Oliver Stone (was:Pauper and Sweatshop Fallacies)

[Henry M]

Sorry, Joseph, but you're wrong. There was no threat from Iraq, so it would
not fall under the rubric of doing some harm to strangers to protect
familiars.  That's the problem with absolutists; they try to cram
everything into too few boxes.  I'm not talking about retaliation.  I'm
talking about terrible decisions that must be made by responsible people,
e.g. to blow a plane that is heading toward the World Trade Center out the
sky.  Things would be much better around the world if we'd been able to do
that, but the mantra of "NEVER do ANY harm" would have forbidden it.

Yours truly,
٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
Henry Musikar, CISSP
http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20


On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 10:15 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> Innocence as used here is just referring to noncombatants and your
> hypothetical construct is far more meaningless. The legal concept is
> innocent until proven guilty. The idea that you can make yourself and your
> family safe and comfortable by subjecting all your imagined enemies to
> terror and even mass slaughter, and all the "uncivilized" to theft has
> always been the province of the military empires of history.  This model is
> destroying the earth.  Based on such reasoning as you put forth in your
> hypothetical amplified with false information similar to what is being used
> with Iran now, the US  just slaughtered 1/2 a million people in Iraq,
> engaged in larg scale torture, and released tons of radioactive materials
> into their nation which has brought a dramatic increase in birth defects
> and leukemia. It has not made us one bit safer but cost us 5000 soldiers
>  and thousands with lifelong injuries and ptsd.
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 16, 2013, at 6:49 AM, Henry M wrote:
>
> > I'm just being honest and forthright.  Let's throw innocence to the side
> for the moment, as it is a practically meaningless, and ask if you would be
> willing to ensure the death of two people holding your child hostage in
> order to ensure the safety of your child?  Where is your moral compass now?
> >
> >
> > Yours truly,
> > ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> > Henry Musikar, CISSP
> > http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 5:31 PM, <malignd at aol.com> wrote:
> > "Some number"?  What might that "some" be?  Tens of thousands in order
> to save your nephew?  Do you have a moral compass?
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Henry M <scuffling at gmail.com>
> > To: Pynchon Liste <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > Sent: Tue, Jan 15, 2013 1:09 pm
> > Subject: Re: Oliver Stone (was:Pauper and Sweatshop Fallacies)
> >
> > In an us vs. them world, x should not be the number of lives saved or
> lost by an act, but how many more of their lives are "we" ready to
> terminate in order lower, or end, "our" losses.  It may sound harsh, but
> I'm comfortable with some number of innocent people dying (as long as I
> don't know them or see them die) in order to save the life of someone in my
> family; fewer people to save a bff; still fewer people to save someone I
> grew up with; even fewer to save someone I don't know at all but with whom
> I share something more than being human.
> >
> > Yours truly,
> > ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> > Henry Musikar, CISSP
> > http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 4:40 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> > Alice said:
> >
> > [insert your choice here, but please no Howard Zinn or Oliver
> > Stone ;-)]?
> >
> >
> > Oh, Alice, Alice, you brought it upon yourself!  I was looking for some
> gratuitous opening to bring up Oliver Stone's new series:The Untold History
> of the United States, and you supplied it.  Now before you start beating on
> me, I'll say that it's a pretty flawed documentary.  One device he uses
> that's both dishonest and annoying is to have actors recite quotes from
> various personages, making it seem as if we're listening to a historic
> oration, rather than a reenacted reading of someone else's written or
> spoken words.  He's weak on attributing sources, uses way too much
> Hollywood footage to make rhetorical points (as opposed to using it to show
> the mentality of the particular time), and gets over-zealous in praising
> various personages (as various as Henry Wallace and Stalin), to the point
> where the so-called documentary devolves to overt propaganda of Fox-level
> intensity.  The worst part of this is that, in doing so, he drives away
> mainstream viewers who could actually be enlightened by some of the things
> he has to say.
> >
> > But he still makes some good points, and asks questions that are rarely
> if ever asked on such a mainstream venue as Showtime.  In last week's
> episode, by way of discussing Bushes senior and junior, he brought up the
> shameful history of Prescott Bush and other American industrialists who
> supported the Nazi regime (something that we discuss all the time here, by
> way of GR).
> >
> > I particularly liked the episode that covered Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
> wherein he tackled the standard orthodoxy:  By dropping the bomb, we saved
> x number of lives.  This passionately defended point has been the endless
> fodder for Thanksgiving dinner fights with in-laws, etc., with countless
> (always male)defenders shrieking variations of (naively confident that no
> one will make the obvious, hostile rejoinder): "Hey my [father,
> grandfather] was stationed in the Pacific.  If we hadn't dropped the bomb
> [incinerated small children], he would have had to invade Japan, and I
> would never have been born!"
> >
> > The Stone episode brings up some convincing evidence that Japan, afraid
> of an impending invasion by the Soviet army, was ready to capitulate, but
> Truman stalled any negotiations, and convinced the Soviets not to invade,
> so the "tests" could be run.  Stone also provides a nice montage showing
> how the variable x in "we saved x number of lives" increased steadily over
> time.  I suspect there are plenty on this list who are devoted to the
> bomb-saved-lives orthodoxy.  I'm glad Stone questions it, if only on
> subscriber cable TV.
> >
> > Laura
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > >From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> > >Sent: Jan 14, 2013 5:49 AM
> > >To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> > >Subject: Re: Pauper and Sweatshop Fallacies
> > >
> > >Why would I deny it? Why would anyone who knows a bit of history, who
> > >reads the newspapers, who has read One Hundred Years of Solitude,
> > >M&D...any decent narrative about colonialism, orientalism, a but of
> > >Said or [insert your choice here, but please no Howard Zinn or Oliver
> > >Stone ;-)]?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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