but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious You cease to exist, and slowly rot away to dust. I know this comes as a shock for you, but that's obvious too. Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years... You are aware that when you look into a telescope you are essentially looking back in time? The light from the stars takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to reach us. The Hubble Telescope allows us to look back in time an incredible distance. Check out what happens when the Hubble points its camera at a seemingly empty "black" area of space for four months straight. We can see 13 billion year old starlight. In 2015 the age of the universe is not at all up for debate, it is a scientific fact that our universe is at minumum thirteen billion years old. Fun fact, when you look at the sun you are looking back in time about eleven minutes, or said another way you are viewing the light that left the sun eleven light minutes ago. Wrong! We know that the speed of light isn't a constant right now. We know that it is faster sometimes and slower at other times. We know that gravitation affects the speed of light. We also know that other constants aren't always quite the same. In addition, not all scientists believe that Planck's Constant is a constant. Google "variations in Planck's Constant." Keeping this in mind, nobody knows if any of the constants were anywhere near what they are now, say, in the time that we call 10,000 years ago. Everyone has heard of absolute zero. Few people have heard of "absolute hot." Planck calculated absolute hot. Other scientists calculate figures for absolute hot that are extremely different than Planck's. We don't really know for a fact that our guesses for the distance away of the far galaxies, or the age of the universe, are even close to reality. And this is common knowledge among scientists and astronomers, though they don't like to look at it or think about it. Then we have you, proclaiming the guesses as fact.  The speed of light is constant in a vaccuum. The only time it varies is in different mediums (through glass, through water, etc.). Gravity wells affects space-time, so it can affect the direction of light, but not the speed of light, which is always constant. You again are claiming your ignorance as an asset. You cannot disclaim facts by throwing bad logic at it. At the risk of posting a source completely over your head and which you'll find some way to dismiss illogically anyway: http://www.quora.com/Does-gravity-affect-the-speed-of-light |
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but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious You cease to exist, and slowly rot away to dust. I know this comes as a shock for you, but that's obvious too. Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years... You are aware that when you look into a telescope you are essentially looking back in time? The light from the stars takes tens or hundreds of thousands of years to reach us. The Hubble Telescope allows us to look back in time an incredible distance. Check out what happens when the Hubble points its camera at a seemingly empty "black" area of space for four months straight. We can see 13 billion year old starlight. In 2015 the age of the universe is not at all up for debate, it is a scientific fact that our universe is at minumum thirteen billion years old. Fun fact, when you look at the sun you are looking back in time about eleven minutes, or said another way you are viewing the light that left the sun eleven light minutes ago. About 8.5 minutes. It seems like a minor thing, but at the speed of light, that's an additional 28 million miles. Because of the eliptical orbit of the Earth, at it's furthest, light takes 507 seconds to reach Earth, and 490 seconds at the shortest distance. |
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@Wilikon Let's take for example what happened in Charlie hebdo .
Charlie Hebdo drawers insulted the son of the ex-president of France on their draws , then BOOM . the Director became without a job then ... they insult the prophet of muslims who is the leader of billions and billions of people and it suddenly became "freedom of speech" and no one should do anything about it . It just dosen't make sense and will never be . yes "Conspiracy theories" It's not theories for me because I know what Intelligence agencies do to make Islam look bad .
All they do is making groups of terrorists that kills by the name of the religion . They make the leaders and they recruit fucked up extremist who don't know a single shit about religion . that prooves why the half if not more are from Europeans or Americans because they don't know anything about the religion and they converted recently unlike the others who read about islam from their birth . so yeah ...
But all it's not working and I don't see why they keep doing it to be honest , Islam is spreading more and more then ever .
