denoir

I just ran out of ink on my HP 940C. I've had it for over a year and never had any complaints. Looking for ink cartridges I noticed two things: 1) Inkjets have become very very cheap 2) Ink cartridges are expensive. As a matter of fact buying a new and better printer is cheaper than buying new cartridges. [ ] So, I'll buy a new one and throw away a perfectly good printer. Anyhow I was wondering if anybody has some suggestions on which printer to buy. At a quick glance these three seem like a good replacement: Epson C84 HP 5150 or Lexmark Z65P

I think a thread on this is in order. So anyway, for the uninformed non-Europeans or the ignorant Europeans here's a short intro: On 10/6-13/6 we have elections for the European Parliament (EP). The EP is the legislative body of the European Union hand has grown more and more powerful over the years. Laws that are passed there are automatically valid in the member states and the number of laws that are passed on an EU level is increasing every year. Nearly 349 million people will have a chance to vote for the new 732-member parliament, making it the largest transnational democratic election ever held. The European parliament has a big influence on the lives of citizens in EU member states, whether they realise it or not. EU laws apply in all member states, and most laws passed by national parliaments are drafted in response to European directives (framework laws that have to be transposed into national law within a certain timescale). As the European parliament has the power to amend or reject most proposed EU legislation, it is often argued that members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have more real power than members of national parliaments. Even if you think your country should withdraw from the EU, there is likely to be a party you can vote for which represents your point of view. Examples of recent EU laws: [*]Working time directive. This introduces limits on the hours employees can be made to work, and regulates rest periods, annual leave and night work. From August 2004 it applies to junior doctors. [*]Cosmetics directive. This regulates what industry can do to test cosmetics on animals, and bans animal testing of cosmetics after 2009. [*]Takeovers directive. This establishes standard EU rules on takeover bids, and restricts the tactics companies can use to avoid foreign takeovers. [*]GM food regulation: This governs the amount of GM products allowed in food and the labelling required to alert the consumer. [*] Flight records personal integrity records: Regarding Washington's request for personal data on passengers flying to the US. MEPs have insisted that EU data protection rules must not be violated. So this is an important election! So, who can you vote for then? This is a bit more tricky to answer. Each country has a number of representatives, depending on the size of the country. Each country elects those representatives through a democratic vote. Now, the tricky part is that you vote on three different level: 1) Personal election - the candidates generally have some form of agenda of their own and positions on certain issues. 2) National party affiliation - generally the candidates belong to a national party that has an agenda 3) European party (aka group) affiliation - the candidates generally belong to an European party as well. This requires some reading up to make the selection that fits you as the three different levels may be contradictory! You might like what the candidate's European Party stands for, but not what the national party does. A good thing is that all of that information is readily available on the web. Here's a list of the current parties: ---------------------------------------------- That's enough as an intro. Personally I'll be voting for the liberal party (ELDR) on european level. That means folkpartiet on a Swedish national level. I was actually going to vote for another party, Moderaterna, but after discovering that they were in the Christian democrat group in the EP, I quickly removed them from my list. The thing I actually want is a federalist, but unfortunately we have none of those in Sweden So I'm picking in the usual manner the candidate whose opinions offend me the least. Here in Sweden at least, the information about the elections have been terrible and we're probably going to see a low turnout. I hope that we at least here on the forum can get some form of debate going, as these elections really are important. It would be embarrasing to see that Europeans take more interest in American politics than in their own.. So prove me wrong and debate! Â Oh, and a note to the Euro-sceptics: this election is the more important for you. You can't complain about how the EU is undemocratic and then not use your vote. Even if you have everything that the EU stands for, I can guarantee that you can find MEP candidates that share your point of view. So regardless of your position, VOTE!

