Donnervogel

I'm not debating Iraq War. I'm debating about the phenomenon that people pay respect to professional soldiers fighting in wars far away from home with the justification that they died "defending their country". This is the topic of this thread as I see it.

This is a discussion forum. If you want to make a list where supporters sign up then you're free to do a webpage for it or something. As far as I know forums are supposed to be a place where opinions are exchanged and debated. I pay respect to anybody who died defending his country. But why Americans have to defend their country in Iraq is beyond my understanding.

I am...

Of course I served in the military. But what difference does this make? Do you think only people that served in the miltary are capable of thinking? Hell the military was the time I regret wasting most in my life. Unfortunatly I did not have a choice about this. because here every man has to stand up for his countries defense. I more often have the feeling that some people are way too biased by the crap they get told in the military. Their exaggerated pride of their army/whatever is more like a another thing you have to overcome for a resonable discussion. Now I won't bother telling you anymore because it annoys me that you most propbably didn't read my earlier response at all because you did not go into any point of it.

I don't want to bash you or something but I want to point out some things were our opinions differ very much. Note that I respect your opinion. But I don't share it. That would indeed be a very noble goal. But well.. how should I put it. A declared goal is not much worth. You have to take a closer look and when I look at it I suspect that american wants to strenghten it's geopolitical situation in first place. You know I was educated in history at school and well... The soviet union declared the same goal as you declared for the US. So I hope you will understand that I take such declarations with a pinch of salt. First of all. I don't know many occasions where US peacekeepers were criticised. Peacekeeping is harldy ever a problem. The problem appears when the US military tries to enforce it's views on others. May it be with an invasion (like iraq) or peace enforcing missions. Of course then you get called imperialists. But remember. It's not "the world" that calls you imperialists. It's only one or some groups that are in the world. Another group may call you "friends" at the same time. You can't only put the USA and the world as two different parties. It's completly wrong. First of all the US was part of "the world" when I last checked. And "the rest of the world" isn't one homogeneous party. There are thousands or millions of different groups with their views and opinions. If you make an oversimplification out of it and put them all together into the same group you will never understand what is going on and why nothing seems to be right what you do for "the world". Whatever you do. You will find groups that are supporting it, groups that are against it and groups that are indifferent. But all of them because of their own reasons. Therefore it is an illusion to expect that the US will be 100% supported in something it does. When you speak of the US "driving" the world. Don't you think that's quite arrogant? Don't you think people will have negative feelings towards you if you put yourself above them for no evident reason? Of course the US has huge militay and economical power. But is it driving the world? Do you really think the US could "drive" the world if everyone else was against it? Don't you think the US is only in a leading position because it has won many allies in the past? Don't you think it might be a bad idea to offend those allies by such behaviour? Those are very noble things. But other nations work hard too. Other people are pround of their nation too. Other nations are democratic too. Other nations are successfull too. So why is america so successfull? Actually I don't know a real answer on that. But I see that many nations were successful in the past too and then have fallen. This can happen to america too. And I think one element the current administration of the US is neglecting is that they don't try to solve situations as they did in the past. With much diplomacy. I see that they put more priority on military action and enforcing of their views rather than compromise. And I fear that this will stir up trouble. It won't bring the US down in near future. But the more enemies you get the lesser your influence gets. And violence produces enemies. Rome wasn't build in a day. And it wasn't destroyed in a day either. I think you take this too easy. Apology is great. I don't want to dispraise that. But I don't see the atoning part. (For the record: I also critisize other nations for this - including my own - but here it's about the US) And I honestly can't imagine how you want to atone for all those things you did that were wrong (No I am not religous. I don't belive in a life after death were such a thing could happen). But in the end it is war. You can't prevent crimes and tragedy in a war. But that's not a general excuse for the bad deeds made in war by any nation. It's more a reason to not go into war so lightly. And this is what I criticise. The US government takes war too easy and declares it too quickly. I did not support Saddam. Not at all. But I did not at all support this hasty war in Iraq either. You president said wise words when he said war should be the last option. I wished he would stay to his word. But he didn't in my opinion. Wel. I have almost no postive words for the current geopolitical agenda of the US. I must be honest there. I completly disagree with it. But despite that I did not forget other positive things about the US. I can tell you a few. The people I met in the US were impressive personalities. They were very kind and also often honest. They were very open and many of them were tolerant. Those are very noble traits and I really hope more people would have them where I live. And I would wish those traits were more evidents in the US politics. excuse my spelling. I am very tired.

