Some of you may have heard or seen a variation of this before, but I believe this is his latest.  Worth a read.

Go Robin!!!!

YA GOT TO LOVE HIM....A MUST READ...PLEASE DO YOURSELF A FAVOR....READTHIS!
The Plan!
?

Robin Williams, wearing a shirt that says "I love New York " in Arabic.

You gotta love Robin Williams......Even if he's nuts! Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan. What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.

Robin Williams' plan...(Hard to argue with this logic!)

"I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's one plan."

1. "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good ' ole' boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2. We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany , So uth Korea , the Middle East, and the Philippines They don't want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence..

3. All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave .. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of wh om or where they are. They're illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4. All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will be allowed in If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

5. No foreign "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home baby.

6. The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. This will include developing nonpolluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for awhile .

7. Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8. If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides m ost of what we give them is stolen or given to
   the army. The people who need it most get very little, if anything.

9. Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

10. All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer. The Language we speak is ENGLISH..learn it...or LEAVE...Now, isn't that a winner of a plan?

"The Statue of Liberty is no longe r saying "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece of me?' "

I got this as an E mail,..........makes sense to me,........mostly.   sackrat.

Heh.  I agree with some of it...especially the parts about the UN. 

Hell! I agree with all of it, but only if it's applies to MY country!

(We on Mars - that means just me, guys! - already have this policy/plan)

Robin Williams for president...lol

I should hope thats not meant to be serious cuz thats about the biggest load of bullcrap political ideas i've heard in a long time... :blink:

And thats whats wrong with the world, take a big problem and make it a joke so we can laugh intead of crying...the mans an idiot!

*(We on Mars - that means just me, guys! - already have this policy/plan)

*I dunno if yer alone there Bryster. An ex-Imagine user who moved to LW does  an awful lot of 3D photos from there...LOL...a New Yorker I believe.. ...

I get forwarded email of this ilk every day. When will humans ever get past this "us" and "them" stuff? Just because someone is born one foot past an arbitrary line in the dirt doesn't mean anything. Imagine all the people living life in peace... and it still hasn't sunk in.

LOFLMAO! I agree with 6,7,8 and 9 all else is total left-wing commie, liberal, rosy eyeglass view, utopian young college minded BS to which I do not agree. 

Quest

Oh Stop sitting on the fence, Quest and tell us what you really think!!! :lol:

LOL...yes, I do say so myself...what else?

Quest

I agree with everything said by Robin Williams above.  Especially bring the troops home and put them on the border.  Send the illegal aliens home to ruin their own countries.

1. By far not all of these points are very good... Iraq is less safe and less stable now then it was under Hussein. The whole thing with Milosevic went combined with ethnic cleansing, how fun!
   Russia... hmm.. wasnt that the country the US nearly started a nucleair war with? Oh lordy, I'm just thrilled about the way the US deals with Russia...

2. If this goes combined with setting up a proper hand-over to more local nations who might have a clue about cultural and religious factors involved instead of just plain running from the problems the US created... sure, go right ahead :-)

3. Illegals should be reviewed before deciding who to throw out. Those who've been able to form a life and are productive to society shouldn't be forced to lose everything just because US administration failed to get them out of the country before. In many cases they've had years and years to arrange such a thing. Don't punish the ones that try to be productive for your own administrative incompetence. (same goes for all those other countries, including my own, which bug about illegals. If those people are really that bad, dont friggen wait 5 years or more to kick them out!)

4. Yea total removal of the cheap labor segment will be SO good for the economy! (not)
   And what constitutes a terrorist nation?? There are terrorist cells all over the world, including inside the US itself! And wow, wont all those innocent non-radical people be thrilled to be downgraded to some kind of lower being unworthy of witnessing the awesome superiority of a country that would collaps if it wasnt for THEIR oil.

5. Most students need to save up money for a few years before they even can afford studying abroad, a 21 y/o age limit would make studying abroad even more of a 'rich elite' previlige. And  yea, sure, go ahead and attack the foreigners for being possible bombers when you cant even keep your own damn students who are younger then 21 from shooting up their schools!

6. Oh yea, go ahead, why dont u build a few uranium enrichment facilities and such to support a new nucleair power grid, the rest of the world will really enjoy that considering the amount of times you go paranoid when anyone else works on anything nucleair.

7. Europe and asia will gladly take the excess oil while you all go financially bankrupt :-)

8. I guess new orleans was an example of how well the US manages such situations ;-) those people were drowning in food within a matter of days!

9. The US already managed to get itself excluded from just about every significant rule out there... whats the damn difference really?

10. The land of plastic fantastic needs even more "pressure to be perfect" on its new generation?

Nobodys perfect.  Charity begins at home.  My country is NOBODYS ROLE MODEL.  The politicians no longer fear the people who have elected them and ignore them in favor of serving  big corporations.   Our involvment in Iraq is all about corporate moneymaking.  We have tried to tell the rest of the world how to live for far too long.  Let Americans put their money in buying America back from Saudi Arabia and China/Wal Mart.

that, i can agree on :-) except for the part where america is owned by china and saudi arabia :-P

As a side note on the isolationist temper in this country, a front page article in today's Scottsdale paper says the local racetrack may have to shut down because all the groomers are about to be deported. Their work permits are buried under a pile of applications. Yup, bad people, getting up early every morning to muck out stalls, and work horses for a paycheck no one else could live on.. definitely need to get these scarey people out of here. Good grief. Whoever called me a "young" leftist radical... um... not. ;) You want radical? I actually believe in what's written on the Statue of Liberty.

If a business cannot operate unless they hire illegal help by paying them under the table with a lower wage than is legally allowed, then they do not deserve to stay in business.

Paying brown skinned people a lower wage than you would pay white skinned people is RACIST.

Quote - Paying brown skinned people a lower wage than you would pay white skinned people is RACIST.

No. Rascism is categorizing people by the color of their skin, like you just did.
It is not believing that it doesn't matter what color or nationality that someone belongs too, like Scanmead.

I dont think the practical point is a matter of skin color really. It's a practical matter of who wants to do work for a certain amount of money, and who wants to pay a certain amount of money for work to be done.
Fact of the matter is, most of us simply don't want to pay enough money for certain jobs to even be possible in a well-payed setting. We should be grateful that there are people willing to work hard for little pay.
I'm not saying they should earn less then the law requires, they really shouldnt, but fact is, without this group of people, which really comes with many different skin colors, a lotta work would not get done.

btw, lets not accuse each other of racism. I'm sure most of us here have  good intentions with their opinions and dont intend to negatively label people based on their origins.

