Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room Comparing the Left's reaction to the average Iraqi's reaction

Now it makes sense. As I've read Nunatax's posts, they reminded me of another person, from rmmp, a few years back. Nunatax is Belgium's answer to "Al," a Brit of similar age, education, and mindset. I'm sure a few people in this thread remember Al. I wonder whatever happened to Al. He did occasionally drive me nuts, but I always felt for him and hoped that he'd eventually come out the other end of the tunnel well and in one piece.

Like I said, he might be worth saving.

I think we make too much of this young person being from Belgium. His English is better than most of ours, and I don't even see the typical Continental twists on how the words are used.

Nonewtax

Actually, Lieberman has caught my attention too. As far 2008 goes, depending on who the GOP has up on the block, I could consider him a viable alternative. It's going to take a little research on my part first.

Since N. brought up the grave effects of not signing Kyoto, Michael Crichton\'s speech on environmentalism seems appropriate. As he says, with many enviromental issues, myths live on and "increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary."

A very good speech, and well worth reading.

Thank you, DT.

Great speech!

How about this beauty from the left, in the form of Jim McDermott? To our piano colleagues in the Northwest, please do the country a favor and vote his heiny out of office ASAP. I believe he's a US representative, so he comes up for election every two years. Just make sure you're in his district, for Pete's sake. Below is an excerpt from a story today on Foxnews.com:

I was trying for fun to imagine what the Dem's might say about this historic event. I can't believe this nonsense would spew from one of their mouths though. Several embarassed Democrats are speaking out though, so good for them.

Yes, good for them! Us more-or-less conservatives NEED the other side, there must be discourse and argument, but over issues! There are too many of the whacko dems that seem to believe that if they spout nonsense, eventually it becomes truth, or if they avoid facts, their positions are equally viable, and if they simply maintain any anti-Republican position, they are proving something.

JBryan wrote :
Yet you are enough of an expert to say that there was an alternative and castigate us for not employing it even though you cannot tell us what it is. With all due respect (please don't accuse me of hostility when I have shown you none) that is incoherent.

First, the hostility issue was not meant for you JBryan, if there's someone I'd like to discuss further with, it's you.

Jolly said :
I think we make too much of this young person being from Belgium. His English is better than most of ours, and I don't even see the typical Continental twists on how the words are used.

So now I'm the primary target because you believe I'm lying about my descent and whereabouts, all because I know how to speak (and write) English properly?

When I was 21, I'd already graduated from college with a Biology degree...and one in Chemsitry..oh, and one in Medical Technology.

Oh, right, I think I'm beginning to understand why some people question the state of the educational system in your country...

Larry wrote :
Lastly, when I was 21 I was in college too. The only "greenhouse gases" anyone was worried about was after about 5 hours into a Saturday night beer bash.....

Then you must have been quite the partygoer, Larry, because the greenhouse gas levels have been soaring in the last decades, open your eyes.
It's foolish to deny the greenhouse effect. The magnitude it will have is yet unknown. Here it's again a Gaussian curve. You have the "greenhouse sceptics", who do approve that the greenhouse effect is there, but that it will only have positive effects (like for example that the rise of CO2 wil make the O2 production rise, which means we can continue cutting down the rainforests at the current ridiculously high rate because we will be able to maintain the same O2 levels with less trees, oh and the plants will grow so rapidly that all the food shortage will be history soon! Oh please...). You have those who claim the greenhouse effect will make the average global temperature to rise 10°C which will cause an apocalyptic scenario.
And as usual, you have those in the middle, who predict a global rise in temperature of a few °C.
Simply denying the negative effects of the global warming is foolish, to invent an apocalyptic scenario is equally foolish.
Answering the question whether global warming will have serious consequences is very difficult. Right now as I type, powerful computers are performing quite difficult calculations (and I'm sure you'll just brush it aside as stupidity), to find out the most plausible changes global warming will have on the earth as we know it today.
It's rather foolish to say you've got it all figured out already. Then you're equally entwined in the rather broad definition of religion Mr. Crichton provides us with.