But if we destroy the planet , how can they survive to curse us Well it's not like the earth will be wiped out. There will still be people (and animals) but they'll have sucky living conditions...

@Noon416 (OFPEC) Well I have to agree that the Kyoto protocol is not the solution to the cliamte problem. We won't be able to prevent major effect due to global warming with the kyoto protocol only. But it's not due to the incompetence of the people that wanted the protocol. It's rather to due to the ignorance of some nations participating that negotiated special terms and conditions that flaw the original Kyoto protocol. Nevetheless it's one step into the right direction and if it would be possible to reach those goal it would be a major success because it would prolly be the first time any global effort really succeeded. And that would be a base to continue from. Now Denoir explained it well how the Kyoto protocol works. Now theoretically it could be that some nations buy enough credits to continue their pollution or even increase it in some cases. But you forget the other effects. The credits will make it much more expensive to continue with pollution. While the companies that will continue to pollute will have an increase in their costs and thus will lose their competitive position other companies that invest in greenhous gas reducing technology will benefit from it and get even more income, giving them a better competitive position and more capital to invest. Therefore you have a clear economical spur to reduce greenhous gas output. And the best part of it is that it's in line with the market. But the critical part with the Kyoto protoclo for me lies somewhere else. It's the political will of the nations. Nobody likes changes because they require effort. So many economical lobbyists will obviously fight Kyoto. When a nations doesn't reduce it's output and doesn't implement the credit and rights system from Kyoto... what will you do? We don't have an international authority that would punish those nations. We can't really enforce anything. I fear Kyoto will fail due to the ignorance of some nations that will have an effect on everyone. Because when some nations start boycotting Kyoto even though they signed it, it will have an effect on everyone and maybe more and more nations will boycot Kyoto and then it would prolly break down. If we continue as we do the future generations could see us as worse people than the nazis. Destroying the whole planet...

How about a forum night? I mean, any games tonight?

When someone says he doesn't "care" about global warming than you won't impress this person much as long as you don't show him why he personally should care about it. It's the major problem about all this climate things. People always think they won't be affected or put other things to higher priorities. So when I tell to somone in Poland that some pacific island might disappear because of global warming he prolly won't start caring. I must tell him why he should care. But I agree with you. There are more important things. But the harsh truth is that many people are egoistic, they are ignorant towards things that don't affect them personally.

And what reality check on a global level could you possibly give me in Poland to prove there is no global warming? It has nothing to do with warming but with thinking. When you are born in the country as US with all things provided from the start and which you take for granted, then it is fine and shiny. Although, when you get to live in country like Poland where everything is fu..d up. One is working his ass off and earning, lets say 3 000$ a month and all he can buy (after paying all bills) is f.. potatoes then I say I F... weather warming. now I see your reasoning... so let's say we warm the earth up. The gulf stream breaks down, poland will get severly colder. You will have to heat much more, you will have to spend much more to buy warm clothes, to isolate your buildings and you will use much more oil. Now who do you think will suffer more from those increased costs for everything? The "rich" US/EU 15 or Poland? Hmm hmm... it is you who should worry more about it since you will be affected stronger when your costs increase.

From IPCC's Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis 2. Observed Climate Variability and Change 2.3 Is the Recent Warming Unusual? EDIT: another interesting graphic: Indicators of the human influence on the atmosphere

@Gordy Personal experience is useless for "observing" climate change. Because ou need to differ between global effects and regional effects. The only thing you can rely on is the data collected around the world. The data doesn't lie and the data compared to the past shows that the global temperature level has risen more quickly than it should and it doesn't seem to stop. Now no matter if that is natural or not. Don't you agree that this will change our world and our living conditions?

Global warming could very well mean very cold times for europe and the east coast of the US.... and other places maybe too. I mean the point is we will screw up the climate. It's not that we will have the same climate everywhere but hotter. Some places will get very cold, others will get very hot and dry. and in even other places you maybe just get very hot summers and very cold winters. and maybe some places even stay as they are... It's not really predictable what could happen everywhere... but one thing is sure. we won't like it when things change too much.