I'll second that. It's not where people come from, it's what's in their heart. Just think what a different place this world would be with just one concept actually put into practice: thou shalt not kill. How liberating would that be?

If the job is worth twelve dollars an hour to get done, then pay WHOMEVER fills that job the twelve dollars an hour.  Don't try to get by paying someone who doesn't know any better five dollars an hour to do the job and pocket the rest as profits.  All while enjoying an unfair advantage over those businesses who operate LEGALLY.

Jobs are worth whatever pay someone is willing to work for.
Same way as something is worth whatever you can sell it for.
And if you can underbid the opponent to get a contract; well that is business.
Let the market (be it jobs, or retail, or real estate, whatever) decide prices.

And I didn't accuse anyone of being racist. Just pointing what racism is: categorizing people by the color of the skin.
I actually like UVDan quite a bit, and have a lot of respect for him.

wow, did someone just bring back the OT forum? I was gettin' nostalgic there for a moment..;)

Robin Williams is a funny guy...   I used to enjoy listening to him on cable during the 80's...   I could'nt get enough of him...

Listening to him is like trying to drink water from of a fire hose!   Everything he says sounds like reflections from a smashed mirror,,,,

There is a lot of "truths" and gibberish in it as well..  The whole thing is part Conservative, part liberal, part libertarian and part anarchist,,,  

a little of everything to please everyone...  very funny!!,, 

not very realistic...

Geez,...............seems like I'm a real rabble rouser huh ? Actually I think most of what Mr Williams was saying was only partly a joke. The whole argument of whether illegals or "undocumenteds" have a right to work or not is moot,..........the point is that they are here in the U.S. illegally. This country was founded on the rule of law.  In my area in Virginia and in point of fact, the whole of Northern Virginia illegals are a real problem and pose a serious obstacle  to American citizens in the workforce. To those who say tough crap,........well, it isn't happening to you is it ? Label me a racist if you want. I would say that crying "racist" is the last refuge of those who have no valid argument.  As far as American "interference" in the internal politics of soveriegn nations,.......well, sometimes it is justified and sometimes not. Afghanistan may be justified,.......as is certainly not the case in Iraq. The taliban governent subjigated women and minorities to the point of murder. They did provide aid and comfort to terrorists, and I did not see any of their Arab bretheren rushing to put a stop to it.  I have always liked what Sir Edmund Burke (at least I think it was him) had to say "all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." End fo my rant. Now,........will one of the Mods please lock this thread ?

The big problem with illegal immigrants is that at times, they're accepted because they turn out economically useful, or we've simply been incompetent at enforcing the rules we made.
Then at other times we suddenly change our opinion and come to te conclusion that they've become a problem.
At this point a new ethic dilemma occurs, because our previous actions cause a situation in which enforcing the rule several years late, greatly increases the severity of the impact of the law-enforcing actions.

In the case where we've chosen not to enforce the rule for a while, we introduce the following factors:

• By not enforcing the rule, we've allowed these people to get a life in our country, one where they have family, friends, children who were born and raised in our own country. They did not have anything to lose here upon arrival, however, they do now, and we've actively encouraged this.
• By allowing these people to build a life here, we've encouraged them to put less effort into keeping up their old contacts and networks, encouraged them to leave oppertunities back in their previous country in favor of oppertunities here. We've made going back to be more difficult for them now then it was upon their original arrival.

In the case where we've been incompetent at enforcing the rules, a similar pattern has occured. We might not have actively encouraged it, but we're still partly responsible for it, as it has been through our inaction that we've enabled for these things to happen.

So on one side, they've got a lot to lose here, and on the other they've got little left ánd little to earn back at their old place (less then they had upon their arrival here). And all this as a direct consequence of our own decision ór incompetence to send them back sooner.
In essence this means that throwing these illegal immigrants out of the country years after they came into our country, has become a far greater punishment then throwing them out of the country straight on arrival. An increase which we're at least partially accountable for!

Existing illegal immigrants are simply not the same situation as incomming illegal immigrants, thus it is only logical we apply different action as well...

**The big problem is anyone can just walk across the border here in Arizona.  The illegal immigration has to STOP.  The border has to be closed.  Then we can address what to do with those who are already here.  Committing murders, rapes, drive by shootings, kidnappings, driving without insurance, stealing cars.  Arizona has the highest auto insurance rates in the US due to the uninsured illegal aliens and the high auto theft from illegals taking our cars whole and in pieces back to Mexico.  Yes they are looking for a better life.... by stealing from Legal Americans.  Just the other day they caught a Serial Rapist of teenage girls.   He was an illegal alien.  A few weeks ago they caught a serial killer.  Another illegal alien.    They take from America far more than they give back to it.  America will soon be a third world country if illegal immigration  is allowed to continue unchecked.

Here is something else that sucks.  Legal Americans have to give their social security number when applying for a house loan.  Bank of America among others are now giving housing loans to illegal aliens WITHOUT MAKING THEM PRESENT A SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER.   That is discrimination.    If a Legal American has to have a social security number to secure a loan, then the same condition should apply to illegal aliens.**

im not even gunna comment on the immigrants vs. crime rate thing.. way too complicated and sensetive a topic

It is not immigrants who run the crime wave up.   It is ILLEGAL immigrants.  People keep forgetting there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between the two.

Well, we have the extreme opinions from 2 Arizonans here. ;) Born in Tucson, I just don't see the border at all. The only thing that bothers me is the people the unauthorized immigrants have to deal with to get here. Did you know it costs thousands of dollars to go through the citizenship process? The huge influx of people moving here from California has caused more problems in a few years than decades of people moving from Mexico. The California migration has caused housing prices to more than double. BTW, the insurance rates in Boston are much worse than Arizona. I've unwittingly worked with illegals both here and in my short stay in California (Sub-contractors), both from Mexico and the Phillipines. I didn't get shot, robbed or sold drugs. Guess, I'm still trying to say that there are good people, and bad, from every place, speaking every language, and I'm not letting bureaucratic rules and arbitrary lines on a map make judgements for me.

