The U.S. Goverment

[Tonkyhonk]

@burg
"universal morality" is a myth or an illusion imo. and this is coming from someome brought up with non-Abrahamic religions, who have been taught and have read thousands of times "to change styles not to be barbaric", and i still get shocked by some other differences shown in different parts of the world.

@jorb
a war is a war, however gentlemanly some can act in front of other's eyes, what they do are still the same. real war is not where you should search for fairness or fairytale, unlike online game wars. nothing is totally fair.
(you can dig from our samurai stories and find such "samurai-ship" too in ancient day combats, but still they are decorated artificial works merely to impress the mass.)


one funny story we have in our history.
back in ancient time, lots of missionaries came to our country and tried to make us christians.
lots of people converted to christianity, believing in "human are all equal", "not to kill", and "forgiveness", however, the government at that time had to doubt the teachings when they witnessed how different groups of missionaries were hating each other badly, speaking ill of the other groups, and heard and learned how they were buying slaves, and how those western countries of christianity were warring all the time, even trying to sell us guns to kill. we called westerners "南蛮 - nanban/southern barbarians" in our language.(they used our southern ports, so they came from south.)
of course the biggest reason to prohibit christianity back then was the convenience for ruling the country, but you should not dismiss how corrupt christianity was/looked then, which actually pushed our country to go for sakoku/national seclusion and only allowed small groups of Dutch and Chinese to do small trades (because they did not bring missionaries).

-----------------------------------------------------------------

back on topic for those who wanna talk about the us government, one of our tv programs had a special show on this coming american presidential election. what they talked mainly was about Romney being a mormon. (i expected them to talk a bit more on Ron Paul because the american military base in Okinawa could bring a big change and arguments to us especially when north korea trying to be obviously agressive again, but no avail.)
when i was younger, one manga(lol) said that you had to eventually be a WASP to be the american president with an exception of Kennedy. Obama is an african american and broke that chain, but, to us, that religious difference seems bigger than the color of the skin nowadays. what do you think?

[MagicManICT]

Well, you could also quote some narrow fields of philosophy, but is that real science ? :p.

Except philosophy is the foundation of all logic. Still not a science, though. Math isn't science, either, so they're in good company together. After all, what science allows you stray outside the boundaries of what's "real"?

[burgingham]

Philosophy is the mother of all sciences. It fits very well in the apparatus I described that it isn't acknowledged as such anymore today though. There is no obvious profit to be made from teaching someone philosophy so it is considered to be worthless by the machinery that is called capitalism.

[Potjeh]

Certainly the Crimean war meant the imposition of a general blockade on Russia, but it pales in comparison to the unrestricted submarine warfare and seizing on the high seas of private merchant ships of enemy nations that we normally associate with the world wars.

I usually associate it with the Age of Sail and the letters of marque. Attacking enemy's merchant fleet is a time-honoured tradition, not a 20th century invention.

Also, I was referring to the Russian blockade of the Danube, which was accomplished with mines. I'm sure those continued to present a danger to the shipping long after the war.

The burning of tar warehouses and ships in Oulu and Raahe led to international criticism and, in Britain, MP Thomas Gibson demanded in the House of Commons that the First Lord of the Admiralty explain "a system which carried on a great war by plundering and destroying the property of defenceless villagers".

Similar sentiments were not, I believe, quite as common during the world wars.

I am not entirely familiar, I shall readily admit, with the exact courses of the various Russio-Turkish wars fought during the 19th century, but, I mean, at least someone gave a damn. Again, it quite pales in comparison to the 20th century. Also, I have to try to make general arguments. The point isn't that there are no counter-examples to be found.

Ahmedinejad criticised Obama for repression of OWS protesters, IIRC. Scoring cheap political points is just what people do in situations like these. British government certainly didn't seem to give a damn about war atrocities against civilians in Boer wars.

[Tonkyhonk]

British government certainly didn't seem to give a damn about war atrocities against civilians in Boer wars.

has british government ever given a damn in history anyways?

[burgingham]

For pete's sake critical theory is the disease, not the cure. Horkheimer, Marcuse, Adorno and Habermas are intellectual fountainheads of the whole modern malaise of multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, deconstruction, post-modernism and every other intellectual disease that plagues modernity.

I knew the term "Fountainhead" sounded oddly familiar. I have the honor to give a presentation on Ayn Rand today. If I manage to get to that part without puking I will also present her novel "The Fountainhead". For Rand fountainheads are geniuses which are the driving force behind societies success. Just wanted to let you know that the term is somewhat ironic being used on people who despised Rand probably as much as I do, while she herself used the term only on people she valued a lot.

[Saif_Mahlik]

The Presidents need to grow some balls and ban congress or Government officials taking money from corperations in the name of "donations". If this doesn't happen the big Corporations will run the USA.

[will1701-a]

The Presidents need to grow some balls and ban congress or Government officials taking money from corperations in the name of "donations". If this doesn't happen the big Corporations will run the USA.

The big corporations DO run the USA. What do you think SOPA was? Just some chucklefuck thinking it would be a great idea to suppress parts of the internet to "stop piracy"?

Corporations will run America because they are the only things prolonging the imminent collapse of the government.

[MagicManICT]

Corporations will run America because they are the only things prolonging the imminent collapse of the government.

I would actually argue the opposite: they're hastening the collapse of the government. But then, I don't want to really get into it, so I won't. (Yes, I'm such a tease.)

[ArvinJA]

Corporations will run America because they are the only things prolonging the imminent collapse of the government.

I would actually argue the opposite: they're hastening the collapse of the government. But then, I don't want to really get into it, so I won't. (Yes, I'm such a tease.)

Yeah, it's a parasite (lobbying corporations) feeding off a parasite (government bureaucracy), seems like the parasite is a bit bigger than the body sustaining it at the moment.