@Madness pointing at something you believe is wrong doesn't make something else less wrong. Am I using this thread to link isis and your belief (if you are muslim) in this thread? No. In your head, yes. It seems, to you, pointing to victims like I did in this thread (post #2) was wrong to even mention it. You seem to believe because I am not pointing to other cases you believe are wrong, and could very well be unjust, is proof I condone those other cases. Wrong again. Did you care what the tutsi and the hutu did to each other? Yes? Then good for you. Should I believe you are a racist because you answer would have been no instead? Certainly not. See how that work or do you need a better explanation in french or spanish?  Well it certainly does look like some people would blame all the crazy radical Islamic violence on the CIA and such. Gosh, they must be in a lot of places at the same time. Let's look at just the last couple days. Islam's Latest Contributions to Peace "Mohammed is God's apostle. Those who follow him are harsh to the unbelievers but merciful to one another" Quran 48:29 2015.05.25 (Gubio, Nigeria) - Children are among dozens killed after Boko Haram briefly takes over a small village. 2015.05.25 (Quetta, Pakistan) - Two Hazara religious minorities are murdered in a Sunni drive-by. 2015.05.25 (Zabul, Afghanistan) - Two women are among five killed in a massive suicide truck bombing that leaves over seventy others wounded. 2015.05.23 (Gilan, Afghanistan) - A family of four, including two children, is neatly disassembled by a well-placed Taliban bomb. 2015.05.23 (Baiji, Iraq) - Caliphate members slit the throats of sixteen traders transporting food into a city. 2015.05.22 (Jwamda-Kobla, Nigeria) - Sharia proponents sneak into a village and slaughter ten residents with knives. http://thereligionofpeace.com/why are you always on these claim when it has been several times proven that terrorism is NOT muslim. its NOT islam.? Shia are NOT muslims. Sharia? show me the book of Shariah, the book of the Shariah Law. it doesnt exists. it was a Constitution 1400years ago Shia is not muslim? That's news to me. if you ask all muslim who is their last prophet they will say : Muhammad (pbuh) if you ask any Shia who their last prophet is they will say Ali (pbuh) if you ask Khajani's who their last prophet is they will say Mirza Ghulam Ahmad Khajjani there are about 72 sects in Islam, all created by people from different regions but comes to the same point, there were 144,000 approx prophets who came to earth, the last one is Muhammad (pbuh) and Allah is the sole God. shia, khajanis, deobandis, koja, they are not believers of Islam, since they dont read the Quraan itself but some other books. So does Muhammad have any significance to Shia? And what does pbuh mean? |
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You sound like you have a perfectly reasonable solution to a lack of water resources in California, so let's hear it!
Nuke it from space. It will be painful, but amputation is necessary to save the rest of the body (Earth). If not, the rot will spread and eventually kill us all.  I can't think of many problems facing mankind where nuclear weapons is the reasonable answer. |
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The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since.  Well I glad we cleanly sorted that one out. WTF am I reading? It doesn't even make any sense. Just some random words bashed together. Shockingly, I understood this, but it's still inaccurate. Of course he doesn't realize it, but this is close to an Occam's Razor-type inference based upon all available, pragmatic evidence acquired throughout our life. It's a perfectly valid conclusion that we can't possibly know whether the Universe does or does not exist in the absence of our experience of it, or some aspect of it. His mistake is making a definitive conclusion. He is claiming he knows the Universe doesn't exist in the absence of our experience of it, rather than claiming we can't know, which would be empirically correct. There is no theoretical way to empirically validate or invalidate the existence of the Universe in the absence of our experience of it. Way over my head. One question. If the universe didn't exist before I was born, how did my parents exist to create me? Evidence suggests that your parents existed to create you, because you see that other children are created from their parents. If you are a father, you would have witnessed this first hand with the birth of your child(ren). Here's an analogy I've used previously: Imagine I bop you on the head and you're knocked unconscious. While you are in that unconscious state, does the Universe continue to exist? Suppose you become conscious again, and you seek to answer that very question. How would you arrive at a conclusion? One thing you might try is to ask me, the person who bopped you on the head. I could tell you, "Sure, the Universe continued to exist, because I bopped you on the head, saw you fall unconscious, and was with you the whole time until you woke up." Sounds pretty legit, but, how do you know I'm telling the truth? You must now introduce an assumption that I am truthful. Suppose you tried a different approach. Suppose you had set up a video camera that was recording you at the time I bopped you on the head, and it was set to record continuously until you woke up. After waking up, you then check the recording and you see the entire sequence unfold on tape -- i.e. the recording shows me bopping you on the head, shows you falling unconscious, and shows you to be continually unconscious until you wake up. This, too, sounds