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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Dec 23, 2006 0:23:49 GMT -4
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Dec 24, 2006 15:29:41 GMT -4
The enemy of today is no the enemy of tomorrow. It's easy to get caught up in the "now" and forget that. Iran has a space program. North Korea has nukes, and is developing missiles. China has a space program. Even Venezuela wants to get in the game. www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=4076Also, the US military is run like a set of fiefdoms, with each branch having to fend somewhat for itself, justifying programs and scrabbling for funding. Thus, the Air Force is trying to figure out what to do with itself.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on May 18, 2007 2:32:50 GMT -4
Hey, y'all. I'm back. But I'm about to leave again (1 June, until 14 July) for the rest of my training.
Actually, I've been back since the 10th of May, been lurking in and out here and at other sites I read since then.
After spending a month in uniform contemplating the probabilty that I'll eventually end up in Iraq, debating with HB's seems like a complete waste of time.
The second half of my training was at White Sands Missile Range. They have a great museum there. Rode past it on the bus going out to firing ranges many times, and couldn't wait to take my kids there. They loved it. Then we went to Alamagordo, New Mexico to visit the Space Museum. Again, the kids loved it. They won model rockets in a drawing. Bought my wife a pair of space shuttle ear-rings. She wore them to work the other day. Yes, she's a geek. Software testing.
I spent 4 and half weeks with 265 people ranging in age from not-old-enough-to-drink (and yet, prior service) all the way to 49. Yes, 49, and there were two, a man and a woman. The man is headed to Cav Scout school (hard core stuff) and the woman is a jet mechanic. I was humbled by their dedication and physical condition.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Mar 27, 2007 1:05:15 GMT -4
I leave for Warrior Transition Course on Wednesday. So now's my chance to earn a 30 day suspension for flaming or trolling, I guess.
LO - can I be suspended now, and get "credit for time served" later? Just kidding.
Gillian - I don't agree with the current war, either. But I think we're gonna see the fruits of our president's misguided (in many sense of the word) foreign policy ripen in the next few years. I don't think that 9/11 was the only time the American Empire will be attacked on it's own soil in my lifetime. I would rather have a weapon, orders and a clue when it happens than be one of the clueless many joining the river of screaming meat attempting to leave the Area of Operations with their children, pets, and furniture. Watching Katrina freaked me out.
I didn't chose to be born in the United States, at least that I remember. But I'm here. I enjoy the benefits we have - peaceful cities, wide paved roads, and potable water on tap, just for a start. I'm willing to work to defend it, if the need comes up in the next few years.
I'm sorry your boyfriend is in Iraq. It seems like a sh!thole filled with angry people addicted to their sense of resentment. I hope he comes back healthy and whole. I've met a few Iraq veterans in my Guard unit. I've seen some deep psychic scars already, in just a few months with the Army. It's an ugly war in an ugly place, and the Iraqis don't seem to care about the real-world future enough.
Give him your unconditional love when he comes back. He'll need it, no matter how deep or shallow his scars are. He'll have them.
There are no emoticons for a post like this one.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 9, 2006 0:32:40 GMT -4
I've been talking about it for six months, and now it's official. I signed-and-swore today, for a "try 1" enlistment in the National Guard for (my state).
I had to go the "try 1" route, because I want the student loan repayment plan, and I have to do one year and re-up to qualify for it. I have a LOT of student loan debt.
I'll be a chaplain's assistant. Yes, little ol' Agnostic me gets to ride shotgun for a man of God. The job description, basically, is to be an armed secretary that can "set the table" for mass (or whatever, denomination dependent). Chaplains are unarmed, so the assistant is his (or her) bodyguard. Assistans also have to provide services for mass burials, I was reading on line yesterday. Ew.
I know most of you guys would rather argue about "squibs" and tire tracks, but I'll mention my progress from time to time anyway. I won't be leaving for training until after New Years.
This is the culmination of a long meditative process. I didn't jump into it, but neither did I make it a committee decision with my family. This one is MY choice.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 8, 2007 20:10:15 GMT -4
. . .and obviously, these kids are impeding someone's life, property or pursuit of happiness - they've gotta go!
Seriously, now, I agree on the face of it that within the "cultural relativism" model, all the above are acceptable to the cultures involved - but none are acceptable within our cultural outlook.
