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Re:Answer, part 1
> First, you would like to abolish the right to abort. Abortion in itself is not a bad thing, but it depends on the way people use it. Thus, would you like to abolish abortion, and then what kind of solution would you bring to women who have been raped and find themselves pregnant?
I think that legislation is an inefficient tool to solve the abortion problems, which should rather be dealt with at the point where they originate: we should create a society where people do not even think about violating each others' intimacy with raping or other crimes, and think about sexuality and procreation in the scope of decades and centuries. That should make abortions very rare and the remaining cases easier to solve.
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
August 24, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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Re:Answer, part 1
> God is a personal business and must not intervene in legislation, that is to say laws that everybody has to abide by.
Non-religious people might come to the conclusion that disconnecting religion from other things is a neutral solution and best for all. However, religious people follow a very different paradigm. To them culture is part of religion rather than religion part of culture. This means that religion is necessarily involved with everything that people do, think, or decide. To them disconnecting religion would be just one more religious attitude, very far from being neutral, and a very insulting one for people who yearn to see their beloved value system applied on practical purposes.
It might be easier to create laws that allow more latitude for religious thinking, and in general acknowledge better the diversity of human beings.
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
August 24, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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Re:Fives senses: which one is the least important?
> Among your five senses, which one is the least important for you?
If I were forced to completely sacrifice one of them, I would have to stop weighing smell and taste against each other for a long time.
I have spent times with no smell when I have caught cold, and my sense of smell is not very sharp at other times, either. However, I would miss many of my favourite flavors, especially the fruits.
The senses divide in many subsenses and there are senses that cannot easily be contained within those five. Is the satisfying feeling of citric acid in my stomach part of taste or touch? Perhaps "touch" should include pain, temperature, and bodily balance, too? There are senses making me crave for more oxygen or making me feel sick if I eat harmful food. Perhaps I could sacrifice one of the less famous senses instead?
My top favourite sense is the sight.
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
August 24, 2005
# Msgs: 1
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Re:Mankind versus Animals!
> I could agree that a man alone on his island could become a kind of animal due to the lack of other human beings able to remind him of the boundary between the animal reign and humanity.
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> what does separate human beings from animals?
In this context probably the level and sophistication of self-control.
In sparsely inhabited countries there actually are people who live in wilderness, with very few contacts to people for years or even decades. According to what I have heard these people do not become animals, even though they may forget some parts of their cultural sophistication. (Probably not a great loss from a hermit's viewpoint.) However, this does not imply that they would lose their human attitude towards the people in general, unless their isolation is not caused by mental sickness from the very beginning.
I do not believe that the mere loneliness of the children in "Lord of The Flies" would be a sufficient cause for inhumane behavior. It may work as a catalyst, if the children bring the ingredients of inhumanity inside themselves to the island,
and due to their immaturity have no means to control its growth.
> How would you react on a remote island deprived of any modern comfort?
I have not tested myself that extremely. To me the lack of clean water, safe food, and a toilet (and Internet!) would be more of an issue than a fear of losing my humanity.
Puti
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Language pair: French; English
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Juha-Petri T.
August 24, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: September 4, 2005
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President Arnaud
Hey Arnaud, mon ami! welcome back!
I agree with you completely. One of the things that most disturbs me about America is that it seems that the people who truly have the most lofty vision for the country and the most noble ideals are always the least likely to succeed in our political system.
Look at Jimmy Carter. He was the most noble and forthright president we've had in my lifetime, but he was never able to accomplish anything because Congress refused to work with a president who was unwilling to play their political games with them.
Look again at the comparison between Clinton and George W. Clinton, who may have failed in his personal life and not been the most heroic figure we've had, was nonetheless an excellent president who ran a very successful administration that worked for the greater interests of the nation. Yet Clinton was impeached. Bush, on the other hand is domonstrably operating for his own personal insterests and those of his own economic friends. He is a war criminal, an unethical man, and an incompetent. And yet somehow, nobody's talking about impeaching him, who really demands it far more than Clinton ever did.
I'm really thinking of moving to Canada. I'm not so sure I belong in this crazy country.
Mark
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
August 20, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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Re:Re:What I wouldn't do as President:
Thanks. I hope I'm able to express what many Americans are feeling. It sure is what I'm feeling.
Unfortunately, the news isn't encouraging so far. I got a form e-makl back from Senator Boxer which pretty much revisited the ideas in her Commonwealth Club speech, without acknowledging what I had stated was missing from the speech.
Sometimes I get a follow-up letter by mail. It might be more informative. I'll let you know.
By the way, if you've never written your congressperson or Senator before, I highly encourage it. It's great to be in the practice so that when something important like this comes up, there's nothing intimidating. You just fire it off and send it in. I've got a stack of letters from my representatives. It's great having a relationship with my government. It really helps me to feel involved in the democratic process. Also, since people so rarely pick up and write, your representatives assume that for every letter they get, there are about a thousand people who feel the same way. It's a very powerful tool.
So get writing!
Mark
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Language pair: English; German
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Mark S.
August 13, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 13, 2005
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Re:Re:Re:If you were President of the United States...
Dwyn 081205 presidency
Dwyn, you’re so sweet.
You better not keep this up, or my head will swell so I won’t be able to get out the front door. I’ll lose my job and flunk all my classes, and then what kind of congressman would I be?
But seriously, I’d never make it in congress. Too much politics. I have to tell the truth as I see it and do what I think is right, and congress eats folks like me with their afternoon tea. I don’t have the killer instinct.