The US is the home of the smartest people in the world. No, I'm not joking. About half of the world's Nobel laureates live in America. The three top universities in the world are American and as soon as a European or Asian scientist gets any good he/she runs off to America to work - because all the other smart people are at the universities there. I won't bother listing all the achievements by America and Americans - landing on the moon for instance. So is it why there is so much anti-Americanism in the world (and there is a lot of it)? Is it simply envy of its power? Well, yes and no. Americas power is an answer to why it is the primary target but not quite why. Warning: If you are a cultural relativist who thinks that all cultures are equally good and can't be compared - prepare to be offended. If you think that stoning women for adultery is just a cultural peculiarity that has to be judged within its cultural context, you won't agree with me. So let's look at the why. First let's look at the obvious elephant in the closet: Bush and the Iraq war. A vast majority of the world was against the war and a natural animosity against American politics evolved. When the majority of the America people re-elected Bush it was clear that it wasn't just about the politicians at the top - it was the people. After all, in a democracy people are to some degree responsible for the idiots they elect. The first time didn't count as people didn't know what was to come, but re-electing him was approving of his previous actions. On a practical level it gave Europeans (lusting for integration) something in common: they were not Americans. It is impossible to understate the difference between the opinions and cultures of different EU states - opposition to the Iraq war was one thing that everybody could agree on (the populations if not the politicians). Nobody has done so much for practical European unity as Bush. As I said first, America is home to much of the best that western civilization has to offer. This is due to its enormous size and subsequently it is also home to the worst that the western civilization has to offer. The distribution is as always a bell-shaped curve. The world however does no primarily see the worst - for the most part through television and news it sees the average. It's at the center of the bell curve that everything is aimed at - the average American. And at this point there has to come a comparison. Are Americans more ignorant than other people in the world? Of the 201 states in the world is America at the bottom half? -No, absolutely not. Using almost any imaginable metric America ends up in the top half. To pick a few random countries: The average person in say Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Niger.. are all far less educated and far more ignorant of the world than the average American. Clearly America has been chosen for bashing not just because of the ignorance of its population - more than half the world are worse in that respect. Nigeria isn't being bashed because it is not a significant and visible player on the world stage. Having said all that, there is another elephant in the closet - what about the western world? How does America stack up against countries that have a similar GDP/capita? The answer there is not as encouraging: compared to most other western nations the ignorance is abysmal. One poster wrote earlier that if you looked around you could find a Swede that can't point to Sweden on a map. True enough - according to the 2002 National Geographic Survey about 2% of Swedes don't know where it is given a map and four choices. However, 11% of Americans can't find America on a map, given four choices. That's 5 times worse. Yes, there are ignorant people in every country - the relevant question is however how large percentage of the population they constitute. From the same NG survey: This is astonishingly bad especially since the answer is given in the question. 44% is very much in average territory. We're not talking about marginal idiots here. Same thing for this: And finally one more, which I think is the worst of them all: It is not an exaggeration to say that answering "no" to that question is about as sensible as saying that you think that the earth is flat. 47% of the American population believe that the earth is under 10,000 years old  [src] (the right answer is roughly 4.567 billion years) and 44% think that Jesus will return within their life time [src] (armageddon, end of the world...). This comes from a nation with 20,000 strategic nuclear weapons and that is the #1 polluter. Not very encouraging for building a sustainable development. If you are convinced that you'll be raptured to your sky-god relatively soon, of course you won't bother yourself with such worldly vulgarities as global warming. And the especially disturbing twist is that if say a nuke was to go off in Jerusalem, about half the US population would see it as a happy sign of Jesus soon coming back. Given that a third of the world's population are fundamentalist Muslims that will gladly provide the provocation and excuse for a conflict. So given its power and unique position in the world combined with the excessive (relative) ignorance displayed, America does deserve the mud being flung at it. There are real concerns that go way beyond in-group/out-group bashing. Conclusion: Of course generalizations are bound to be unfair for many at an individual level - and for America especially since it is a very divided society. Saying that Americans are ignorant and dangerous fundamentalists will be wrong 50% of the time. It is however not to dismiss that 50% of the time you would actually be right to say so. And yes, again, there are far worse countries than America in that respect. Instead of 50/50 it would be no overstatement to say that for instance 90% of the Saudi population are ignorant and dangerous fundamentalists. It's not politically correct to say so as it hurts our liberal sensitivities, but nevertheless it is the ugly truth. In Saudi Arabia like (the liberated) Afghanistan and many other Muslim countries you can actually get executed for teaching evolution and any other knowledge deemed 'heretic'. America however is not just any country - it is the most powerful and richest country in the world so of course it deserves special attention. The America bashing that is so popular world-wide has a solid ground it stands on - it is not just arbitrary hatred or jealousy. Ultimately what America needs is a better public education system and much less religion. Some travel (no, invasion doesn't count) wouldn't hurt too.

It has two nice things: design and screen resolution. Although I truly dislike OS X on a regular computer, I think it might actually work well on a phone. IMO it is the first smartphone that I've seen that isn't visually offensive. Everything else on the market is more or less an aesthetic insult. The really disappointing thing about the iPhone is the lack of a built-in GPS. I'm using a Mio A701 today and I would really miss that feature. Also, the iPhone is a bit too heavy and its battery life seems less than impressive. I'll probably get one, at least if the first reviews are not very negative. I doubt however that I'll stick with it for a longer time. My hope is that it will lead to a better designed generation of smartphones. The perhaps biggest disadvantage is that it won't be available for purchase for another 6 months. A lot of things can happen in that time. Edit: The "multi-touch" touchschreen seems like a very promising thing on the phone. Check this out (not the iPhone but a demonstration of a multi-touch screen) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6379146923853181774

Slovenia is already in - they actually introduced the euro this year. AFIK they are doing quite well - they're economically better off than a few of the EU15 countries and the richest of the EU+10 bunch. Croatia, that is doing economically better than say Poland and several other EU25 and much better than Romania and Bulgaria, will probably join 2009 or 2010 barring that they don't join the Swiss and Norwegian teams and stay out. IIRC they were one of the most euro-sceptic countries in Europe. Bosnia & Herzegovina as well as Serbia have a long way to go as they are economically broken and not entirely politically stable. My guess would be somewhere between 2015-2025. Macedonia is even poorer and you can count on the Greeks making trouble. Macedonia is however an official candidate - although in their case membership talks won't be completed for at least a decade. Monte Negro is small enough to be able to do a fairly rapid transformation. I'd guess 2015 perhaps. It might take some time, but I'm pretty much sure that all of former Yugoslavia will join within the next say 20 years. There are some primarily political obstacles and there are economic obstacles (although not much greater than in the case of Bulgaria). Still, there is no real cultural obstacle like with Turkey for instance. Goob: That is a load of propaganda that we have been fed by the Swedish unions that fear the erosion of their power. I recommend you to read "Den polske rörmokaren" article series in DN that explores the topic. (Note the articles in the series are listed in reverse order). Start with "Våldnaden från öst".

Indeed - the way people not affected by Saddam in any way are reacting is telling how little the society has changed in some respect. This is the equivalent of the medieval joy of public executions. Saddam was deposed so the act of killing him had no practical value - he wasn't in the position of every hurting anybody again anyway. Had he been in power and done active harm, then sure. He was however harmless and would remain so. I can understand his victims and their relatives wanting revenge - that's perfectly human. Society is however supposed to have gone beyond accepting moral equivalence and aspired to higher standards of morality. Apparently not as evidenced by the gloating people who have no personal motivation for revenge - they apparently just like revenge as a method in general. Killing a convicted criminal is a moral issue. It is not a question of if the criminal deserved it or not, but if the society is willing to stoop so morally low that it kills people. Now I to some extent understand the people that have been brainwashed by old testament (or equivalent) morality. I would not be surprised if somebody from Mississippi or Kabul was finding this event joyful. I do however find it disturbing to find supposedly enlightened Europeans expressing their joy and approval over the meaningless killing of another human being. I'm not sad about Saddam being dead, but I am sad about so many people finding joy in his killing.

Meet the new boss..just like the old boss. Traditional banana republic behaviour: change of government = execution of former government. Uncivilized, but hell, I guess that when dozens of people are killed in Baghdad every day +-1 death is within the margin of error. They should have locked him up and thrown away the key. This way he can become a martyr - he has quite a few supporters left. I don't think his life is worth more civilian deaths.