Here's one of the issues underlying it all - God. Do you believe in a central divine authority? Do you believe in any kind of afterlife? Most of the time, things like the above are committed with some kind of "divine authority rights" waved about by they guys in power. Consider the Aztecs. As far as the Spaniards were conserned, they were a bunch of bloodthirsty heathen savages. From the perspective of the Aztec middle class believers, the priests were doing a pretty good job keeping the world from ending.
So let's go back to Saddam. If Christianity is the one true faith, then God is now, has, or will eventually (depending on your particular version of the one true faith) judge Saddam, and find him worthy of eternal damnation. If Islam is the one true faith, same thing applies.
What if there is no God? No heaven to be earned, no hell threatening you? Secular governments generally operate in that mode, even if the individial participants believe one thing or another. In that case, we could either decide that Saddam deserves a lifetime of boredom at taxpayer expense, as personal punishment, or we could eliminate him from the gene pool.
I'm not sure that I can get into your arguement that there is no one "right and wrong," however. Things that cause pain and suffering are nearly universally reviled. Terrorism, suicide bombing, and Sharia Law beheading, maiming and other punishments are considered abberant even within Islam. In other words, there may be many different "right" things, but some things are just plain wrong. Just because someone believes in a thing does not make it right.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 8, 2007 18:48:38 GMT -4
Yeah, I've read analysis to that effect, as well, that he had no idea what he was unleasing, that he thought we would get all scared and stuff, and pull all our troops out of Saudi Arabia.
As I said, I think he smokes too much Afghani hashish, but I'm reluctant to underestimate him. He's narrow minded and naive, and utterly ignorant of what makes the western world "tick" but he's not stupid.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 8, 2007 17:47:07 GMT -4
Sorry, but I think this is so hypothitical as to be worthless. I can barely imagine what it's like to live in New York, much less someplace that resides in someone else's imagination.
From the reading I've done in the last year, here's my understanding: Osama bin Laden objects to the materialistic comfort that the Saud family has wrapped themselves in. He seems to get some amount of spiritual "kick" out of living in a cave and spending his inheritence trying to recreate the Caliphate - specifically, to recreate the Islamic empire ranging from Morocco to India. He doesn't like the US because of our support for Israel, and he was peeved at the Saud family for "inviting" the US military in to defend Saudi Arabia from Iraq during Gulf War 1. He wanted his mujahadeen to be invited in, save the day in sacred battle against the secular (therefore misguided) Iraqi, and then be welcomed home as the prodigal son. The guy has some serious paternal issues.
He didn't particularly agree with the Taliban, nor they with him, but he needed a favorable nation to operate from, and they needed an armed group to do some of their enforcement. It was a marriage of convenience. However, I think bin Laden's fantasy world would look like a combination of Taliban Afghanistan and Wahabbist Saudi Arabia, with all the worst features of both.
I don't think that the US really figures into his fantasies as an Islamic nation in any way. That doesn't make sense. He hit us on 9/11, according to one analysis I've read, so that we would do exactly what we've done - go out and stir up hornets nests in the mideast, hopefully provoking a general Islamic uprising against the "evil" invading occupiers. This uprising, he hopes, would lead to the reformation of the Caliphate.
Personally, I think bin Laden smokes too much Afghani hashish. He thinks his clever little ideas are the "real deal" and that what he imagines to be true is true. Fortunately, he and his minions have no idea how to really hurt the US. The 9/11 attacks shut us down for a while, but that was a "big dick" attack on the largest phalli in America, and attacks on the symbols of our patriarchal authority structure - the Pentagon, and the White House, if that's really where the other flight was headed. In a few days, everybody NOT in New York started thinking about how good it is to live in, say, little towns in the midwest, or Utah, or New Mexico.
As far as Americans understanding what bin Laden's fantasy land would look like, no, I don't think most Americans can put down their lattes and remotes long enough to think that hard. Ask a fresh-water fish what salt-water life is like, you'll get a better answer.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 8, 2007 13:07:22 GMT -4
Dude! My mother''s maiden name is Eccles! I'm not attacking your church, you don't need to defend it from me!
My comment was stimulated by the "founding principles" comment. All I'm saying is that the reason Mormons were chased out of town by the Americans was that for some reason the mainstream Protestant and Catholic culture dominant in American cities at the time felt threatened by the growth of a "radical" new religion that they didn't understand.
