Zip

Watch out for that Vogon construction fleet.

Jay, for what it is worth I agree. Killing innocent people is the shittiest part of war, be it an accident or the act of a couple of borderline sociopaths but it has also been a part of warfare since the battlefield became, wherever the army was, and not some open piece of ground suitable for the maneuver of cavalry and vantage points for the guns. If the men who are claimed to have murdered the kid did what is claimed then they will certainly be punished, and i have no problem with that. As for posing with the dead and taking trophies are we to remove these men from the battlefield for offending kinder, gentler sensibilities? The dead man doesn't care and the soldiers obviously didn't. No ones rights were violated. Is it repulsive? Sure. Are you going to volunteer to do the job instead of them? What was it that Robert E Lee said... “It is good that war is so horrible, or we might grow to like it.”

JayR assuming the incident with the 14 year old boy did in fact occur I would not be surprised in the least. That is not an excuse or any sort of equivocation it is just a fact of war. Saying "war is hell" is really easy but understanding what that means is another thing all together. Ever talk to a Vet, I mean get right down into their most vivid and disturbing memories? About how they would get hungry on the battlefield because of the smell of burning human flesh, or about how some of them went through firefights with huge hard on’s in spite of (because of actually) their fear? Ever talk about how when a human body has been very close to the site of a large explosion when the bones have been pulverized by the shock wave that picking up your friend is like picking up a flesh coloured bag of jello with bits and chunks of other stuff inside of it? The brutal fact is that war is barbarity in its purest form. One commander I know, the first kill that his troops made in Afghanistan was dragged kilometres back to their strongpoint so that everyone in the company could see a real live dead body. Call it cruel, call it abusing the dead but he swore he's do it again because from that act he was able to gauge how his men would react when the time came for them to be on the trigger. He also discovered which of them he could task with picking up the body parts of children after an IED attack and which, if he tasked them, would probably not be of use to anyone for some time later. I’m the one who isn’t making any excuses. You want these men, when confronted with what is to most civilized human beings the most terrifying and disturbing events and actions to behave like you do sitting in front of your playstation playing Call Of Duty. Well that just isn’t going to happen. We are not about to start nailing babies to telephone poles like the Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia were fond of doing. We western soldiers are for the most part the most professional soldiers in history. We do our best, but there are times when manipulating some dead scumbags jawbone to make him say “Allah sucks big hairy donkey dicks” is the best thing for you, your sanity and the sanity of the troops around you, Geneva convention, regulations and everyday run of the mill civility be damned.

Take any group of people of equal numbers. Put them in those situations and you will get a few that behave exactly like this if not worse. It reminds me of the line from "Apocalypse Now" Kurtz: "We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!" By the way would this be the proper time to bring up the Objectivist ideal of total war? Where the deaths of civilians are the responsibility of the people they support even if only tacitly, and that any free nation has the right to invade any slave pen? War is hell, policing up the bodies and body parts is the kind of shit that makes grown men cry, puke and shit their pants so if you don't like the look of it then don't ever claim that you can send a man to war and have it be all pretty and sterile like some sort of 1930's movie where men fall gracefully and intact when they are shot and you don't have to see their skulls come apart. It's time that the civilian population grew up, more than just a little. Get in, get it done and get out with the fewest numbers of our own killed, or maimed. THAT is the job. Not making it all pretty for the fucking camera.

Doctors have malpractice insurance... why don't lawyers and prosecutors?

I liked The Watchmen and thought it had some good Objectivist-like qualities. Rorschach's unwillingness to compromise in particular.

Someone please tell me that these morons will loose the rights to the book soon...

I'm rather fond of fu%ingdirtbagscumsuckingcommiewannabehypocriteidioticthievingslavetradingmindkillingimbeciles myself.

Actually I've worked for the UN (as a peacekeeper). I was in Bosnia when the Muslims went "Over the top" in true WW1 fashion against the entrenched Serbs and their machine guns. After a series of huge bombardments of Bosnian artillery against the Serbs followed by wave upon wave of Muslims going (and losing) in the face of Serbian machine guns (it really was reminiscent of WW1), when the Serbs finally retalliated with only 6 rounds of howitzer fire against the Muslims the UN called in Ground attack Jets against the Serbs. At that moment I knew exactly what the UN was up to and just what the UN was worth. Bulldoze the entire works into the ground and cover it with a nice landfill or something. As for the uprising... Wait till you meet the new boss. If he isn't just a shadow of the old boss (as has happened without so much as a peep out of the UN in Egypt) I'll eat my words.