An opened market based on free enterprise negotiated in good faith is the goal of a free and opened society founded on capitalism and its workers are indentured by good paying wages and benefits which help in establishing the nuclear family allowing it to enjoy the benefits of its society such as good health and education and the promise of a better future, in other words the original American dream.

When it is not negotiated in good faith and benefits only the capitalist it is called enslavement, at its worst, and exploitation, at its best, and it is this latter condition which is perpetuating the situation to which UVDan is eluding to and I fully agree with him. It is the only reason the borders of this great country are left opened to allow illegal aliens to compete with the middleclass worker in an effort to bring down the latter's hard earned, negotiated and established wages and benefits. Thereby dismantling a system that has been in place since the 1930s which propelled this country to greatness. It infuses the working class with distrust for one another and their government and causes division amongst themselves and fogs their view for a better future. Not to mention the huge burden they impose socially and economically to legal hard working, tax paying members of our society.

The illegal alien crime wave is most definitely a blatant ugly fact throughout this country and the left wingers don't want you to know about it. Here are a few nuggets to help open your eyes:

ON CRIME:

"The LAPD's ban on immigration enforcement mirrors bans in immigrant-saturated cities around the country, from New York and Chicago to San Diego, Austin, and Houston. These "sanctuary policies" generally prohibit city employees, including the cops, from reporting immigration violations to federal authorities.

Such laws testify to the sheer political power of immigrant lobbies, a power so irresistible that police officials shrink from even mentioning the illegal-alien crime wave…

o In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

o A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

o The leadership of the Columbia Lil' Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.'s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation…

New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans-four of them illegal-abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS."

The Illegal-Alien Crime Wave

Heather Mac Donald

http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_1_the_illegal_alien.html

"*  On 13-Nov-2005, Brian Jackson, a Dallas policeman was shot and killed by an illegal alien, Juan Lizcano. Lizcano had become drunk and went to the home of his ex-girl-friend to threaten her. As the police pursued Lizcano after he fled the woman's home, he shot Officer Jackson, who died later in the hospital. Officer Jackson was remembered by his fellow police as someone who loved his job and always went the extra mile.

• Then, there is Jorge Hernandez, a.k.a. Jorge Soto, who killed Min Soon Chang, an 18-year-old college freshman, in a terrible head-on wreck while Hernandez was driving drunk. He had been arrested 3 previous times for drunk driving in 3 other states, and he had been deported to Mexico 17 times!  Why aren't illegal aliens aren't deported instantly after being arrested for drunk driving?

*  Debbie Thomas, who was the mother of three, was killed in a head-on collision on Christmas Eve 2003 when her car was struck by a car being driven in the wrong direction by illegal alien, Narciso Garcia-Jimenez. He later escaped from his hospital bed and is still at large. The car he drove had no inspection sticker and was registered to another person. When Debbie's mom learned that her daughter's killer survived and escaped after being treated at the hospital, she said she felt "angry, bitter and sad, all at once."

*  In Atlanta, Georgia: Mexican Miguel Carrasco raped a female victim in front of her four year old child and two minors; California Mexican Zacarias Camacho committed lewd acts upon a child under 14; El Salvadoran Oswaldo Martinez raped, sodomized and murdered a 16 year old; MS-13 gang member Reinaldo Ramos convicted of 2nd degree sexual offense for brutal gang rape of 16 year old girl.

*  Jose Ramirez is every father's nightmare. The illegal alien beat up a 15-year-old girl after whistling at her. He broke her nose, fractured a bone in her face and produced cuts requiring 30 stitches. The man worked in construction in Spotsylvania, Virginia, where the attack occurred, and resisted arrest to the point where police had to taser him.

*  Jose Raul Pena, earlier deported for cocaine possession, used his little daughter as a human shield in an hours-long Los Angeles shootout with police on July 10. Pena and Suzie were both killed. During the incident, Pena used a 9-millimeter Beretta pistol which had been stolen last year in a burglary in Oregon. His office at the car dealership contained a bag of cocaine and a half-drunk bottle of Tequila - consistent with the illegal Pena's previous deportation for cocaine possession. Videotape captured images of Pena shooting at the police while holding his daughter, yet his relatives are questioning not only whether he used his daughter as a shield, but whether he was even armed at all, according to the Los Angeles Times.

*  Esmerelda Nava, age 4, was recently strangled, molested and killed by an illegal alien who had been deported in 2003. The accused killer is Cornelio Rivera Zamites, who had been residing in Gainsville, Georgia. Esmerelda went with her parents to visit the 24-year-old Zamites. At some point late Saturday night, the child's mother realized the girl was missing. A police officer found her body early the next morning in nearby woods. An article of Zamites clothing was close by and he was gone. Zamites had been deported for driving under the influence, as well as having no license or insurance. At least his illegal status was duly noted.

*  The nation's highways have become far more dangerous since they have been turned into smuggling thruways for criminals. Nineteen-year-old Travis Smith of Mesa, Arizona, was killed in 2002 by a carload of illegal aliens being smuggled to Pennsylvania. The accident occurred near Monticello in southeastern Utah, as the car driven by illegal alien smuggler Isidro Aranda-Flores plowed head-on into Smith's 1966 Mustang. The smuggler apparently fell asleep at the wheel.

*  In Los Angeles (year 2004), 95% of over 1200 outstanding warrants for homicide and 67% of 17,000 fugitive felony warrants are for illegal aliens.

*  PHOENIX: Television and radio stations began running ads in the Valley last week, paid for by the Coalition United to Secure America, attributing the 45% increase in homicides and 41% increase in home invasions to illegal aliens. Phoenix Police Department reports confirm those figures and Sgt. Tony Morales believes there is no doubt that the statistics are tied to illegal aliens.

*  12/31/2002: Six-month figures revealed a 3.3% increase in violent crime in California, including a 16% rise in homicides, over the same span in 2001.

*  In 2001, 87% of deportable aliens who received run letters later disappeared; a number that  was even higher (94%) for illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring countries.

*  According to statistics by the Salt Lake City Police Department (and verified by an independent study), 80% of all drug crimes in the City are committed by illegal aliens. In Salt Lake County, the equivalent number is 50%. That's why Congressman Cannon is on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. He is working to insure that interior states, like Utah, are not overlooked in the war on illegal immigration.

