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Global Warming — Page 16

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Originally posted by: Go-Mer-Tonic
C3PX, I appreciate your response quite a bit, I am also glad things aren't up to me. I can screw up a microwave dinner on a good day.

I get the point about them being taught to hate us, and that is certainly not something one can easily stand by and allow.

I also agree about the benefit of a Saddam-free Iraq.

I just wonder if perhaps we are also being taught to hate them.

But really, as I said. I have no answers, and only question these things to hear your explainations.

Well especially the ones that remain civil.



Taught to hate them. Gomer, that was a good post. You might not be too far from the truth there. It is very tragic if this is the case. And I know it is in some cases. I have seen it first hand and it is really unfortunate. I worked with a group of Afghanis for a few weeks back in 2004. Even then, some of the Americans would make jokes about getting blown up, or hoping they didn't crash a plane into our building if they got angry. These kinds of things aren't helpful to anybody. Not all middle easterns are terrorists or even Muslims. Not all Muslims are terrorists. They really need to work that one out. Treating all these people with hostility is not a good way to go about it. Fortunately it is not as embarrassingly bad as the treatment of Japanese after Pearl. I hope America does not breed hate for them as they have for us. Hopefully those idiots I worked with who made the stupid jokes were of a small minority of idiots. But you know what, I don't think it is, I think it is a danger and a possibility, but I don't thing it is quite as bad as it might feel. Even though we are at war with Iraq, I do not think it makes American hate Iraqis. I think Americans were generally pleased with the outcome of the elections in Iraq. That shows we have great interest in their success, if we hated them this would not be so. We hate terrorism, and we hate oppressive regimes. But I don't think we hate those who are victims of the two.

When we fought the Japanese they would crash their planes right into our ships. Why would they do this? Because they were taught there was an afterlife and they pleased their god by dying for him. The Muslims are in this same category, they KNOW they will get such a great reward if they day in the name of Allah. It is very unfortunate that these people are conditioned this way. The funny thing is that nobody would have defended the Japanese Emperor worship as a peaceful religion of integrity as they claim Islam to be. This is something to think about. Anyway, a foe of this sort is a huge threat to everybody. Because their intent is to destroy us, how can we make them change their mind? If you don't believe this is the case, then you might want to study Islam a little more and learn about what it teaches. As long as America is standing Muhammad isn't coming back. As long as Islam is not a world religion, Muhammad isn't coming back. They want him to return. That is their goal. If this comes as a shock to anybody, I suggest you study Islam. It might open your eyes. How can we make them change their minds? In Japan we make the emperor announce that he was not a god, that he was merely a man. That worked. But we can't do that this time. No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill it is going to be the same thing over and over. As long as there are people teaching Islam, there is always going to be this threat. And I don't see this ending in any of our lifetimes. Look at Judaism, it does not have these teachings. It doesn't teach them to conquer the world and force people to call on the name of Allah. Look at Christianity, the same thing, it doesn't tell you to force people to become Christians (if anyone brings up the crusades I am going to smack them, the crusades have nothing to do with Biblical Christian doctrine and everything to do with the need to get rid of a bunch of idle knights sitting around Europe like time bombs. They were sent on the Muslims to make them an 'SEP'. Somebody Else's Problem). Does anybody remember the Ottoman Empire? It ended less than 100 before any of us were born. That is interesting to think about. It seems like such an old world thing, yet it existed up until our nineteen hundreds. If they still had the power, it would still exist. If they ever get the chance, they will start this again. There is no, "Hitler only cared about Europe" nonsense here (Sorry Arnie, not meaning to pick on you) they want the world. But they have been reduced to a very small power. Very small, but very determined and thanks to our purchasing of oil, very rich. Like a cobra that has been bound they can't strike, but they can still spit venom in our eyes. They have been reduced from the conquests of old to terrorism. If you think that all they want to do is scare us, you are wrong. If they could get their hands on nuclear weapons, you can be sure they would launch them in a heartbeat. I have a feeling this is going to be a very unpopular post.

