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I just read this. The memorial of 11 Sep

Don't you think that some of the comments are a bit naive?

Heavens, I can't believe how much this still hurts; how this can still make one's heart actually ache. I feel for our Country tomorrow as we remember our brave Americans who lost their lives on that day, our brave Americans who continue to live with reminders every day of this tragedy and we must not forget our brave soldiers continuing to fight for our freedoms.

God Bless America

These terrorists are still at work trying to do this again.

NEVER FORGET

Thank God George W. Bush was President - Commander & Chief on September 11, 2001rather than the "environmentalist".

But some comments were better.

Seven years ago today, my son was just out of Army basic training.
Six months ago today, he was killed in Iraq.
Seven years ago tomorrow is the reason, or so they say. I will never be sure, not that it matters now. I have lost interest in caring about the politics of who did what and why. When lives are ripped from existence by violence, whether in the trade center, in the pentagon or along a deserted dirt road in Iraq, reasons become irrelevant. The perpetrators are all criminals, regardless of religion, race, or politics.
My son will never call me again, never play with his own baby son, or grow old with his wife.

May we never forget. May we stop the insanity.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/0 ... _back.html

Christer wrote:Don't you think that some of the comments are a bit naive?

Agreed.

More and more amercans are beginning to see things as you and Druegan, thank God for that. You'll have to see things for "What they are", not what you "want them to be". Americans are becoming more and more critic to their own country, like in most other countries. Sweden isn't that great country some people might belive, not novadays. Sweden is like any other country filled with unjustice, crime, daily problems and crap governments.

I once heard a "famous architect" got inteviewed about a year after 911. He explained that the WTC attack was more awful because it happend in the best country in the world.

I went.......

And couldn't belive what i just heard. Perhaps he was deep religious or something like that.

So it had been less awful if it had happend in Paris or London. Thank God that all americans isn't like that.

(yes, it's true, it was a bbc documentary)

Speaking of 911. I remember that day very well. I just came home, switched on my TV and couldn't belive what i saw. It was both spectacular and scary. The world would never be the same again.

I know I'm probably in a severe minority here..

But 9/11/2001 was not even *remotely* a "world changing day" for me. I wasn't shocked, I wasn't surprised.. hell, I wasn't even particularly outraged, and I certainly wasn't afraid of terrorists all of a sudden.

On any given day, 6,707 Americans die, just as a statistical average. 1,786.6 Americans die every day from heart disease. 1,532.4 die every day from cancer. 393.4 die daily from stroke, and 323 die from sheer accidents. Hell, last year, 5,000 Americans died of *food poisoning*. So I'm sorry, it's just not that big a shock to my system to hear that 2,975 people died because some terrorists supposedly hijacked a few airliners and flew em into the world trade center and the Pentagon.

It also wasn't any sort of a surprise.. even if one buys the "official story" of what happened.. which I'm not certain I do.. How the hell is it supposed to be a surprise that one of the hundreds of active terrorist groups out there, all of whom hate the USA's guts, finally managed to pull off an attack on American soil that was actually worth a damn? This isn't some "bolt from the blue".... this is something that anyone with a remote sense of geopolitical awareness should have seen as an "eventuality". I mean, if enough people want to kill you, or hurt you... sooner or later one of em's gonna get lucky, regardless of your security. That's just common freakin sense.

In terms of not being outraged.. Sorry, I'm not one of the "holier-than-thou" patriot types who thinks that the USA can do no wrong, and that even our shit doesn't stink. We've done a lot of very nasty things to a lot of people... in many cases, innocent people, and for the shittiest of reasons. Seeing as how we, as a nation, have done our best to screw over and exploit as much of the rest of the world as we can get away with, and have done so for the last 30 years or so.. from supporting murderous dictators, contributing to crippling poverty and destitution in the third world, and embracing policies that have driven millions from their homes and land... Ya know? It's kinda hard *not* to see how some radical group or another just *might* have good reason to be really really pissed at us. I certainly don't approve of their methods... but I can't exactly be outraged at them lashing out any way they can..

And frankly, I'm simply not afraid of terrorists or terrorism. I'm not. I stand a much greater chance of being killed in a car accident driving down to the local convenience store for a pack of cigarettes and a coke than I do of being killed by a terrorist. Probably near a million times greater chance. Hell, I stand a better chance of just dying in my sleep any given night from my sleep apnea than I do from a terrorist strike.. I'd put my odds of dying in a terrorist attack... in fact, the odds of any given person in the US dying in a terrorist attack, at pretty close to their odds of being killed by a meteorite hitting them in the head. It's just not a freaking issue.

Now you go to Israel or the Phillipines... where sometimes they have bombs blowing up the marketplace every other day, or somebody driving a car full of explosives into a disco once a week.. shit.. then you got somewhat of a reason to be afraid of terrorists... But here? When we've had one terrorist attack worth a shit in the last decade? Pfft.