*  John Mullaly a former NYPD homicide detective, states 70% of the drug dealers and other criminals in Manhattan's Washington Heights are were illegal aliens."

One Simple Idea Blog

http://one-simple-idea.com/

ON EDUCATION:

"The 1.5 million school-aged illegal immigrants residing in the United States and their 2 million U.S.-born siblings can be divided among the states using government estimates of the illegal alien population...

The calculation of the number of children of illegal aliens in the K-12 public school system indicates that more than 15 percent of California's students are children of illegal aliens, as are more than ten percent of the students in Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, and Texas. More than five percent of the students are the children of illegal aliens in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, and Washington…

According to the Congressional Budget Office, making illegal alien students eligible for federal tuition assistance through Pell grants would have cost $195 million in 2003 and $362 million over the 2003-2006 period…

Conclusion

All of our children-native-born and immigrants alike-are receiving a poorer education as a result of the federal government passing its immigration law enforcement failures on to the states. The implications for the coming generations of workers, our future economy, and our long-term competitiveness in the world cannot be ignored."

Federation for American Immagration Reform

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_researchf6ad

ON HEALTHCARE:

"The influx of illegal aliens has serious hidden medical consequences. We judge reality primarily by what we see. But what we do not see can be more dangerous, more expensive, and more deadly than what is seen.

Illegal aliens' stealthy assaults on medicine now must rouse Americans to alert and alarm.2 Even President Bush describes illegal aliens only as they are seen: strong physical laborers who work hard in undesirable jobs with low wages, who care for their families, and who pursue the American dream.

What is unseen is their free medical care that has degraded and closed some of America's finest emergency medical facilities, and caused hospital bankruptcies: 84 California hospitals are closing their doors. "Anchor babies" born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.

What is seen is the illegal alien who with strong back may cough, sweat, and bleed, but is assumed healthy even though he and his illegal alien wife and children were never examined for contagious diseases.

By default, we grant health passes to illegal aliens. Yet many illegal aliens harbor fatal diseases that American medicine fought and vanquished long ago, such as drug-resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, plague, polio, dengue, and Chagas disease.

What is seen is the political statistic that 43 million lives are at risk in America because of lack of medical insurance.8 What is unseen is that medical insurance does not equal medical care. Uninsured people receive medical care in hospital emergency departments (EDs) under the coercive Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA), which obligates hospitals to treat the uninsured but does not pay for that care. Also unseen is the percentage of the uninsured who are illegal aliens. No one knows how many illegal aliens reside in America. If there are 10 million, they constitute nearly 25 percent of the uninsured. The percentage could be even higher."

Illegal Aliens and American Medicine

Madeleine Pelner Cosman Ph.D., Esq.

http://www.sendemback.org/essays/authors/madelein/medicine.htm

ON WELFARE:

"On average, illegal households pay more than $4,200 a year in all forms of federal taxes. Unfortunately, they impose costs of $6,950 per household."

The High Cost of Cheap Labor
Illegal Immigration and the Federal Budget

Center for Immigration Studies

http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

Scanmead, I've heard your same argument when I first traveled to the Oregon state in the early millennium and they too imparted the same concern of interstate migration into their state as entrenchments. And so why do you think they are moving out? Further, You express concern over immigrants spending thousands of dollars to become US citizens but that has always been the case. Why should it be any different now? At least then we knew who was coming into the country with good intentions and who the legal citizens are.

I believe it is traitorous and disgraceful to say the least that the so-called government of the people has allowed itself to be placed in the most embarrassing and compromising position of being systematically bought out by the corporate money mongers and have placed its legal workers in peril of losing their jobs and their futures.

Some of the other babble in this post is hardly even worth the justification of arguing over. It's the same old tired, jingoistic, left wing rhetorical dribble with little or no bases in fact or truth as seen from the dubious perspective best suited to bring its derisive message across.

I believe both wars are most certainly justifiable but the question of why the UN on its own unfathomable wisdom didn't pressure Iraq into getting in-line with the rest of the world after all the broken resolutions and Iraq firing on coalition forces after the no-fly zone after the initial Iraq war, when it attempted to usurp Kuwait for its own oil domination seems to be above reproach.

Further, I believe the Pakistani government should be made to answer for not flushing out the slime from its northwestern provinces which hold the displaced Taliban government from Afghanistan and almost most certainly the pig and murderer Usama Bin Laden while the US has given them billions of dollars while US citizens get no help from the government when it comes to the impoverished and elderly.

And what's wrong with O.T. and self-expression? I figure I'm just as much an American as Robin Williams and if he can express himself so can I.

Quest

I've come to realization that I can't really discuss what I think about politics on this forum without offending too many people.
I will be guided by the principle of 'nothing good to say; say nothing'; and leave it at that.

Sorry Dvlenk6 but truth matters. And yes you are right, this is not the proper web site to investigate political differences. Thank you for your indulgence.

Quest

First of all, let me say that no opinions here upset me, and I don't mean to argue with anyone. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, and I'm a radical from way back, insisting on free expression of independent thought. That said, I'm totally a-political. No political party or bent is going to dictate anything. I simply see humans as a species to which I belong, a lot of times with a great deal of sorrow. Migration of people pre-dates history, and is likely to cease about the time people stop killing each other, ie never. The specific crimes cited are horrible, but one could also list, crime for crime, such things committed by people born on this side of the border. The same goes for people who cost the government money. The poor are born, and made, everywhere. Immigrants in any country at any time are always looked upon with suspicion and usually find work at the lowest levels. A shameful example are the (legal) Irish immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "No Irish need apply" isn't just the name of a song. I hate to even bring it up, but the ultimate villification of "outsiders" was seen during the 1930's and 1940's in Germany. It was shockingly easy to convince entire countries all their problems could be blamed on one ethnic group. It ain't gonna happen, but I can dream of the day when language, dress, birthplace, cuisine and religion don't matter as much as who the person is inside.

Quote:
*"It ain't gonna happen, but I can dream of the day when language, dress, birthplace, cuisine and religion don't matter as much as who the person is inside."

Well I agree with you.. and here is something to ponder about concerning that dream...

