Murders in France

Funny, I was going to ask you to stop directing your comments (like accusing me of "BSD") towards me. Here you do it again. I haven't said a thing about you, but you persist. I'm sure you can see the distinction between an ad hominem directed at a member of this board and one about some public figure. Again, I have nothing to say about your character and I wish you'd do the same. Thank you.

(Bush admits his drinking problems and subsequent abstinence. His drug use is well-documented, too. No one is surprised by those ideas, even if you or others might be disappointed in their use.)

 

Not intended as tit for tat argument: Obama self-admits, and such is documented in his own book (Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, 1995), his own illegal drug usage too (cocaine and marijuana). Does such disappoint you as well? Just asking …

 

Okay. I'll accept that. But what I won't accept is that a moderator seems fine with directing his comments at a poster. We can disagree. We can even get emotional about topics. But it doesn't do to attack other posters personally. I won't respond in-kind, but I object to it.

 

I've dialogued with Rich hundreds of times since the old AED days (on AED, DegreeInfo and DegreeDiscussion), using a different posting name on each forum. I've learned over this period of time that Rich will debate/dialogue/argue with a chainsaw. :wink:

 

Only if provoked personally.

 

I guess some people are easily provoked. :smile:

 

Oh, guilty as charged! But again, the key is that I don't go after people, but I find that they come after me because they don't like what I say. The ferocity of the argument is not the same as a ferocious attack on a person. But we see that all the time here: an ad hominem chucked at someone in lieu of a sound point of view. And when a moderator does it, it's even worse because of his/her bully pulpit status.

Over the years, I've been wrong a lot. And I've made mistakes in my conversations with some posters. But I try to keep to the issues. And I don't take personal nastiness lying down. Ever.

For example, Bruce and I disagreed on an issue in this thread. Fine. But at some point he decided instead to make ME the problem (with his comment about Bush Derangement Syndrome). That's not right, and his status as a moderator makes it even more so. (Sure, the mods have every right to participate in the discussion, but they shouldn't lead the league in violations of the TOS.) That crossed a line and I didn't appreciate it. Again, I argue fiercely, sure. But I rarely get personal first.

Look, this isn't that important, and I have no intention of pursuing this line of discussion on my own. I tend not to let these things go without response, sure. But then I prefer to move on unless further provoked. Like now.

 

Considering the rather epic temper tantrum you threw in the "Wake up, Mr. President" thread, frankly I'm amazed you had the gall to make such a childish comment here.

Do you lack emotional maturity in real life or do you bottle it all up and just unleash it under the cover of anonymity? Fine either way, mind you, I'm just curious.

 

I recently read an interesting take on this problem in a blog. The blogger asked why there was no major terrorist incident on U. S. soil after 9/11, even though the country is at least as open as the UK or France. Her answer was that the US have strong tradition of religious tolerance. As a result, many devout Muslims who line in US are loyal to the country. Major terrorist act would need a group to organize it and carry it out, and the FBI has no difficulty finding and recruiting practicing Muslims to infiltrate such groups. That's why the acts that did happen (like Fort Bragg or Boston) were the work of loser loners rather than groups.
Besieged fortress mentality can undermine this very tolerance.

 

Can't resist: Islamic world didn't exist for "thousands of years". Islamist ideology is a radical movement that really started in the seventies, drawing, yes, on about two centuries of blunders brought about by the Western (mostly British) imperialism. For a more recent example of the latter, see the background for the Iran thing.
There's a book I learned about recently, "Disinformation" by Ion Mihai Pacepa, former Communist Romanian top spy who defected to the West. He argues that Arab anti-Semitism and anti-Western sentiment was deliberately fanned by the KGB under Andropov. He says Romanian Securitate under his command carried out disinformation campaigns on behalf of the KGB, and so did other spy services of the Eastern Bloc. Including the distribution of thousands of copies of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" translated to Arabic and printed in the USSR, along with tons of pamphlets linking USA to the "Zionist cabal". Makes a lot of sense.

 

fftopic:
Kind of off-topic but this thread was done anyway.

Pumped Dry: The Global Crisis of Vanishing Groundwater - USA TODAY