Which brings us to our famous novel writer :
Environmentalists who do not look at facts are bad environmentalists. Greenhouse sceptics do not look at the facts either, they are either sponsored by some fuel association, in which case their objectivity is clouded by greed, or their vision is equally influenced by beliefs.

Now let's get back to the Saddam issue.
In 1979 he violently forced the president at the time to surrender, executed several memebers of the Baath party and yet America and Europe did not see. Iraq was quite a powerful country to Middle-East standards, it got combat plains from France, traded them for oil. Was assisted by East Germany in developing a program for the production of chemical weapons.
He was supported by many European countries AND the US (the CIA provided him with satellite images of the troups in Iran) in his war against Iran, some sources even claim the US turned a blind eye on the supply of chemical and biological weapons.
Because of this war, the Kurds in the northern part of the country started to rise, Saddam crushed the movement by bringing about a massacre. They were slaughtered by who would be later called "Chemical Ali".
This war ended in an uncomfortable status quo and yet he managed to keep his reputation fairly high. For a moment, Irak was the most powerful state of the Gulf.
Only when he attacked Kuwait, the world woke up. Unfortunately they were still quite drowsy : Saddam may have lost that war, he was still alive and kicking ánd still leader of Iraq. America's attacks on "leadership targets" failed one after the other.
Saddam was spied on, followed and shot at, yet miraculously he remained alive. According to some American sources the CIA always found out where he was, yet they were always 24 hours late to get a clear shot : poor organisation? They once blew up a building and he wasn't even anywhere near, how more absurd can it get?

Today I have heard that Hans Blix said yet once again that all the weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed, probably already in the early 90's. And whether or not Saddam had those weapons was what this war was about, no? America did not go to war with Iraq because Saddam slaughtered innocent women and children, bush was worried about the safety of this planet.

Don't go telling me this war was inevitable.

and is the greenhouse effect inevitable Mr. Nunatax, and if so, how do you come to that conclusion?

If you go back and check your history, the west supported Hussein because he was less a threat at that time than Iran. The leaders of Iran were calling for Holy War against the US and the rest of the west. Coordinated terror attacks, and even violated and invaded the US Embassy and held diplomats hostage. The west went with the old "enemy of my enemy" bit. Whether this was the right decision or not is open to debate, but this habit of blaming current leaders for mistakes made by those out of power is ludicrous. Plus, if you do feel that the US and our allies were wrong in providing him with the opportunity to grab power only to find out the cure was worse than the disease, isn't it incumbant on us to rectify our past mistakes?

As far as the rest of your history lesson, it's not anything we didn't know before. By the way, you were also incorrect concerning the targets of opportunity. In many cases, the strikes missed by mere hours and in some cases, minutes. If you feel that indicates a poor job by intelligence, then you don't understand very much about the difficulties of that work. Especially when involved with somebody as unpredictable and cagy as Saddam.

Go back and read Blix's report. He found plenty of evidence that Saddam's WMD programs were continuing. Also, try asking the inspectors that were kicked out in the late 90's if they think the WMD were destroyed. You might be surprised. The inspections failed because they went in with the purpose of avoiding the war. An honest and open investigation (or experiment) cannot occur if there is a desire for a certain result. The lead investigators wanted to find no WMD, they found no WMD. The eco-disaster group wants to find evidence that doom is on hand, they find evidence that can support that theory. TRhis does not mean that it's the truth.

Quite true of course. The last thing many "experts" want, is a definitive study where data proves the opposite of the premise, or lack of data suggests a wasted effort.

Everybody wants a paycheck - including mediocre pianist-professors and their endless stream of "How to Learn Piano the Right Way" methods. . .

You need to read Blix's report. Here's some excerpts which I wrote in this thread.

[begin excerpts]

"Regrettably, the 12,000 page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or reduce their number."

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

"The nerve agent VX is one of the most toxic ever developed. Iraq has declared that it only produced VX on a pilot scale, just a few [metric] tons and that the quality was poor and the product unstable.

