

Mark2
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Mark2 last won the day on September 11 2011
Mark2 had the most liked content!
About Mark2
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Mark
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Another aspect of this case deserves emphasis. The assassination was done with the help of the Yemen dictatorship, which the U.S. has propped up for years. I for one am sick of the U.S. propping up dictators all over the earth. This is really what fosters “Al Qaeda.” Sure, a few crazy Muslim clerics hate America for being the West, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the hatred the U.S. government engenders by at one time or another arming every government in the Middle East, including Uzbekistan – about which read Craig Murray: http://www.craigmurr...orture_and_the/ former Bri
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Dreamspirit reacted to a post in a topic: Near Death Experiences
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A defeatist attitude easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. Anyway, with Rick Perry soon to abandon the race, even Ron Paul’s detractors should acknowledge that he has a real chance of winning the Republican nomination. (As for the presidential election, any even halfway reasonable Republican candidate will win over Obama.) But don’t look to Fox News for news about Ron Paul. See this funny – and scary – series of video clips about Fox News and its bias against Ron Paul: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhNGoArBJuQ
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SapereAude reacted to a post in a topic: Fool's Gold (article)
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Leftistspew defends 2.7% inflation as follows: In other words: Invest your savings in something that yields an interest rate as high (or higher) than the inflation rate and your savings won’t lose value. Only if you fail to invest it wisely, say by stuffing the cash in your mattress, will it lose value. As others have pointed out, you have a right to dispose of your property – in this case your savings – as you wish. Mattress-stuffing, also known as instant liquidity for a rainy day, being an innocent activity, you might expect to engage in it without being punished. If you put you
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softwareNerd reacted to a post in a topic: Fool's Gold (article)
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This replies to just the initial post. It’s a most peculiar stability where goods that twenty years ago took 100 dollar bills to purchase today take 170. One could say relative stability, but it would be relative to an even worse performing currency, say one in South America. This is our standard of stability? If you aren’t wiped out – unadorned with Make-Light Of-It quotes – everything’s OK? Not having been completely wiped out, just robbed somewhat – a mere 40%. From the linked-to article: “As 17th-century Latin American silver production dropped, debtors flooded the Dut
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Dreamspirit reacted to a post in a topic: Is letting your chlid get fat abuse?
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Is letting your chlid get fat abuse?
Mark2 replied to Dreamspirit's topic in School, College and Child development
This sidesteps the question but still needs to be said. 1. Unlike real abuse, which is extraordinarily rare, fat is hard to define even approximately. The same goes for skinny. Look what CPS – Child Protective Services, or whatever it’s called – did to one vegetarian couple. When CPS took their children away from them they tried to get their children back by force. The eventual trial, with Edgar Steele as defense lawyer, was featured on TV (I don’t watch such things and only read about it). The mother, Ruth Christine, spent 7 years in prison, the father will have served 12 when relea -
Who kept us safe after 9/11
Mark2 replied to TheEgoist's topic in Terrorism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Straw man argument. No one here said have faith in a terrorist’s mercy. This sounds as if we’re to conclude that Tanaka means there’ve been thousands of domestic “incidents” in the U.S. since 9/11, which is absurd if “incident” means anything serious. There’ve been several FBI entrapment operations trumpeted as thwarted terrorist attacks. There’s been one utterly incompetent but apparaently genuine attack. Then there was the Underwear Bomber, in a class by itself. Instead of evidence of terrorist danger it’s evidence of our amazingly corrupt government. Again (I’ve mentioned it b -
They've turned on video-streaming: www.911anniversary.ARIevents.com