That's arbitrary picking and choosing. The bible that states those things also tells us we should kill people that work on Sunday, children that talk back to their parents, adulterers, gays etc The principle of "don't kill me and I won't kill you" and "don't steal my shit and I won't steal yours" are pretty universal and required for any type of organized society to work. If anything religion can corrupt those basic values by overriding them with arbitrary rules. The god of the Old Testament is an ill-tempered genocidal maniac and hardly a suitable role model in modern society. Jesus was of course a great improvement as a moral role model. From a Christian point of view however both books are equally valid. Islam is just like Christianity completely contradictory and basically allows you to find any niche you want. If you want to be nice to people, you can find the verse to support it. If you wish to kill infidels you can find verses that instruct you to do so. The problem of Islam today is that people in the Islamic world are largely religious zealots. The average Muslim takes his religion far more seriously and literally than the average Christian. 700 years ago the roles were reversed. The central concept of religion is “faith†– the blind belief in something without any evidence.  A “leap of faith†is considered to be a good thing. That is what makes the mainstream moderates dangerous. They uphold a framework that enables extremism. As the moderates claim the right to pick and choose the “nice†parts of the religious texts without having any criteria for such a selection, they legitimize the extremists when they do the same. From a biblical perspective “Be nice to other people†and “God hates fags†are equally true. Which one you select is up to you. Therefore people that advocate that morality is to be taken from scripture are not just misguided but dangerous in a wider context.

Bye Paul. Take care and good luck in Singapore. I'm sure you'll find the time to drop by on occasion

There is more to it than that - a religious conviction of moral supremacy. You can draw many parallels to medieval Europe or the colonization era. The self-designated role of being a "world police" is just a more modern version of the "White man's burden". It's a mix of expansionist economic ambition backed by absolute nationalist and religious beliefs. One should be careful not to think that the nationalism and religion are excuses - they're at least as strong as the pragmatic economic ambitions. When Europeans kidnapped people from Africa to be used as slave labour in the colonies there was a strong conviction not only that they had the right to do it but that it was their duty before God to do so. They were convicted that they had been chosen by God (why else would they be so successful?) to civilize an uncivilized world. The heathens had to be converted. Slavery was necessary as the savages weren't capable of taking care of themselves. The slaves weren't exploited as a cheap work force - they were being cared for by their masters and rescued from barbarism as well as eternal damnation. These weren't excuses - they were dead honest about it. Religion played an essential role in these absolute beliefs of superiority. Fast forward 200 or so years. Our moral standards have evolved to a higher level of sophistication, but we play the same games. Take the Iraq war. Economic exploitation? It's called introducing a free market and free trade. The "White man's burden" has become the "Western man's burden". The Iraq project was as much about introducing a stable democracy in the Middle East - with the hope that it will be spread. Again on the agenda is saving the poor bastards that aren't capable of managing themselves. As in each instance before, it is "One nation under God" doing the 'educating' of the world. It's not a simple question of nationalism. The notion of a divine purpose and approval is essential. And there is no clearer example than America where religion and patriotism are deeply interwoven. To quote Bush (Senior): "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." Europe, after two devastating world wars abandoned that type of thinking but America holds the Euro-centric flag high. The only pragmatic approach in recent years was Clinton's North Korea policy - which worked considerably well. There were inspectors on site and NK did not develop nukes. When the negotiated time interval ran out and it was time for renegotiation was badly timed with Bush ascending to power. The result: NK has nukes and its relations to the US are at an all time low. That's exactly what I'm endorsing and I'd say it worked amazingly well. Had it not been for the detente, had the superpowers continued in the style of the 50's and early 60's, the Cuban Missile crisis would have not been the last critical moment. There would have been a series of them, most likely resulting in a nuclear war. As I see it, the detente saved the world. They have universal suffrage for the executive and legislative branches of their government. They elect their president and their parliament. What more are you looking for?

I think they might refer to it as "separation of powers". In standard democracies the judicial branch is not elected nor chosen by the politicians. The US is an exception there. Iran is a democracy, but not of the regular western type. They are also a theocracy where the religious leaders have a formal government body that is separated from the elected politicians. In the same way a supreme court supersedes other branches of government on some issues, so does the guardian council. Now I'm not endorsing Iran's political system - I think it is one of the most potentially destructive ones, but nevertheless, it is a type of democracy. This brings me to a second point. Lately on my favourite website a large number of columnists have been raging against the firing of John Bolton and generally against the UN. Their primary argument is that people like Chavez and Ahmadinejad are allowed to have their say and rant against the US. While I'm not a fan of those two populists the arrogance and presumptiousness of the other side is worse. The root cause of that is a combination of nationalism and religion. You said in the US Politics thread that America wasn't über-religious. In a practical way, you might be right - most people don't pray to Jesus for guidance when buying groceries and religion isn't a factor in the majority of the decisions that the people and the government does. There is however a very widespread and strong belief that God is on America's side - that what America does and stands for is good on an absolute scale. This combination of religion and nationalism breeds intolerance towards other cultures and political systems. That's why you can't tolerate Chavez or anybody else that challenges your system and the American-centric world view. In essence it there is little difference between this and when the Europeans decided that everyone else in the world were savage barbarians who should be converted or enslaved. There are practical differences as society has evolved since then to a set of more sophisticated moral standards, but the principle remains the same: "I'm right and you're not so it's my right and obligation to do something about your incorrect beliefs." I'm not advocating moral relativism - far from it. It can't however be treated as narrow-minded as the US foreign policy does - a more pragmatic approach is required, even if you don't understand or disapprove of what the other side does. To give you an example - the death penalty is seen in the EU as a barbaric violation of human rights. Does it mean that we won't talk to the US and demand that the US be kicked out of all international bodies and that sanctions should be imposed? No, because it would do more damage than good. Instead the EU won't extradite people unless guarantees are made that the death penalty won't be sought and it is mentioned on a regular basis that Europe strongly disapproves of the practice. In the same way you can disapprove of the Iranian government without claiming it is illegitimate and demanding that it be overthrown. You can talk to them on issues where a constructive dialog is possible. There is no need for the relation to be a binary love or hate thing. The first thing you need to do is to seriously drop the idea of American exceptionalism. Look around the world and you'll see that because of it you are more hated than you probably deserve to. And it is the same skewed notion of righteousness and the delusion that your cause is just per definition that got you to initiate this Iraq mess.

