Artful Dodger:

> Some out of guilt, others out of joy.

Joy in what sense? I just gave something to somebody in need, and the joy I feel comes from knowing I did something "good". In essence, the joy comes from knowing that I am a "good" person. Let's say for a moment that I decided that being selfish is better. I turn into a Mr. Scrooge and give nothing away, not even a penny. Then the joy is gone. I am not so good any more.

My sense of ethics tells me that giving is good, and being selfish is bad. Perhaps my posts sounds harsh "launder one's conscience, guilt, etc." Notice that I did not say anything about guilt being good or bad. I merely point out the "psychological" motivation behind giving.

In capitalism the rich are constantly trying to prove how good they are. So much so, that they even sold to people Adam Smith's "invisible hand". The rich are good, really. They even created a job for you. Now you can feed your family thanks to them. So what if they make a profit at your expense? You should still be grateful that the invisible hand has made them so nice to you.

Then somebody points out at the fact that the rich exploit the poor. They pursue monopolies and use their wealth to acquire political power. Suddenly the rich don't look so nice any more. Their image has to be restored and giving to charity buys the best PR around. Now Mr. Scrooge is not some mean callous exploiter, but a nice man, reformed from his selfish ways. Suddenly the eye of the needle got bigger, and Mr. Scrooge actually fits through.

My big criticism of "giving" is that it is politicized. Governments and politicians use aid as a means to leverage political and economic advantage. They will give aid to countries only when it is politically and economically convenient.

I know very well that a lot of people give out of the goodness of their hearts. They do it with kindness and joy. It is those people that remind me that humanity is more than a bunch of selfish, consuming, abusive, bellicose, murdering apes. People that give are the ones that show that humanity can strive for better. That much is true.

Islam is as much a political view as it is a religious view, there
sharia laws are oppressive and aggressive towards those under them, and they want these laws in England and the EU. These Muslims should be watched closely as they basically want you enslaved.

where were the underwear and shoe bombers from? is anyone suggesting that blacks get profiled? oh that should go over well. there are a huge number of Black muslims in this country and the list is growing..sure.. just profile them and olive complected people...not whites though..cant wait for the outrage over that..good luck with that

rod03801: well none that you are admitting to ROFLMBO

Mousetrap: And? my innocent child has to be subjected to having a total strangers hands put in areas that I have told them they should always report if someone touches them, because it's wrong?

(Hypothetical of course, as I have no kids.. )

(V): NI is a prime example of days of yore when kids were throwing fire bombs. Kids can easily be brainwashed if taken from their families.

Mousetrap: A priest was the prime suspect in a bombing during the Northern Ireland war on the IRA side.. but it was covered up to stop "consequences" ... He was moved to the Irish Republic where the Irish police and government were use to covering up for the Catholic church... Such as nuns and priests abusing children.

Artful Dodger: That is easily answered. Personally I havent seen it. But who is to say it has never been done. That we take that chance.

Artful Dodger: Extremists use women and kids to do exactly that and protect themselves. How many times on the tv have you seen terrorists hiding behind women and kids. I know I have seen it many a time.

Artful Dodger: You took the words right out of my mouth.. err fingers.

rod03801:

> I'm assuming you didn't TRULY intend to make such a broad generalization?

I sure did intend to make that generalization. What is "social conscience"? It is middle class guilt. If I give to the poor, then I am a good man. If I don't, then I am selfish, and I feel guilty about it. So I give to the poor, to prove to myself that I am good so I won't feel guilty about being bad.

Then we come to the definition of "good person". For a Christian, a good person is typically somebody who follows what they interpret the Bible to say. "Faith, hope and charity. Of all these charity being the greatest." "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Hence somebody with money, knowing that the rich cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, must make ammends to prove they deserve to be good Christians and be accepted into heaven. So they launder their conscience by giving to the poor. "If I give to the poor, i am not the kind of rich guy who is compared to a camel, but the kind of rich guy who is welcome in Heaven."

Of course, many donations are tax deductible. So a rich man can buy himself a good reputation while at the same time getting himself a nice tax break. In fact, the more money I can afford to give, the more PR I can squeeze out of it, and the more of a nice guy I look. The artifice is so good, that I can literally get rid of my bourgeois sense of guilt, and even be a good Christian (or a good Moslem or whatever religion I might like).

