New Mars Forums

Hatred? Nah.

I don't hate anyone. We Catholics are taught to hate the sin, NEVER the sinner.  :;):

Nice FOX News talking point, however. Well done. Ignore all criticism of Precious Leader by accusing the critic of hate. 

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Facts remain. The January 30th Iraqi elections (which I support) were Plan D for the Bushies and their hand picked candidate is coming in third place.

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PS - - "Kool Aid drinking" as a metaphor has become commonplace with various Chicagoland sports talk radio hosts.

Example:

Caller: The Cubs will win the World Series. Or the Bears will win the Super Bowl in 2006.

Host: "Kool Aid, Kool Aid, tastes great. . ."

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Shaun: Bush will be noted by history as an exceptional leader.

Bill: "Kool Aid, Kool Aid. . ."

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One of the more sweetly touching movies I have ever watched was "Tortilla Soup" - - lots of great cooking as well, I left the theater pretty darn hungry.

Anyway, a proud Hispanic father in Los Angeles was continually yelling at his young very successful professional children:

"Speak English, or speak Spanish. Either one, I don't care. Just don't mix them up!"

Exactly!

A hero worship Bush-idolatry that wants to add the man to Mount Rushmore. The religious right is spending many many millions of dollars portraying Bush as being personally chosen by God as "His" emissary. All rather cult-like.

Genuine American global dominance would seem to openly signify the end of the traditional nation-state system. The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war under which "We" (meaning the US alone) can lawfully attack any sovereign nation, at any time, if we deem ourselves threatened appears to me to be a blatant repudiation of the the prior system of nation-states. Combine that with the actual power to do such with little immediate risk of meaningful retaliation and that situation appears radically new.

Be it a "good thing" or a "bad thing" - - it certainly is a "different thing"  :;):

and whether there are significant long term negative consequences to asserting such a right of pre-emption gets at the heart of my concerns.

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Perhaps the EU will crash and burn. If so, the remaining smaller nation-states of Europe will be relegated to geo-political irrelevance. If Europe desires to remain (or rise to be) on par with the US, China and India it MUST make the EU work.

Population and size of economy are the reasons.

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There appear to be three potential or wannabe hyper-powers along with the US which already is a hyper-power: China, India and Europe.

What allows each entity to retain internal cohesion? What is unique about each entity or potential entity?

Does the traditional term "nation-state" well describe the bonds that unite into a single political entity those people living in the US, China, India and perhaps the EU?

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1123/p01s … .html]This is way cool, IMHO.

and these

and these

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http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.htm … m=1]Kliper to fly on Zenit.

5 or 6 to LEO for $50 million give or take? Isn't Zenit the least expensive light/medium booster in the world, right now?

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Maybe an American company can purchase manufacturing rights and win Bigelow's prize.

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http://www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf]$42.5 million per launch.

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Finding adequate global resources is the biggest challenge.

=IF= we can find a way to show the rest of the world we are serious about every human being having the material resources to live a healthy engaged meaningful life =THEN= we can persuade the others to follow our lead.

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Where do we differ with Europe on issues of political philosophy?

(1) How we envision God; and

(2) The meta-physics of private property. The Europeans desire a slightly lower standard of living, a 35 hour work week and 5 weeks of paid vacation. This scares the hell out of work-a-holic Americans.

Honest dialouge on (1) & (2) is a good place to start.

Cobra, to tie our two threads together, the one where we agree completely and the one where we may disagree completely

let me say this.

The United States is the most successful, most powerful, most generous, most moral, most just (albeit very, very far from perfect justice) nation-state to have existed in the history of humanity. Cool, but we accomplish all this just in time to begin to witness the decline of the nation-state as the pre-eminent unit of human political organization. 

(Edit: And as  we seek empire we begin to throw all this away! - Our current neo-con cabal are not comprised of the same people  and are not the same American boys who liberated Normandy from Hitler in 1944.)

Today, the American Republic risks morphing into an American Empire with certain analogies to Rome of 2000 years ago, when the Republic was transformed by the Ceasars. Except unlike Rome, the rest of the world - - the EU, Russia, China, Islam, India and South America - - are not too keen on accepting full spectrum US global domination as envisioned by the Project for the Next American Century people. (Edit: And containment of US power is increasingly the best explanation for the actions of those other nations.)

My opinion is that if we want our values to engulf the world - - those values found in the Declaration of Independence, the Constituion of 1787 and the great speeches of Lincoln - - we must accept that we cannot accomplish that through the economic and military ascendancy of the American nation-state or by building an American empire.