When OFP 1.0 was released, it was incredibly buggy and so was Resistance. ArmA just follows the same tradition. The bugs will hopefully be fixed as they were in OFP and Res. If you ignore the bugs, ArmA is a great improvement in graphics and multiplayer over OFP. It runs just fine (1600x1200, high settings 4000m view distance) on a modern computer (X6800 Core 2, 3 GB ram,  Radeon X1900 under Vista x32 RTM), but I can imagine that older computers might have a problem with it. I have only one major complaint: the new vehicle steering. Helicopters and fixed wing aircraft are impossible to fly with a mouse, difficult with the keyboard and cumbersome with a joystick. Yes, the flight model for the helos is more realistic - but since the steering interface is useless it's not an improvement in practice. This IMO sucks big time. In addition the game seems pretty spartan - when you are used  to an OFP with tons of addons installed.

(Article) YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!! Â Â (Don't worry, I'm not going crazy) finally a democrat in be in effective charge of the US Military. yes yes, i know i know, "But Sophion, you hate democrats." BUT NOT LIKE THIS!!! I so called it: HAH! [leaves as quickly as he came] You are as well-informed as usual. Gates is a republican. Not only that, he was the CIA directory under Bush senior. wow, thanks for telling the world a murder is just as bad a a homicide. The reason why many US schools don't have britannica in them, surprise. Given your ignorance of.. um.. everything.. I'm guessing your school is one of them. Britannica is generally considered to be the most reliable encyclopedia in existence. As for US schools not having it - hardly surprising - they are at the absolute bottom in the western world. maybe i should use you as one, an egotistic self-centered dumb*ss that has no respect of other human beings. thank you for opening my eye oh great jack*ss of the year! Hehe, I'm going to let your comment speak for itself. we still got into Iraq kicked a*s and took Saddam out of power, whats the difference? fly from the north and drop bombs or fly from the south and drop bombs? The point is that on the white house page Turkey is listed as a member of the coalition along with a number of other countries that not only had nothing to do with the invasion but actively opposed it. It shows how reliable the propaganda office of the white house is.

Well.. im sure Kuwait allowing the US to use their country as a staging area for their attack was pretty valuable too. True. Which brings me to a good example why the list on the white house site is completely bogus. They list Turkey - the same Turkey that refused to allow the 'coallition' to use it as a staging area for an attack on Iraq from the north. Nobody screwed up the invasion plans as much as Turkey did.

I demand an apology, that was uncalled for. (That is why my research isn't limited to just wikipedia, which is mostly hearsay btw) Hehe, good joke, linking to the white house. If there is one biased source to rule all other biased source on this issue it is the white house. My statement stand for the white house as well as for you: debating is easier if you ignore reality and make shit up. As for the reliability of wikipedia, testing has shown it to be roughly as reliable as Britannica. Not that such accuracy is needed to beat the white house press office - just making things up will put you on that level. Incidentally, that's what you are consistently doing. You need new role models. And claiming that somebody is part of your coalition just because they aren't actively opposing you is fundamentally dishonest. Incidentally, after the white house released that list there were strong denials from some of the countries. This is the list of the 30 countries that agreed to be associated with the US on this one: Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan. Source: us state department via BBC Anyway the only meaningful contributions to the US led coalition were made by the UK. Money and troops, that's all that counts and in the invasion only the US and the UK provided that in meaningful quantities.

lets just look at the list: Afghanistan Albania .. <snip> Uzbekistan nope, don't look so alone. I know that debating is easier if you ignore reality and make things up. These were the countries that participated in the invasion of Iraq [wikipedia]: Note that most of the countries that sent < 1000 troops only sent medical personel.

Well, apparently an Iraqi rebel with his weapon. primary sources: PFC David Whelms, USMC LCPL Jessie Whoebach, USMC SGT Justin Davidson, USMC PFC Steven Cornet, US Army Ah, I see. When opinion polls are made for simple questions the pollsters ask thousands of people. Do you think that they do that because they enjoy phoning people? That four of your friends think that the Iraq war is going well isn't enough to draw any general conclusions. For any form of statistics being possible a large sample is required. I'm not aware of any such opinion poll of the support for the war by US military personnel. The majority of the American population in large is (now) against the war and I suspect that the people actually doing the dying are even more against it. The military brass have as we know expressed their opinion about the chance of this ending well.