UNMOVIC, however, has information that conflicts with this account. There are indications that Iraq had worked on the problem of purity and stabilization and that more had been achieved than has been declared. Indeed, even one of the documents provided by Iraq indicates that the purity of the agent, at least in laboratory production, was higher than declared.

There are also indications that the agent was weaponized.

I would now like to turn to the so-called "Air Force document" that I have discussed with the Council before. This document was originally found by an UNSCOM inspector in a safe in Iraqi Air Force Headquarters in 1998 and taken from her by Iraqi minders. It gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs, by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War.

The document indicates that...there is a discrepancy of 6,500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1,000 [metric] tons...we must assume that these quantities are now unaccounted for.

The discovery of a number of 122 mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions.

I might further mention that inspectors have found at another site a laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor."

BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS

"Iraq has declared that it produced about 8,500 liters of [anthrax]. Iraq has provided...no convincing evidence for its destruction.

There are strong indications that Iraq produced more anthrax than it declared, and that at least some of this was retained after the declared destruction date.

Iraq did not declare a significant quantity, some 650 kg, of bacterial growth media, which was acknowledged as imported in Iraq's submission to the Amorim panel in February 1999. I note that the quantity of media involved would suffice to produce, for example, about 5,000 liters of concentrated anthrax."

[end excerpts]

There's more, including accounts of prohibited missles. I just snipped a little bit.

Our Belginian wrote: Actually, we(Americans) are concerned about our K-12 public educational system. We are talking University - and that, young man, is the envy of the world.

Yet, I didn't attend a public university, but a private one. I may be a redneck, and I can certainly fracture the English language, but only fools and the inexperienced presume their opponents to be as dumb as they are.

Take another swing, foolish one.

Take a roomful of Crays, and you can't accurately predict wind direction with 99% certainty on a local weather forecast two weeks out. And you are going to make the preposterous statement that they are going to unlock the key to global warming?

Don't think so.

Who has a much, much better scientific education than you do.

Son, you might think I ain't real smart. But when a man is standing over me with a baseball bat in his hand, a bat that he will use, and he tells me to 'fess up about my ill-led life, and I refuse...well, it shouldn't come as an epiphany that I'm going to get whacked with a baseball bat.

Sadaam was given myriad opportunities to comply with UN resolutions. He was given multiple opportunities to negotiate with the U.S. He basically told us to take a short walk off of a long pier.

Bad mistake. Very bad mistake.

Like I said before..... Nunatax needs to quit hugging trees and get laid.

There is no question that the earth's climate is changing. It is an observable fact. It is also an observable fact back through the millenia of mini and major ice ages punctuated by warmer weather. The real question is how much of this is as a direct result of the influence of man and how much is the result of cyclical events on the sun and here on earth. So far, there is no conclusive evidence that the influence of mankind has any significant effect in comparison with solar and tectonic phenomena. Anyone that tells you different is jerking your chain. I heard something (I actually wasn't watching) on TV the other day that purported to describe global warming effects caused by man going back (10,000 years) to the late Pleistocene. Now, if that is not a classsic example of the tail wagging the dog (the rise of present day Homo Sapiens was pursuant in large part to the end of the last major ice age) then I don't know what is. I don't have a problem believing that global warming exists. I am simply unconvinced that man made phenomena are the cause of it and that curtailing certain emissions (at great economic cost, I might add) will have any effect on it. There certainly is no consensus among climate scientists at this point no matter what the "conventional wisdom" purports.

I didn't realize that Oxford and Cambridge were American universities. While I agree that "Ivy League" universities in the US are among the best there are equally prestigious and competent colleges elsewhere in the world. It all depends what the field of study is. If I were doing a PhD in Medieval history I would not necessarily choose a US university but rather a British university. Likewise, if I were doing an MBA, although Harvard is among the top choices, there are also excellent Business schools in Switzerland and Belgium that are jsut as prestigious internationally.