pretty legit, but how do you know the recording you're watching isn't the result of some kind of video trickery? Here, too, you must introduce an assumption that no alterations were made to the recording after you woke up. Occam's Razor only works with empirical data. It advises that the best conclusion is that which accounts for all of the data but introduces the fewest assumptions. Because defining the state of the Universe in the absence of our experience requires introducing assumptions about it, we can simply remove these assumptions and come up with a more sound answer, i.e. we simply don't know what the state of the Universe is like when we don't experience it. It may not be a practical way to think in all cases, but I believe its hard to argue with the fact that in 100% of cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist, experience of the Universe was present. And, there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it. I understand what you're saying, and yet the thought experiment has almost zero utility outside philosophy. Maybe thousands of people suffering and dying every day is just a really realistic simulation to fool me into believing reality is real. Or maybe philosophers have too much luxury to wonder if others' suffering is just a deception. The philosophical practice of denying things we know to be true doesn't strike me as having a high utility. Logically necessary, but in academia only? Like the ending of your last post: "there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it." I understand it to be logically true, but what is the utility of asserting this? Since all knowledge only exists in the universe, which can't be indpendently verified outside of itself, the assertion seems to have no meaning. Is the point we can't know what we can't know? Because that's a truism with no utility. This is where philosophy loses me. Regarding the emboldened passage, I've been working for ~6-7 years on trying to change that. During that time, I've been working on a theoretical model that lends itself to the development of a formula that may provide loads of practical utility. Once complete, I intend to submit it for peer-review to the most capable audience I can possibly find. The general idea is to arrive at a workable, practical formula without ever controlling for observer participation in the same way that classical formulas do. Why has it been ~6-7 years? Because it's fucking hard The fact that the formula happens to graph very nicely gives me hope for its validity. Other than that, you're right. It's not an obviously practical way to live, but at a fundamental level, assuming such a perspective -- while at the same time dismissing it in favor of practical considerations as you suggest -- can have pragmatic effects. I hold such a perspective, and I've derived a lot of personal meaning from it which has certainly shaped how I view the world and interact within it. Well good luck with your work, it sounds revolutionary if it pans out. |
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The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since. Well I glad we cleanly sorted that one out. WTF am I reading? It doesn't even make any sense. Just some random words bashed together. Shockingly, I understood this, but it's still inaccurate. Of course he doesn't realize it, but this is close to an Occam's Razor-type inference based upon all available, pragmatic evidence acquired throughout our life. It's a perfectly valid conclusion that we can't possibly know whether the Universe does or does not exist in the absence of our experience of it, or some aspect of it. His mistake is making a definitive conclusion. He is claiming he knows the Universe doesn't exist in the absence of our experience of it, rather than claiming we can't know, which would be empirically correct. There is no theoretical way to empirically validate or invalidate the existence of the Universe in the absence of our experience of it. Way over my head. One question. If the universe didn't exist before I was born, how did my parents exist to create me? Evidence suggests that your parents existed to create you, because you see that other children are created from their parents. If you are a father, you would have witnessed this first hand with the birth of your child(ren). Here's an analogy I've used previously: Imagine I bop you on the head and you're knocked unconscious. While you are in that unconscious state, does the Universe continue to exist? Suppose you become conscious again, and you seek to answer that very question. How would you arrive at a conclusion? One thing you might try is to ask me, the person who bopped you on the head. I could tell you, "Sure, the Universe continued to exist, because I bopped you on the head, saw you fall unconscious, and was with you the whole time until you woke up." Sounds pretty legit, but, how do you know I'm telling the truth? You must now introduce an assumption that I am truthful. Suppose you tried a different approach. Suppose you had set up a video camera that was recording you at the time I bopped you on the head, and it was set to record continuously until you woke up. After waking up, you then check the recording and you see the entire sequence unfold on tape -- i.e. the recording shows me bopping you on the head, shows you falling unconscious, and shows you to be continually unconscious until you wake up. This, too, sounds pretty legit, but how do you know the recording you're watching isn't the result of some kind of video trickery? Here, too, you must introduce an assumption that no alterations were made to the