N3O Age Of Empires and Starcraft 2 Clan

[quote=""IndyBrit""]
Not sure I agree with the Christ-slavery business. Many of his parables involved servant-master relationships, and Ephesians (post-Christ interpretations, but considered relevant by many Christians) also cover master-slave relationships. Christ would probably have told masters to treat their slaves well, but I don't think it's clear that he would have abolished the institution. His gig was not really political, and he probably would have said that you shouldn't worry about your stature and focus on God instead.[/quote]

Anti slavery is not exclusively a Christian ideal. The word found in the bible in Hebrew is "eved" The word has a range of meanings but generally means a relationship with a dominant partner or obligation. This could be a king, a master, a contract, an addiction or something like that. Biblically speaking, other than perhaps pow's, slavery as we think of it is not mentioned, just mistranslated. In fact, translators translate the word eved as their fancy suits them as far as I can tell. In the bible it is better translated as servant (as it only sometimes is).

Phillip Burgin, an ancestor of mine, left Crediton, Devon in 1677 and came to America as an indentured servant. According the contract (that he willingly entered), he received a free ride here in exchange for 7 years of service. During this time he worked as an apprentice and learned a trade so that when the term of the contract was up, he made a good living for himself, becoming an owner of a decent amount of land. This was not slavery though my father often makes that comparison. lol

Mac

@Mac:
Well, many "servants" of the biblical times were servants for life, had little or no pay, with their livelihood provided by their master. They were treated differently under the law including their master receiving payment if they were killed. They were not given the choice to leave.

This is different than indentured servitude in colonial times, but it also lacks something from the slavery practiced in America. I think it's fair to say that the Bible is referring to actual slavery due to the above points, but the brutality factor was different, and it's that aspect of the American system that I think unquestionably is not supportable as a Christian ideal.

The proposed quotes are non-responsive.

Saddam banned inspectors from the country on many specific occasions, and he banned them from specific sites they were supposed to be allowed to inspect on many occasions. Both of these quotes are post-invasion, so they cannot be quotes from a situation where Saddam was allowing inspectors and yet Bush asserts that he is. It is easy to see these quotes referring to either occasions where Saddam banned the group from the country or from certain sites, although they are non-specific so we can't be sure. Perhaps, rather than referring to times where Saddam banned inspectors, these quotes are referring back to times where they were allowed, and he wasn't thinking of the banned times during these quotes, and was therefore lying. (and perhaps that line of reasoning is absurd. )

Therefore, again, where is he saying that they were banned from the country during a time they were allowed in?

January 27th 2004:
“And then we went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution — 1441 — unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
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Ok, so Bush mentions Resolution 1441. It was passed in November 2002. It orders Saddam to let the weapons inspectors in. Then in this same passage we have Bush saying Saddam refused to allow the inspectors in. He is clearly referring to the time period following the passing of Resolution 1441. However this is lie - Saddam allowed inspectors back into Iraq following Resolution 1441.

You can argue that nowhere does Bush actually say anything along the lines of "Saddam chose to defy Resolution 1441" . But he has already mentioned Resolution 1441 in the same passage, so what other time period is he referring to?

[quote=""Macabee""][quote=""IndyBrit""][quote=""jonesk""][quote=""IndyBrit""]@Mac:
Find me the specific Bush quote you are talking about. I'm aware of him saying that Saddam was not cooperating with inspections (true) and that he violated security council resolutions (also true).

Where is a naked assertion by Bush that inspectors were not allowed in the country when in fact they were in the country at the time?[/quote]

July 14th 2003:
” The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful.”

January 27th 2004:
“And then we went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution — 1441 — unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."[/quote]

The proposed quotes are non-responsive.

Saddam banned inspectors from the country on many specific occasions, and he banned them from specific sites they were supposed to be allowed to inspect on many occasions. Both of these quotes are post-invasion, so they cannot be quotes from a situation where Saddam was allowing inspectors and yet Bush asserts that he is. It is easy to see these quotes referring to either occasions where Saddam banned the group from the country or from certain sites, although they are non-specific so we can't be sure. Perhaps, rather than referring to times where Saddam banned inspectors, these quotes are referring back to times where they were allowed, and he wasn't thinking of the banned times during these quotes, and was therefore lying. (and perhaps that line of reasoning is absurd. )

Therefore, again, where is he saying that they were banned from the country during a time they were allowed in?[/quote]

It appears he quoted the quote about the time in question. That time that Bush referenced as we all know was the time that Hans Blix led a UN inspection team in Iraq. To clarify: Bush was saying that Saddam Hussein would not let the inspectors in.

