evodawg wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>>>
>> It's a sick, sick world... :-/
>>
>> P.S.: I apologize for yet another longwinded post. Should be good enough
>> to get me into a few killfiles again, though... :-/
>>
> Well if it does I would not worry about it.
>
> Ain't that the truth! We have the same problem with the THUGS to. But over
> here they carry guns.

I really wonder how long it's going to take until they start doing that here
as well. Either way they already pack knives, and I just read on the
teletext news - I don't know what it's called in the US; it's text news on
your television, and the Brits call it CeeFax - that they finally got the
one guy who stabbed another guy a few weeks back.

First they had the wrong one, but it seems they have the real perpetrator
now. The victim was 16, the perpetrator was 15. They were both kids from
the same school, and the perpetrator stabbed the other guy in the back when
they were leaving school. The victim never saw who had stabbed him, but
there were other eyewitnesses.

> That's why the last time I was on vacation traveling around the West, I
> bought a 357 mag. in Utah where the gun laws are very laxed. In California
> you have to go through the fifth degree and most of the time you are
> denied. And to just get bullets you have to go through the same thing all
> over again. Went into a Utah gun shop and showed them my California Driver
> License and walked out with the gun and ammunition.
> There are cities in the West, Utah, Arizona, Idaho and a few other states
> that you are allowed to carry a weapon, in those cities there is virtually
> no crime. Wonder Why?

Belgium has always had a very strict weapons/firearms legislation, but
certain firearms could still be bought without a license, i.e. shotguns and
non-repeating hunting rifles.

Then, about a year and a half ago, a troubled 18-year old with Nazi
sympathies wanted to end his own life while "going down in style", so he
entered a gunshop, bought himself a Winchester-style lever-operated rifle -
it was actually a different make but you know the type - and some bullets,
walked out of the store, loaded the weapon and shot a Turkish woman sitting
on a bench, and then a black woman who was babysitting a white 2-year old
girl.

The Turkish woman survived, but was in a coma for a long time and will be
disabled for the rest of her life. The black woman was dead on the spot,
and the guy also shot the little girl "as she was sad and he wanted to
spare her the cruelty". A police officer saw it happen, drew out his 9 mm
and told the guy to drop his weapon. The guy was very calm and dared the
police officer to shoot him. Eventually he made a gesture as if he was
going to aim the rifle at the officer, and the officer shot him in the
stomach.

In the days that followed, a serious hype developed. Every day on the news,
they were talking about all kinds of motives that would have driven that
guy to commit those racist murders; anything from "he was a troubled kid"
to "he played violent video games" and "the influence from Vlaams Belang" -
that's the rightwing extremist party over here, who have already been
convicted of racism.

It was a real hype, and our politicians opportunistically jumped on the
bandwagon and totally redesigned the firearms legislation in just about two
or three weeks - they seem to take years for everything else but hey, this
was a popularity contest. The result is now that if you want to buy or you
possess *any* kind of firearm...:
(1) You have to have the weapon registered at the police office;
(2) You need a license for a firearm, renewable every year and very
expensive - this license is granted to you by our equivalent of a District
Attorney, which means that any conviction will be taken into account, and
you must have a valid reason for owning a firearm;
(3) You need to pass a medical and psychological exam every year to prove
that you are capable of handling a gun responsibly;
(4) You need to be registered in a weapons club with a shooting range, and
you have to use the weapon on that shooting range at least once a year in
order to remember how to handle the weapon - you also need to be registered
at that shooting club six months prior to the purchase of a weapon;
(5) You have to offer the weapon up for inspection on its safety at the
local police office every year; and
(6) You must at all times keep the weapon in a different room of your house
than the ammunition, behind lock and key, and the ammo in a safe.

I'm sure I've still even missed a few conditions here. Of course, you could
simply bypass all that and simply buy a fully functional Kalashnikov AK-47
from some Russian mob guy in Antwerp for about half of the money you would
spend on a legally acquired firearm and its license, and it would be
unregistered.

It is estimated that 70% of all firearms in Belgium are unregistered and
unaccounted for, but I don't know whether they've included the military and
law enforcement weapons in that percentage or not. Either way, I think
it's clear what choice is most popular with people wanting to own a
firearm.

Oh, and just because you own one doesn't mean you are entitled to carry it
around in a holster. No sir, if you need to transport the weapon to the
weapons club or the police office, the weapons should be in the glove
compartment and the ammo in the trunk, or vice versa. Only the elite gets
to wear a weapon on their person. No wonder most people are simply buying
illegal firearms off the black market.