And this is just a short list of the crimes being committed. We are discussing illegal aliens. We are not talking about crimes committed by citizens. We have laws in this country and when they are broken a jury of their peers who also happen to be citizens themselves deals with the lawbreakers accordingly. All nations have to deal with internal crimes and there really is no need to import more crime when there are existing laws already on the books to stop illegals but isn’t being enforced for no other reason than personal greed. And I wasn’t only pointing out the blatant crime wave, which most choose to ignore but also the obvious economic burden placed squarely on the shoulders of the taxpayers.

It never ceases to amaze me when the conversation of illegal aliens comes up ideologues promptly point an accusatory finger and bring out the obligatory discrimination banner. Somehow it becomes lost in the translation that no one is saying they don’t have a right to be here. By all means, come but come legally and assimilate into your adopted country and follow its laws so that we can all prosper. For your information I too have been called a rebel, in fact many of my friends still consider me one and I also happen to be Hispanic and also an Independent and follow no partisanship. I pay close attention to the problems, listen to all sides then makeup my mind on where I stand. Further, I am a pragmatist and I do not delude myself with utopian visions and fantasies of what “coulda-shoulda” been. I live in the here and now using the deck of cards handed me.

Quest

By the way, terrorists should not be feared, they are incredibly useless, ineffectual scumbags. If you live in the West, your vastly more likely to die form a plane simply crashing from malfunction than terrorism, and plane crashes are really rare, compared ot # of flights.

There have only been three major terrorist atrocities in the USA, while Sept 11th was bad, remember, 50,000 die on the roads every year! By which comparison, 9/11 is a minor problem, like it or not. Sept 11 was a one off, but 50,000 die every year just because of road traffic accidents, most of which are caused by gross negligence b y fellow citizens.

The worst thing terrorism does, is grind folk down, ruin life and fill you full of hate and fear, which is exaclty what terrorists want, because they are useless scumbags. SImilar professional military unit woudl wreck vaslty greater carnage, if they so chose, which they don't, cause professional soldiers rarely see any need ot slaughter civilians.

Note I live in the UK, been bombed by scumbags for over 100 years, and we're sitll here, stuff 'em all! :D

Enjoy life, folks, you could die tomorrow or live life in pain! Enjoy :)

While I applaud Quest's epic post and sit in shock at what I have read, I find it amazing that even now, as America decides who its next president will be, no one has had the guts to challenge the incumbant with questions about the legality of  his office and how he got to sit in it.

As long as corruption is prevelent in the highest of offices there will never be a satisfactory solution to America's multitude of problems.

Enough said.
I think it's time to close this thread and do what we do best. Render something!

“…as America decides who its next president will be, no one has had the guts to challenge the incumbant with questions about the legality of  his office and how he got to sit in it.”

Bryster, that’s because that particular conspiracy theory has long been debunked here and no one can proof it. In fact, if you follow the theory’s logic it happened twice that the majority of Americans voted for him (he’s been in office two terms now…8 years). I’m personally no fan of Mr. Bush but how do you figure that happened? Do you think for one minute that if the Democratic party had any inkling of said conspiracy it wouldn’t be used to impeach him in a heartbeat? A conspiracy that large would certainly leave a trail and many loose ends untied, an enticing meal for a well-equipped and hungry predator.

Yes Silverblade protecting our borders against the infiltration of terrorists should have been top priority since 9/11 and little of that has been mentioned. But I take issue when natural tragedies are compared to wanton terrorist massacres of innocent people.

Quest

Quest: According to a tv documentry transmitted in the UK, and they have to be good to be transmitted here, it was recorded that just before the presidential election in Florida, the mechanical voting machines were 'overhauled' by a government worker. It has been established that he did in fact sabotage those machines. To wit, those machines either broke down or damaged voting papers meaning that 10,000 votes, mainly from black voters were disallowed.

In the period in which votes were cast, ie: voting day, every News Organisation as I understand it, was watching the exit poles and the count. Towards the end of the event, Fox news suddenly announced that Bush had won the election - when in fact at the time this was not possible - the other News Channels, hearing Foxes announcement thought that if Fox had the result then they were lagging behind and of course FOX MUST be right, and then followed with similar announcemnts. Bush won! 
Who pushed Fox's button? A lady either related to the Bush family or having dealings with the Bush party politic.

However, in the following weeks several statements/complaints were madeby citizens in Congress citing the lost votes in Florida - currently run by Bush's cousin - each requireing the signiture of just ONE senator. Had any of these been signed then the complaint/s would have been investigated, but NOT ONE Senator signed any of the complaints which were subsequantly disallowed/rejected by Congress.

It was payback for the 2000 election, when 4 out of 5 dead men in the state of Florida voted for Al Gore...

Those elections were stolen and on the last elections the higher courts stopped the counting and gave the election to Bush...  something unprecedented under those particular circumstances... The blacks and Hispanic voters were disenfranchised...    no, not a fairy tale...

----The new touch screen machines is just another way to try and steal more elections..   but maybe I'm paranoid... 
 
BTW  there is no Voter fraud...   it is Vote counting fraud...  Voter fraud happens so very infrequent it is not a problem.. (if it happens at all)

----Katrina was both a testing ground and a gift to developers like the Carlyle group people.... they used ,Black Water, to test the eventual plan to put a privatized army on our soil...  With the help of the Carlyle corp..  heavily soaked in formaldehyde trailer homes were built for the people that wanted to stay behind and get back their property..  Now many have fallen sick..
I have heard people say that those who permanently left their homes can be called "the smart ones"...   I think it is cold and heartless thinking..
(perhaps i'm too liberal)

--- All of our mainstream t.v. and radio news stations is privately owned..
(by one entity) You think we could get the truth from any of those news organizations... ?
we are dreaming if we think so...

---Our system has been corrupted...  just look at the housing market..

---This Replublic is being sold out right from under everyones noses... if the chips were to be called in today, by the lenders, we would be in deep cow dung.. This financial black hole we are in today, is not a travesty from the need to have money to run our country's everyday business...   this is out of a well executed and thought out plan...  The occupation in Irag being a chess move...  to ultimately create a world unified economy... 
ie.. ever heard of the North American Trade Union..? 

---The powers the be wants you to be pragmatic in a near sighted way...  anyting three feet ahead and behond is Idealistic, not practical, not patriotic  and a leftist point of view.. 
BTW...  "Liberal" is not the left...  The real left is the communist party....   "Liberal" is the middle... 