Mac[/quote]

Well, again, Saddam blocked UN inspections outright for 4 years. In the 90 days that he let them in (seems a short time to go to war in, which is not to Bush's credit) they found banned weapons in two locations (empty chemical warheads and missiles with excessive range) which Iraq had explicitly claimed were destroyed. There were numerous times in those 90 days that the USA thought Iraq was clearing sites before inspectors got there, and delaying inspectors.

Is he talking about specific sites? Is he trying inartfully to indicate that Iraq was not cooperating (which they were not) and therefore never allowed meaningful inspections? Or was he making a naked lie that Hans Blix was not in Iraq for 90 days when of course he was?

It takes an uncharitable reading to make those statements lies, and even then they are ridiculously easy to disprove, as the public record is replete with the physical presence of inspectors during that time. So what would be the purpose of such a lie? Since the simpler explanation does not include lying, and lying does not serve any purpose in this instance, I cannot understand why Bush detractors insist statements like that are lies.

The Bush-lied accusations remind me of the very real problems that the Bush team actually had. The Bush team had a template and they read all of the available data into their template, reducing the weight of counter-data and increasing the weight of pro-data. Therefore, they incompetently blundered into the Iraq business, no deception required. Perhaps that makes the world a scarier place, because blundering can happen to anyone. Better to assume they were lying because that can only come from someone that you already know in your heart is evil, so now that Bush is gone the sun will shine and the roses will be pretty again.

The problem is, that to see the Bush-Iraq business as lying, you have to have a template ready and read all supporting data into your template while ignoring any counter data. This is an engine for bad decisions, as we have seen vividly demonstrated.

[quote=""IndyBrit""]@Mac:
Well, many "servants" of the biblical times were servants for life, had little or no pay, with their livelihood provided by their master. They were treated differently under the law including their master receiving payment if they were killed. They were not given the choice to leave.

This is different than indentured servitude in colonial times, but it also lacks something from the slavery practiced in America. I think it's fair to say that the Bible is referring to actual slavery due to the above points, but the brutality factor was different, and it's that aspect of the American system that I think unquestionably is not supportable as a Christian ideal.[/quote]

I think I may have failed to provide some context in my previous post. The point of the second paragraph was to demonstrate that being a servant is not necessarily like being a slave, or more importantly that the slavery of the Confederate States just does not exist in the bible. A servant, like my ancestor mentioned as well as the biblical servants, had rights. One was that if injured in any way by the "master" they were to be set free.

On the other hand, Exodus 21.1 says this: "If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for 6 years, but on the 7th he shall go out as a free man without payment". (notice that the bias of the translator translates eved as slave here where the translator does not in other place) There are various rules governing their treatment.

I just want to be clear. the Hebrew word "eved" is the same word that means anything from servant to slave to addiction to obligations and oaths. One can serve one's country for example without being a slave.

Mac

[quote=""IndyBrit""]
Well, again, Saddam blocked UN inspections outright for 4 years. In the 90 days that he let them in (seems a short time to go to war in, which is not to Bush's credit) they found banned weapons in two locations (empty chemical warheads and missiles with excessive range) which Iraq had explicitly claimed were destroyed. There were numerous times in those 90 days that the USA thought Iraq was clearing sites before inspectors got there, and delaying inspectors.

Is he talking about specific sites? Is he trying inartfully to indicate that Iraq was not cooperating (which they were not) and therefore never allowed meaningful inspections? Or was he making a naked lie that Hans Blix was not in Iraq for 90 days when of course he was?

It takes an uncharitable reading to make those statements lies, and even then they are ridiculously easy to disprove, as the public record is replete with the physical presence of inspectors during that time. So what would be the purpose of such a lie? Since the simpler explanation does not include lying, and lying does not serve any purpose in this instance, I cannot understand why Bush detractors insist statements like that are lies.

The Bush-lied accusations remind me of the very real problems that the Bush team actually had. The Bush team had a template and they read all of the available data into their template, reducing the weight of counter-data and increasing the weight of pro-data. Therefore, they incompetently blundered into the Iraq business, no deception required. Perhaps that makes the world a scarier place, because blundering can happen to anyone. Better to assume they were lying because that can only come from someone that you already know in your heart is evil, so now that Bush is gone the sun will shine and the roses will be pretty again.

