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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (328384)	3/9/2007 7:14:22 PM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578127

Why do you choose to deify fetal humans? We're just animals, like any other. We have no problem controlling and even extincting other animal populations. Haven't you given up on the primitive notion that we, of all the species on all the planets in all the galaxies, are somehow God's special, chosen species? What's the big deal about killing a fetus? There are billions MORE where it came from..

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (328384)	3/9/2007 9:17:51 PM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578127

" But we eat fertilized eggs for breakfast all the time." I certainly don't. The only place I know of to get fertilized eggs is from a farm.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (328384)	3/10/2007 12:45:41 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 1578127

Indicted Tom Delay Wants Libby Pardon, Repeats Lie that Plame Was Not An Important Clandestine Agent (* Here he is, the most corrupt poilitician of the past 30 years saying it's OK to out CIA asgents during war-time, then lie about it and smear them. Delay is a truly evil man. A heart of darkness and lies.) rawstory.com

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (328384)	3/10/2007 12:07:01 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578127

Time to volunteer Ten. Your President needs you. It's the least a true hawk can do for his country and the soldiers that have already risked limb and life, right? Time to do your part in the war effort against ... or for ... what was this for/against again? Never mind... just enlist. Everybody on the GW Bush thread will be very proud of you. Pentagon struggles to find fresh troops By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer Military leaders are struggling to choose Army units to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan longer or go there earlier than planned, but five years of war have made fresh troops harder to find. Faced with a military buildup in Iraq that could drag into next year, Pentagon officials are trying to identify enough units to keep up to 20 brigade combat teams in Iraq. A brigade usually has about 3,500 troops. The likely result will be extending the deployments of brigades scheduled to come home at the end of the summer, and sending others earlier than scheduled. Final decisions — which have not yet been made — would come as Congress is considering ways to force President Bush to wind down the war, despite his vow that he would veto such legislation. In the freshest indication of the relentless demands for troops in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Benjamin R. Mixon, commander of coalition forces in the north, told reporters Friday that his troops have picked up the pace of their attacks on the enemy in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. "Could I use more forces? No question about it," Mixon said, adding that he had asked for more. The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said a day earlier that it was likely that additional U.S. forces will be shifted to areas outside the capital where militants are regrouping, including Diyala. The region has become an increasingly important staging ground for militant groups, including al-Qaida in Iraq. "There have been about 30 percent more offensive actions and attacks. Many of those are initiated by us; some are initiated by them," Petraeus said from a military base outside of Tikrit. "I am cautiously optimistic that in the next 30 to 60 days that we're going to see some significant differences in the security situation in Diyala." If not, he said, he'll go back and ask for still more support. Petraeus said Thursday that the U.S. buildup in Iraq would need to be sustained "for some time well beyond the summer" to garner the needed results. Maintaining increased troop levels, said military officials, will require troops to return for what could be their second or third tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, and force military leaders to juggle the schedules to give soldiers a full 12 months at home before returning to battle. The officials would speak only on condition of anonymity, because no final decisions have been made and no formal requests for the forces have come from commanders in Iraq. But they said it is beginning to appear likely that Petraeus will ask to maintain much of the buildup at least through the end of the year, and possibly into 2008. One official said planners are scrambling to figure out what combination of units and schedules can be fashioned that could give Petraeus what he wants and have the least negative impact on the troops. The complex scheduling must identify which units would have been home for 12 months and be trained and ready to go, plus whether the needed equipment would be available and what impact a schedule change has on other plans for the equipment or troops months down the road. Combat troops, meanwhile, are coming to realize that the Pentagon can't fulfill its commitment to give soldiers two years at home for every year they spend deployed. At Fort Drum, N.Y., the 1st Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division is already training for a return to Iraq this summer. The brigade, which spent a year in Iraq and got home last summer, is not yet on any official list of units scheduled to deploy, but it's likely to go in late summer. "It's prudent planning for us to be prepared to go back in a year," said Fort Drum spokesman Ben Abel. Military officials also acknowledge that units scheduled to come home later this summer — such as the 3rd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division — could be forced to extend their tours by up to 120 days to maintain the Baghdad security buildup. Initially, the Bush plan called for sending 21,500 extra U.S. combat troops to Iraq — mainly to Baghdad — with the last of five brigades arriving by June. So far two of the brigades have arrived in Iraq. The latest estimates indicate that up 7,000 support troops may also be needed, including more than 2,000 military police. ___ Associated Press Writer Pauline Jelinek contributed to this report ___ On the Net: Defense Department: defenselink.mil

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (328384)	3/11/2007 11:56:25 AM
From: bentway	Respond to of 1578127