It is true. those fluctuations are considered "normal". But as I said. what is normal is that the average temperatures worldwide are on the highest level ever and still rising rapidly. While a large part of that might or might not be natural some part of it is certainly man made. You can't expect us to blow greenhouse gases into the athmosphere in such an extend and not having any influence on the climate. It is clear that our action change the climate or boost natural change of climate. And recent signals are alarming. Natural or not. We will get into trouble with the weather and climate "fluctuation". We will experience stronger storms causing dammage to houses. We will experience more hurrcanes and cyclones. We will experience more floods and landslides. We will have rising ocean levels. All that means the planet will change and it will not be more friendly to us. We might disrupt major ocean currents and the effects of that are hardly imagineable. The climate is very sensitive and we should do our best to not make things even worse. EDIT CO2 did it for one. Volcanos for example. They did blow massive amouts of CO2 in the athmosphere. Why should CO2 blown into the athmosphere by human beings do anything else?

Rapid clima changes are not only normal in the history of the earth, they are also quite often (relatively to the age of the planet). But there is one fact that is concerning about our current clima change. Never have the global temperatures been so warm as in the last years. The global average temperatures are higher than ever and still rising rapidly. I don't have a internet source on that but I read it last week in a swiss newspaper. But I found a nice IPCC graphic for this: Global temperature change, 1861-2000 and 1000-2000

you should read the caption on the side for that picture:

May I ask why the thread "The Pentagon Strike" was closed? Is it only because of the digging up of the old topic or was there anything wrong with the discussion? I am a bit disappointed because I found that the discussion that evolved there was quite interesting. Anyway. Just asking.

Well I would never talk it down in a discussion with German people. But when you have foreign people you have to put some things in perspective because they don't watch German media and somethimes don't know some things. It is important for everyone to have a realistic picture before you discuss a topic. And the claim that there is a speacial problem with right wing movements in the east is arguable too. A recent research showed that the support for right-wing organisations (support in the sense of agreement with their agenda - not the so called "Protestwähler") is higher in the western parts of germany than in the east.

one should also mention that most citizens of Dresden were against this demonstration and made some sort of silent protest by wearing white roses. Also those nazis came there from all over Germany. It's not like all those 5000 nazis are from Dresden.

wippy I told you many times that the jam sounds were put into a seperate pbo so people could customise them. So when you don't like them you are encouraged to replace them yourself.

wippy I told you many times that the jam sounds were put into a seperate pbo so people could customise them. So when you don't like them you are encouraged to replace them yourself.

I might have a small music collection, but that's because I only keep music on the IPod I listen to ;) And what you can't do with 256 Mb of music (only) is what I do. I leave the house in a depressed mood. Then I listen to some dark music maybe. Would I have a 256MB flash memory thingy I would have taken some dark music with me. During the day I meet a beautiful girl, have some talks with her. Now I'm cheered up and want to listen to completly different music. No problem with my iPod. I the past I used mp3 CD Discman. Then I often was disappointed because I didn't have the right music for my mood with me. I often have such mood "swings" and then I am happy to have the abillity to chose the right music. Well I can't listen to music with dedictated harddrives ;) and I don't need a bigger or faster one. The iPod is just perfect for my needs. And I can't use a good internet connection for the same things because not every computer at uni allows me to connect to my home computer and download from it. Also I would have to spend lot's of money more for my electricity bill at the end of the month because I would have to keep the computer running. You might have other demands and thus the iPod isn't the right solution for you. For me it's one of my best investments in recent years. There wans't a single day I regreted to buy it. I'm completly satisfied and I didn't experience any problems despite extensive usage. All I wanted to point out is that there don't have to be any problems. Sure there can be problems with it. But it doesn't mean the iPod doesn't take any blows and breaks down on the spot.

uhmm well for you maybe. For me the iPod serves for two main purposes. It's an external harddrive I can use for taking data with me to uni or back home. (atm I am carrying my diploma thesis which is around 12 GB with all the additional data and even programs I need to work on it) The other advantage is that I don't have to choose the 100MB (or 256) of music I want to listen to. I can have all my ~6GB of music with me wherever I am and then choose what to listen to depending on my mood or whatever. I don't have to care everyday about which collection of music to take with me. I wouldn't call my 20GB iPod heavy at all. I don't even notice it when I'm carrying it in the inside pocket of my jacket. I do my daily running for the bus and train with it and everything. No problems and I never had any disruptions. It survived every fall to the ground so far. And knowing my clumsy fingers it's not very rare that that happens.

My store gives me 2 years guarantee... my iPod is running daily for over a year now and no problems. Battery still working flawlessly. Nothing to complain about. @eizei I have yet to see a low prized mobile phone that can handle 20 GB or more of data.

some impressions enemy tank enemy tank destroyed this one got us but our bmp flipped it over too with it's last shot ;) how it all ends