Gorgon

I can't fathom the 'gangland' dog fighting culture among mostly latinos and blacks. It's utterly demented. Just a reaction from a dog owner who doesen't care anything for American football, or this twerp's career.

Countries should really stop 'pleding' money for various charitable purposes without actually having looked at their budget first. It's the same with the UNHCR and the World Food Programme, a lot can be done to prevent those pictures of starving children we see on the news every time there is a famine in Africa, but most of the money doesen't start to appear before we do.

An old ww2 Thomson, must have been worth a pretty penny.

Hold on now, 'violence against civlians'. Thats a far cry from the militant animal crackpots. I think some of them set fire to some buildings at one point, but that was the height of it.

PETA has just one thing they care passionately about, thats fine too. Just remember that Hamas is more than just a terrorist organisation, they provide health care and 'education' as well as social work. So in that vein it does matter what they get up to other than blowing people up.

Apropos, a journalist on one of our big networks was recently let go because of an Iraq update he did. He was filmed talking from inside an APC trying to find just the right hook to make the danish withdrawal sound like something monumental, waving his hands to the landscape he opened with 'Denmark, is now leaving Iraq'. The convoy was actually on it's way to Iraq, a few miles of the border however, not leaving. These tricks are all part of the business.

They go through the trouble of hacking the UN, and all they do is scribble little messages. Seems like a 'hey, were in, what are we gonna do now' kinda deal. Basic grammar would have helped too.

I know a guy who used to be a phoner for a charity, around 30% went directly to operations, some kind of African project, the rest payed for wages and headquarters. There ought to be some kind of official government stamp of approval on these things that the companies can't get if they aren't serious enough about it.

I dunno, I have sweet spot for people who aren't all shrivelled up and realistic, but who still believe they can make a difference by attending demonstrations. This is democracy at work, at least someone cares to participate.

A fake cake with an escape kit

She seems like pixes to me. Twileks are hot though.

The real problem must be the sheer number of lawyers pumped out of the schools every year. They need something to do.

A charity should be judged on eficiency, but there is a tendency to forget that there are costs involved, and that these are comperable to other companies with similar logistic and office operations. Raising money costs money. You think the people who stop you on the street or call you on the phone for a donation work for free ?.

Wait a minuite, you don't prefer mutants over roaches ? The use of the bomb can't be called justifiable when the arguments for it are all based on assumption. You can say definately that it shortened the war, but you can't say with any ammount of finality that a swift surrender could not have been agreed without it, or that the bombs saved as much as a single life. Of course it matters in such a massively destructive war who started it, and of course it matters what their motivations were, but on all sides considerations for civlian deaths were overshadowed my military necessity as a matter of course. At the time of the bombings Japan was contained, unable to respond. Military necessity was nolonger as prominent with the outcome nolonger in doubt, but the Americans nuked Japan, and Bomber Command continued to hit civilian targets even long after any consideration of german production rates was an issue. Politicians should have stepped up and put an end to it, but the politicians themselves had become the generals.

I believe that it's quite unplausible that earth is the only example of the complex chemical reaction called life in so vast a universe. It's not that far a leap even to postulate that it's likely that there are other lifeforms, and even civilisations. I don't think they have anything to do with the phenomenon we call UFOs though.

'For hundreds of years, such and such, blah blah' Well it ain't exactly like that anymore now is it. I can understand the need for a movement when there is real and tangible discrimination, everyone should have equal rigths and all. I may get into trouble for suggesting this, but it's a bit like the NAACP. Once a movement with a very real and justifiable end, now, more or less strugling to find a reasons for its own existance. This whole business with the 'N' word. The blacks are the ones using it, so what is the NAACP now, some kind of institute issuing out rules on language use ?. There are plenty of places in the 'third world' where women have no more rights than they did a couple of hundred years back in the west. Go pick a fight where it's needed.

I prefer to think in the lines of Mad Max, mutants and bunker cities.

Alien pinups don't score that high on my wierdometer. Anyway the links work now, I prefer the black and whites, the lighting is good. The others tend to look too 'photoshoppy'.

Linky no worky

Everyone did. Dresden, NanKing, Stalin's Purges, Auswitch etc.

You can't complain when you aren't present.

uhh, me ?

I wonder how that stacks up per annum versus the general death rate after the invasion. Hard to tell since the US and the Iraqi authority in their wisdom decided not to count. Sadam was in power how many years, 20+ ?

But towards the end ? I mean, bomb what, Berlin, just before it was about to fall, somehow I think not. It's not that that the US was somehow worse that i'm trying to suggest here, simply that the action may/should have been avoided. The argument that they did not surrender in the days after the first bomb does not rule out the concept of surrender without the bombings at all, and again, the hypothetical casualty rates in the event of invasion assumes there would be one. These are all assumptions, and they are convenient to hide behind. Bargaining and some kind of fig leaf for the emperor and his cronies that would enable a surrender was another possible outcome, and as mentioned I am not alone in this assessment, in the words of then General Eisenhower ; "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." The political message was, as mentioned, quite unmistakable, but to begin in the language of 'world communism' to suggest all kinds of outlandish machinations by Soviet Russia and that the bomb prevented these as well, it's just another example of selective memory, and history writing.

We are discussing the nukes because that was the subject, you are wellcome to start a new thread about Dresden, the einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe, Stalin's massacres, etc. if you want.