It's not like we're secure here... we're not. Hell, there's *dozens* of things I could do that would be capable of killing tens of thousands of people, generally with less than $1,000 and supplies available from local stores. And the Department of Homeland Insecurity sure as hell isn't doing anything much to secure even the airlines, especially seeing how many times airport security fails to catch the "testers" that sneak contraband past them to check up on how well they're doing.. Which brings me to my final point of why I'm not afraid of terrorists..

"If this shit is the best they can do, one decent attack in 7 years... these guys are either serious underachievers, seriously stupid, or both."

So no.. 9/11 was, at best, a mildly interesting day for me. I got a call from a friend which woke me up, I turned on the tv and bits, said "huh." and drove to Uni for a class that morning. Classes were called off, of course, so I spent the morning sitting around watching all the sheeple who were glued to the TV sets... and then I got bored, went to lunch, and went home.

A both true and sensible posting Druegan. USA have done lots of bad stuff, taking advantage of every single situation, pretended to be some kind of world police who fights for "freedom" and "justice".

That's pure bullshit.

I can't understand people who see the country as "innocent" and "fair", because it's certanly not. USA is the country of double standards and isn't late to show the world what happends if you don't obey "the free and the brave" nation. "Those who aren't with us is against us". Some americans are beyond words if you read some of the comments in the link i posted earlier in the thread. Talk about to live in some other world, brainwashed by the government.

No, we don't see "americans" that way, only the government.

The documentary i reccommended earlier
movies-tv-f27/where-is-osama-bin-laden-t963.html

Shows that very clear. People in eastern countries don't hate americans, they simply don't like the government.

I don't like Bush and i think that our government in Sweden aren't any better, fuck Reinfeldt. (the prime minister).

Christer wrote:I can't understand people who see the country as "innocent" and "fair", because it's certanly not. USA is the country of double standards and isn't late to show the world what happends if you don't obey "the free and the brave" nation. "Those who aren't with us is against us". Some americans are beyond words if you read some of the comments in the link i posted earlier in the thread. Talk about to live in some other world, brainwashed by the government.

No, we don't see "americans" that way, only the government.

This kinda gets to the fundamental peril of the "American Illusion". Lemme explain this a little.

There's a fairly common notion that "We don't hate the *people* of Country X, we just hate their government." Be that America, Iran, China, whatever.. Well, in a nation like Iran, or China, or some similar nation that doesn't make a claim to "representative democracy" or "government doing the will of the people", that's rather a valid sentiment. But when a government makes the claim that whatever it does, it does in service to "the will of the people"... if this actually *is* the case, there can be no separation between "the people" and "the Government which people hate."

Well, don't for a minute believe that Government, anywhere, actually serves the will or the interests of the people being governed by it. It doesn't happen. Governments serve the interests of the elites in their respective societies. In that sense, the "American Experiment", the first attempt in the world to create a government out of the philosophies of the Enlightenment,... creating a government that recognizes that "all men are created equal" and giving all Citizens a voice in their own governance... is an abject failure. For all its talk, the American Government hasn't acted in accord with the Will of "the people".. or even for the "greatest common good", for well over a century. Probably closer to 200 years.

The problem is.. The USA trumpets to the World an endless barrage of statements that *claim* it actually *does* do what it does not.. represent the wishes of the American People.

In that sense, then... Any strike against the civilian People *becomes* a strike against the hated Government and its actions. It's almost a philosophical justification for terrorism. In a way, Terrorism directed against civilians has an origin in the very concept of "representative democracy" itself. It's fucked up, but that's the way of it.

It's also why terrorism is so bloody stupid.. and partly why I have so little respect for terrorists and their doings. Civilians simply *aren't* valid targets for people who have beefs with our Government for the simple reason that the *vast* majority of us do *NOT* have any sort of voice in how our government conducts business, regardless of what the Government itself claims.

In short, the Terrorists who would attack us are just as bloody naive and stupid as those people who buy into this foolish ignorance that the propaganda about a nation is the same as the *truth* about that nation. They have the same ignorance and lack of critical thinking that is endemic among people who claim that "The USA is the greatest nation on the face of the earth, no matter what" and "Those who aren't with us are against us." They're just more willing to use violence *personally*.

Government and the people are for the most two completly different things and a fine exemple of how "good" democrazy really works. You're allowed to choose between people you never even voted for to be there in the first place. People who are going to set up the rules for you to obey.

Democrazy basically means, "you say what you think, and does as you're told".

You don't want Bush, yet he's there as president. We don't want Reinfeldt, yet he's there as our stinky prime minister.