Ultimately, everyone wants to convince themselves that they are good. Yet nobody wants to admit the truth. The poor of the world don't need charity. What they need is social justice. They don't need petty bourgeois guilt. What they need is the fair and equal distribution of wealth. But then, it is the evil godless communists who preached that. Charity is good, because as long as there is charity there is no need for real social change or revolution.

> Is that why you give to charity? WOW. It's not why I do.

Why do you give then? I give as much as I can out of guilt. I am honest. I know very well that the money I give to charity is for the most part wasted because it will never ellicit any real social change. It merely eases my guilt so I can sleep better at night. I am an atheist, so God does not play in my sense of guilt. Mine is mere middle class guilt. But then, if people don't give out of guilt, why do they give? Are they trying to prove something to themselves, or to the world? Even if they give anonymously, what is the psychological motivation behind giving?

Übergeek 바둑이: When they do something for others (like give money to charity) it is either out of guilt, fear of hell, or to cash in a nice tax break.

Is that why you give to charity? WOW. It's not why I do.

I'm assuming you didn't TRULY intend to make such a broad generalization?

Artful Dodger:

> Plymouth Colony upon communist principles

Two details: First, Communism did not exist in 1620, not as an ideology. It is something that was born in the early 19th century. Second, we should eliminate Thanksgiving as a holiday because it was invented by Communists! Since all of these pilgirms were Christians, I suppose Christians can be communist too.

Let's face it. The reason why Communism failed while individualism and capitalism won is because people are in essence greedy and selfish. It is interesting that the pilgims hated work when it was for everybody else's benefit, but had no problems with it when it was for their own individual benefit. That hasn't changed. People still think of only what is good for themselves. When they do something for others (like give money to charity) it is either out of guilt, fear of hell, or to cash in a nice tax break.

Artful Dodger:

Pan Am Flight 103
Lockerbie... 190 Americans on that flight. Just it blew up over Scotland.

It's been in the news again recently

Artful Dodger: hopefully not the Basque, or the Tamils, or davy koreshs friends, or FARC or the NLF and Tim MCveighs groups, incidently , where did the IRA get their ak's from? oh that would be Libya.. and what was the IRA doing in Columbia? and wait, A maoist group set off a Bomb in India??
?

Artful Dodger: Hopefully Hannity's prediction that this week will change this whole thing, is true.

Artful Dodger: You forget that suicide is considered a straight to hell act in the Qur'an. And the killing of captives and the like has only added to the recruitment of active combatants. Something even ex Pres Bush knows.

Artful Dodger: According to a MI5 source quoted in a UK paper there are about 1500 white British converts to Muslim fundamentalism in the UK.

And as well known, converts tend be to be more zealous than people born into a religion.

Artful Dodger: This is my favorite Republican tactic. If you repeat something enough it makes it true!

How about the likes of Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczynski?

And these guys: http://trueslant.com/allisonkilkenny/2010/05/19/white-domestic-terrorists-slip-off-medias-radar/

Artful Dodger:

> All, I repeat "ALL", terrorist attacks in America have been committed by Middle Eastern men between the ages of 18 and 40.

Except for that Mexican guy with the dirty bombs. I think he is called Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah al Muhajir.

Oh, and the English Jamaican shoe bomber. Richard Reid, aka Abdul Rahim.

There are a few others here and there!

Artful Dodger:

> "Cut this PC nonsense and go after the bad guys. PROFILE!"

I think the biggest problem with profiling is not so much making assertions about somebody based on external appearances, but rather what the "profile" says about an individual and how that information is used.

According to the profile, I am a Hispanic male with tattoos on his forearms. That means there is a big likelyhood that I am a member of gang and possibly involved in drug trafficking and other illegal activities. That profile has cost me dearly every time I travel. It goes without fail that at every airport I get stopped and get my luggage searched. I get questioned and harrassed. The funny thing is, I am more like a "white middle class" man. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I have never committed a crime. The hardest drug I ever took was Tylenol with codeine, and that was because of an elbow operation. I am not some homie from the hood, but a university educated chemist. The profile fails in this case. I found it insulting and deameaning.