The problem is, that to see the Bush-Iraq business as lying, you have to have a template ready and read all supporting data into your template while ignoring any counter data. This is an engine for bad decisions, as we have seen vividly demonstrated.[/quote]

I think some of the events you refer weren't current events to the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Having questions and problems with Iraq having the weapons that were talked about is not the problem. Going to the UN and getting a resolution requiring inspections is not at issue. But then when the inspectors do go in and are doing the inspections and Iraq is in compliance there's no reason to invade at that time. To then order the inspectors out and invade, and then say Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in, well that's a lie.

It's like the night I watched the State of the Union Address and Bush said, among other things, that the aluminum tubes were for a nuclear centrifuge. Many already knew this wasn't true as it had been discussed for weeks before the State of the Union. It was already known to be false and yet he still said it. it's more than just being inartful.

On top of all this, the neo-conservative ideology presents us with what turned out to be a false view of the world. Neo-conservatives talked about a "reverse" domino theory. Once Iraq fell then the rest of the middle east would fall one by one. I believe they actually created more enemies than we had before. Another is that once the US demonstrated it's power "shock and awe", our "enemies" would quickly bow down to the US. That isn't what happened. Another one was that once people in the middle east held elections, they would choose the US backed candidates. Instead they were shocked by the results. They thought that securing cheaper oil was the only way to "preserve the American way of life". They were wrong here as well. Time for a new template.

Mac

In the 90 days that he let them in (seems a short time to go to war in, which is not to Bush's credit) they found banned weapons in two locations (empty chemical warheads and missiles with excessive range) which Iraq had explicitly claimed were destroyed.

Irrelevant - we are talking about whether the claims made by Bush that Saddam did not let inspectors into Iraq following Resolution 1441 are false.

Is he talking about specific sites? Is he trying inartfully to indicate that Iraq was not cooperating (which they were not) and therefore never allowed meaningful inspections? Or was he making a naked lie that Hans Blix was not in Iraq for 90 days when of course he was?

From some site:
"Did Saddam 'deny the inspectors'? In the most technical sense, he did. Saddam was not 100% compliant every day at every site. This is how Bush gets away with misleading the public, he wraps a blatantly false premise which conveys his message around a miniscule piece of the truth.

We can endlessly debate the logics and semantics of this but I think the simplest thing to do is look at the intent and effect of Bush's rhetoric. Bush's obvious intent is to lead his audience to a conclusion not supported by the facts. Ergo, he is a best a spin doctor.

Personally, I'm not inclined to give him the benefit of being labelled a spin doctor. Listening to his other Iraq rhetoric, how many times have we heard Bush say something along the lines of, "We were attacked on 9/11, so we had to do something about Saddam Hussein." He doesn't state outright that Saddam was behind 9/11, which we know to be untrue, but his implication is clear. As a result, we have a bizarre reality where 20-30% of the American public believes Saddam was behind 9/11 but Bush can claim he never directly linked the two."

Better to assume they were lying because that can only come from someone that you already know in your heart is evil, so now that Bush is gone the sun will shine and the roses will be pretty again.

Or we could pretend that "not allowing inspectors in" is close enough to saying "clearing up weapon sites before UN inspectors get there", and that mentioning Resolution 1441 and then in the immediate following sentence saying "he (Saddam) chose defiance" is actually referring to some period prior to said resolution.

Saddam defied the resolutions, so that is choosing defiance. When you make a positive assertion that you don't have something, and then the inspectors find out you have it, that is a clear violation. That's probably the clearest thing in Bush's muddled statements that you offered.

But he "allowed inspectors in". Taking any specific position regarding those statements requires anyone to debate angels dancing on pinheads, because as you state he's at least a spin doctor, and because it was a very mixed situation.

I don't mean to denigrate age - but how old were you during the 2003 stuff going on? The idea that Saddam was defying the resolution was not controversial at the time. Blix did his best to point out where Saddam was coming close, and France was practically begging Saddam to make at least a colorable showing of following the resolutions. As it turns out, Saddam did just enough to kill the final resolution in the UN, but unfortunately not enough to prevent the war. And it's not clear if he did just a little more that we would have attacked anyway - it's possible we would not have. I would also point out that others in the U.S., including Clinton (the male version) and John Kerry were also making rhetoric about what a severe threat Saddam Hussein was. Bush did not pull this off by himself, or even with only "neo-con" help. The Democrats fled the scene of the "crime" the moment the war became unpopular, but they don't have any alibi if you look at the events leading up to the war.

