Oliver Stone (was:Pauper and Sweatshop Fallacies)

[Henry M]

I wish things were as simple as they are for you, Joseph.

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


On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 8:38 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> So its ok if you just murder a  couple hundred? Just torture a couple
> hundred? Maybe jail a few thousand without trial?  Yea that's not so bad,
> especially if someone in the ever astute chain of command thinks they might
> be "linked" to Al Kida. If these were George Bush's drones I suspect you
> would react differently.
> On Jan 16, 2013, at 12:48 PM, Henry M wrote:
>
> > Yes, yes, EVERYONE is being killed by drones!  It's just a miracle that
> there's anyone left.  (Must not be enough drones to kill them all.)
> >
> > If those 70% had been correct and if there had been evidence that there
> were WMDs and there was further evidence that there was a program to
> threaten the USA with them, then I might have supported the war with Iraq.
> Well the democratic party had even more reason to doubt there was a threat
> but only a small handful opposed the war.  This is the way real decisions
> have been made. The current decider continues to verbally justify the
> slaughter in Iraq by saying the soldiers who served there were "defending
> us".  Pure  Orwellian newspeak.  "We" were not attacked, and you cannot
> defend someone who was not attacked.
> >
> > Do you support the Arab Spring?  Many non-combatants were killed, ya
> know.
> Do you? Because the Tunisian uprising was directly related to the B
> Manning Wikileaks release, which you seemed to despise.  I believe people
> have a right to defend themselves from violence , cruelty and oppression
> but violence and revenge are hard to stop once they begin.  We must all
> beware of narratives that excuse our particular group from the abuse of
> power.  What the Arab Spring tells me is that there are many in the Gulf
> region who aspire to the same rights , freedoms and justice that I want.  I
> think we all have a long way to go and will need to find new tactics to
> defend our loved ones from wars and climate change. Killing will not
> protect us.
>  >
> > Yours truly,
> > ٩(●̮̮̃•̃)۶
> > Henry Musikar, CISSP
> > http://astore.amazon.com/tdcoccamsaxe-20
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > WMD was the reason given.   Also  the white house speeches carefully
> placed 911 next to Saddam until 70 % of americans thought Saddam was
> directly connected or responsible. Judy Miller published  her shit in the
> NYT. It was all made possible by the perceived threat.
> >
> > Once you start down this road,  the next inevitable step is to label
> everyone killed as  a terrorist threat, which is the policy with the drones
> and night raids.
> > On Jan 16, 2013, at 10:46 AM, Henry M wrote:
> >
> > > 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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