but considerably more fragile too. all it takes is a nuclear state to withdraw and the whole thing collapses. But not as gods. I have never really conversed with a Hindu. I don't see Hindu's any less or greater as a person than I. But I tolerate their religion because it is a big part of their culture. and offending a persons culture offends the person (underlined for you denoir). It's starting to get back to a theological debate... Moving on! Oh to put a nail into the US Constitution - Religion debate: Good luck shaking that off your fur. That's just the thing - it wouldn't. The EU isn't bound by military loyalty  - it is based on economic self interest and some shared political values. Any country or group of countries could leave without the EU collapsing. The US would be far more sensitive to one or several states leaving the federation. No, the EU's weakness comes from its basic assumption that society doesn't have to be hierarchical - that people have an interest in society working out. While on average this is certainly true, it doesn't hold in every case and for all groups. One example is the growing fundamentalist Muslim communities that actively work against the liberal principles of the European society. And Europe doesn't know how to handle that - the tolerance extends to the intolerant which is of course auto-destructive. Another example is the French and Dutch rejections of the proposed constitution - a clear yes/no in a decision is rare in the EU - for the most part everything is some form of compromise. While there are of course different parties and political agendas, the decision process is by necessity more cooperative than adversarial. If the EU model will fail then it will be because of too liberal values - because of the willingness to respect and tolerate the minority that wants to see it destroyed. "The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name." (Exodus 15:3) "But the LORD is with me like a mighty warrior; so my persecutors will stumble and not prevail. They will fail and be thoroughly disgraced; their dishonor will never be forgotten.(Jeremiah 20:11) Yes, there are a massive amounts of inconsistencies in the Bible, especially between the two testaments. And as I said, you seem to me like more a fan of the old testament genocidal god. The moral message of the old testament is awful by any modern standards. The character "God" is a thoroughly disgusting, petty, vengeful and plain evil one who ordered genocide and other forms of mass murders. To give an example, on god's orders the Israelites invaded Canaan and exterminated seven ethnic groups whose only crime was to live there. "... the seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them." Deuteronomy 7:1-2 "And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword." Joshua 6:21 Not to mention the various mass murders of innocent children: "And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead." Exodus 12:29-30 No normal person in the civilized world today would say that genocide and infanticide are good moral standards. These are just few examples. The old testament is really morally disgusting and even though it's a work of fiction, its message is appalling. They feel they're winning? Do you have something to back that statement up? Some statistics, an opinion poll perhaps? You know, for a discussion to be meaningful, you're not allowed to make stuff up.

There is a Marxist view of history: http://www.cccb.edu/notes/ghs344/3%20views%20of%20history.pdf I was expose to it while attending college in a history course. "Central Christian College of the Bible" .. oh dear. Anyway, the "Marxist view" presented in the PDF is very oversimplified. The Marxist view is based on Hagel's concept of dialectics which is basically a cyclic view of thesis and anti-thesis. Engels added a third stage called "synthesis" where the thesis and the anti-thesis form a conclusion. It's also known as "Historic materialism" and wikipedia has as usual stuff on it. Do I believe that historical materialism or dialectic materialism provides an adequate description of history? No, not really, it assumes that every stage is relative to the previous stage. I would argue that there are some absolutes such as our biological nature and the physical reality around us. While historical materialism may be a relevant theory for describing the past two centuries, it is certainly inadequate to describe early civilization. A typical example would be found in the writing of the Greek historian Herodotus who tells how a solar eclipse led to some very bad military decisions on the part of Sparta which ultimately led to the fall of a dynasty. When we didn't understand nature, our misunderstanding of it led to some odd twists and turns. There were many cultures that for instance thought that the sun was a god and as you can imagine all sorts of decisions were made due to unrelated astronomical phenomena. A relatively recently studied such thing are the Cargo cults in the South Pacific. If you are not aware of them: ======== During WW2 US soldiers occupied a number of inhabited islands in the South Pacific that were populated by indigenous people. The islanders were very impressed by all the wondrous possessions of the western immigrants to their islands (administrators, missionaries, soldiers). They also noticed that the westerners who enjoyed these wonders never made them themselves. When things needed to be repairing, they were sent away and more of the wondrous things kept arriving, first by boat and later by planes. No western man was ever seen to make or repair anything nor did they do anything at all that could be recognized as useful work. Sitting behind a desk shuffling papers, talking to a box was obviously a religious ritual. Evidently, the "cargo" (i.e western manufactured goods) had to be of supernatural origin. So the natives started building airstrips, airports and radios out of coconuts and straw - hoping that it would please the western god and give them "cargo". Despite the pleas of the missionaries and attempts at explaining that "cargo" was actually produced and not supernatural were in vain. On some islands, these cargo cults became mainstream religion. One messianic variety, talks of a saviour called John Frum, who is "the black King of America and who will come and expel all white men from the island and cargo would arrive in great quantity so that everybody would have as much as he wanted." (From David Attenborough's Quest in Paradise from an interview with a follower). The John Frum cult is actually a mainstream religion on Tanna and one of the major political parties is operated by the John Frum followers. ==== Now, the point of this story, apart from it being amusing, is that you could hardly apply dialectic materialism to explain the development of these islanders. What is interesting with the cargo cults is that they emerged independently in parallel across quite a few regions. It is not an entirely unreasonable assumption that the rest of the world religions had similar beginnings. The object of awe was not cargo, but natural phenomena. Nature religions developed into tribal religions and later into organized structures. And religion has undeniably shaped history. So you can have a completely unrelated natural event that leads to some form of irrational behaviour in humans that misinterpret it. It gets institutionalized and shapes world history. Dialectic materialism fails completely at describing such a development.