Bush never said anything about Saddam being involved in 9/11, and Cheney made their case on this very eloquently which I assume you ignored. However, I won't open any more debates on those with you, as I can assume you will disagree so we can just pretend that we had that discussion and disagreed.

Bush is stupid, yet the most brilliant machiavellian schemer that the world has ever known, all in the spotlight of the modern media which the actual machiavelli never had to deal with. Apologies that I can't sign on to that version of reality.

It's clear that there is a large segment of the world that assumes the worst about Bush, and denigrates him at every opportunity and in every way. All he does is wrong because he's stupid, or a liar, or both, or maybe he was just cursed at birth. That's all fine and wonderful - I'm just trying to point out the danger in taking this position.

Bush did not create most of the problems in the world today, and the belief that these problems are caused by Bush or "neo-cons" (I will admit to an immediate suspicious bias of anyone who throws labels around) is to at least delay the day that we can begin to address the problems, and at worst will cause us to allow the problems to grow and fester before we begin to address them.

Where is the critical analysis and skepticism regarding anyone but Bush? Why did everyone suddenly get religion with him? Are we to suffer the occasional Bush-backlash in between stumbling drunkenly to our eloquent feel-good leaders that, as it turns out, also don't solve any problems, also ignore or bias data, and also strip us of rights for the convenience of the moment?

Look what happens? I stay away for a day and still the posts grow longer. Maybe my verbosity is starting to have an influence

In regard to slavery vs. Christianity, I think you've already made an important distinction. American CHATTEL slavery was the institution that fundamentally offended Christian ideals. Throughout the Bible, we see master-servant relationships, including relationships that involve grossly unfair power disparities. It was even possible to "own" slaves in antiquity, just as Americans later owned African slave laborers.

But these institutions were not as pernicious as American chattel slavery. In antiquity, slaves served a variety of purposes. They served around the house, helped with the family farm and even built structures on large government building. Some were conquered enemies. Others were just poor people born into the slave class. They did not always differ racially from their masters. I'm not sure whether the Romans thought of their slaves as "property" in a legal sense, but I can imagine that it would be harder to say a person who looks like you is nothing but a piece of property.

In America, slavery had a harder, nastier edge. First, all slaves were Africans. That carried an assumption that Africans were inferior racially. The mere difference in appearance, language and custom made it easier to think of slaves as "subhuman." Second, African slaves were objects of mass commerce. America was--and to some extent, still is and always will be--an economic experiment. Europeans settled North America for unbridled commercial opportunity and limitless natural resources. In a sense, the whole continent is one vast "plantation" designed to churn out massive profits that would have been unattainable in the Old World. Slaves were considered instruments on this "plantation." They were nothing but "goods" to be bought and sold along with the land, which in turn would generate profits for the owner. In short, these two factors made it easier for early Americans to regard slaves as "subhuman property," rather than people. Last, African slaves were forcibly uprooted from their homes, lashed into ships and transported across the ocean, then dumped in a strange land to work and die. Although slaves throughout history have been seized and taken away, no other slave group has ever been so systematically sought after, or transported so far, under such consistently atrocious circumstances, as the African slaves.

Christ preached that all men are equal before God, and that the first man on earth shall be the last in Heaven. It would have appalled Christ to witness an institution that literally transformed living, breathing human beings into commercial objects. Christ did not see American chattel slavery. Lincoln, however, understood the Gospels. Applying his understanding, he could not help but feel utter revulsion at American chattel slavery. The Constitution provided a theoretical and legal framework in which to employ his Christian ideals. Naturally, Lincoln did not explicitly reference the Bible in his fight against slavery. But I am certain that it was ever-present in his conscience. In his Second Inaugural Address (March 1865), he even said "our God is a living God" who brought freedom to dispossessed people. If that does not show a basic Christian conscience, I do not know what does.

Rufio, I think the South truly believed it had a constitutional right to secede from the Union in 1860-1861. After all, the Constitution says nothing about a State's right to withdraw from the federal compact. In the most basic way, the Constitution is a contract. States agreed to give up some of their sovereign prerogatives in exchange for protection from an overreaching--though limited--federal sovereign. The Constitution explains what powers the new "federal sovereign" has, as well as the limitations on those powers. It also explains what States may and may not do under the "contract." But nowhere does it say a State may or or may not "leave the contract" if it feels the deal has gone wrong. It also says nothing about slavery, at least explicitly. When South Carolina moved to secede in 1860, it thought it was merely canceling a contract that was no longer working. It thought the federal sovereign was overreaching its authority by limiting slavery, so that gave each State a right to cancel the deal.