If you want to talk about something take a look at this film...
at least everyone can input...

if the link don't work
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

Bryster, I would find better sources for your information.

Boy, you left-wingers sure love your conspiracy theories. I’m sure the “X-Files” series rates really big with you as a source of serious documentation. Guess you really are paranoid after all! Like I said before, I’m not going to justify off-the-wall claims with an argument. If you really want to know what happened then you should see your way clear to attain that information on your own and try to stay away from the tabloids for goodness sake! But just to wet your appetite here’s something from the “prestigious” “The New York Times” considered by many to be liberal oriented for lack of a better word:

“The e-mail messages and Web postings had all the twitchy cloak-and-dagger thrust of a Hollywood blockbuster. "Evidence mounts that the vote may have been hacked," trumpeted a headline on the Web site CommonDreams.org. "Fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines," declared BlackBoxVoting.org…

But while the widely read universe of Web logs was often blamed for the swift propagation of faulty analyses, the blogosphere, as it has come to be known, spread the rumors so fast that experts were soon able to debunk them, rather than allowing them to linger and feed conspiracy theories. Within days of the first rumors of a stolen election, in fact, the most popular theories were being proved wrong - though many were still reluctant to let them go…

And the early Election Day polls, conducted for a consortium of television networks and The Associated Press, which proved largely inaccurate in showing Mr. Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, continued to be offered as evidence that the Bush team somehow cheated…

But while authorities acknowledge that there were real problems on Election Day, including troubles with some electronic machines and intolerably long lines in some places, few have suggested that any of these could have changed the outcome…

For its part, the Kerry campaign has been trying to tamp down the conspiracy theories and to tell supporters that their mission now is to ensure that every vote is counted, not that the election be overturned.

"We know this was an emotional election, and the losing side is very upset," said Daniel Hoffheimer, the lead lawyer for the Kerry campaign in Ohio. But, he said, "I have not seen anything to indicate intentional fraud or tampering." …

A preliminary study produced by the Voting Technology Project, a cooperative effort between the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to a similar conclusion. Its study found "no particular patterns" relating to voting systems and the final results of the election…

"I'd give my right arm for Internet rumors of a stolen election to be true," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, "but blogging it doesn't make it so. We can change the future; we can't rewrite the past."

Vote Fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried

By TOM ZELLER Jr**.**

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/12/politics/12theory.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&oref=slogin

And what’s more liberal than “The Boston Globe”?

“Democrats, I suspect, would also be much more likely to believe that if the Florida recount in 2000 had not been halted by the Supreme Court, Al Gore would have won the state and the election. In fact, a 2001 review of the Florida ballots by a media consortium concluded that both the recount in several Democratic counties that Gore had requested and the statewide recount of undervotes that was actually underway would have given a victory to Bush (though Gore could have won under some other recount scenarios). And, no doubt, far more Kerry supporters than Bush supporters believed Kerry's groundless claim in a campaign stump speech that one million African-American votes weren't counted in Florida.”

Debunking political stereotypes

By Cathy Young

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_
opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/15/debunking_political_stereotypes/

LOL…And I would add, who in the 2000 election in their right mind would vote for the inventor of the Internet Mr. Al Gore?

Oh, let’s not forget the Katrina conspiracy as well. An article from the equally liberal “Washington Post”:

“And who braved the raging winds of Katrina to do the dirty deeds, according to this elegantly named, overly imaginative scribe? He doesn't name names but implies it might have been those seeking "massive opportunities for real estate speculation" and, of course,  "Halliburton." …

…Halliburton's secret deals are open to legitimate question, and the company's no-bid contracts for hurricane reconstruction demand scrutiny. But the theory that there was "massive sabotage" in Katrina's wake is absurd.”

Katrina Conspiracy Theory

By Jefferson Morley 

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/worldopinionroundup/2005/09/katrina_conspiracy_theory.html

Or maybe you would like a larger choice of Katrina conspiracy theories if so then you should check out Wikipedia. They have one in every flavor. My favorite is that God was getting even because of all the legalization of homosexuals but do I believe it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_theories_regarding_Hurricane_Katrina

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…90% of mainstream media is liberal oriented and I have provided non-partisan stats in those posts so if you really need to know then search for them.

Left-wing liberal = communist party (or something close to it). Liberal is not the middle; Liberal is left of middle. You have moderate republicans as you do moderate democrats, they are the middle (the moderates). Then you have the right = conservatives (opposite of liberals) and far right which comprise the ultra conservatives and extremely religious zealots (almost the opposite of the left-wingers and sometimes called the right-wing). Think of it as a spectrum of ideologies from one extreme to another. These are identifying labels, which pigeonhole certain belief practices and are stereotypes of those beliefs but people tend to float between them. Like the labels “man”, “woman”, vertebrate, invertebrate they set a class system in language for purposes of identification and encompass everything in between.

The film…I’m on dial up, no way. If it’s left-wing or right-wing propaganda, I don’t want to waste my time with it. Propaganda is propaganda any way you cut it.

 Quest 

If I pursue such discussions, as these one here, stands out me again and again that always the weakest and poorest people, at all blame what crooked goes is. Do these people have really such power? Is a crime installment, really the correct standard?

If the western industry states would become, for the raw materials measured pays, there would not be so much immigrants either!!!! We, the so-called civilized countries, use the less privileged countries from and only needs the populations of these countries in order to establish there an insignificant infrastructure so that we come at their raw material. Still is simpler and cheaper, as it in, to take, possesses. One should not be surprised, or even fury, against people, develops that also something, from this cake wants to have, we push them to this situation!!!!

And in the case of terrorism...I have more fear to be hurt or killed in case of a car-crash, or a thunderstorm, than by a terror-bomb.

My left-wing conspiracy theory: none of them are that smart or can keep their mouths shut that long. Get enough bureaucrats involved, and whatever it is isn't going to work properly. I do object to being lumped in with Communists, though. It's an organized political body, and, as I said, I'm a-political. I gotta quit here, because I've managed to become totally depressed about the state of mankind in general. We may have made a lot of progress making stuff and building things, but we certainly haven't made much headway getting our minds out of primitive mode.

Quote:
The film…I’m on dial up, no way. If it’s left-wing or right-wing propaganda, I don’t want to waste my time with it. Propaganda is propaganda any way you cut it.

