Oligo
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Posts posted by Oligo
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Akira @ Jan. 08 2003,15:38)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">First off, N.Korea has TWO bombs. Not an arsenal, and none of them with the capablity to come anywhere close to the US. So the arguement that the US doesn't "bully" those with WMDs that may threaten it is shallow in the extreme. If that was the case, the US would have backed down from every major confrontation in the Cold War. And anyone with WMDs has the capability to strike any country through rogue elements. That is the danger of them.
The US's concern, which I have stated numerous times, is of N. Korea's willingness to sell weapons to any and all buyers. This leads to the dangerous possibility that WMDs could fall into the hands of less desirable subjects.<span id='postcolor'>
If you invaded North Korea with conventional forces, they could nuke two of your armed formations to ashes. Needless to say, this kind of loss in men and materiel is more than U.S. public can absorb. That is why you are not preparing to invade NK, but are smoothtalking instead. The point is that you can really only safely invade countries with no WMDs. Clearly cold war does not apply, since not much invading was done during that conflict.
What do you know of NK's willingness to sell weapons? And who are you to judge? As far as I know, U.S. is selling weapons to whomever they please without any external control. Why should the rules for NK be any different? Maybe it is that U.S. has a willingness to dictate to the rest of the world what is desirable and what is not?
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Longinius @ Jan. 08 2003,12:16)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What gives the US any rights to sentence Saddam?<span id='postcolor'>
Not any other, but the right of force. History is written by the victors.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Jan. 08 2003,04:22)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">NK has an active nuclear program and makes threats against the US. They get the nice diplomatic treatement.
Iraq hasn't threatened the US and there is no evidence of a nuclear program. Yet they will face war.<span id='postcolor'>
It's so simple: If you already have the bomb, the bullies do not dare to do anything. If you do not have the bomb, the bullies will screw you up. It's schoolyard politics, really.
By the way, I just absolutely love this "Saddam has used WMDs on people before" reasoning by the pro-war camp of U.S. I mean, the same schoolyard rules apply to Saddam as well: He can only use WMDs on people, who do not have them (like the Kurds whom everybody oppresses, even members of NATO), so U.S. (with the piles and piles of WMDs) should not be very concerned about an attack by Saddam.
So Saddam, finish your WMDs fast and talk the talk, you'll be safe.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (DarkLight @ Jan. 07 2003,16:52)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I bet you guys need money, fast...<span id='postcolor'>
Eh?
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Jan. 07 2003,21:28)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I can see many reasons why it could become a very shitty situation for US forces. I'm however not willing to make any predictions. I thought Afganistan would be a disaster, considering what problems the Soviets had two decades earlier. I was obviously wrong.<span id='postcolor'>
You were not that wrong about Afganistan. Back in their day, soviets stormed Afganistan in a short time and took Kabul. So did US troops. The rest of the war the soviets tried to pacify the rest of Afganistan by rooting out the roving bands of mujahedin, without a success. US troops may have eliminated Taliban as a coherent, identifiable entity and installed a puppet ruler who now sits in Kabul pretending he is in charge, but in reality the warlords are still ruling their little domains, Osama is free and there has even been news about Al-Qaeda re-establishing their terror training camps. With their heritage of eternal warfare, the Afghans have learned to bend with the wind and then just go on with their business as usual. The war in Afghanistan is is no way over and at the moment it does not look too good for the U.S. (especially when their troops are harassing the civilian population and thus instilling hatred towards yanks).
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Tex [uSMC] @ Jan. 07 2003,10:06)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">At this point you hit a logical speedbump. The criminals only pick someone like Grandma because she is supposedly an easy target. However, the criminals are faced with a cost/benefit ratio when they have to take into account Granny's gun. Is it really worth it to spring for the cost of a shotgun when originally all you needed to take down Granny was a baseball bat (cricket mallet if you prefer
 or less ). And for what reward? Whatever she has in her purse? No, your arms-race argument simply doesn't apply when the monetary stakes are as low as they are in street muggings. However, my core point is that an individual that is faced with the event of being robbed, has a right to defend himself and his possessions. I am not overly concerned with the entry of deadly force into the scenario, because if the law-abiding citizen has the gun, then chances are that the blood that ends up on the wall will have belonged to someone who could have used a pint or two less anyways.<span id='postcolor'>Your reasoning also hits a speedbump as it goes. Arming granny will enable her to shoot criminals, but how does this affect the behaviour of criminals? It does not deter them or make them get bigger guns themselves, but makes them more violent. The easiest way to rob a granny with a gun in her purse is to walk over to her, when she is unsuspecting, and beat the shit out of ole granny before she even thinks about going for her gun. Instead of a robbed granny you get a beat up and robbed granny and possibly a dead granny. You also get a criminal with a stolen firearm in addition to granny's pension.