The other day I was in a mall. I saw these two young African girls. They were wearing hijabs (head dress). By their features I could tell that they were possibly Moslems from Somalia. What were they? Terrorists? Oppressed Moslem women? Generally xenophobic Moslems? Not at all. I figured out what they were about when their conversation focused on how one of their friends got into trouble for being "too horny". It is likely they would not have that conversation at home in front of their parents, but it made me question my views based on a profile based on looks.

Sometimes profiling works. Most of the time it fails. It is the simple truth. I see a white guy, about 200 lbs overweight. What is he? A MacDonalds addict? A Walmart customer? Some redneck? No, he is diabetic, having a difficult time regulating his blood sugar and thyroid function. He is a teacher in a school, a father and a good man. Throwing a profile at him is insulting, just because of the way he looks.

Profiling and and his ugly cousin stereotyping go too closely together. Sometimes people go too far in the name of political correctness, but I would rather have that than ignore potential stereotyping and racism.

Übergeek 바둑이: thats kinda hard to explain to the victims of 9/11,imo.
its a shame that good people have to be treated like criminals.

Artful Dodger:

Until recently I had considered taking my son to Disneyland in the USA. I figured that it would have been a great family trip for all of us to go there and give my son a trip he could treasure once he grew up.

However, considering the current stance that the USA has taken with regards to travellers and visitors, I felt that the USA has become the least inviting country to visit.

Why would I want to subject my family to either x-ray machines that see through our clothes, or some goddamn paranoid xenophobic customs agent copping a cheap feel in the name of national security.

As I see it, even the North Koreans don't do that. Americans have no conception of how this is viewed around the world. Every day the USA is drifting more and more towards paranoid xenophobia. Americans can tell themselves that it is being done for "national security", but in reality it is all about control. The USA even wants personal information from people who travel through its air space, even though they will never even land in the USA. It is all a big brother scenario.

We used to travel through the USA in our way to Latin America. Then we decided that taking Mexicana and travelling to Mexico was better than subjecting ourselves to the hassle of going through the USA, even though travelling through Mexico is more expensive.

I am Canadian, a citizen of one of the countries that is the most friendly towards the USA. I can only imagine how less friendly countries see all this. All I can say is that the USA lost my tourist dollars, but then, I doubt anybody in the USA cares about that.

Anybody want to guess how many terrorist HAVE EVER been caught by the TSA due to pat downs
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thats right ZERO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Artful Dodger: the horror stories of airport embarrassments are terrible.

My daughter has lost all her hair due to something I can't even pronounce let alone remember thename of. She wears a wig. When she was leaving here after a holiday with me the fact that she wore a wig showed up in the xrays she was given....she was pulled back and questioned...she was then told to remove her wig so they could see if she had nothing or something to hide...she asked to be taken to a separate room so she wouldnt be embarrassed in front of 100's of people...they refused and she had to remove it. I wasn't impressed and queried the actions of staff to be told she could have been a terrorist. I might add she is a tiny wee thing (4ft 10in) and weighs 37kilos.(about 80 odd lbs)...she is smaller than a lot of young kids :(....we just had to wear it I'm afraid

Don't you 2 even start the personal stuff, or you will both be banned. ONLY warning. And there is also no need to debate this post here on this board. Thank you.

.. you now have to reply.. is this some unwritten commandment?

to the person who sent me via PM this post......DONT....I have people on hide because I dont want to see what useless information they are about to impart.....but having said that I now have to reply

***I dont think (re the A380) that Rolls Royce use cheap labour****....nothing was said about RollsRoyce using cheap labour...in fact nothing was said about Rolls Royce.

QANTAS (note the spelling) gets the majority of maintenance done OFF-SHORE using CHEAP labour...ie people who work for peanuts therefore dont give a damn if the repairs are done correctly or not.
OFF-SHORE means - not on australian shores.

Artful Dodger: Only because production of ozone depleting substances were banned.... At least they were in Europe.

Do your bloggers read at all??

rod03801: It's about safety and the prevention of deaths of American citizens as well as those of other countries affected by the emergence of the latest in terrorist groups of the 20th-21st century. Drugs (illegal legals or the illegal kind) kill.... As both Terrorists and drugs kill, I would have thought both would have been on the top two possible activities via plane been targeted.

It's called killing two birds with one stone.