 Quest

With all due respect... this is the problem,,,   Judging something unseeing..   BTW..  You think you are not tainted with some propaganda?  If you know how to copy video off the internet onto a disk, I'll do it and send it to you...  if you are interested ofcourse...

I'm still up to meeting for coffee or at the Brooklyn's museum....

One point, from people elsewhere who worked on the various electronic voting machines themeelves: they are unbelievably CRAP, security wise, I don't just mean bad, I mean STUPIDLY bad, anyone with half a brain can hack them with a a little know how.
Said folk were shocked, badly.

I don't trust any government, anywhere in the world, they will all do whatever they can get away with. Constitutional democracies just help block more of the bad crap, than any other system we've invented. But mine or yours, could easily redo gulags or death camps, or Apollo missions and polio vaccines...good or bad, only takes the right cirumstances and people, and enough idiots to not prevent the bad things.

Quest,
5 million people a year, world wide, are killed by tobacco, 120,000 a year in the UK. Vastly more folk are killed by alcohol and tobacco than by illegal drugs, by an enormous margin (UK death toll from illegal drugs is about 1,600 per annum, and note I am NOT condoning drugs, far from it, alcohol and tobacco are vile drugs almost as bad as heroin, we just refuse to see them as drugs).
-UK Death toll per annum from motor vehicle accidents is over 3,000, USA is over 50,000, and while the media love harking on about the US gun murders, 25,000 are killed by firearms (half the number slaughtered on the roads). Alas I've forgotten the numer of robberies stopped by legal use of firearms vs intruders, even if only to scare 'em off,  but it's enormous something like 150,000 or more.

Point is...folk have very poor thought patterns on many things.
How many folk have you know, killed by terrorism? Unless connected somehow to the Twin Towers, very unlikely indeed (and most of Iraq is NOT terrorism, that's sectarian mass murder & stupidity by numerous idiot factions in the region, sigh, there is a difference between the militias/sectarians/criminals and Al-Qeda)

But how many have you known dead by alcohol, or tobacco, or on the road?

My area is, alas, rife with drugs because of poverty, but I don't know a single aquantaince dead from heroin (though I know 2 folk murdered over drugs). I know 2 heroin addicts, they will probably die in the next decade. I have however, known at least half a dozen dead from alcoholism, and the same or more from smoking.
-I know 2 people killed due to terrorism, and I'm unusual, 1 was school mate who was a soldier killed by the IRA, the other was one of the murders I mentioned, as the other type of Irish scumbag, the loyalist terrorists, have been takign over the drug trade here, by murder. The reality of Irish terrorism is that it's vile, heinous criminality, hidden by retarded patriotism.
But damn few folk in the UK know ANYONE killed by terrorism.

Thus, what's society doing gettign freaked out by a bunch of nitiwit psychos (terrorists)? 
When:

-death from negligent driving and our society's love affair with the car slaughters children en masse, yet one freak kills 16 kids children and guns are banned...eh? Why aren't cars banned then? it maybe the fact folk are foolish...You could easily reduce the vehicle death rate if wanted too, but folk are too greedily in love with the car, including the makers who leverage governments.

-War on drugs is a total failure. It hasn't stopped them at all. UK/USA prison popualtions are sky high, worst in the world basically, and have achieved nothing. yet, legal drugs are posioning society at a horrifying rate. 600 heroin junkies vs 120,000 tobacco junkies per annum. Costs billions to incarcerate,arrest junkies/dealers, billions from thefts and insurance payments from their larceny to pay for their crimes. women debase themselves as prostitues for heroin and get murdered. 

The answer is obvious: legalize all drugs, but clamp down hardon sales/distribution. Go look at Prohibition. We have problem swith alcohol/tobacco because they are sold willy nilly. Here in UK, grocery stores sell certain cheap booze favoured by alcoholics & folk wanting plastered, at BELOW normal rate, as a loss leader. They are encouraging folk to become alcoholics.

-Instead, let each town have only one distribution centre of all drugs, only purchasable by a bank card or like, so only adults can buy them, can be tracked etc. Thus the illegal sellers go out of business, greatly removing their real threat to society from violence, and other activities. Give all addicts their fix freely, it's very cheap compared to the crimes they cause otherwise, much safer to use clean drugs etc, best way to get them off drugs as they can stabilize their lives (proven fact).
etc.

But folk won't accept that. or that if someone is dumb enough to want to use drugs, TOUGH! let 'em, if they are an adult. It's their life to do with as they please, not yours. Much as it sucks to see 'em turn to drugs, it doe smore harm makign them illegal, than trying to get folkto accept how bad drugs are, sensibly. Heroin, alcohol and tobacco  etc = POISONS, only morons use poisonous drugs without a medical reason.
Making drugs illegal has made the situation worse not better.

And again: I hate drugs, I've seen 'em destroy so many folk, and no I do not ever use 'em bar a drink once or twice a year, and that I'm very leery of as I know it's a poison, like all drugs. But the legal drugs are worse than the illegal ones for actual total harm. We need a massive re-think, ASAP.

I find society insane, worrying over terroism and gun/knife crime, when there's much worse going on we choose to ignore.

"Oh we need cars!" no you don't, were you born with a carburettor up yer bum? No! :D 
Driving is a privilege not a right, big difference. Limit all cars ot no more than 55mph, limit their acceleration, and you'd cut a LOT of deaths. Modern cars are simply too powerful for Humans to drive safely, our responses/bodies are not fit for them. The impact energy of a car at 70 mph is about the same as 140 rifle bullets, (1/2 Mass) x (Velocity squared). 
Our advancing technology/laws have been pushing the death rates down, but in the face of advanced lethality of the vehicle itself. Cars can accelerate far faster to higher speeds, now.

