tagged w/ True Freedom
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"I believe that my work has been just, and that someday China will be a free and democratic country. Our people then will bathe in the sunshine of freedom from fear. I am paying a price to move us in that direction, but without the slightest regret. I have long been aware that when an independent intellectual stands up to an autocratic state, step one toward freedom is often a step into prison. Now I am taking that step; and true freedom is that much nearer." - Liu Xiaobo, shortly after being..."I believe that my work has been just, and that someday China will be a free and... more
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neham
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added this
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2 years ago
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American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own fantasy of what America could become. They are false patriots.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Instinctive influences on morality
I am one of the many who believe that we all have inborn moral responses. So when people say that something is "just wrong" they are not really being incoherent but are being guided by strongly felt moral instincts in themselves. I set out my thoughts on the matter at more length here.
A recent piece of research rather strongly supports that view. The research was based on the responses of a small group of (mainly) young women attending a minor British university so we must not get too excited about its generalizability but it may be a straw in the wind nonetheless. Below is one summary of it:
"A new study has found that people are more likely to be lenient in making decisions if they have just washed their hands. British scientists who carried out the research said the findings suggest that jurors in criminal trials who have cleansed their hands may make their verdict less severe. And voters may be more likely to excuse a politician's misdemeanours when going to the ballot box if they have just had a shower.
In the study, 22 people who had washed their hands, and 22 who had not, were made to watch a disgusting three-minute clip of heroin addicts from the hit film Trainspotting. All 44 were then asked to rate how morally wrong they deemed the series of acts shown to them on a scale of one to nine, with one being acceptable and seven being very wrong. The actions included stealing money from a wallet, lying on a job application, cooking and eating the family dog, killing a dying plane crash survivor to avoid starvation, and abusing a kitten.American liberals don't love America. They despise it. All they love is their own... more
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One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey.
Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday.
The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported.
The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
Young Britons under 20 lack a basic historical education according to the survey results, historian Correlli Barnett told the Daily Mail.
"This suggests a complete lack of common sense and respect for our greatest heroes of the past," Barnett said.\
When I read this article, I seriously was reminded of the many arguments I have had on CURRENT in the last three months. With biased people who claim to be more educated than I, yet ignorance just pours from their mouths like Guinness from an Irish pub. Arguments where people think that we didn't land on the MOON in 1969. I happened to be at my uncles house on that day, he worked at NASA at the time, trust me, we landed on the moon. Arguments that our President was behind 911, object, to gain power. Now,... why would the most powerful man in the world want more power? There is so much more stupid stuff, but I don't want to waste the space. I am disenchanted with this corrupt haven of Liberal Thinking. Now that's an OXYMORON.One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill... more
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Pornography is a hot topic no matter how you present it. Not only is it one of the most lucrative businesses in this country - and others - but it remains one of the most controversial. The very nature of this industry makes it controversial on so many different levels, to so many different individuals and groups.
Even without the controversy, anyone who uses the Internet owes a degree of debt to the business of porn. Whether you realize it or not, pornography on the Internet has driven some of the biggest developments in Web-based technology as the people involved in it seek to deliver bigger, bolder, and badder content to an audience willing to pony up billions upon billions in fees each year. Enthusiasts don't simply want to read salacious text or view still images, they want to interact. As one Web pioneer has said, "The first group to bring us computer-based scratch and sniff capability will no doubt be the purveyors of porn."
Yet it is not only impossible to divorce the controversy from pornography, it would almost be counter-productive to do so. Part of the appeal, for those who enjoy this kind of material, is its taboo nature - something to engage in privately, furtively, with the full knowledge that others we care about like a spouse, a boss, or our parents would heartily disapprove. Common sense and every marketing study ever done shows us that we are much more willing to spend big dollars on secret, illicit, or outright illegal or unsanctioned vices than we will on common ones. The guiltier the pleasure, the bigger the price tag.
Of the hundreds of arguments against the prevalence of pornography in our society, one of the loudest and most frequently voiced is that any content of this nature demeans women. It is perhaps the only point upon which both feminists and Christian fundamentalists agree.
While surfing around the other night I came across a video of dead movie stars. I watched it, it covered clear from Laurel and Hardy up Heath Ledger. It was about 5 minutes. Along side was one Dead porn stars, I played it. I was astonished at how many were dead, then I realized that there were at least five videos. The mortality rate of porn stars is outrageous. I also noticed that they all died of similar things, The men primarily died of AIDS or Liver cancer. The women primarily of suicide and automobile accidents. With some of each from murder. The next day I found an article which a lot of porn stars thought dead are actually still alive, and retired.
