[extropy-chat] clash of un-civilizations

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Sat Jul 9 22:26:05 UTC 2005



--- c c <beb_cc at yahoo.com> wrote:

> (Mike, those people happen to die parked on top of
> toilets, not because of anything the toilets are doing
> to them).

This isn't quite true. People slip on wet bathroom floors and hit their
heads on the commode, they strain themselves while doing their business
and suffer from strokes, heart attacks, aneurisms, thrombosis, among
other ailments. The point is that when you sit on a toilet, there is a
greater chance of not getting up than if you'd not sat on it at that
particular moment, a chance which is more significant than most risks
that most people consider are things to worry about. It's just that
toilets are such a part of everyone's life and their utility is so
obvious (like cars) that the idea of not using them and going back to
squatting on a field or sitting in an outhouse is unthinkable.

If only a small portion of the population used toilets today, it would
be far easier to get them banned based on a handful of fatalities while
sitting on them than not.

> We are in World War 4, it is a clash of civilizations,
> not just an ideological war as WWs1-3 were. When Rummy
> says we'll be in Iraq for 12 years you multiply that
> by two and you get a more plausible time frame: about
> a quarter century. 

It certainly wouldn't be the longest period of war in history. There
was the Thirty Years War between the european powers around the
beginning of the 18th century, and the Sixty Years War of Dutch
Independence. Of course, the Vietnamese generally regard their war of
independence stretching from 1945 to 1975 as well, and given the level
of intensity to this conflict, it is more on a par with the North
American Indian conflict with the US through the 19th century, most of
which US historians don't regard as wars other than for a few periods.

A clash of civilizations is very much an ideological war over how
civilizations are to be run. In this case, you have groups of
arab-supremacists high on Andalusian fantasies and pulp islamo-fascist
theology who want the middle east, and much of the rest of the world,
for islam and nothing else, while some of the world is intent on
tolerance and individual liberty and the rest is trying to ignore
things as much as possible hoping it will go away.

> What weapons have been used or will be used; bunker
> busters with small nukes? What else?

We won't use nukes until and unless some state finally acknowledges
backing the jihad, and unless they use them first.


Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com


		
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