It's hardly the Marxist view as I say that the Soviet union failed because of Marxism - i.e an unrealistic economic and by extension political system. While I don't equate a free market to liberty, it sure beats the alternatives. Given a stable political situation the self-optimizing properties of a free market are amazingly efficient. Now, I do agree with you that America has never been about spreading democracy. There have been lapses of realpolitik and naive utopist movements (such as the neocons) but they have never introduced lasting policies - and certainly not in the early cold war. America post WW2 returned to its pre-depression practices where were very much of imperialistic nature. What it did in the early 20th century in Latin America it continued doing after WW2. It started with the Monroe doctrine in the 19th century and got a truly military dimension with the Spanish-American war. It got formalized by the Roosevelt Corollary stating that the US has a right to invade Latin American countries at will. Although it was abandoned in the isolationist post-depression US, what followed after WW2 was a natural extension of it. The US view on the world is very much similar to the pre-WW1 European view. The fear of the "domino effect" and the red scare was never about ideology, but about loyalty in a bipolar world. Incidentally we can see the same thing today, albeit much weaker as there is no military dimension to it, the economic bitch-slapping between the EU and the US. I do however believe that the US policy is bound to change relatively soon both as a consequence of the miserable failure in Iraq and the beginning of the end of US economic dominance. In fact, I suspect that we will see a new European imperialism, but a very different one. The key idea is that the primary reason why a society works is not a top-down hierarchy but simply because the vast majority of the people want it to work. The EU economy is roughly the size of the US one (actually somewhat larger) and about a third of the world have the EU as their primary trading partner. Yet at anti-globalization rallies you won't see people burning EU flags. Europe's decentralized structure has allowed it to reverse the concept of balance of power. Due to the low profile, its strength grows, its neighbors want to join it rather than balance it. While you may change the government by force in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will generate animosity and ultimately the population will hate you and stab you in the back the first chance they get. The EU doesn't threaten with military action. It's threat is withdrawal of support and the prospect of membership. The key is the law. Every new country that joins the EU must absorb some 100,000 pages of laws and regulations on everything from environmental safety to gay rights. The lure is so strong that countries will completely remodel their constitutions, laws, institutions and political systems to join. Once in with the law and the institutions the countries are changed forever and never want to get out. Even bitter enemies like Croats and Serbs are more than willing to put their differences aside to get in. While Serbia has some years to go, Croatia will be joining the EU within the next few years. Slovenia is already in. As a prerequisite for Croatia's entry was for instance normalization of diplomatic and economic relations with Serbia. The important distinction between this and the American way (or the previous European ways) is based on distributed inclusiveness. Everybody involved in the project has a stake in preserving it. The key for it to work is co-opting countries to uphold the rules themselves - not coercing them into submission or bribing them with handouts. So far, it has done miracles in the so called "Eurosphere" - the EU's sphere of influence that covers some 1.5 billion in about 80 countries that are tightly linked to the EU. The European model has however had a strong impact beyond the Eurosphere - other regions are looking for similar arrangements. You today have in South America, Asia and Africa building up similar political structures. And as I said, the key to such organizations are the law, both domestic and international. One other important characteristic feature of such a construction is the emphatic lack of nationalism. You won't see people burning EU flags because they have no divisive meaning. When European troops deploy, they do so under a flag of the United Nations. It's simply too abstract to hate. The idea that society is held together by people, institutions and countries who wants things to work out eliminates all need for nationalism and patriotism. It is the anti-thesis of the nation state. You don't need some mythical love for your nation to make it work, self interest is sufficient. It's practical and rational. So when I say new European "imperialism", I'm not saying that Europe will rule the world, but that the world will become like Europe.

If you redefine the meaning of "America", "war" and "victory" then yes, you have no problem claiming that America has been victorious in all wars. Even if one would accept your ludicrously incorrect understanding of history, it hardly lends any support to America being endorsed by the god defined by new testament Christianity. "Blessed are the peacemakers", wasn't that what Jesus said? I'm guessing though that you are more of an admirer of the old testament genocidal maniac of a god as you are putting forward the notion of god endorsing and supporting the killing of other human beings. However, by that same argument from military victories, there are more impressive military empires in history. If winning a large number of wars is a measure of divine endorsement, then the Roman gods are better candidates than the Christian one. try an aggressive jack#$% that has no tolerance to other faiths. You are confusing respect with tolerance. I don't respect your religion but I don't advocate banning it or persecuting you for those beliefs. Much like I don't care much for your political views but I support your right to have them. It is telling though that you have been calling me names and coming with insinuations of violent things that might happen to me. Is it your religion talking, or your insecurity about your religion? seriously, get off it. I'm not here to have my God compared to a fairy. There are a number of cultures which hold a belief in fairies. Why do you dismiss them? And especially, why are you not respectful of the belief in them? Do you feel the same way about say the Hindu gods? Or about the beliefs of other Christian sects? billybob2002: I'd say it was the other way around. The difference in ideology was highlighted as an excuse for the inevitable friction between two powers with imperialistic ambitions. America wasn't about spreading democracy through the world, it was about grabbing hold of markets for US products. The Soviet Union wasn't about spreading the proletarian revolution, it was about co-opting natural and industrial resources from satellite states. Of course the ideological differences were relevant, but they weren't the cause of the disagreement. The fall of the Soviet Union was a consequence of some very flawed assumptions about human nature that the system was built on. It led to an unworkable economic system and periods of blatant abuse of power. It was however ultimately the failure of planned economy that killed off the Soviet Union.

My point exactly. You are thinking of a destruction of the world as a positive thing. I wouldn't mind terribly such auto-destructive tendencies and would be the first to posthumously give you a Darwin Award. The problem is that you'd like to destroy everybody, not just yourself. Yes, that is the religious attitude. I'm sorry however since I'm not buying into your superstition, I don't play by those rules. Religion is a belief, an opinion, no different from a political opinion and is to be discussed. Saying that religion is rubbish is no different from saying that a political opinion is rubbish. Is your belief so weak that you are so afraid of somebody questioning it? Of course it is. It is quite humorous how terrified many religious people are of scrutiny of their beliefs. As for it having a place in this thread - since we've firmly established that politics and religion are inseparable in America, I would say it very much has. What, a rational, moral being? I don't need a degree in fairyology to know that fairies don't exist and that people who believe in them are delusional. It's not from a position of ignorance but a position from the obvious. Your irrational hostility stems from the fact that you were indoctrinated as a child. You accepted it as it came from figures of authority (parents, priests) and have it therefor deeply rooted. You do however also have a rational mind that subconsciously understands that there's something wrong there. The religious core is however stronger and you project your confusion by resorting to hostility rather than to civilized debate. That's a broad problem in religious societies - the children are brain washed, which in my opinion is a form of abuse. If I lived in Afghanistan, then sure, I would be stoned to death for my blasphemous statements. Fortunately for me, I live in secular Sweden where we stopped doing that centuries ago. Incidentally, I belong to the majority group, the atheists, and you might be surprised, but we don't stone religious people either. a·the·ist [ey-thee-ist] noun - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings. Exactly, you don't believe in for instance the Hindu gods. Vietnam? Slavery? No, no. It was Saranya testing the faith of the Russians and he was on the side of North Vietnam. No, I'm not trying to get you to be disloyal to your faith. I have no chance of doing that and to be honest, really no interest either. What I can hope for you to get out of this discussion (unlikely) is that you think about your assumptions in a broader context. If you learn that across the oceans there are some strange lands that some call "Ur-op" where people have no gods. And what is especially strange is that they are quite a prosperous, peaceful and open society. A look outside from beneath your burkha might do you some good and that goes for a significant portion of the US population (a minority perhaps, but a large one). As for you making me regain my religious faith, that would be a tad difficult since I've never been religious. I had the fortune of growing up in a part of the world where children are not indoctrinated. An as an adult I've had as much need for a belief in god as I have for a belief in fairies and witches. If you want me to start believing in god(s), it's quite simple: provide me with repeatable, measurable empirical evidence. Something that stands up to scrutiny like say the theory of gravity or quantum mechanics. If you could do that, every scientist in the world would thank you as you would have taught us a new fact about the world. However as things are, religions make all sort of claims of real-world interactions while they have never been able to provide any evidence that stands up to scrutiny. Ultimately, the burden of proof is on you as the god theory is yours. Atheism is the neutral position until, if ever, proven wrong. The same way if I believe that Santa Claus exists, it is my problem to prove it. It would not be reasonable to be upset because you don't share that belief without me providing any evidence of it. Anyway, my interest here is not really debating religion itself, but discussing the role of religion in US society and politics and to discuss the positive/negative effects of it.