You can't spell unethical without the UN...

The government does not have a monopoly on retaliation. I as an individual in immediate danger or even under immediate threat have the moral right (and obligation) to retaliate when there is no other course of action open to me.

I agree with Tanaka, but what they would not be able to do is pull anyone over for breaking the regulations of the Road company. There would also be no such thing as a random police checkpoint, spot searches etc. It irks me that in our world now so much of our police spend so much of their time not enforcing the law, but enforcing traffic regulations.

Thanks for the correction Steve. When I went there in 2002 I thought it was still owned/held in private hands and was supported by donations. It is a beautiful place but I think that its popularity and notoriety is due more to its proximity to people rather than unique natural beauty.

Personally I think that people who claim that such and such piece of land is "unique" or "among the most beautiful places on earth" needs to get out of the city more. There are some truly beautiful natural places in this world but they are not that rare. Show me an acre of forest in Yellowstone National Park and I'll show you one 5 minutes from my house which is virtually indistinguishable from the one in Yellowstone. It's another argument about finite resources, yup, they aren't making any more land; but we haven't even started to think about "running out" of what we do have. As for how this would be handled, well as you said individuals would (or could) buy and preserve land. It's already been done for places like The Garden of the Gods, Colorado The thing that must not happen is that someone, or a group of someones start thinking that "this property has to be 'handled' differently because ### people feel it should be."

This one was definitely better than the rest I have seen. Hope springs eternal I guess.

I for one will continue to believe that a religious person who happens to have some redeeming ideals is a person who has not confronted the inconsistencies and contradictions in their own beliefs. Until they do, I will not count on them or rely on them or depend on their support.

If you want to get a glimpse at how this movie is going to be received by the vast majority of imbeciles in this world read the comments at 2046's link. I feel I should add that I am experiencing trepidation at the thought of this movie. Based on the clips I've seen of it the creators have absolutely ZERO idea what they are dealing with. It's like a 13 year old stoner got hold of the cliffs notes and "tried" (no, he really did try) to make a short story out of it. Even (perhaps especially) if the creators had made a very good movie rendition I think that the movie will be so thoroughly slagged in the press, by "academics" and the rest of the vocal left and their religious nut-job Conservative fellow travelers that it will make the harsh (and unwarranted) criticisms of the novel itself seem like a top ten review from the NY Times.

I understand what you are saying and what you mean when you speak of morality Greebo, but be careful when dealing with theists, especially if you are going to use phrases like "immoral laws". The Christian, the Buddhist and the Muslim operate on moral premises that would give any Objectivist the creeps. The phrase "objective law" is much less ambiguous.

Indeed.

From what I read it sounds like you are replacing how your parents want you to live your life/spend your time with how your boyfriend wants you to live your life and spend your time. I'd encourage you to live how you want to live. Perhaps this is also the reason why happiness is eluding you, because you are looking for it in the wishes of others. Good luck!

Whole lot of context dropping going on here. In 1940 the average German citizen had no political recourse left. Therefore assassination of Nazi's would have been moral, a moral imperative IMO. In the USA in 2011 there are plenty of political and legal avenues open to counter someone who is bent on violating your rights.

No. There is no contradiction. In each of your choices, running away and not running away (fighting) you are still attempting to make a, hopefully, the choice which furthers your life. You are not expected to be omnipotent, you do not know which one will prove successful. Both of those choices are moral, one may be more effective but both have you choosing and acting to live. The immoral act would be to grab the barrel of the gun, put it in your mouth and pull the trigger (or any similarly idiotic move which a rational person could recognize as being suicidal). I do not think there is such a thing as a morally neutral act.

I never claimed that the person who broke his contract not to distribute the information was guiltless. However, if you are going to give the press a free pass (to a certain extent) in the name of the right to know, then that same permission must be granted to someone like Assange.