We cannot dictate to the world, for we will lose. But I believe we can persude the world if we refrain from things like Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. The Nike jungle goes "Be Like Mike" - - we can  persuade the world to imitate us - - and if we torture, they will torture. If we rule by the sword and the JDAM, they will seek to rule by the sword and the Galileo guided JDAM.

We can engage in genuine dialouge with Europe, and India and China on key questions. Europe is our best logical partner yet we fear Europe because they are choosing a modestly more socialist trajectory. But to prevail, Western Civilization must have a large enough tent to accomodate BOTH an American view of private property rights and a European view of private property rights.

Bush, IMHO, lacks the grand global vision to see more than a few years ahead or to acknowledge that the era of the nation-state may be drawing to a close.

The modern nation-state was created at Westphalia less than 500 years ago. The modern nation-state cannot extend out into space, altouigh space settlement can be useful to various nation-states during the wind down period.

Civilizations, as Samuel Huntington decribes, are the new most relevant political unit:

Western;
Islamic;
Sinic (China);
Orthodox Christian;
Hindu;
South American;
African.

Japanese and Buddhist are less populous players.

Western Civilization is undergoing a division (US & Europe) largely over how we perceive God. If the US permits a division of the EU and the US into two new civilizations (Greater Canada and Jesusland?) we weaken our standing with respect to the others.

But can Jerry Falwell and Dr. Dobson support a government that is friendly to God-less gay loving Frenchies?

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We are fighting fundie Islam nearly single handedly. Why? Okay, Italy is with Bush but is New York with Bush as firmly as Italy?

We are fighting fundie Islam because we cannot escape our oil addiction. Why did God put our oil under their sand?

And because of Israel. Note that Condi Rice is now saying the US will pressure BOTH sides, something Bush rejected in his first term. Why? We need to re-build bridges with Europe.

And I say - - Good! Its about time. But those bridges are very badly ruined at this point. But its a start.

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Saddam being gone is good. Period.

But to remove Saddam and claim the right to re-write Iraqi patent laws to mandate the use of Monsanto seed, or to deny re-building contracts to the French and Russians is not spreading democracy, its building empire.

And that will undermine our ability to spread our values as the era of the nation-state draws to a close.

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In the long run Iraq may very well turn out well, despite the bungled operation, in large measure because of the patience and wisdom of Ayatollah Sistani.

Iran may turn out well also, with the pro-democracy anti-radical-Islamic factions becoming dominant =IF= we have the good sense NOT to invade or bomb them. 

And, if President Bush proves to have the good sense to allow facts to modify the apparent trajectory set by the "Project for a New American Century" people then perhaps we will not be totally FUBAR-ed come 2008.

This thread captures the catch-22 or dilemma of space settlement.

Whether or not national governments should colonize Mars, in my opinion diverse nation-states are at a significant disadvantage as maintaining political control over a colony million of miles away will be awfully difficult.

Cut off supplies? Well okay. If China cut off the supply chain to its Mars colony, why couldn't India or the EU or the USA simply adopt that colony and start sending supplies? Corporate colonies might routinely re-negotiate with their Terran sponsors, which undermines the incentive to make that initial $100 billion investment.

Now, if colonies are founded by civilizations (or religions!) rather than nation-states, the loyalty of the colony to its Terran founders will be of a different character. The nature of Terran "control" over a religious colony will be of a very different character than Terran control over a nationalism inspired colony.

Juan Cole is excellent, again.

This is taken from a blogger-war with Jonah Goldberg, son of the woman who tape recorded Monica Lewinsky:

Hate Saddam? Okay, I agree.
Glad he is gone? Okay, I agree.
Believe Bush FUBAR-ed the whole operation? Yup, I agree.

Three for three. 

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/goldberg-v.html]Link

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If you have Flash media, there is a marvelous "deleted" scene (15 - 20 seconds of video/audio) available at the scifi/com website for Episode 105. It involves the doctor and the Cylon "script cookie" embedded in his brain.

Naming that character "Six" seems to be a deliberate toying with Jeri Ryan and Star Trek's "Seven of Nine" character.

And she certainly is a "cookie"

Ian is correct about the explosive growth of autism, asthma and childhood diabetes. No one knows why. And just as Vioxx was supposedly verified as safe, we should not jump to conclusions.

But that Monsanto "terminator gene" has potentially horrific  consequences, for example and suggestions that its expression in the wild is self limiting offers only partial comfort.

Mono-culture (all grains being the exact same gen-mod species) is pretty damn risky, IMHO.