I'm in total agreement with JBryan's views on global warming. It is just one more expression of the political left's narcissism to believe that puny man, who still covers less than 2% of this world's surface, has or can make any effect on global climate whatsoever. I would include as a basis for my conclusion climate studies based on eyewitness accounts of life in the ancient past in parts of the world we usually think of as having fairly cold winters. About 2,000 years ago, it was usually warm enough in Britain and Ireland for people to sleep outside most of the year, except for the dead of winter. The climate in the 17th century was so unusually cold that the Thames was frozen most of the time. The current climate is being affected by the sun and no amount of resolutions is going to tell the sun to stop acting the way it will. I've indicated on this forum a few times that the melting is occurring on Mars as well. Yes there is global warming going on. It's the sun that's largely responsible. Will this change and dramatically? Unfortunately the record (from ice core samples in Greenland and Antarctica) is pretty clear. Climate changes happen suddenly and usually favor cooling down rather than heating up and once the cooling gets going it stays cold for a longer period of time due to reflection (albedo) being increased. For instance, one day in high latitude there are grazing Mammoths, when suddenly something happens that freezes them solid within a matter of minutes. And they stay frozen for thousands of years. And mind you this climate change happened long before there was any manmade industrial pollution to gas about politically. Whether it was a great super-storm set up by competing convections of hot and cold air (as I think likely, contributing in its wake to a greater reflectivity or albedo, further driving down the earth's temperature and bringing on an ice age), or possibly a big wobble of the earth itself (I doubt this as there is less evidence for it) or something else, at this time we can just say that tremendous climate changes do happen and fairly quickly. A case I'm far more aware of is also from ancient times and concerns the Nile valley and northern Africa. About 8,000 years ago the area saw far more rainfall, about the same as the Eastern United States, up to 44 inches a year. It left traces on the Great Sphinx (erosion by water, not sand or dust) and confirms that the real date of the Great Sphinx is in excess of 10,000 years, not 4,500 as the usual suspects in university archeology departments commonly assume.

There's a lot of things college professors also get wrong, but we wont go there except to suggest that the biggest joke is on them; they think they're smart, the smartest, and their students, who are always younger and know less to begin with, can be relied on, at least for a while, to bolster their belief in their own intellectual superiority.

Q: What's the definition of a brilliant student?
A: A student who reflects most accurately the ideas and views of his professor.

Unfortunately for most college professors, most of the rest of us who have gone through their grist mill know the truth; once one becomes part of any group, one is limited by the views and outlook of the group to the point where theories must be defended practically to the death. The only chance a competing theory has is for the holders of the previous theory to die.

A few examples are:

Evolution of species by natural selection. Not a shred of evidence to support it and yet it is staunchly defended. Biblical creationism is equally fallacious but it is the "out" view and nobody takes it seriously. The truth is that life here is a mystery not solved. But nobody is very comfortable with the implications of that.

The creation of the universe by a Big Bang. There are any number of better, simpler alternative explanations for the apparent red shifting of distant galaxies, etc. that suggest that the universe is and has always been and always will be, a steady state, not expanding or contracting, etc. We think we know, but we don't have a clue. The assumption is that since each of us had a beginning in life so too must the entire universe. It is a narcissistic view.

There are a few views on the political scene that are as wildly out of touch with reality too, such as.

The civilized world, the West, does not have a right to defend itself against barbarians at its gates. I wonder if people who seek anything but war as a solution after everything else has been tried would rather we just throw up our hands give up and plan on returning to a 7th century society and standard of living? This is the outcome of their view. If nature does it to us that may be one thing and it may have happened before and there is really NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT if it happens again. But, to accept suicide rather than fight against other humans who would take our civilization down for any reason represents a position too weak to be borne.

I have considerable sympathy with Larry's suggestion about what to do with pacifists. If it wouldn't involve legal entanglements to do so (or if we lived in a country more like Saddam's Iraq), I suppose it would assuage some natural loathing. As it is, we have to resort to verbal assaults instead (until the PC crowd takes those away from us too), by suggesting that people who hold pacifist views, who neither know what to live or to die for, had best not reproduce. Physically, Larry, if it were permitted, I'd aim for the testicles not the mouth.

I'm still trying to figure out what motivates someone to turn against their country, especially this one.