"Well especially the ones that remain civil."

Sorry when we don't. Without you this would not be much of a conversation. I can see you like to press buttons, so I guess you should expect what you get. But I don't think we are doing anybody any good when we fire insults at one another. I think it is best we all remain as civilized as possible and respect one another's opinions. I think your biggest problem right no Gomer, is that a lot of people are posting things they feel are pretty good points you just ignore them and sometimes turn around and ask the same question they just answered. Perhaps a "that is an interesting post" or a "I'll think about that" or "I see what you are saying, but I disagree because..." from time to time might earn you some more respect. At least make them feel that you are taking them seriously.



"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Weshall, you're a great poster, and you're young, so you're full of vim, piss and fire---which is GOOD, btw, but what's the old saying, "You'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar." I use to be like you. The moment someone said something contradictory, I was ready to haul back and knock 'em on their asses. Now that I'm older its more fun to sit back and watch them crap on themselves... But it's good that you stand up for yourself, you're thinking these things through and present good points. Keep at it, man.

Gomer, I'm glad you realize you don't have the answers. I hope you take a look at some of the logic here and not base everything on "feelings." Feelings are good, but some good ol' fashion common sense and logic is good, too.
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A Christian Exodus from the Arab World

By Amira El Ahl, Daniel Steinvorth, Volkhard Windfuhr and Bernhard Zand

Violence, terrorism and the Islamists' growing influence pose a threat to Christianity in the Middle East. In some countries, members of an unpopular Christian minority are already fighting for their survival -- or fleeing for their lives.

Christians praying in Syria
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REUTERS

Christians praying in Syria
In New Baghdad, the driver of a minibus, a Shiite named Ali, set out at 7 a.m. on the last Sunday before Christmas. A few hours earlier he had received a call on his mobile phone with instructions to pick up five passengers for a long trip outside the city. His first passenger, he had been told, would tell him who the other passengers were and what their destination would be. He was also told not to mention a word to anyone.

The first passenger was a 24-year-old man named Raymon, who was sitting on his suitcase a few blocks away. He directed Ali through the city's dreary east side, where having a Shiite as a driver is a smart move -- first to the Karrada district, where Amir and Fariz boarded the bus, and then to Selakh, where Wassim and Qarram were waiting. By 9 a.m., Ali had picked up all of his passengers and the bus left Baghdad and began traveling to the northeast -- for the 350-kilometer (218-mile) journey to Kurdistan, the only part of Iraq that is anything close to safe.

The five young men traveling in Ali's red Kia were the last seminary students at the Chaldean Catholic Babel College to leave Baghdad. Four priests have been abducted since mid-August, and two others were murdered. Father Sami, the director of the seminary, was kidnapped in early December. The community managed to raise $75,000 to buy his freedom, but after hesitating for weeks, Emmanuel III, the Chaldean patriarch, decided to withdraw the teaching institutions of his community from Baghdad. He ordered the evacuation of the city's four Catholic churches, the Hurmis monastery and the college in the city's Dura neighborhood, but chose to remain behind in the city as the lonely shepherd of a rapidly shrinking congregation.

A history that traces back to the Ottoman Empire

Present-day Iraq was still part of the Ottoman Empire when Iraq's Catholics opened their first priest seminary. They moved it from Mosul to Baghdad 45 years ago and, in 1991, untouched by then dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, they founded the Babel College for Philosophy and Theology in Dora. It would only exist there for 15 years, a flicker in the history of the Chaldean people. "I don't know when or whether we will ever return," says Bashar Varda, the man Father Sami has entrusted with running the seminary.

Christians have lived in the Arab world for the past 2,000 years. They were there before the Muslims. Their current predicament is not the first crisis they have faced and, compared to the massacres of the past, it is certainly not the most severe in Middle Eastern Christianity. But in some countries, it could be the last one. Even the pope, in his Christmas address, mentioned the "small flock" of the faithful in the Middle East, who he said are forced to live with "little light and too much shadow," and demanded that they be given more rights.