In a gun-carrying society criminals use the element of surprise and excessive force to overcome any armament carried by the law-abiding citizens. After all, we cannot just walk around aiming guns at each other, just in case the person going past you in the street is a mugger or can we (should we)?
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Ex-RoNiN @ Jan. 04 2003,02:08)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Oligo, whilst coming from a very cold country, certainly isn't a cold individual and his conduct on the forums and his manner of speech are all well regarded<span id='postcolor'>
Sigh, I miss the days of the great flamewars.
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50-80 centimeters of "steel ice" is considered enough to support any vehicle, including a 45 ton tank. I don't know whether they have such ice thicknesses in netherlands, though, probably not. But here they surely do.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ Jan. 02 2003,09:34)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Your particular examples are ridiculous! If your local newspaper says an armed bank robber was shot and killed, is this an excuse for anybody from any religion to go out and kill because of the use of the word "kill"?
Please show us a single historical case for the perpetuation of killing based on any of the verses you quoted.
I'm not saying you're completely off track but your particular point and examples do not add up.<span id='postcolor'>
The particular verses I quoted (assuming they are true of course) were each a description of an event where god ordered killing, which command was then obeyed. So therefore for each verse there exists at least one event of killing.
My main point was that in the bible god orders a lot of killing. Thus god endorses killing for a "good" cause, like for his greater glory. Not very benign of him, is it?
Anyway, luckily the christian believers have nowadays mostly abandoned this darker face of god and the darkest passages of the bible, except of course for certain fundamentalist nuts. The problem with militant muslisms is that they are reading the wrong parts of the koran.
However, I personally think that religion is just a walking stick for people, who cannot face the music without.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (FSPilot @ Jan. 02 2003,04:09)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Show me where in the Christian Bible it tells the followers of God to go and kill everyone who isn't a Christian. Â Can't do it? Â That's because Christianity is a religion of peace, forgiveness, and love. Â HUMANS got it in their heads to people of other religions, I don't believe God (yes, the Christian God) told them to.<span id='postcolor'>
Also the bible can be mined for excuses to do whatever. With the word "kill", you will find 480 hits from the bible, for example:
Exodus 32:
26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, "Whoever is for the LORD , come to me." And all the Levites rallied to him.
27 Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD , the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' " 28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died.
Numbers 25:
3 So Israel joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor. And the LORD's anger burned against them.
4 The LORD said to Moses, "Take all the leaders of these people, kill them and expose them in broad daylight before the LORD , so that the LORD's fierce anger may turn away from Israel."
5 So Moses said to Israel's judges, "Each of you must put to death those of your men who have joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor."
Numbers 25:
16 The LORD said to Moses, 17 "Treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them, 18 because they treated you as enemies when they deceived you in the affair of Peor and their sister Cozbi, the daughter of a Midianite leader, the woman who was killed when the plague came as a result of Peor."
Numbers 31:
16 "They were the ones who followed Balaam's advice and were the means of turning the Israelites away from the LORD in what happened at Peor, so that a plague struck the LORD's people. 17 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, 18 but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
All holy texts should be taken at least with a grain (preferably with a whole pile) of salt.
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Actually you're wrong. When the immediate immune response to a vaccine (or a disease) calms down and ends, a part of the fighting cells turns into "dormant" memory cells. The rest of the fighting cells die off as unnecessary. The population of memory cells then starts to degenerate with time.
Now the immunity completely depends on the robustness of the memory cell population. Some diseases like chickenpox cause such a solid population of memory cells that you'll retain your immunity for the rest of your life. Vaccinia, however, causes a population of memory cells, which dies off enough in about 5 years so that you'll lose your immunity to smallpox. So if I tested a population that had been vaccinated in 1970, there would only be an insignificant fraction of people retaining immunity.
