Posts by Tony Judd
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As for the "American kind of freedom", what exactly does that mean? The freedom I enjoy in the US is pretty much the same as the freedom I enjoyed growing up in NZ and people enjoy in any country around the world typically described as "free".
The "American kind of freedom" that I referred to James is the particularly American view that war is necessary to preserve freedom when in fact one of the defining characteristics of "American freedom" has been the freedom to go to war whenever it looked as though that would be a good way to advance the "national interest" (however that was defined at the time).
As for overthrowing governments, what could possibly be wrong with whomever overthrowing governments such as North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe
I would say the death of innocents, the bad track record of that particular form of diplomacy to date and the small question of who is the judge to decide which governments should be overthrown and which shouldn't.
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Craig
Well, Tony, am I the only person who thinks New Zealand's tough talk to folks who overthrow democratically elected governments much closer to home is looking a wee bit hollow right about now?
What? So Bainimarama is granted permission to pass through NZ on his way to Niue for the South Pacific Leaders' Forum, and this is in some way comparable to American imperialism by expansion as developed practically through the use of military force over the last 300 years?
Please explain, I'm not sure that I see the connection...
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What has happened in Georgia is a balls up of spectacular proportions, but it is hard to see that it has much to do with neocons, for the reason that there are almost none in the administration anymore, and haven't been for a while.
Ummm, James? First paragraph of the blog entry that this discussion is attached to:
Something you might not know about the short, sickening conflict in Georgia: John McCain, who yesterday declared "we are all Georgians", is being advised by Randy Scheunemann, a neocon who, until March was registered with the US justice Department as "a foreign agent working on behalf of the government of Georgia."
I assume that when you are talking about freedom:
Anytime the world becomes less free, as it has in this situation, it is something to be regretted and hopefully reversed and whomever or whatever made the world less free should be the automatic object of opprobrium.
that you mean the particularly American kind of freedom where it is the USA who invade a country and overthrow the government and not any body else?
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Tony, meet Grant. His 'arguments' largely consist of fucking idiotic, fact-free assertions repeated over and over.
Yeah, I am familiar with Grant's modus operandi but I still feel that he needs to be called on it. Even if only occasionally when the nonsense overwhelms my ability to ignore it.
If we don't remind people like Grant of the existence of the world of facts and measurements every so often I hate to think what new heights of delusion they might reach.
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What percentage of people on welfare do you imagine are in genuine need of it? I would say the number is well below 1%
Where the hell did you get that batshit statistic from?
Well below 1%???Truly, did you just have a quick imagine and decide, "ummmm, well below 1%"??
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I know you're after good new stuff, but check this out for a fall from grace...Chris Cornell produced by Timbaland.
Jesus - WTF is that? Seriously? Who told him (actually, either of them) that was a good idea?
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Shearwater's new record "Rook" is on high rotate at our place at the moment.
There was a great article in Scientific American this week about Jonathan Meiburg's secret life as a ornithologist. He's a superstar muso and a bird nerd.
</Geeky swoon> -
"Hubris", "petard" and "pants on fire" indeed.
Oh it is a rich and delicious irony, isn't it?
But one mustn't get too smug at the misfortune of others.
Lest one's own petard be required. -
Ladyhawke is nice enough, but did you see the Feist/Sesame street video down the page.
Wow. Educational & cute as a button. Mini-crush. Colour me a fan-boy etc...
She played the park just round the corner from me the other night. Beautiful show.
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Excuse the long post but I think it is an important point that living human cells cannot be considered to be a human being for the following reasons:
Foetuses are uniquely different from born human beings in major ways. The most fundamental difference is that a foetus is totally dependent on a woman's body to survive. It is common to argue that born human beings can be entirely dependent on other people too (__e.g.__ disabled persons), but the crucial difference is that they are not dependent on one, specific person to the exclusion of all others.
Another key difference is that a foetus doesn't just depend on a woman's body for survival, it actually resides inside her body. Human beings must, by definition, be separate individuals. They do not gain the status of human being by virtue of living inside the body of another human being. At some point the embryo is capable of surviving without it's mothers womb. I would argue that this is closer to the point when an embryo becomes a human being.
Early embryonic forms do not share basic commonalities that define us as human beings. For example, zygotes and blastocysts are barely visible to the naked eye and have no bodies, brains, skeleton, or internal organs. Foetuses cannot breath or make sounds, and they cannot see or be seen (except by shadowy ultrasound). They absorb nourishment and expel waste via an umbilical cord and placenta, not via a mouth and anus as do all other human beings. At various stages, foetuses have eyes on stalks, notochords (instead of spines), fish-like gills, tails, downy fur, distorted torsos, spindly legs, giant heads, and alien-looking faces. Finally, the foetal brain is not yet capable of conscious thought and memory (which aren't fully actualised until two or three years after birth). But our complex brains are what set us apart from animals and define us as human beings. The human brain is the essential seat of our humanity.
This is not to say that human life doesn't have value. Of course it does, but only the value that we bestow on it - in biology, life is cheap, life is wasteful, and death is vital. Nature does not value humans any more than worms, and in all species, vast numbers of eggs and seeds don’t stand a chance of reaching maturity. Life has been cheap throughout human history too - it's only modern medicine that has allowed us to keep most of our babies alive for the first time. All human beings are valuable, important and special. But (of course) not all human cells are necessarily human beings.
An acorn isn’t an oak tree and the egg you had for breakfast isn’t a chicken. Neither is a blastocyst a human being.