And then there's the following... Suppose you do have a legally acquired
and registered firearm in your house and you get burgled. You may not use
the weapon unless your life is in danger, and then only so after firing two
warning shots into the air first.

Now I don't believe that it's right to just shoot a burglar, especially not
if it's a regular unarmed burglar - as opposed to a tiger kidnapper or a
homejacker - but come on, with these laws you're simply getting yourself
killed even if you do have a gun in the house.

I believe all firearms should be registered, yes. But I also believe that
it should be more easy to acquire a legal firearm than it is now, or at
least, for someone with a blank criminal record.

In sheer contrast, Marc Dutroux - you may have heard of him even in the US -
was just released from jail the first time and was able to buy a .22 long
rifle while on probation.

(For those who do not know him, Dutroux was not only a fraude but also a
pedophile. He and his cohorts kidnapped young girls - the youngest that we
know of were 8 and 9 years old - and kept them prisoner as sex slaves for
himself and his buddies in a specially constructed hidden concrete basement
underneath his house. He also recorded the rape sessions on videotape.

The 8- and 9- year old girls were found dead and buries in his backyard.
The remains of two other girls, 18 and 19 years old, were also found on one
of his terrains, and two other girls, 13 and 15 years old, were rescued
from his basement. He was already holding those girls there by the time he
acquired that firearm. The police later on testified "We allowed him to
buy a gun because at least we knew then that he had one." Duh!)

Dutroux is serving life with no chance of parole. One of the two surviving
girls is now in her twenties and has written a book about the whole thing,
and of how it has broken her forever. She was granted a large sum of money
from the Victim Help Fund - although not as large as you'd think - but she
waives that away, as it cannot undo the damage done to her.

She was 13 at the time, and she spent five months of her life in that
basement, being raped every day.

> I was really sadden to here about your parents, its sounds like life has
> been very tough on you and your family.

Thank you. Yes, it was tough, in many ways. It was a whole chain of
tragedies, both for all of us as individuals and in terms of what it did to
us as a family. :-/

> [...] My Mom divorced him when I was around 18 and is still kicking and
> doing well. She use to be a very well known Interior Designer on the east
> coast. She is now retired but still works for some of her very high end
> clients for fun.

I can see where you got your skill for interior design then. ;-) The apple
doesn't fall far from the tree. ;-)

> Funny the Experts say because I was beaten I will beat my kids, but I've
> never had to lay a hand on them. My son is graduating high school this
> year and plans to go to Cornell for finance, my daughter is a little
> unruly and still is in high school, and have had to get a little tough
> with her. But she's coming around.

Well, I have certainly had my share of beatings, and despite of his handicap
and my understanding of what he was going through, the last time my dad
used physical violence against me, I was already 31, and I had already been
living by myself for 9 years.

I was also constantly being bullied and beaten up in school - especially in
highschool - because I happened to be in class with the worst pigs of the
entire school. Never a fair fight. Always me against twenty guys or so,
so you can imagine the outcome.

Yet I am a very peaceful man, and I do not believe that children should be
beaten up or tortured the way it was done in the 19th century. Sure, it
might be necessary to spank them in the butt sometimes, but beating them
up? No, never.

People who beat up their children are not doing that because they too were
being beaten up. They are doing it because they can't control themselves.
Because they have no discipline. So how can they even think that they have
the right to call themselves parents and teach their children of
responsibility and discipline, if they themselves don't even know what
those concepts mean?

But then again, leaving your kids to do whatever they want and not once
intervene until it's absolutely too late is not the way to go either. And
unfortunately, it's that hippie mentality that rules now, and that gives us
the teenage thugs of today.

I hate the idea that they are tomorrow's adults... :-/

> This time I have gotten a little long winded. Wonder if I will be
> Killfiled??? hahahaha

Well, I'm sure some here will have killfiled us already by now. Or maybe
the thread, but that in itself might not be such a bad idea for those who
don't care about the things being discussed here. ;-)

Aragorn wrote:

> Unfortunately, most of the anti-climate change measures need being
> implemented by national governments, and this is where things go wrong,
> because everyone is always thinking in terms of its effects on the
> economy.