He's a politician, of course there is intent behind the statement. The same way there was intent behind Washington's statement. Bush represents a very conservative religious branch that indeed think that Christianity should be the foundation and guiding force of America. The same people that reject with disgust the Islamic claims of supremacy in America (and the rest of the world) insist on that having the ten commandments in front of courts of law is A-OK. How many do you think would support a Koran being there instead of the ten commandments. While Bush may be forced to have a slightly more balanced view, it is still very clear in whose camp he is. It is über-religious, for a European, or least a Scandinavian person it's like stepping through the looking glass. With 0.4% of people declaring themselves atheists in a technologically advanced society and with 90% declaring themselves 'religious', there is something strange going on. America is in the western world what statisticians call an 'outlier' - an odd sample that doesn't fit with the rest. It is difficult to comprehend, that ancient superstition and rituals. "In God we Trust", "God bless America" and a million other examples. My God (pun intended), have civilized nations not grown out of that ridiculous rubbish? And yes, religion is part of our cultural heritage wherever you are in the world. I'm not saying you should ignore or eliminate that (like abolishing traditions like Christmas). What we have in today's America goes way beyond that. Some 50% of Americans believe that Jesus will return within their lifetime (i.e end of the world, Armageddon). And they see it as a positive thing! Not a comforting thought considering how many strategic nuclear weapons America has. Even with if you ignore the damage done, it is still incomprehensible that grown men and women actually believe that rubbish. It's the same way you might think of a society where it is widely believed that doing a rain dance will make it rain. It has no place in a rational civilized society. That's hardly the point. The question was if Christianity makes people give more to charity to help other human beings. The answer is a resounding no as for example the Swedes on average gave three times more, and they're godless infidels. Americans give a lot to charity as most Americans are perfectly normal moral beings with the same impulses and the same feeling of empathy as most other human beings. The question is not if they gave something, because everybody does. The relevant point of comparison is that Sweden, largely atheistic is the neutral position when it comes to morality. In addition it is a good comparison as the Swedish GDP/capita is similar to the US GDP/capita. The deduced answer is that Americans, largely claiming to be deriving their morality from religion for some reason underperformed in the charity department. Could it be that they didn't want to help non-Christians to the same extent as the atheists would? I'm stabbing in the dark here, but I assume that you are a person of average human moral character. Would you say that it is morally correct to deny an injured child help because it (or better to say it's parents) belong to the 'wrong' religion? If you put it like that, I think even conservative Christians would think of it as morally wrong. Yet in practice that's exactly what they are doing. By helping less than the godless atheists they are demonstrating the true moral character of their beliefs. This was nothing more than a pre-emptive strike at the "religion makes people do good" argument. Sophion-Black: Actually, I'm an anti-theist, not just atheist. I'm actively considering religion to be harmful. You are an atheist as well, in regards to say Hindu gods, ancient Greek gods, Sumerian gods, Babylonian gods etc etc You don't believe in any of those gods (and they are very different from the Christian god). You don't believe in any of the thousands of gods that have been worshiped throughout history, except for one. The difference between you and a consistent atheist is that he or she believes in just one less god - which is a very small percentage of difference. Ask yourself why you are a Christian and ask yourself had you been born in India, had you been a Christian then? Those religions are mutually exclusive, the Hindus and the Christians can't both be right. In large parts of Europe such a world view became obvious once the oppression of an enforced state church was removed. When you have a bunch of sects claiming different things, not being able to prove one of them, it takes just a very small step to question if they all might be wrong. This started in Europe during the enlightenment period. America branched off from that point but apparently grew in a different direction - which is unique in the western world - or for advanced civilizations in general.

