flesh on a daily basis is the WHITE COP, these Black people are living their lives nearly immune to what some WHITE KID is smoking, injecting or snorting and the legal sanction they face. The law abiding majority in these communities that are being torn apart by DRUGS are asking for THE GOVERNMENT THAT THEY HAVE VOTED FOR TO START WORKING FOR THEM AND ADVANCING THEIR INTERESTS.
The proof of this being the case is few and far between REGARDLESS of the promises that were made on the various campaign posters and door knob hangers that they were bombarded with when someone saw their value two days a year. Primary Election day and General Election day.
When are YOU, Real News, going to start you INTERNAL focus upon our community?
When hypocritical, manic obsessive, hypergraphic authoritarian bibtards like you are dead and gone Ronald?
fundaligion and drugsIt is no accident that people of faith often want to curtail the private freedoms of others. This impulse has less to do with the history of religion and more to do with its logic, because the very idea of privacy is incompatible with the existence of God. If God sees and knows all things, and remains so provincial a creature as to be scandalized by certain sexual behaviors or states of the brain, then what people do in the privacy of their own homes, though it may not have the slightest implication for their behavior in public, will still be a matter of public concern for people of faith.
A variety of religious notions of wrongdoing can be seen converging here—concerns over nonprocreative sexuality and idolatry especially—and these seem to have given many of us the sense that it is ethical to punish people, often severely, for engaging in private behavior that harms no one. Like most costly examples of irrationality, in which human happiness has been blindly subverted for generations, the role of religion here is both explicit and foundational. To see that our laws against “vice” have actually nothing to do with keeping people from coming to physical or psychological harm, and everything to do with not angering God, we need only consider that oral or anal sex between consenting adults remains a criminal offence in thirteen states. Four of the states (Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri) prohibit these acts between same-sex couples and, therefore, effectively prohibit homosexuality. The other nine ban consensual sodomy for everyone (these places of equity are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia). One does not have to be a demographer to grasp that the impulse to prosecute consenting adults for nonprocreative sexual behavior will correlate rather strongly with religious faith.
The influence of faith on our criminal laws comes at a remarkable price. Consider the case of drugs. As it happens, there are many substances—many of them naturally occurring—the consumption of which leads to transient states of inordinate pleasure. Occasionally, it is true, they lead to transient states of misery as well, but there is no doubt that pleasure is the norm, otherwise human beings would not have felt the continual desire to take such substances for millennia. Of course, pleasure is precisely the problem with these substances, since pleasure and piety have always had an uneasy relationship.
When one looks at our drug laws—indeed, at our vice laws altogether—the only organizing principle that appears to make sense of them is that anything which might radically eclipse prayer or procreative sexuality as a source of pleasure has been outlawed. In particular, any drug (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA, marijuana, etc.) to which spiritual or religious significance has been ascribed by its users has been prohibited. Concerns about the health of our citizens, or about their productivity, are red herrings in this debate, as the legality of alcohol and cigarettes attests.
I am pained at the sight of so much potential, squandered by one named KCnulan.
I can't escape my suspicion that his drive to legalize drugs is a selfish attempt to reduce his electricity bill. As an expert BASEMENT theorist and technologist he has to power the lamps for his hydroponic gold species of his favorite plant. Furthermore he has a matrix of tubing upon his interior walls in which liquid cooling is applied in order to make his home grown intoxicants invisible to drive by surveillance by authorities with infrared cameras seeking a certain heat signature from his lamps. KCnulan's electric bill is getting out of hand. He would like to use his freedom as a "Anarcho-Capitalist" and plant his herbs out in the open. The growing season in MO is about 8 months long. Enough to get 3 good crops.
Mr KCnulan seeks to shift the focus of the argument to the condemnation of the AUTHORITY of the GOVERNMENT and CULTURE/CHURCH which suppresses drug use and same sex marriage. In doing so those who don't note his slight of hand won't be inclined to apply SCIENTIFIC processes of deduction and inspection upon his abstract theories.
KCnulan is averse to considering the BEST INTERESTS of the people who he advocates for the most. While he lends a kind ear to their union organizing efforts in conjunction with the CWA as they work against their more powerful corporate adversary he is unwilling to pause and make QUALITATIVE analysis. The question of defining the the priority of mental exercises that a people who are BEHIND per the interval of historical subjugation that they have been subjected to (Blacks, the poor, the laborers) and instead focus their efforts upon arts and actions that, in the short run, OVER-COMPENSATE for the hand that this third party has dealt them but which is necessary to forge a different future. Instead of KCnulan promoting temperance and 'denying of self' in the short run for future benefit - KCnulan errs on the side of abstract, libertine views.
Why isn't KCnulan willing to make note of the areas where THE GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY AND THE CHURCH ARE NON-EXISTENT in their ability to bind the masses to their order? Is Somalia which has no real functioning government a show piece for Mr. Nulan? (Well this is Africa. He might dismiss them because so many see Africa as inferior and thus they seek a European reference for legitimacy). What about Spain then? The church influence is waining in Spain and as two family friends from Spain told me a few months ago - she could not think of a single one of her family members who are married at present, despite having children. Riots have taken place on May Day" as the untethered people have been made to shift their faith from GOD to GOVERNMENT. Now that government has failed them - they choose Anarchy.
I would not like to live in a land in which the THEORIES of KCnulan are the rule of the land.
you can't escape the pernicious dual habits of mental and manual masturbation either ronald...,
my only question for you is, why the compulsion to self-stimulate in public?
Does that make it more exciting for you?
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