No. There simply isn't any "climate change" happening at all - what you're
seeing is a natural cyclic set of weather patterns. A quick bit of
research (cut down an old tree and examine the rings) will tell you that
the thirty years /before/ the Industrial Revolution were /much/ hotter than
we're seeing now, and seventy years further on there was a series of the
coldest years ever recorded...

The "climate change" lobby is just a bunch of clueless "greens" who have
been fooled by the machinations of big government. The Governments around
the world are largely bankrupt, and need desperately to raise large tax
revenues. These governments have also realised that fossil fuels are
running out. The easy way to control fuels is to make their use "socially
unacceptable". It's just the usual manipulation of the largely stupid
populace. Remember: the last thing /any/ government wants is a properly
educated populace!

Some countries (France, most notably) saw the forthcoming problems with
fossil fuels, and moved virtually /all/ of their electrical generation to
either nuclear or hydro... /This/ country (the UK) has to be nice to the
Russians because that's where 90% of our gas supplies come from, and 80% of
our electricity is gas-generated...

C.

On Thu, 01 May 2008 06:15:00 +0200, Aragorn wrote:

> Scott B. wrote:
>
>> Dan C wrote in response to Aragorn:
>>

>I may not agree with him, but I will
> still respect both him as a human being and the fact that he has
> opinions which are different from mine. Not everyone has the same
> ideas, and not everyone has the same mindset.


A similar sentence, or a sentence in the similar spirit, had been said
by Voltaire a few hundreds years ago; it has been the foundation for
tolerance and freedom, funny that we still had to reind ourselves of this
basic principle of civilised living,...but I guess it is the spirit of
this times that require a memory refresh
santo

On Fri, 02 May 2008 08:24:54 +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately, most of the anti-climate change measures need being
>> implemented by national governments, and this is where things go wrong,
>> because everyone is always thinking in terms of its effects on the
>> economy.
>
> No. There simply isn't any "climate change" happening at all - what you're
> seeing is a natural cyclic set of weather patterns. A quick bit of
> research (cut down an old tree and examine the rings) will tell you that
> the thirty years /before/ the Industrial Revolution were /much/ hotter than
> we're seeing now, and seventy years further on there was a series of the
> coldest years ever recorded...

Perhaps you should so a bit more research, and look at what the actual
science says.

We passed the previous peak, (the medieval warm period), several years
ago and the temperature is still climbing at an unprecedented rate. We are
actually at a 100,000 year high because this is the warmest the Earth has
been in this interglacial period.

Rick Pikul wrote:

> On Fri, 02 May 2008 08:24:54 +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:
>> Perhaps you should so a bit more research, and look at what the actual
> science says.
>
> We passed the previous peak, (the medieval warm period), several years
> ago and the temperature is still climbing at an unprecedented rate. We
> are actually at a 100,000 year high because this is the warmest the Earth
> has been in this interglacial period.

In addition, we also know from studying Venus - a very earthlike planet -
that there is a strong correlation between the amount of carbondioxide (and
similar greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere and global-scale planetary
warming.

Many things emit carbondioxide and/or other greenhouse gases. Volcanos are
one important source. Respiration is another one. We also know that
plants tend to absorb carbondioxide and give off oxygen in return (during
daytime), and that there is a serious amount of deforestation going on in
Latin America.

The Rainforest has now been reduced to only a spec of what it once used to
be, and this is certainly not helping us. The wood of the rainforest is of
course harvested for capitalist reasons - most governments in Latin America
are corrupt, and this is a wellknown fact - but similarly, the
ever-expanding human population requires housing, and so we cut away more
forests to build homes. And factories. And roads between factories.

As someone has already said, the amount of carbon dioxide alone - not even
mentioning other greenhouse gases - has dramatically risen in the last two
centuries, the bulk of which was in the 20th century.

You can't argue with the numbers... :-/

Anyway, most people are already tired of this thread by now, and we won't be
able to convince those who have a different view, so I myself am going to
drop the subject here now. After all, our talking about it here isn't
going to make any difference, not for the better and not for the worse...

santo wrote:

> On Thu, 01 May 2008 06:15:00 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> I may not agree with him, but I will still respect both him as a human
>> being and the fact that he has opinions which are different from mine.
>> Not everyone has the same ideas, and not everyone has the same mindset.
>
> A similar sentence, or a sentence in the similar spirit, had been said
> by Voltaire a few hundreds years ago; it has been the foundation for
> tolerance and freedom, funny that we still had to reind ourselves of this
> basic principle of civilised living,...but I guess it is the spirit of
> this times that require a memory refresh

.... Or as Hegel put it, "History has a habit of repeating itself." ;-)

Quite peculiar though, that in light of the infinite number of possibilities
offered by quantum superstates, the highest probability for the collapse of
the wave function always seems to lean towards what would yield the most
cynical outcome. ;-)

I guess that in itself must be the ultimate wave function of superstate
humanity, i.e. a mathematical predestination to self-annihilation. ;-)

Rick Pikul wrote:

> On Fri, 02 May 2008 08:24:54 +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:
>> Perhaps you should so a bit more research, and look at what the actual
> science says.