The rules seem to be that if chosen to be scanned (as being trialled now), only if you decline will a body search be initiated.. yet at the moment with a body search being the only option without the scanners... the scanners is a better quicker option.

(V): This isn't about "drug mules". This is about terrorists. Frankly, I'm even MORE against my child being poked and prodded to stop the influx of drugs. They did not increase this because of drugs.

Artful Dodger: But what of the drug mules that would be caught in the process? Or has that problem in the USA that kills many many people each year now been sorted? No colour there to profile!!

rod03801: I think most terrorists (under a Muslim banner or otherwise) know that security is high. Metal detectors, sniffer dogs, x ray scanners that can pick up what is in the luggage in many ways.... chemical detectors... Which are already in place. The problems that Have been going on with planes being hijacked over the last 5 decades, drugs smuggling and other illegal activities... make the ability to smuggle anything very hard.

Maybe we shouldn't have trained the ex favourite anti USSR freedom fighters so well and we wouldn't be in this pickle. Rambo (Rambo 3) fought side by side with them.

Artful Dodger: This should be an interesting week, with Thanksgiving traveling.

Artful Dodger: Other side of the coin, I suppose : What if they KNOW we won't check such people thoroughly and they find a way to use that to their advantage?

Artful Dodger: That is silly. I am responsible for myself at home.
When it comes to planting bombs then it is the airport,s responsibility to make it as safe as possible for the thousands that travel.

I wouldn't be so quick to blame the body scanners on Obama. These machines were invented and being talked about back when no one outside of Illinois knew who he was. This is all 9/11 fear-fueled, and this fear has been been driven by the Republican party for years. ("You're either for us or you're against us.") People are complaining now who thought the invasion of privacy from the Patriot Act was okay. Every liberal friend I have who I've heard talk about the scanners is against them.

What's sad about these scans is that they just give us an illusion of security. I heard a TSA agent on the radio, who said that it would be very easy for a terrorist to get ahold of an airport employee badge and get to go through a much slacker security line. They know what's being done in the name of security, and can work around it.

I was chosen for a body scan when I flew in June. I emptied my pockets before I went through, but had forgotten I had a tiny memory card from a camera in the bottom of my pocket. I was pulled aside and asked what was in my pocket, pulled it out and showed the agent, and then was rubbed (not patted) down. This was done in the open as other passengers were standing there. That was the biggest issue I had with it - that they did this in front of any random person standing there. It was definitely very creepy, and this all is part of the reason I decided I'm going to drive instead of fly this Thanksgiving. Sadly, I think their airlines will suffer over this. I think one thing that needs to be done to make us more secure is improve the metal detectors. My stepmom has two metal hips, and half the time she flies the machine doesn't detect them.

Bernice: Yes.. I researched under the words "worlds safest airline".. and up on fatalities Quantas came up as the lowest on record... just 7 dating back to the 1950's.

I didn't look up on "blame the foreigners" .. I don't think (re the A380) Rolls Royce use cheap labour.

Artful Dodger: ROFL @ the fig leaf and clasped hands.....

Im going to do what AD has done....*click* (and what Vikings and others have advised)

(V): you didn't do your research properly is all....you used the words fatality and teething...not I......the lack of good australian maintenance people instead of cheap O/seas labour is the problem.....do your research......AGAIN

Artful Dodger: That's "Their shirts are brown".. and so do alot of your police officers!! It's a readily recognised colour shirt used in law enforcement.

Artful Dodger: "In criminal law and tort law, the threat or use of force on another that causes that person to have a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact."

.... So would alot of arrests by police officers and preventions by body guards.

Bernice: You haven't read my post properly once again.....

"............Fatality wise....."

ie deaths not malfunctions or teething problems.

at the moment I wouldnt fly qantas for all the tea in china (there is no T in china) and in the past have always flown qantas both at home and abroad, and im not on my own saying this

(V): they were not teething problems, you are talking the A380....what about the 3-4 747's that had to have a turn-around because of engine problems in the ensuing days (different engines/different planes)....it is maintenance problems as all the work is done off-shore. You haven"t done your research correctly/properly once again.

Bernice: .. Fatality wise it is the safest airline. The recent problems were teething problems with the engine... a relatively new one.

(V): Quantas? well....Qantas has had so many problems that I don't think it holds that record any longer, or doesn't deserve to.