I think I’m doing exactly what I need to do. Grab young people like you and sit ‘em down and teach ‘em how to think for themselves, how not to buy the cock and bull everyone wants to hand them. When people stop buying it, Hollywood and congress and Wall Street and Standard Oil and GMC, and everyone else will be forced to stop trying to pass it off. Perhaps in a couple of hundred years we’ll have a congress we can be proud of. I’m willing to wait if that’s what it takes.
Meanwhile, keep studying, keep asking the hard questions, and don’t buy any of their pretty castles in the sky.
# 58336
Re:Re:If you were President of the United States... Dwyn Hart
Okay, so you don't want to be president. But would you like to run for congress? I'd vote for you! You back up all your opinions, and explained
everything.
This is a reply to message # 58204
Language pair: English; German
Category: Opinions
Post date: August 11, 2005
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Language pair: English; German
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Mark S.
August 12, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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What I wouldn't do as President:
I wrote this letter; what do you all think?
Dear Senator Boxer,
I want to ask you about something that has been disturbing me greatly over the last several years, and which disturbs me more and more as we get more information about President Bush’s precipitous invasion of Iraq and about how clearly the President had previously been looking for an excuse for this invasion: How is it possible that impeachment proceedings have not been initiated?
The very best that we could say about the President’s prosecution of the war on terror is that it has been criminally incompetent.
However, the facts argue that his actions have been clearly unethical, and even criminal. While claiming to pursue Al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks, Bush initiated a war on Iraq, a nation that clearly has no substantial connections to the terrorist organization. None of the evidence that the President cited to justify our invasion made any connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, and even his arguments that Iraq was preparing its own terrorist actions by preparing weapons of mass destruction, offer no proof of Bush’s allegations of terrorism. This all proved moot, of course, when the arguments that Iraq was developing a nuclear weapons program, flimsy as they were at the time, proved entirely specious.
The Downing Street memo is concrete proof that George W. Bush is pursuing his personal goals ahead of our national interests. If he had directed as much attention and resources to Afghanistan as he has to Iraq, he could have captured Osama bin Laden many, many months ago. The president had personal reasons for wanting to invade Iraq—oil being the most obvious—and knowing Saddam Hussein was too smart to give him an excuse, the President simply fabricated one out of rhetoric and rubbish. He offered the people his lame explanation of his actions, and we, for reasons I’ll never understand, have accepted it.
Your speech to the Commonwealth Club on July 6 acknowledges all of these facts, but you made no mention of the logical implication of all of this: At a very minimum, the President is guilty of incompetence, misleading the people, unjustified invasion of a sovereign foreign state, and some 25,000 counts of voluntary manslaughter.
I will never claim to be sorry that Hussein has lost his position in Iraq. But I am deeply ashamed of how we brought this about. We have descended to Hussein’s playing field, and this has been a devastating blow to my sense of pride in being an American. I cannot be proud of my American citizenship while this incompetent, criminal George W. Bush, is our president.
The American people have a right to know what is being done to investigate this matter and to bring President Bush to justice. Please tell me what you know about calls for President Bush's impeachment and what actions you are taking to address the issue.
Your faithful constituent,
Mark Springer
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
August 11, 2005
# Msgs: 2
Latest: August 13, 2005
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Re:If you were President of the United States...
Part 4 of 4
9 medical marijuana Establish a medical marijuana program that ensures that patients with a valid medical need have ready access to the drug. The program will implement practical, effective controls to ensure that the drug is not freely accessible to abusers.
10 Corporate welfare Set up a plan to phase out corporate welfare programs—not pull the plug on them immediately, but let companies know that handouts are over, and they have about five years to transition off of it.
(End of 4-part message)
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
August 10, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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Re:If you were President of the United States...
part 2 of 4
2 Unemployment Establish a commission to do the research and present a proposal to re-design welfare. We need to create a system that is aware of changing trends in the job market, able to provide career counseling that will help workers find jobs that suit their skills and talents, training, when necessary, to help them transition into careers that can employ them when their current careers no longer can. We need, during worker transition periods, to ensure that workers have access to health care, subsistence needs, transportation, and guidance. The program must provide workers with the means to find new employment without disempowering people by ignoring barriers to work, rewarding those who don’t seek employment and punishing those who do. The welfare system will do its job effectively only when it looks at unemployment as a complex social problem, addressing the real causes and challenges, rather than trying to gloss over symptoms and ignoring causes.
3 medical care Medical care: We need to implement the health care program suggested by the commission headed up by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her program is outstanding. It addresses all of the major problems of the existing health care system at a minimal cost to the tax payers by revising our philosophy of health care so that we spend reasonable amounts of money on prevention in order to save billions on corrective medicine. It ensures that all Americans have free access to health insurance at all times, that we are free to consult the physicians we choose to see, and that doctors, not accountants, have the power to make critical decisions regarding patient treatment.
4 criminal justice system Establish a commission to reform the criminal justice system. We must examine justice, not in terms of punishment, but in terms of rehabilitation. Our current system channels offenders into a revolving-door hell. First-time offenders are often reformed by the prison system, not into functional citizens, but into career criminals. We need a system that examines the factors that encourage offenders to commit crimes. WE as a society need to take responsibility for certain social conditions that make criminal lifestyles more accessible to many than a constructive role as a contributing member of our society. Results of this commission’s study would likely inform research being done by the commissions on education and on welfare, as would the work done by those commissions be very useful to this one. These commissions must work in concert because the work of each will have direct impacts on the challenges of the others.
See part 3 of 4
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Language pair: English; All
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Mark S.
August 10, 2005
# Msgs: 8
Latest: August 24, 2005
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