There are no reliable figures on the size of Christian minorities in the Middle East. This is partly attributable to an absence of statistics, and partly to the politically charged nature of producing such statistics in the first place. Lebanon's last census was taken 74 years ago. Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who is himself part of a minority, was fundamentally opposed to compiling denominational statistics. In Egypt the number of Christians fluctuates between five and 12 million, depending on who is counting.

Graphic: Christians in the Arab World
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DER SPIEGEL

Graphic: Christians in the Arab World
Given the lack of hard numbers, demographers must rely on estimates, whereby Christians make up about 40 percent of the population in Lebanon, less than 10 percent in Egypt and Syria, two to four percent in Jordan and Iraq and less than one percent in North Africa. But the major political changes that are currently affecting the Middle East have led to shrinking Christian minorities. In East Jerusalem, where half of the population was Christian until 1948, the year of the first Arab-Israeli war, less than five percent of residents are Christian today. In neighboring Jordan, the number of Christians was reduced by half between the 1967 Six Day War and the 1990s. There were only 500,000 Christians still living in Iraq until recently, compared to 750,000 after the 1991 Gulf War. Wassim, one of the seminary students now fleeing to Kurdistan, estimates that half of those remaining Christians have emigrated since the 2003 US invasion, most of them in the last six months.

Greater affluence

Demographics have accelerated this development. Christians, often better educated and more affluent than their Muslim neighbors, have fewer children. Because the wave of emigration has been going on for decades, many Middle Eastern Christians now have relatives in Europe, North America and Australia who help them emigrate. Their high level of education increases their chances of obtaining visas. Those who leave are primarily members of the elite: doctors, lawyers and engineers.

But there are deeper-seated reasons behind the most recent exodus: the demise of secular movements and the growing influence of political Islam in the Middle East.

The Christmas procession in Bethlehem: "A wave of emigration"
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Getty Images

The Christmas procession in Bethlehem: "A wave of emigration"
It was a Syrian Christian, Michel Aflaq, who founded the nationalist Baath movement in 1940, a career ladder for Iraqi Christians until 2003 and still a political safe haven for many Syrian Christians today. Former Egyptian President Gamal Abd al-Nasser had no qualms about paying homage to the Virgin Mary, who supposedly appeared on a church roof in a Cairo suburb after Egypt's defeat in its 1967 war with Israel. And former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, insisted on sitting in the first row in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity during the annual Christmas service.

But those days are gone. The last prominent Christians -- Chaldean Tariq Aziz, Saddam's foreign minister for many years, and Hanan Ashrawi, Arafat's education minister -- have vanished from the political stage in the Middle East. And since the election victories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, the rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the bloody power struggles between Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq, the illusion that Christian politicians could still play an important role in the Arab world is gone once and for all.

A history of discrimination
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I'd just like to apologise to Tiptup for making personal remarks in my posts. I also apologise to ferris209 and WESHALLPRESERVE for any personal remarks against them.

Sorry, guys.
Don't you call me a mindless philosopher...!
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I apologize you you too man---I shouldn't have gotten so worked up and I overlooked the fact that you lived in the UK. Oh, and this does not mean I am apologizing to Gomer.
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Originally posted by: WESHALLPRESERVE
I apologize you you too man
Cool!
Don't you call me a mindless philosopher...!
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Cool, I aopoligize if anything I said may have inadvertanly been directed at you on a personal level. Now we can get back to our Star Wars.
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Originally posted by: auraloffalwaffle
I'd just like to apologise to Tiptup for making personal remarks in my posts.


That's okay, many of them were basically accurate, though twisted to a degree.

I don't know when I'll repsond about the Iraq questions. The issue is very tiring to discuss and it's not like any of us can truly affect the policy. The people currently in power have their minds made up (for whatever reasons).