That says a lot of democrazy, unfortanly. Those in power just run over people as they like, until next election. That's why i don't understand people who's shouting about freedom and democrazy, because there is no freedom. Nowadays if i hear a swede saying, - We live in a free country with democrazy.

Are we, really?

Those in power are the people with all the money because money is what rules this rotten world.

Christer wrote:Government and the people are for the most two completly different things and a fine exemple of how "good" democrazy really works. You're allowed to choose between people you never even voted for to be there in the first place. People who are going to set up the rules for you to obey.

That reminds me of a question I've been meaning to ask you. I'm slightly cynical about Merkin presidential primary elections. Even in the 'Democratic' Party, 20% of the delegates at the national convention are 'superdelegates', who are largely current and former government officials. If Candidate A has a slim majority over Candidate B in the primary elections, in principle, the 'supers' could override the voters!

Anyway, here's my question. How do political parties in Scandinavian countries decide which candidates to put on the ballot in the general elections? Do you have primary elections? Or are those decisions made behind closed doors?

It's way different from USA, it's mostly done within the party and not a public question. Poof, suddenly they have a new party leader. We don't vote or something like that.

Democrazy is in many cases a fine way to just run people over, like in the FRA (snoop law) case.

That's kinda funny.. because actually, it's legally done behind closed doors here.

This is the bit I don't get about America... Absolutely *nothing* in our constitution says that we, as citizens, are entitled to vote for our President. There's nothing in there that says that the states have to poll the public. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

There's also nothing that says that the results of the popular votes for the President are legally binding, either. It is generally held as "customary" that the members of the Electoral College will vote the same way that the popular vote dictates, but in half of the states, voting against the popular vote isn't even a crime, and even in the states where it is illegal, there are no penalties for it. It's happened 150-some times since we started having elections.. and nobody's *ever* been punished for doing so.

Members of the Electoral College aren't elected, either... They're appointed by the members of the state senates and houses of representatives.. Ie, they're appointed by members of one of the two dominant parties. Independents effectively have no say in the process, regardless of how many popular votes their candidate happens to get.

Now, I can understand the way the parliamentary system works.. you vote for your MP, and the assemblage of MP's work out who's going to be their top dog, the Prime Minister...

But I don't for the life of me understand this nonsense that grips the USA every 4 years.. Legally, absolutely *none* of this "presidential election" circus is binding, or even *matters*... In fact, the Electoral College was established so that the Citizens *DIDN'T* have direct say in the choice of Chief Executive.. So I'm seriously wondering why all this crap is carried out.

In that case, it makes no sense other then as in some kind of PR purposes perhaps?

Speaking of democrazy.

Imagine that 52% of the people are for and 48% against some law.

It isn't very fair to a big part of all citizens, is it?

The conclusion is.

Democrazy isn't that good. We'll have to find something better in the future. Leaders just run people over and in at least 99% of all cases we don't have a shit to say about new rules that we are supposed to obey.

Yet people standing there and cheer for the new leader. I don't see the point at all. It makes me wonder how stupid people really are.

Yep.. "Tyranny of the Majority" is a big potential peril, not just in democracy, but in any society. Of course, there hasn't been an actual Democracy in the world since Ancient Athens, and even then, it wasn't what we would call an "ideal democracy", since only people who could prove that both their mother and father had been Athenian citizens, and only the Men of those Citizens had any political voice...

Technically, both the parliamentary system and whatever the hell it is that we have here in the USA, are both classified as "Republics".. We bandy about this word "Democracy"... But unless somebody is discussing ancient greek history, or philosophy, the term is being misused. We simply don't have them. The idea of a true democracy is only now becoming technically feasible in a modern nation.. Athens, at the time of its democracy, only had to worry about roughly 40,000 voters.

To be honest, I'm a fan of the idea of Constitutional Monarchy. I like the notion that there's *one guy* who is ultimately responsible... because that way, if something is *horribly* mismanaged, we know who to stab in the head, instead of responsibility getting lost amidst a thousand layers of middle managers, clerks, and agencies. I also like the idea of Meritocracy... That you need to measurably display you're not a f*cking idiot and that you're not some kind of scumbag in order to be given power.. Maybe the idea that "You can only become President if you really don't *want* the job...

There's one fundamental problem... and I'm not sure yet how to get around it... The problem is that any social structure, or cause, or movement... whatever it is... whenever it becomes an Institution.. ie, an essential structure in society as a whole, it ceases to be focused upon whatever the original founding ideals of it were, and turns all its efforts to maintaining and expanding its own power. Everything.. All institutions do this. It's kind of a law of "political physics".

Thomas Jefferson's answer to this problem was that every nation should have a revolution every 20 years.. to keep social structures from becoming institutionalized, and to keep government honest. I just think perhaps there should be a constitution put in place that *severely* restricts the ability of lawmakers.. (congress, parliament) to make laws. It's really all quite a mess.