This may sound like a decent argument. But the Civil War proved that the Constitution is NOT a voidable contract. Once you're in, you're in. If you try to leave, the federal government will FORCE you back into line. Only a full-scale revolution can topple the current constitutional regime. And revolutions don't happen unless LOTS AND LOTS of people are VERY, VERY upset with their lives. We are not there yet

If only we had 1000 food, 1000 wood and 1000 coin...then maybe we could consider a revolution ::/

^^
Very well thought out and good post.

Ah, here it is for all those who doubt that Lincoln thought slavery violated Christian ideals:

(March 4, 1865)

"Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"

A. Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address

(And thank you Danno for that compliment... glad you enjoyed it )

I don't mean to denigrate age - but how old were you during the 2003 stuff going on? The idea that Saddam was defying the resolution was not controversial at the time. Blix did his best to point out where Saddam was coming close, and France was practically begging Saddam to make at least a colorable showing of following the resolutions. As it turns out, Saddam did just enough to kill the final resolution in the UN, but unfortunately not enough to prevent the war. And it's not clear if he did just a little more that we would have attacked anyway - it's possible we would not have. I would also point out that others in the U.S., including Clinton (the male version) and John Kerry were also making rhetoric about what a severe threat Saddam Hussein was. Bush did not pull this off by himself, or even with only "neo-con" help. The Democrats fled the scene of the "crime" the moment the war became unpopular, but they don't have any alibi if you look at the events leading up to the war.

At the time I was 13. Unlike the assumed Democrat heroes you have given me, I opposed the war from the start, and also unlike my newest idol, Barack Obama (whom I pray to every day), I opposed it not because it was a "strategic blunder" but because it was illegitimate and immoral. Believe it or not, not everyone believes the end justifies the means, but I guess it's a bit much to expect a great country like the United States to worry about a few UN Charters. As Chomsky puts it, "If Washington achieves its goals, then its actions are justified. Reactions are quite different when Vladimir Putin succeeds in pacifying Chechnya, to an extent well beyond what Gen. David Petraeus has achieved in Iraq. But that is THEM, and this is US. Criteria are therefore entirely different."

Bush is stupid, yet the most brilliant machiavellian schemer that the world has ever known, all in the spotlight of the modern media which the actual machiavelli never had to deal with. Apologies that I can't sign on to that version of reality.

I think Bush just does what he's told, tbh. It's the team surrounding him which masterminded the whole Iraq thing. Bush just reads the speeches and answers the scripted interviews.

Bush did not create most of the problems in the world today, and the belief that these problems are caused by Bush or "neo-cons" is to at least delay the day that we can begin to address the problems, and at worst will cause us to allow the problems to grow and fester before we begin to address them.

I actually agree with this. Bush was just being consistent with US foreign policy, post-WW2.

jonesk:
I think it's cool that you are thinking so deeply about your world when you are so young. I don't agree with all of your opinions, but that's why discussion is so much fun.

I was making points to both you and Macabee at the same time, so some of those points are not directed to you. However, I will try to be careful about making assumptions about what people think when they have not stated what they think.

Cheers,
Indy / Steve

@Kaiser:
Well stated on the Confederacy bit. It was clearly a legal question before 1860, but the "courts" decided on that one. As a practical matter, states have no right to secede. As a philosophical matter, I'm not convinced that's the correct answer (although I'm not convinced it isn't either).

I don't doubt what Lincoln thought about Christ, I was merely speculating about what Christ really would have thought. There is no question that American slavery was different than almost anything preceding it, but I'm unconvinced Christ would attack the institution. I'm certain he would attack the implementation.

[quote=""IndyBrit""][quote=""Sporting_Lisbon""]Yes, europeans shouldn't trust so much in the american government right? :p[/quote]

Europeans should not trust the U.S. government. They should also not trust the European governments.[/quote]

The us goverment = untrustwhorty for any european. it doesn't matter what president they have. Ecomical crisis is also for the larger part the fault of the american fincancial sector. So american institutions = don't trust them.

i'm not speaking about the common american of cource

indy you can't really begin to talk about a person opinions who existed 2000 years ago. The information about chirst is to limited.