The Lord's Encyclopedia: WIKIPEDIA FOR CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS Christian fundamentalists in the US have launched two online encyclopedias modelled on the Wikipedia format. Conservapedia and CreationWiki aim to explain the world from a creationist perspective. They make entertaining reading. By Christian Stöcker spiegel.de "Kangaroos, like all modern animals, originated in the Middle East and are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood." This sentence is taken from an online encyclopedia. And it is meant seriously. The encyclopedia in question is not Wikipedia but Conservapedia. Boasting a layout modelled on that of Wikipedia, it is one of the latest coups in the struggle of Christian fundamentalists to ban scientific teachings in school and reinstate the Bible as the definitive, all-explaining text and history book. Conservapedia is essentially the Christian fundamentalists' answer to Wikipedia. It's an attempt to undermine the supposed hegemony that evolutionary theorists have on the Internet when it comes to explaining the origin of humans and animals. The religious project even has a big sister: CreationWiki spreads words of wisdom like: "God created humans separately from the animals less than 10,000 years ago." Although 45 percent of Americans believe this thesis, evolutionary theory is "taught as fact in schools funded by taxes taken from people who disagree with these views", argues the author of the entry "Creation vs. Evolution." Critics of a literal interpretation of the Bible may find Conservapedia unintentionally amusing. The "Debate Topics" facility allows readers to discuss burning questions like "Crusades -- Good or Bad?" "Much-needed alternative to Wikipedia" Unfortunately, many entries are extremely short. Look up Mount Sinai on Conservapedia, and you will be informed tersely that it is a mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments. CreationWiki goes further, letting readers know how high the mountain is and offering a link to the two Sinai entries on Wikipedia ("Mount Sinai" and "Biblical Mount Sinai"). Conservapedia views itself as "a much-needed alternative to Wikipedia, which is increasingly anti-Christian and anti-American." It has a dedicated page for "Examples of Bias on Wikipedia." It calculates, for example, that the free encyclopedia is "six times more liberal than the American public" -- and condemns it for that reason. CreationWiki tries to maintain a veneer of objectivity even though it labels itself "creationist," but Conservapedia is first and foremost aimed at provocation rather than providing information. It was created by conservative lawyer Andy Schlafly and 58 high school students in November 2006. Schlafly believed that the world needed "a resource for the general audience, but without the defects of Wikipedia," as he told Wired magazine, because Wikipedia is in the hands of the liberals, the godless and the nation-less. "This requires an Intelligent Designer" CreationWiki is evidently meant to be a serious project for the promotion of "creation science" -- an attempt by Christian fundamentalists to put creation thought on the same discursive level as evolutionary biology. In CreationWiki, which was set up in 2004, users can read about genes, and there is even a picture of the DNA double helix to illustrate the entry. There is no sign of evolution theory-bashing in the article. Conservapedia, on the other hand, only has three sentences on the subject: "A section of DNA that codes for the production of a protein or a portion of a protein. Although the gene is the fundamental unit of heredity, changes in genes (so-called 'evolution') cannot explain the differences between species, which require an Intelligent Designer." The intelligence of the creators of Conservapedia, however, is at times questionable, for example if one compares the length of the entry on the Bible (about 1,300 characters) with the 47,000- character article on Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code," which angered the Catholic church with its reference to the legend that Mary Magdalene bore Jesus a child. CreationWiki provides its readers with a table aimed at convincing them that creationism is right for the school curriculum while the satiricial "Flying Spaghetti Monster" religion isn't: "It can be seen from the comparison above that there is no basis for teaching students about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, but the same cannot be said for Intelligent Design nor creation." "Shocking level of vandalism and obscenity" Atheistic jokers have, of course, long discovered the Jesus wikis. According to a reporter for New Scientist, Conservapedia has had to block 60 IP addresses and users from the site due to what administrators called "obscenity", "vandalism" and "inappropriate disparagement of God." Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has no problems with the Christian fundamentalist sites. "Free culture knows no bounds," he tells the writer from New Scientist, "we welcome the reuse of our work to build variants. That's directly in line with our mission." Net users who are not so inclined towards Christianity have recently had the same idea: Athpedia for Atheists was recently launched in German. It doesn't view itself as "a rival to Wikipedia" but as a "complementary resource for interested Internet users." Readers can find extensive entries about subjects like "religion", "ideology" or the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. He once said what could be good advice to the Conservapedia creators: "I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world." Related internet links: Athpedia athpedia.de Conservapedia:Pacific Northwest Arboreal Octopus conservapedia.com New Scientist Blog über Conservapedia newscientist.com rival- for- wikipedia.html Conservapedia:Debattenthemen conservapedia.com CreationWiki:Eintrag über das Flying Spaghetti Monster creationwiki.org CreationWiki creationwiki.org Conservapedia conservapedia.com