recording after you woke up. Occam's Razor only works with empirical data. It advises that the best conclusion is that which accounts for all of the data but introduces the fewest assumptions. Because defining the state of the Universe in the absence of our experience requires introducing assumptions about it, we can simply remove these assumptions and come up with a more sound answer, i.e. we simply don't know what the state of the Universe is like when we don't experience it. It may not be a practical way to think in all cases, but I believe its hard to argue with the fact that in 100% of cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist, experience of the Universe was present. And, there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it. I understand what you're saying, and yet the thought experiment has almost zero utility outside philosophy. Maybe thousands of people suffering and dying every day is just a really realistic simulation to fool me into believing reality is real. Or maybe philosophers have too much luxury to wonder if others' suffering is just a deception. The philosophical practice of denying things we know to be true doesn't strike me as having a high utility. Logically necessary, but in academia only? Like the ending of your last post: "there have been exactly 0 cases where the Universe has been affirmed to exist in the absence of the experience of it." I understand it to be logically true, but what is the utility of asserting this? Since all knowledge only exists in the universe, which can't be indpendently verified outside of itself, the assertion seems to have no meaning. Is the point we can't know what we can't know? Because that's a truism with no utility. This is where philosophy loses me. |
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but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious Nothing happens to you. The same way nothing was happening to you for billions of years before you were born. Everything after you die, from your perspective, will be exactly the same as it was before you were born. Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years... The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since. This is all demonstrably false. You might have taken note that people die all the time, billions and billions of them throughout history, and yet the universe has continued on unchanged.I wouldn't tell that(bolded part). Did you want to explain why, or did you just want to be asked to dance? |
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but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious Nothing happens to you. The same way nothing was happening to you for billions of years before you were born. Everything after you die, from your perspective, will be exactly the same as it was before you were born. Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years... The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since. I'd also like to draw your attention to the fact that you are now invalidating your own religious beliefs by claiming that any existence of the universe outside of your lifetime "is all a made up story." You are so confused about what you believe, you can't even keep your fairytales straight. Your repeated attempts to explain them invalidate and contradict the pages and pages of utter nonsense you have typed in this thread, and every other thread you inflict your presence on. |
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but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious Nothing happens to you. The same way nothing was happening to you for billions of years before you were born. Everything after you die, from your perspective, will be exactly the same as it was before you were born. Well, first off, nobody knows that there were billions of years... The universe didn't exist for anyone before they were born. Therefore the universe doesn't exist except for the lifetime of people. The suggestion that the universe exists more than your lifetime is all a made up story that you might have heard about before you were born, but that you have apparently forgotten about since. This is all demonstrably false. You might have taken note that people die all the time, billions and billions of them throughout history, and yet the universe has continued on unchanged. |
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People who don't believe in Jesus salvation are going to Hell.
See here's a prime example of someone telling you as fact what's going to happen when you die. As we've already concluded, nobody knows what will happen when die, so this person is obviously lying. Do you really know that I don't know? If so, how do you know that I don't know? Because if you knew anything about this with certainty, you wouldn't have to rely on such manipulations of logic to try to convince people of your truth. |
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but i would like to ask to an atheist what happens after death? Lots of things, but none of them will involve you. The universe keeps spinning totally indifferent to your existence, as if you never existed at all. The universe won't care, and you won't care either. Only your loved ones will be affected. what happens to YOU. not the universe because thats obvious Nothing happens to you. The same way nothing was happening to you for billions of years before you were born. Everything after you die, from your perspective, will be exactly the same as it was before you were born. |
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Or what's happens if the devil has been tricking all the religious folk all along.