I've done all the research I need to do, and will bow to the superior
knowledge of the climatologists at Cambridge University. The results that
you've seen have been manipulated for political ends and are entirely
bogus.

> We passed the previous peak, (the medieval warm period), several years
> ago and the temperature is still climbing at an unprecedented rate. We
> are actually at a 100,000 year high because this is the warmest the Earth
> has been in this interglacial period.

Sorry - that's complete and utter nonsense. If you read the unaltered,
accurate climate analyses, you'll quickly realise that you're being fed
political rubbish in an effort to manipulate your behaviour.

C.

Dan C wrote:

> Since you don't have any first-hand experiences on a US college campus,
> I'll have to say that you don't know as much about it as I do.

/I/ have experience of what you describe, and find myself shocked to
entirely agree with you!

> There is
> absolutely NO doubt that what I said is correct, and even the
> Libs/leftists will readily agree with that assessment.

Exactly right!

C.

On Sat, 03 May 2008 13:08:57 +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:

> I've done all the research I need to do, and will bow to the superior
> knowledge of the climatologists at Cambridge University.

Translation: Don't confuse me with facts, I've already had my mind made
up for me and will continue to employ the time-worn logical fallacy of
the appeal to authority to support my groundless argument.

> The results that you've seen have been manipulated for political ends
> and are entirely bogus.

this codswallop obfuscation is regurgitated by shills for big oil who
apparently have no stake in the reduction of the use of fossil
fuels...are you a shill for big oil "christopher"?

> Sorry - that's complete and utter nonsense. If you read the unaltered,
> accurate climate analyses, you'll quickly realise that you're being fed
> political rubbish in an effort to manipulate your behaviour.

so apparently the 30% higher levels of atmospheric CO2, the empirical
observation of the overwhelming majority of the world's climatologists,
has nothign whatsoever to do with the heating phase we are
experiencing...they are all just stooges of this nebulous political
conspiracy you mention...

talk about complete and utter rubbish

mr.b wrote:

> .are you a shill for big oil "christopher"?

Certainly not! I have no love for "big oil" - they've abused their position
for too long, and now that the reserves are shrinking, demand is beginning
to exceed supply, they're going to get their comeuppance!

I just hate the manipulative machinations of governments. The minor, cyclic
change in global weather is, of course, being (ab)used for the purpose of
trying to support the indefensibly inefficient governments around the
world.

There's no "grand conspiracy", but rather a lot of "band-waggon jumping" -
it's entirely convenient for governments to pronounce on the "global
ecological disaster" whilst they hike taxes to support their failing social
programmes (the NHS in the UK is a /prime/ example of that).

The figures you've seen for atmospheric CO2 are complete nonsense. If you
actually don't believe the numbers you're being fed, you can very easily
disprove them yourself - it's trivially easy to measure concentrations of
atmospheric CO2. Do the measurements /yourself/ over some months, and plot
the trend - you'll quickly realise that you're being fed nonsense.

C.

On Sat, 03 May 2008 13:08:57 +0100, Christopher Hunter wrote:

> Rick Pikul wrote:
>> I've done all the research I need to do, and will bow to the superior
> knowledge of the climatologists at Cambridge University. The results that
> you've seen have been manipulated for political ends and are entirely
> bogus.

Sounds to me like you either fell for a quote mine or simply didn't
understand what you were looking at.

Which climatologists from Cambridge and where did they publish?


The Earth does have temperature cycles, but they are very slow in human
terms, (they are on the order of 100 kyr).

evodawg wrote:
>
> Guess all Americans in the majority are pinheads. Brilliant statement! Your
> words speak for them self.
>

Please don't classify all Americans into the same bunch, the ones who
don't like the way things are in this country keep to themselves hoping
someone would shove a nuke up Washington's ass....

later