But don't get me wrong: I'm with you on your opinion about Saddam. He is perfectly happy there oppressing Iraq, after all, he is just a power-hungry secular dictator, who might have WMDs. No way in hell will he cause any trouble to other countries, if we just leave him alone. His gassing the kurds was purely just because the kurds did not accept the oppression without dissent.
I'm also sure that EVERYBODY has smallpox, since it is such a simple weapon to store and not long ago it was widely available for free.
What is really scary is that busy little scientists are developing genetically altered bioweapons as we speak. Here is a reference where some russian researchers explain how they created a strain of anthrax which is not subdued by normal anthrax vaccines (which use less virulent Anthrax strain ST-1):
Pomerantsev, Staritsin, Mockov & Marinin (1997) Expression of cereolysine AB genes in Bacillus Anthracis vaccine strain ensures protection against experimental hemolytic anthrax infection. Vaccine 15:1846-50
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The only official stocks of smallpox are stored in U.S. and Russia, but I am very sure that stocks of smallpox are still around everywhere in the world, since storing it does not require any specialized equipment but a simple freezer.
However, smallpox virus is not needed for production of smallpox vaccine. It turns out (proven by Jenner a long time ago) that a similar virus of cows (known as vaccinia) provides immunity against smallpox, when injected to humans. So in order to produce smallpox vaccine, cow vaccinia was grown in cows or sheep, harvested and injected to humans. Vaccinia virus does not replicate much in humans, but provides immunity against smallpox. It might also (the reported frequency varies between 1:100000-1:1000000) cause fatal brain fever in humans (d'oh).
Smallpox vaccine has not been produced for a long time (not for at least 20 years), at least not publicly, since smallpox has supposedly been eradicated. Any stocks of vaccine available are just stores from back then. However, U.S. has ordered new stocks of vaccine, but these are not available yet.
Considering all this, why is Iraq still vaccinating some soldiers against smallpox?
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The problem with vaccinating everyone against smallpox is that for every million people who take the vaccine, as many as 52 will develop life-threatening ailments, and roughly two will die. So vaccinating for example the whole of U.S. would produce approximately 600 deaths and 15000 cases of life-threatening symptoms. As a reference point, compare this to the WTC death toll (3000).
The easiest way to distribute smallpox is to vaccinate a small number of volunteers and then infect these people with smallpox. These carriers can then shuttle around the world in airliners, sneezing a lot. After completing the task, the carriers can just go on with their lives, since they will not die (because they were vaccinated). However, all those people they flew with will go on with their lives, infect everybody they associate with and so on... Smallpox is nasty.
As for is smallpox eradicated? Eight of 69 Iraqi POWs screened during the Gulf War were immune to smallpox. Since the vaccine works for only four to five years, this suggests they had been inoculated relatively recently. Now why were they inoculated, if smallpox has been killed off from the world?
Furthermore, storing smallpox is so easy that even individual persons (who knows how many nutcases there are?) can have taken samples and stored them when smallpox was a common disease just like people nowadays collect computer viruses.
Accidental storage is also possible. A few years ago a finnish diver dove to a shipwreck and rescued bottles of wine. He drank it, after all it was a really well developed brand
. Unfortunately he got "black death" from the wine. Fatality, micro-organism wins. -
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Dec. 16 2002,13:14)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Heart Disease: 710,760
Cancer: 553,091
Stroke: 167661
Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease: 122,009
Accidents: 97,900
Diabetes: 69,301
Pneumonia/Influenza: 65,313
Alzheimer's Disease: 49,558
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 37,251
Septicemia: 31,224<span id='postcolor'>
We should be having:
War on Small Particle Clouds. Clouds of small particles are caused by e.g. heavy traffic in cities and smoking cigarettes. These are the leading cause of Lower Respiratory Disease, killing a whopping 122,009 people a year.
War on Transport. Cars and other forms of transport are the leading cause of accidents, reaping a nice toll of 97,900 lives a year.
War on Bad Genes. Bad genes are the partial cause of several ailments like cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, nephritis and Alzheimer's. It can be claimed that bad genes waste more than 1 million people in U.S. every year. If we invested the defence budget of U.S. to research on gene therapy and associated disciplines, we would be saving quite a number of lives each year.
This world is such a peachy place. Merry x-mas.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Col. Kurtz @ Dec. 10 2002,01:08)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">That peter Rbit come Sven Hassel was the best Kids story ever!!!!