Atheists will have the last laugh then.
but its quite scary to think we were wrong and will burn in hell. It not remotely scary. This burning in hell thing is a ploy used by the church to increase their followers. Wise people ignore it. Just enjoy life and stop worrying about your inevitable death. You can't stop it, it's as natural as eating, breathing etc, so why worry? yeah i do agree it has yet to be proven. but all religion speaks of hell as burning fire. all religion even tho they have their differences and beliefs speaks about the same subject, im not saying they are right or they are wrong. but its just a thought i wanted to point out. i do agree with you, death is inevitable. That's because at the time all these religions became prominent, fire was about the worst thing mankind could imagine having to endure. Think about it for a fairly primitive culture: a naturally occuring phenomenon that created terrible pain when you touched it. Naturally, that would be a thing people would fear greatly, so the thought of having to endure an eternity of fire 'in the afterlife' was probably quite motivational to 'get right with god.' |
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I don't know enough about the dams of the area to know that they could solve the problem. The area is going through a severe and prolonged drought, so I don't how dams could solve a scenario like this, mostly because I'm not an engineer. I think your industry point is spot on, but republicans seem to fight for their special interests to protect that valuable campaign cash. I see them being as big of a problem as the democrats. But I don't buy the self-engineered problem. Nobody plays with things as serious as access to enough clean water for political gain. What have you seen that substantiates that line of thought?
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City in the sky: world's biggest hotel to open in MeccaThe holy city is fast becoming a Las Vegas for pilgrims, thanks to the new £2.3bn megahotel that has four helipads, five floors for Saudi royalty – and 10,000 bedroomsFour helipads will cluster around one of the largest domes in the world, like sideplates awaiting the unveiling of a momentous main course, which will be jacked up 45 storeys into the sky above the deserts of Mecca. It is the crowning feature of the holy city’s crowning glory, the superlative summit of what will be the world’s largest hotel when it opens in 2017. With 10,000 bedrooms and 70 restaurants, plus five floors for the sole use of the Saudi royal family, the £2.3bn Abraj Kudai is an entire city of five-star luxury, catering to the increasingly high expectations of well-heeled pilgrims from the Gulf. Modelled on a “traditional desert fortress”, seemingly filtered through the eyes of a Disneyland imagineer with classical pretensions, the steroidal scheme comprises 12 towers teetering on top of a 10-storey podium, which houses a bus station, shopping mall, food courts, conference centre and a lavishly appointed ballroom. Located in the Manafia district, just over a mile south of the Grand Mosque, the complex is funded by the Saudi Ministry of Finance and designed by the Dar Al-Handasah group, a 7,000-strong global construction conglomerate that turns its hand to everything from designing cities in Kazakhstan to airports in Dubai. For the Abraj Kudai, it has followed the wedding-cake pastiche style of the city’s recent hotel boom: cornice is piled upon cornice, with fluted pink pilasters framing blue-mirrored windows, some arched with a vaguely Ottoman air. The towers seem to be packed so closely together that guests will be able to enjoy views into each other’s rooms. http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2015/may/22/worlds-biggest-hotel-to-open-in-mecca--------------------------------------------------- I understand it is islamophobic and racist to even ask why you need to convert to islam to have a reservation in this hotel. Fine. Does anyone need to convert to chrisitianity before visiting the vatican? I am sure it is the case but can't find any links on that subject... Google must be broken...  If they have a Muslim-only policy, they may be changing it when they can't find enough Muslims to fill this hotel. Oil won't last forever, and then they're going to need a replacement industry to keep the economy going, otherwise the people are going to get mighty restless and resentful. Tourism is the most likely solution. UAE has known this for some time, which is why they built islands in the ocean to create tourism to sustain their economy before the oil runs out. (They have far less reserves than Saudi Arabia.) But my prediction is Saudi Arabia becomes more moderate over time, because they'll need to in order to survive economically. Running out of oil will be the best thing to happen to the Middle East since oil was discovered there. |
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Just be thankful you don't live in California where the greenies are getting set to make people drink toilet water...and like it! It's recent on the 'everyone hates environmentalist and feminists' thread here. I estimate that the cost for the privilege of drinking sewer water will be a mere 10x or so what they pay now for whatever-the-hell they are drinking (which was snow-melt from the Sierra Nevadas when I lived in Silicon Valley, I believe, before I got the hell out of there a few years ago.) At least the anchovies will still swim up the San Francisco bay. Theoretically. Agenda-21 FTW! You sound like you have a perfectly reasonable solution to a lack of water resources in California, so let's hear it! |
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all world's media is controlled by few. if you have invested into this war only the 'right' info would get out. ether way, innocent people are caught up in this. what difference does it make how powerful the explosion is or whether its a nuke or not? i just literally passed on the info that i read - not trying to prove anything here to be honest. the reaction i get here is exactly the problem with this world today. we just accept these thing trying to argue who is right or wrong - it frankly doesnt matter as long as our taxes and actions support the empire's killing machine. the sheer ignorance of some indoctrinated masses is just unbearable sometimes. its easy to put people into the 'conspiracy nut job' box and be done with it. too easy. imagine an explosion like this in your neighbourhood - just imagine..