I am not someone who's views porn, so imagine my surprise when I viewed some. These girls are aren't the old skaggy gals from the 1970's. Hardly, most look like beautiful cheerleaders. I couldn't believe that such awesome looking ladies would have to do porn for a living. So,....All I can figure is that they must really like it, or they get paid much better than I thought.
Seeing Britney Spears performing oral sex, wow, 20 years ago that would ruined her career, I must be getting old.Pornography is a hot topic no matter how you present it. Not only is it one of the... more
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As Cold Wars go, NATO's season of half-hearted saber-rattling at Russia over its summer offensive in Georgia was decidedly brief, and tepid. It was with a palpable sense of relief — at least in the capitals of Western Europe — that the Alliance moved this week to bury the hatchet with Moscow, agreeing at NATO summit to resume relations with Russia that had been bedeviled by Moscow's military showdown with Georgia. The move reflects a victory for Western European skepticism over what is viewed as the overly confrontational approach to Russia adopted by Washington, made possible by the waning influence of the Bush Administration and spurred by a global economic crisis demanding maximum international cooperation. But it may also mark the onset of a more assertive European Union taking the leading role previously reserved for the U.S. in defining the continent's post-Cold War relations with Russia.
Russia was unabashedly smug about the outcome of the NATO summit that ended Wednesday in Brussels, where it was agreed to resume high-level relations with Moscow. Even though the NATO agreement specified a "measured and phased approach" to restoring ties — and insisted Moscow fulfill pledges to withdraw its forces in Georgia to pre-conflict positions — it was the Europeans' eclipse of Washington's harder line that Russian officials found most encouraging. (See pictures of Russia's military campaign in Georgia)
"The resumption of NATO relations with Russia is unconditional, which we can only applaud," said Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, blithely ignoring the many qualifiers and caveats the Alliance had outlined before relations with Moscow could be fully normalized. "I personally do not see the difference between formal and informal sittings, except that you don't have coffee in an informal meeting but you still can order one."
I think it is very important to remember at this time that Russians are people just like us. The cold war was a long and expensive exercise, just because another country has another form of government is no longer a reason to be paranoid, to waste time on and money on futile pursuits, which in the end don't matter anyway. The world needs to come together and help one an other. No matter what we call our selves communist or capitalist it really is irrelevant. We all are humans.As Cold Wars go, NATO's season of half-hearted saber-rattling at Russia over its... more
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LAS VEGAS – A weary and beaten-looking O.J. Simpson was put away Friday for at least nine years — and perhaps the rest of his life — for an armed robbery in a hotel room, bringing a measure of satisfaction to those who believed the football star got away with murder more than a decade ago. The 61-year-old Hall of Famer listened stone-faced, his wrists in shackles, as Judge Jackie Glass pronounced the sentence — 33 years behind bars with eligibility for parole after less than a third of that.
Moments before, Simpson made a rambling, five-minute plea for leniency, simultaneously apologizing for the holdup as a foolish mistake and trying to justify his actions.
He choked back tears as he told her: "I didn't want to steal anything from anyone. ... I'm sorry, sorry."
The judge said several times that her sentence in the Las Vegas case had nothing to do with Simpson's 1995 acquittal in the slaying of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
"I'm not here to try and cause any retribution or any payback for anything else," Glass said.
But Goldman's father, Fred Goldman, and sister, Kim, said they were delighted with the sentence.
"We are thrilled, and it's a bittersweet moment," Fred Goldman said. "It was satisfying seeing him in shackles like he belongs."
Simpson said he and five other men were simply trying to retrieve sports memorabilia and other mementos when he stormed a Las Vegas hotel room occupied by two dealers on Sept. 13, 2007. He insisted the items, which included his first wife's wedding ring, had been stolen from him.
But the judge emphasized that it was a violent confrontation in which at least one gun was drawn, and she said someone could have been shot. She said the evidence was overwhelming, with the planning, the confrontation itself and the aftermath all recorded on audio or videotape.LAS VEGAS – A weary and beaten-looking O.J. Simpson was put away Friday for at... more
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Two neighborhoods in Milwaukee are considering printing their own currency, which could be bought with U.S. dollars, but would be only accepted at local businesses, in order to encourage people to shop at home instead of Walmart.
It's not a new concept — the Chicago Tribune says that lots of towns and neighborhoods relied on their own local currency during the Great Depression. It's also perfectly legal.
So what's the advantage for shoppers? Well, the currency could offer incentives — trading $100 US for $110 in the local currency would give shoppers a 10% bonus, for example.
What do you think? Would you use a local currency in order to support your community? Or are you going to shop at Walmart until they pry the cart from your cold dead hands?
Bold move, hope the Secret Service doesn't get bent. Can you Imagine 50 seperate countries like the former Soviet Union? I can, and it's not a bad idea.Two neighborhoods in Milwaukee are considering printing their own currency, which... more
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