A few more barbs for discussion:

Gulf War I "Desert Storm" was a UN war. UN wars are not usually designed to win anything. They are police actions. I think I speak for most Americans on my side of the political fence when I say that we're getting pretty damn tired of police actions. As such we were instigated to get Kuwait back from Iraq, not take out Saddam. As I've also indicated, my sources, which are fairly good on this point, indicated to me that at the time to exceed the UN mandate would have strengthened the hand of hard liners in the Kremlin. As it was, the Kremlin was handed a fairly stern message, that militarily the US was still a power to be reckoned with. There were comments from high ranking Soviet generals commending us on the precision and professionalism of our military in that conflict.

A little background is instructive. Saddam never accepted his role of third world tin pot dictator very well. He certainly never respected the overriding concerns of The Barge, that he do what he wanted in his own country only. Yes, he was used as a pawn in a giant chess game involving Iran. Why The Barge permitted Ayatollah Khomeini to come to power there after the fall of the Shah (also a creature of The Barge) is beyond me. His accession was permitted only by certain very powerful people, of that there is no doubt.

But another group that didn't do as they were told were the Emirs of Kuwait. Prior to the takeover of their country and the subsequent war to free them, they had been playing their oil money on the arbitrage markets, causing wide swings in the exchange rates of various foreign currencies, reaping huge profits with the swings. They had been told to cease and desist. They didn't. So Saddam, who was hungry for expansion (seeing himself as the successor to Gamal Abdul Nasser who was also a Baathist), was goaded into believing he could take Kuwait without severe consequences.

The Barge got the Emirs to cease and desist. They also got the collapse of the Soviet Union. Saddam got nothing.

Things changed with 9-11. On that day America, the leading civilized nation on earth (with various apologies to certain countries in Europe) was brutally attacked. Was there foreknowledge? The Israeli "Institute," The Massad certainly tried to warn us. Who was there in the Bush administration to say "let it go?" How was it that buildings normally housing 30,000 to 50,000 people suffered far fewer losses than was originally expected? How come a Pakistani cab driver in Manhattan told me he'd have to be home in Pakistan before 9-11? (This is true! It was January. 2001 when he told me as I was in New York doing my initial survey of piano stores there, remember?).

We knew that Saddam was trying to develop biochem weapons and that he was looking for parts to construct nukes. He already had some missiles and was getting more from North Korea, China and possibly France. Where are they? That has been put forward as the reason for the current conflict. It isn't.

Gulf War II, the present conflict, is squarely about terrorism. The denizens of The Barge regard it in about the same light as they used to consider cannibalism. Only cannibalism was easier to get rid of. Apparently various forms of slavery are not. They don't really care because none of the countries where this activity goes on are very important. Iraq is. Is it a matter of oil? You bet it is. Is it a matter of teaching a few people that their behavior will no longer be tolerated? Absolutely. It is beyond reasonable doubt that Saddam, smarting from the sure knowledge that he'd been used by higher powers, vowed revenge and was consorting with terrorists. It was time for him to go.

This is realpolitik not some phony idealism about international law, the United Nations or anything like that. This is what the big boys upstairs want. And they shall damn sure get it too.

When Bush went before the UN last year he basically said, "your resolutions mean nothing, it was the US that got attacked this time, and we wont stand for it." You want to really make the big boys upstairs angry just try something like 9-11 on London. Forget it. All heck would break loose.

As for Belgium. Yes global warming should be a vital concern of theirs as it should of all the Benelux countries. Why did the EU decide on Brussels as a capitol anyway? A far better choice would have been Basal or Geneva. Oh yeah, the Swiss aren't in the EU yet, or are they? Anyway I suggest they move it quick, and find a few more places on higher ground for a teeming population there. Can't hold back all that water forever if it's going to come.

And Belgium's water was recently declared the worst in the world by UN officials, worse than the water in Bangladesh. It's considerably high cheek for a Belgian to suggest their problems are due to our unwillingness to sign the stupid Kyoto accords. Best clean up your own water or consider moving to higher ground first.

Over to the forum.....