Bah. None of this have to do with the subject. Assertion. It was asserted to be a nuclear explosion. And that was false. Has nothing to do with media being controlled, who accepts what, what the problems with the world are, or the ignorance of some indoctrinated masses. Agreed. You say a nuke goes off, that has huge geopolitical repercussions all across the globe. Asserting a nuke going off is a BIG DEAL, which is why the fact that it's not a nuke is relevant- in fact, it's now the only relevant fact in this thread. |
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Why ISIS was existed?
I am just wondering why the warriors of ISIS don't help their friends in Palestine to against Israel
Or why they don't help the Rohingya in Myanmar
Hope world be better
Right now ISIS is busy fighting a different sect of Islam and they have their hands full butchering innocent people. It's not like they have the resources or capabilities to just jet around the world getting involved in other sects' fights when they're struggling to hold the area they've seized. yeah, that's why world people hate ISIS ISIS leaders claimed that ISIS was founded for make Islamic State they fight for themselves, not for moslem people but the poll said 81 % respondents support them make me shocked I will agree with the poll if ISIS helped Palestina or Rohingya, but they didn't That's what ISIS is fighting for, to create an Islamic state. There are groups in Africa who are fighting for the same thing. The problem is, their version of an Islamic state is one in which people they don't agree with politically or religiously get murdered. This includes the murder of other Muslims. You have to agree to their very warped view of Islam, otherwise you are a threat to them and will be murdered, even if you are Muslim. They are barbarians. |
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Why ISIS was existed?
I am just wondering why the warriors of ISIS don't help their friends in Palestine to against Israel
Or why they don't help the Rohingya in Myanmar
Hope world be better
Right now ISIS is busy fighting a different sect of Islam and they have their hands full butchering innocent people. It's not like they have the resources or capabilities to just jet around the world getting involved in other sects' fights when they're struggling to hold the area they've seized. |
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I read a book by George Friedman (founder of Stratfor) called The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Next-100-Years-Forecast/dp/0767923057). While I found his specific predictions pretty unlikely (borderline ridiculous at times), the book begins with an excellent analysis of the rise of US hegemony and the evolution of US strategic foreign policy objectives, the most important of which now are unparalleled naval capabilities and preventing regional powers from becoming strong enough to threaten the US around the world. (If you look at what the US frequently does through this lens, a lot of US actions make a lot more sense.) Another fantastic point he makes (before he goes all goofy with the predictions) is that foreign policy is larger than any president or any one politician. The external factors and complexity of both global foreign policy and the the military industrial complex often makes it impossible for a president to follow but one course. Essentially, on very large geo-political issues, it doesn't matter who is in office, because of the importance of maintaining the US foreign policy objectives (again, the most important two are unparalleled naval strength and allowing no regional power to project influence beyond their region, thus becoming a world power), every president will follow the same course. Long story short, I believe this is an obvious such case here. We can look back at Bush's presidency and see similar instances where Bush gets blamed for an action that any president would have taken. But there are two strategic foreign policy objectives the US is protecting here: (1) preventing China from extending it's regional influence deeper out to sea, where it (2) could start to threaten US naval dominance. (Not to say I agree with this course of action, because I don't. But from the perspective that the US is protecting all its global foreign policy initiatives, it really has no choice but to contain China. And I believe anyone in the White House right now would be doing the same thing.) |
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Given that the forum was down for a significant portion of this last week, will you waive minimum post requirements this week or roll posts into the next pay period? I'm not even sure if I would qualify this week otherwise, and I'm pretty consistently active every week.
minimum post changed from 20 post to 10 post. so , minimum post will be kept though the forum was down last week. the payment of last week will be paid soon. thank you. That's a fair accommodation since the the forum was down for a couple days. Thanks. |
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