Wrong, again. The majority of the founding fathers (ff) were not deists, agnostics and atheists. The majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were of the Christian faith. The majority of the delegates to Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the signers of the Constitution were of the Christian faith. Majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were Protestant. Some (majority? don't know) of the "notable" ff (i.e. Franklin and Jefferson) were deists. Any references to back that up? Never mind, the founding fathers were probably a too broad group to begin with. The people I'm talking about are the ones who derived the politics of the philosophical values expressed in the US constitution. I would for instance include Thomas Paine in that category. If we count the first presidents -  Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, all except Adams were very sceptical of Christianity. Incidentally Adams was a unitarian, and at the time in Europe unitarians were considered to be atheists. W. obviously when he states that the US was founded on Christian beliefs. If you assume that he thinks it is a good thing the point of the association is pretty obvious. There may be tolerance for sectarian differences but regarding Christianity the position is pretty clear. This clearly contrasts Washington who said that the US government is no sense founded on Christianity. For some revealing stats on the position of religion in the US: 0.4% of the US population positively claim to be atheists while 5% said that a god didn't exist and 14% as "without religion". The number of atheists in Sweden for comparison is 85%. Note though that the stats are difficult to interpret due to differently stated questions. They do however give you a rough overview. In the US atheists are the most distrusted minority, more than Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other groups. The study in question also unsurprisingly concluded this: "The researchers also found acceptance or rejection of atheists is related not only to personal religiosity, but also to one’s exposure to diversity, education and political orientation — with more educated, East and West Coast Americans more accepting of atheists than their Midwestern counterparts.†It's not surprising that people like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are calling for American atheists to "come out of the closet". To be fair, there are several European countries that are very religious (although not in the same way as the US), namely Malta, Poland, Portugal, Ireland and Italy. Still, even with those exceptions the American system looks very weird from a European point of view - as if looking at something that you would expect to find 200-300 years ago. Quicksand: Actually.No.Link    Last time Ive checked Northern Ireland was hardly atheistic Sadly while I can be called an atheist mysel,I beg to differ with Emile Zola quotation as I deem it quite narrow when people kill their each other over soccer matches,spilled drinks or just for the fun of it.     Is religion the excuse for tens of millions of deaths across history.For certian.Is it the cause?I am not so sure.Will the banishment of any form of relligion attain the perfect civillization?One only needs to have a superficial look at todays multitude of global problems that lack any sort of connection with relligion to see the answer.    Religious people,indeed tend to be more violent then atheists but where does the education factor kicks in when we also know for a fact that there is a strong trend  for atheists to have a higher level of education then non-atheists. In terms of violence, assaults are hardly the primary concern, especially since crime stats are notoriously difficult to interpret. To give you an example, in the US if a person is found guilty of multiple accounts of a crime, in the stats it is only counted as one instance. In Sweden on the other hand each instance is counted separately. In addition, in the US only convictions are counted. In Swedish stats arrests are counted rather than convictions. So for the most part comparing crime stats is nonsensical as each country has its own peculiar way of collecting the data. Murders, wars, terrorism etc are the really problematic items. Drunk people fighting in a bar are no threat to society unlike organized resistance aiming at hurting or destroying the political and social institutions - or simply a perceived enemy.  Northern Ireland is a good example where people have been murdering each other over religion for over a century. As for Zola's comment, he did not say that removing religion was the only prerequisite for perfect civilization. There is a famous quote from Cicero IIRC that goes something like this: "The common people believe religion is true, the educated know that it is false and the politicians that it is useful" Certainly religion as a divisive force has been used and abused on every imaginable level. Certainly there has been a lot of harm done in the name of religion rather than by religion itself. The latter is however significant and there are at least two points to be made. The first one is obvious - people crashing planes into office buildings, burning heretics, depriving people of education, forbidding the use of condoms in regions with massive AIDS problems etc, that list goes on. These are deeds done by people with a sincere religious belief who think what they do is the right thing. A similar albeit more complex issue is sectarianism such as the one seen in Northern Ireland or Iraq. It is a bit more complex as it involves politics and historical developments. Ultimately however in a typical sectarian struggle the people on the warring sides are identical apart from their religion. This is all fairly obvious. There is however a more subtle problem and that is of moderate religion spawning extremists. One feature common to all religions is that there is no empirical evidence of it or objective criteria to judge it by. Faith (i.e blind belief in something you haven't got any evidence of) is considered a virtue. Due to this what specifics you choose to believe is arbitrary. The source texts are complex and contradictory and you can always find something to support your idea. Moderate and liberal practices of religion promote this methodology. If you say that you shouldn't steal because the Bible says it is a sin you could equally well justify stoning adulterers or people working on Sunday as the Bible instructs you to do so as well. If you promote the idea that you can pick and choose the pieces that you like then you legitimize the extremists who are doing exactly the same thing. Normal people, religious or not, have a baseline morality. Religious moderates will pick the parts that go with that morality and filter out the morally offensive parts. Unfortunately the conviction that the texts are an absolute truth lead some people to override their baseline morality with arbitrarily filtered instructions from an inconsistent and complex text. In most cases it is not their fault - they get indoctrinated by parents, clergymen and teachers. And as we can plainly see religion is quite successful at establishing itself as the primary rule. Religious people for the most part say that they get their morality from their religion. Even if you do the right thing because of religion, it is corrupting. To do the right thing because God is looking over your shoulder is far worse than doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. If you get used to thinking that you are doing the right thing because of supervision or because of potential rewards or risk of punishments you will be morally unreliable as first of all the morality depends on how you interpret your religion (arbitrary) - and since religion doesn't cover all conceivable moral situations. What we human intrinsically consider to be fundamental morals are the same regardless of religion. There are a number of fascinating anthropological experiments that have been conducted that show how the basic morality is more or less the same in all civilizations - even in fairly advanced moral problems. The explanation to that is obviously evolutionary and while a complex problem there are some pretty convincing theories to how we got our sense of moral right and empathy to other people.  So what about positive reinforcement? An argument that is often made is that religion can give you an extra push to do the right thing - a sort of moral viagra. Perhaps, but statistics would say otherwise. If we look at a typical example, say donations for the Tsunami victims in 2004. Who do you think gave more per person, the Americans doing their Christian duty or the atheistic Swedes doing the humane right thing? The answer is the Swedes, almost by a factor of three [ref].

Why is it funny? The first colonies here were founded to be a "City on A Hill" (aka a religious wonderland) that was supposed to impress Europeans to the point where they would then emulate America. It is true that the early wave of colonists were people leaving Europe not to escape religion, but to have their own sect without risking legal consequences. So yes, the mayflower bunch, the calvinists the puritans etc were all religious zealots. However they didn't found America and it is not their values in the US constitution. Generally they settled, married their cousins, declared themselves prophets and split off into even smaller sects etc But again, they are not the ones that founded America. It took high caliber enlightenment minds. While the US constitution may look fairly unimpressive today compared to more modern ones, at the time it was truly revolutionary. I'm saying that it is funny is because the enlightenment era was the beginning of the end for religious oppression (and to a large degree religion as a whole) in Europe. America started with enlightenment philosophy at the core and regressed to a far more conservative and religious arrangement (in relative terms).