Same fear-threat response as you are talking about, that's all. Human nature.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 8, 2007 12:44:01 GMT -4
Okay, technically speaking the nation would not be "destroyed", but the foundations of the nation - freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and democracy - would be gone if the nation were remade as an Islamic state. I consider attempting to destroy the founding principles of my civilization to be roughly the equivelent of attempting to destroy that civilization. I think that's roughly why the Mormons got chased out of "civilization" - the dominant culture of the day felt they were a threat.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 6, 2007 12:11:24 GMT -4
I agree.
We "hold these truths to be self evident", that whole bit about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (originally a reference to property rights, but changed to happiness)" , but obviously not everyone agrees that everyone has these rights. Tyrants worldwide and throughout the spans of history have universally agreed that their rights trump the rights of others.
Our fearless leader told us that we were attacked by al Qaida because "they hate freedom." At first I took this to be a stupid bit of reductionist political sloganeering, but the more I learn, the more I see it as kind of a political koan, a distilled little nugget of wisdom that sounds stupid until you are "enlightened" enough to "get it."
Not that al Qaida has anything to do with a tyrant being hanged for his crimes against humanity, except in the minds of military-dot-com readers. As I've mentioned before, I have to come back here just to get a refreshing dose of spelling, to say nothing of logic and wit.
That said, I still think Saddam needed to be hanged, and recording it with a cell-phone camera, while in bad taste, was necessary to provide proof-positive for the Iraqis who are prone to a heavy dose of denial. It provides a record of the event that is additional to the "official" record.
I watched the video link that Moonman posted before the thread was deleted. I'm not offended by existence of the video, and I wanted to see it, but I agree that this forum is not the venue for such things. As I watched it, I was trying to come up with what I would say to follow the original post. I decided on the following: "Interesting video, good acting, but the lighting sucks and the camera work is reprehensible. I liked the casting, although perhaps the star risks becoming type-cast by this role."
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 5, 2007 19:50:58 GMT -4
Thanks for the confirmation, Mitrabor.
I'm not drinking. It's not even 5pm my time.
I'm one of those guys posting on forums at work when nobody's looking.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 5, 2007 19:26:41 GMT -4
Nobody is forcing you to read here but you, Vince. Get off it.
I think you have an addictive relationship with your negative emotions, and you keep coming here to get your "fix" of anger, resentment, and self-righteous justification for both. You also feel disempowered in your life and work, and feel the need to come in here and post your little bitternesses to feel empowered by getting a rise out of people, and then you resent the "power" wielded by the Moderator. (Capital M, because he represents every mod you've had run-ins with on every board you visit)
Perhaps you should read that book by Bill Wilson. You might find it helpful.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 1, 2007 14:19:13 GMT -4
Saddam Hussein had to be tried by the newly constituted Iraq to prove itself. Iraq needed closure. The tyrannical power he held over his people led them to have a disempowered victim mentality that prevents them from taking personal responsibility for their world. Trying him in the international court would have further disempowered the Iraqis.
He needed to be executed to remove the threat of return. Ding-dong, the wicked witch is dead! Now they can move forward, knowing it will be without him as either threat or savior.
He needed to be the sacrificial goat, killed to symbolize the death of the old Iraq. His execution needed to be publicized to prove it to everyone. Now there is now doubt, except for those who will inevitably call it a hoax.
Moonman needed to be banned for posting the video link and images here. There are other venues on the internet for such things.
Thank, you, LunarOrbit, for your prompt and uncompromising actions.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Nov 7, 2006 19:15:27 GMT -4
No, but I fail to understand why something that advertizes for your site and helps spread the ideas in your site should be treated as such. Unless, as LO said, you r going to pay for it even if it is put on another site (I didn't know that before), then I understand why you don't want it posted on another site. A) Bandwidth isn't free, hotlinking the image on another site uses the original site's bandwidth (and is commonly referred to as bandwidth theft) so it costs them money. B) People like to retain control of their content, just because something is online doesn't make it public domain. I have software on my computer to eliminate adware, viruses, and maintain cookies. Until "the internet" as a whole stays the hell out of my computer, I'm treating the internet as whole as part of my computer. I snag images from anybody I want for my personal (not online) image collection, and I hot link avatars. I also try to be semi-respectul of the originator of my avatar images and change 'em up regularly so that nobody gets a bandwidth hit for too long. Which reminds me. . .
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