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Relative to gold, prices are stable. But consider what this means. From 2001 to 2011 gold went from about $300 to about $1800 – a factor of 5 difference. In the same period prices have increased somewhat over 25% – a factor of 1.25 difference. (Try these inflation calculators, which I don’t think are far off: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ and http://146.142.4.24/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl ) This is a major decrease in purchasing power. While you weren’t looking about a fourth of your savings melted away. It doesn’t matter if this shrinking money is stable relative to anything. In
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9/11 – A Decade Later: Lessons for the Future A symposium sponsored by the Ayn Rand Institute / Center Thursday, September 8, 2011 - free and open to the public. National Press Club 529 14th Street NW Washington, D.C. 20045 The program will feature three panel discussions: • Upheavals in the Middle East: Assessing the Political Landscape 1:00 - 2:05 p.m. Panelists: Yaron Brook, Efraim Karsh, Daniel Pipes, Walid Phares. Moderator: Elan Journo. • The Islamist Threat: From AfPak to Jyllands-Posten and Times Square 2:10 - 3:15 p.m. Panelists: Peter Brookes, John David Lewis, D
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On page 4 of this issue of The Undercurrent you find a reference to “the “homegrown” terrorists who have recently become major threats. The plans of the ‘underpants’ and Times Square bombers were foiled ...” The Times Square bomber – a Pakistani immigrant – was utterly inept. He might as well have had a smoke bomb. How about some effort made in restricting Third World immigration before we consider Faisal Shahzad a “major threat.” The Underwear Bomber, to repeat an earlier post, looks like a fraud from beginning to end. Read what Kurt Haskell – a passenger on Flight 253 – has to
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Hoover helping Bolsheviks
Mark2 replied to Practice Good Theory Blog's topic in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion
The U.S. helped the Soviets all along, starting with the Bolsheviks. Listen to this hour long interview with Anthony Sutton, made in 1980, about the help given the Soviets and Nazis: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6987303668075230852# Unfortunately the interviewer appends his own ideas at the end after the interview is over. His manner turns me off but Anthony Sutton is well worth listening to. You can skip the interviewer’s introduction too. (The picture quality is very poor, almost useless.) One of Anthony Sutton’s books was favorably reviewed in The Objectivist (January -
Aristotle is supposed to have said: “Justice consists of loving and hating aright.” Long before seeing the above I’d come to loath the writing of Edward Cline. It reeks of counterfeit emotion. Phony to the core. Eesh! which I understand is what the ancient Greeks used to say when they couldn’t take it anymore. Note Cline’s admiring nod to Winston Churchill, who helped lie America into WWII. Alternate history isn’t supposed to alter too much, that is, before a certain point in time, yet Cline writes: “Monitored Al Quada communications repeated the query, ‘Is he dead yet?’ The
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Cline must be living in some alternate universe. “War Won, Government Diminishes” ? “Long Live Lady Liberty!” ? Where was Cline when the following outrages on Her occurred: The Administration can lie the U.S. into trillion dollar wars, thousands of soldiers killed, with impunity. (Listen to former Col. Lawrence Wilkerson on this. Lie is the right word.) Real ID. The Military Commissions Act of 2006. The Defense Authorization Act of 2006. The Martial Law Act of 2006. The Cybersecurity Act (not yet law). The Protecting Children Act (not yet law). Illegal dome
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Tanaka repeats his assertion that Ayn Rand wrote an essay on Hickman, dishonestly abusing the meaning of “essay” in the process. I think what I wrote about perfect makes sense in the full post. I’m not going to write about details of AR and Hickman. The subject is disgusting and doesn’t interest me that much. It’s inconceivable that AR – later in her mature years when she better understood English and Americans – would either defend any aspect of Hickman or denounce his detractors for hating him as an egoist rather than a creepshow killer. Tanaka – he of the private disorganized an
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Regarding Zoid’s last post ... 1. AR made a mistake in her evaluation of Hickman. She made a mistake in her evaluation of many, perhaps most, of the journalists condemning him (e.g. Edgar Rice Burroughs). Two private mistakes. 2. Reread Zoid’s earlier statement: “ ... since sociopathy is characterized by a habitual disregard for the rights of others, and since rights are central to Rand’s philosophic thought, it’s clear that she would never have deemed such psychological illness ‘a gift.’” It’s a fallacious, rationalistic argument. What she said in the 1920s is what she said. S