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Originally posted by: Tiptup
I don't know when I'll repsond about the Iraq questions. The issue is very tiring to discuss and it's not like any of us can truly affect the policy. The people currently in power have their minds made up (for whatever reasons).
Now that's something we can certainly agree on!
Don't you call me a mindless philosopher...!
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Optimus Prime was not a fire engine. Not originally, and not correctly at least. Certainly not the toy in that picture.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Want me to take out the Fire Engine and put truck?
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Originally posted by: sean wookie
Want me to take out the Fire Engine and put truck?


That would be more canon with the picture presented.
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I'd prefer "truck tractor" I think.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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Sean is extremely prejudice against religion. This is because he used to be a Jehovah's Witness, which he believes is a real branch of Christianity. JWs, from the ones I have known and seen are much more akin to scientologists. It is very cult like, with many dark secrets. I hope nobody hear is a JW, if you are, please understand that I am basing this off my personal experience with them and am not intending to be offensive.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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hehe---I got scared one time--- We put up a sign in our window that said "THIS IS A CATHOLIC HOME, AND WE DO NOT ACCEPT LITERATURE FROM ANY OTHER RELIGION" and yet this massive group of 15+ came down our street and stayed knocking at my door for five minutes, laughing when they saw the sign. I shut off the PS2 and went to take a shower--they were finally gone-hehe
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Heheh. My family isn't Jewish, but we bougt a Menorah when we went to Israel last year. Recently a Jehova's Witness autovangelist came to our house and I told my mom she should light the Menorah and answer the door holding it in her hand.

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Let us not be stopped by that which divides us but look for that which unites us
If we could reduce the world's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this:
60 Asians 12 Europeans 5 US Americans and Canadians 8 Latin Americans 14 Africans

49 would be female

51 would be male

82 would be non-white

18 white

89 heterosexual

11 homosexual

33 would be Christian

67 would be non-Christian


* 5 would control 32% of the entire world's wealth, and all of them would be US citizens



* 80 would live in substandard housing



* 24 would not have any electricity
(And of the 76% that do have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)



* 67 would be unable to read


1 (only one) would have a college education.

* 50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation



* 33 would be without access to a safe water supply



* 1 would have HIV



* 1 near death



* 2 would be near birth



* 7 people would have access to the Internet


If to take a look at the world from this condensed perspective,
the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes evident.
Think of it!
If you woke up this morning with more health than sickness,
you are luckier than the million that will not survive this week.
If you have never experienced a war,
a loneliness of an imprisonment,
an agony of tortures
or a famine
You are happier, than 500 million persons in this world.
If you are able to go to church, mosque or synagogue without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death,
you are happier, than 3 billion persons in this world.

* If there is a meal in your refrigerator,



* if you are dressed and have got shoes,



* if you have a bed and a roof above your head,


you are better off, than 75% of people in this world.

If your parents are still alive and still married,
then you are a rarity.

* If you have a bank account,



* money in your purse



* and there is some trifle in your coin box,


you belong to 8% of well-provided people in this world.

If you read this text, you are blessed three times as much, because

1. Someone has thought of you;



2. You do not belong to those 2 billion people which cannot read



3. and... you have had your computer!


Someone has told once:

* Work like you don't need money,



* Love like you've never been hurt,



* Dance like nobody's watching,



* Sing like nobody's listening,



* Be surprised, like you were born yesterday,



* Tell the truth and you don't have to remember anything,



* Live like it's Heaven on Earth.


This is your World!
And you are able to make changes!
Hasten to do good works!
Think of it!
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"1 (only one) would have a college education."

And he would be either a white American or European capitalist, and would rule over the rest. He would also be the one with the best internet and the nicest house. He would make sure that every home had a McDonald's inside of it and drank Coca-Cola. He would also broadcast all his TV channels into their homes and they would love it. He would employ the Indian population to answer his phone for him also.

Sorry WESHALLPRESERVE, didn't intend to take the point out of your post. The first part with the percentages was very interesting. It is a really interesting to think about.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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Originally posted by: C3PX
"1 (only one) would have a college education."
.... He would employ the Indian population to answer his phone for him also.


Now that, is just too damn funny!