<span id='postcolor'>Too bad that the tank in the pictures is a T-34, not a Tiger.
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Panzer General was a good read. It's the biography of Heinz Guderian.
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Economic Left/Right: 0.25
Authoritarian/Libertarian: -3.79
The funniest thing in the Forum Average -graph is that there seems to be a correlation between being a commie and an anarchist (e.g. libertarians are more likely to be economic left). Denoir, our official statistician, maybe you should calculate whether this correlation is significant or not.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ Dec. 04 2002,13:00)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">The concept in the book is that the army match different men and women up at different times to have sex, called confraternising or something Â
So that would eliminate competition, because everyones goign to get laid  <span id='postcolor'>Ok, I grant you this would work too.
Would probably even raise the morale. 
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (denoir @ Dec. 04 2002,04:55)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Finland has always been a part of Sweden, and the Finish-Swedish relations have always been good since they have always realized that their choice in the world is to either be a part of Russia or a part of Sweden. The current semi-indenpendence is a temporary one
<span id='postcolor'>Right. I'll never forgive you Swedes for making crusades to Finland. We were perfectly happy with our pagan religions, but you just HAD to come in to spread your christian crap.
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</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (DarkLight @ Dec. 03 2002,17:00)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Sheesh, you sure served with some really weird people, i enjoy being near women, and i'm not talking about the sexual part. Â I dunno about any of you guys, but i never compete with other guys just cuz there's a woman somewhere near me. Â Actually that would be pretty damn pathetic. Â It's like the macho guy that tries to be coooool just to impress someone. Â Everyone just thinks he's a stupid moron...<span id='postcolor'>
People change when you stuff them into barracks. I'm not talking about your typical society environment with almost no stress. I'm talking about an environment where people are pushed to their limit and beyond. I'm talking about an environment, where some men cry.
You should hear a typical conversation between soldiers after they have been in the field in the mud and rain for two weeks without seeing anything even remotely female. I'd bet my money that the conversation is about getting some. I don't even want to think about soldiers who have been on the field for months...
Stress brings out strange aspects of male nature.
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0--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (KingBeast @ Dec. 02 2002,230)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">If a woman in full combat gear and camoed up would make any one of you drool and dribble and run inefficiently as soldiers, then there are some incredibly serious  social problems here.Sure, you get a pretty face to look at rather than an ugly bloke, but i dont see how that is going to distract you from your duties.<span id='postcolor'>
You are missing the point.
In an all-male unit, the males are not in a competitive situation, since the pecking order is clearly established (ranks) and there is nothing to compete over. Thus friction between the unit members is minimized. They can all fear for their lives and miss you-know-what together, this unites them.
In a unit with some females, the males are suddenly plunged into a competitive situation over getting some. The brass will utilize their rank to score with the females and the grunts will use any means available to them to score. Eventually somebody will score. Now the rest of the males are envious of this one who is getting some, when everybody else is starved of sexual relief. This kind of unequality will break up the unit unity.
A military unit without females is like a bar with no chicks in it: Blokes being all friendly with each other and singing drinking songs. A military unit with some females is like a typical club: Blokes trying desperately to score in an every man for himself, dog eat dog, style.
At least that's how it went when I served.
EDIT:ralph: some word choices.
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Women probably make as good soldiers as men. The problem is that men become distracted if women are around. I know this is not the fault of the women, but it is still a problem, since armed forces have more males in them than females.
So women serving is really not a female problem, but a male problem, since we poor males have such a simple mind: Our eyes are wired straight to our dicks.
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I have no doubt that women have what it takes to serve in combat. However, I am pretty sure that combat units made solely of members of a single sex are the most efficient, since there are no fuck-interests to screw up the chain of command and so on. It also keeps the rape statistics down.
Hell, some women in an otherwise all-male unit is like a few women intruding on a male beer-drinking night out. Likewise a few males in an otherwise all-female unit would be like boys intruding on a girl's night out.
So unisex units, thank you.
"declaration of war"
in OFFTOPIC
Posted
</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (theavonlady @ Jan. 09 2003,08:29)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Wake up and smell the thermal blast!<span id='postcolor'>
The point is that I feel very safe, since our little country never screwed with anybody. So it is not very plausible that we'd have a thermal blast.
Anyway, I appreciate the concern of the rest of the world, I'm so sorry you had to mess with each other. 