-Personally, I'd want a system that automatically sets max speed, according to the area you are in, 20 mph urban, 40 country road, 55 motorway/dual carriage.It IS technically possible. Add in a system to automatically stop a car from starting if it detects alcohol to prevent drunk driving (again it IS possible such systems to exist already). If you cut acceleration as well as high speed you stop a lot of deaths from moronic youngsters, showing off, too stupid to realize the laws of physics and facts of driving. Also, ban anyone under 25 from driving, except under great restriction / control. They need ot learn, but they are also the worst idiots on the roads.
-Note over 60% of vehicle accidents are due to negligence, not genuine accident. many of those are due to drugs (booze mostly), and young morons thinking they can drive fast / accelerate and still handle the car, which they cannot (nor can anyone else in that way without great risk)

Fix drug abuse (legal and illegal), and motor vehicle harm, and you'd do a LOT more good than freak over terrorism. 
So WHAT if some rat bag blows a place up? Same day the're will be more conventional murders, or accident deaths, and vastly more deaths from cars and drugs. 
Terrorists armed with N.B.C. weapons are exception to this, but mostly very easily stopped, actually (you can't make nuke-bio-chem weapons easily!)

Anyway this thread is NOT about digital art....lol! :)

LOL…Scanmead, I understand and I’m sorry. I really wasn’t lumping “YOU” per say as a left-winger in particular. My comments are directed to the wider range generally those at both extremes from the political center be it liberals, left-wing liberals or conservatives and right-wing conservatives. But from the read here there seems to be no response from the conservative sector and the majority partaking in the discussion are either liberal or left-wing oriented so my comments encompass that scope in general. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing either way but from my stand point it makes more sense to apply even temperance towards either the left or the right since most Americans (75-80% by stats) fall somewhere in between and this is why I’m an Independent. I too will be disengaging from posting after this post.

With time one is able to pick up the jargon of either side and see immediately where a person falls within the ideological spectrum. There are certain key wards, jargon, arguments or rhetoric often called political jingoism, which are indicative and recognizable and tall-telling of a person’s political stand.

When I was in college I attended a course on “Media and advertising” in which the students were to view television advertisements and had to pin point what the sponsor was selling and how they were doing it within its allotted 30 seconds. Now I think most people have been subject to some similar course or courses to varying degrees and know what I’m talking about. The most often used motivator was always sex by about 75% of the time in one form or another. This came in handy later when studying political science and logistics, in particular when using logistics and truisms. The professor was politically motivated and often made his logistical examples using politics. “My aunt is fat therefore all aunts are fat”, “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?”…that sort of thing to be simplistic.

Allibaba, yes, I agree that as the world becomes increasingly more depleted in natural resources the more wars there will be unless nations decide either to share or discover alternative means for the same ends. Be it water, food or fuel.

Early in history the Middle Eastern countries Mesopotamia, Syria, Babylonia, Phoenicia, and those in Northern Africa…generally those nations considered the cradle of civilization contributed greatly to human history and civilization. The foundations of many natural sciences, art and philosophy have largely been thought to have originated there, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, music to name a few.

In modern times the governments of many of those nations have decided long ago to keep the riches for the ruling class (much royal bounty has been spent frivolously) and not pass on the riches of their natural resources to their citizens, therefore impoverishing them.

I dread and fear that as the western nations learn and discover alternative means of fuel supplies the Middle East will no longer enjoy the wealth it now enjoys from governing the oil supplies other than by oil by-products. It should not be forgotten that many countries enjoy their own natural resources and the United States is still considered the bread basket of the world and currently enjoys the privilege of feeding many in the world. Most modern Middle Eastern wars are fought over territory or religion. I can only imagine the wars if it ever came to food, water or medicine.

Tom:

“With all due respect... this is the problem,,,   Judging something unseeing”

Tom, you again jump the gun. I said:

“If it’s left-wing or right-wing propaganda, I don’t want to waste my time with it.”

Operative word being “IF”

“BTW..  You think you are not tainted with some propaganda?”

That’s the point, I know propaganda when I see it and really have no great hunger to have it spoon-fed to me by anyone. And I would be more than happy to meet with you anytime...but mind you...I drink tea and whiskey! ;)

Silverblade, as I said before; “I take issue when natural tragedies are compared to wanton terrorist massacres of innocent people.”

Do I really have to discern the difference between natural disasters and human made catastrophes to you? If you live in the modern world more than likely you will have to drive a car. When you drive a car you incur the possibility of being involved in an accident. Insurance companies make their living evaluating these probabilities and charge you accordingly. Same is true when you smoke, take an airplane flight, drink alcohol, do drugs or any number of things that humans decide they want to do with their freedoms.

If you decide you want to shot someone because he stole your girlfriend or because you wanted his money or just because you didn’t like him or her, that’s a criminal act. This is an individual act, you will have to answer accordingly for your crime.

Terrorism is an act of war by an anarchist group or person not officially recognized by any official government elected by its people against an innocent society for the sole purpose of making a statement. Thus this is an act of war and not a crime!

“How many folk have you know, killed by terrorism?”

Well, you must be new here. I lost 21 work colleagues and a 40 year old widow cousin whose four young children had to be transplanted within the family after the tragedy. We had two memorials her and several for my colleagues. The first immediately after the attack when she didn’t come home and the second 6 months later when a positive DNA identification was made from a couple strands of hair and a bit of her tooth was discovered. I will never forget her or those wonderful people I had the pleasure to work with throughout my career.

I myself was within yards of the attack, felt the intensity of the second plane’s resultant fireball blast on my face and suffered several effects; respiratory and short term emotional and psychological effects from watching live people falling to their deaths and I sometimes still wake up feeling like I’m running for my life amongst the falling ash.

So yes, if you weren’t involved, you tend to care less. If you were involved and/or you can truly empathize then you might have a better grasp of what actually transpired. It’s like watching an accident on news TV you can say “oh gee that’s terrible!” or you could have been involved in the accident and fully realize the impact on you and your family. I realize the impact for my American society since it wasn’t an accident but a wanton act of terror on the innocent and totally unexpected on that fine September day.

I thank all of you for participating. I will be disengaging so as not to garner anymore disdain and hope that this post served to be as educational to you as it was to me.

Quest

No disadain, mate:)
Mostly ontheVue forum, used to beover here onceupon a time ;)

I'm sorry about your friends and cousin :/ Uncle-in-law in USA missed one of those planes by good fortune, that day, as he flies all the time for his work across the globe.
Terrorists are murderous scum, they are not soldiers, huge difference. 

Romans and Mongols used very effective tactics to wipe out "terrorism" in that region a long time ago...in the long term though, it only made things worse. Stability & education in the other country are the best way to defeat terrorism (and general scummy behaviour). 
Too many folk want ot nurse their hatreds, to enjoy killing.

I hope the nightmares pass. Best revenge is living well, and happily :)