Yeah, that's the truism. But, actually, why?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
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Yeah, that's the truism. But, actually, why?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
Sure thing, kiddo, keep on trolling. I don't have dreams as I am not asleep.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
"Good" also need a definition. My experience shows that this is being a completely different concept from person to person. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
(Just grumbling)
Putin talks about victory in the same way Bush does. Remember that 'international terrorists' is a euphemistic phrase for 'the Chechen separatists we haven't killed yet'.[/quote:3b7c6cx5]Quote:
[quote:3b7c6cx5]Nobody talks about victory
True, but Putin is just a man like anybody else. Spare him this slips. Noone's perfect.
On the whole I think too that terrorists must be killed and separatism - confronted.
What a great jaded bundle of emptiness you must be, in that caseQuote:
Originally Posted by adoc
Really now, fellow: these things are much more fun if you actually enter into the debate rather than throwing pebbles from the sidelines.
Really, all of it? Even where the separatists pursue their ends in a (relatively) civilised manner? Even if, say, Scotcher wanted to dissolve the Act of Union?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramil
I still think you're a good fellow, despite your semantic concerns.
Have you?Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
Russian people don't build up their opinion based on TV news. I've never met anyone who did. So quoting the media is pointless - how do you know whether that article or TV-program is true? Russians like no one else know what propaganda and brain washing mean. So the trust for the media information is lost.
So they ARE confronted in a civilised manner.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
But if they would begin to bomb people they would be dealt correspondingly.
Well, quite.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramil
I'm not a member of the Shamil Basayev Appreciation Society.
And do you know what's strange? In the days when I favoured this forum with my presence far more often than I do now, I often found myself unfairly typecast as an old curmudgeon. Now it seems I'm a trolling teenager in the popular imagination. A guy could get an identity crisis...
I've heard this from Russians before and I applaud the sentiment. But how exactly do you build up an opinion? Could anybody (Ramil?) furnish me with a list of sources which people are generally inclined to trust?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramil
The Washington Post, Guradian, Boston Globe, The Times, New York Times and other Western newspapers. I read articles and compare their information with real life in Russia. Usually it seems like shitfall. Also I discovered 5 demagogical instruments of western journalists:Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
1) careless citing;
2) appeal to the feelings, not to the facts;
3) careless comparison;
4) cutting facts;
5) inadmissible analogues;
I don't read russian newspapers and watch russian tv. But I mean they use like methods.
If you want to find truth then you should scrutinize all viewpoints (and I talk not about "independet" mass media). You should know what your opponent is interesting in.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying you use these Western newspapers as sources of information, but still don't trust them? Are they the best of a bad lot?
I didn't understand this bit either.Quote:
You should know what your opponent is interesting in.
My eyes, my ears.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
That's about all.
Also even if you watch TV or read newspapers you tend to "read beween the lines".
It's from our former Soviet experience, i think. We always suspect the worst in people.
When something happens - I look for anybody who is taking advantage over the situation.
That's the primary suspect.
When they're telling me about some plane crash in Southern Africa I say - maybe.
When they begin telling me why this happenned, I say - I don't know.
When thay say something about the facts i can gain proof for - I say the facts are: ...
You really need a reason? How about the fact that they are defenseless, that they are not partial to anybody's cause apart from loving their parents, they have no understanding of the world, its dangers and issues. They are just brutally removed from their child-world (you have been a child yourself, and might appreciate how life was so much happier and easier then) not even given a chance to take a stand of their own.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
Have you ever met a child? Belligerent little sods, especially the boy 'uns. If they jump on your face while you're reading the paper, you'll know it.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
Of course they are. They're partial to cyberpets, Christina Aguilera, fizzy drinks, violence and dope, some of them. Amongst other things. I think your warm and fuzzy sense of the little blighters displays a lack of recent proximity to them.Quote:
not partial to anybody's cause apart from loving their parents
Ineffably patronising. Some of the smartest people I know are children.Quote:
they have no understanding of the world
Look, killing kids is wrong. But so was executing Timothy McVeigh. Moral relativism is a dangerous thing when we're talking about people's lives. Even Shamil's.
Ineffably patronising. Some of the smartest people I know are children.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
Look, killing kids is wrong. But so was executing Timothy McVeigh. Moral relativism is a dangerous thing when we're talking about people's lives. Even Shamil's.[/quote:37tghdfp]
:roll: Killer arguments, matey, killer.
You are saying that the death of Mussolini is just as bad as the rape, killing and partition of a child aged 6.
Тяжёлый случай, скорее всего безнадёжный :(Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
Поздравляю всех с праздником -- каким, думаю, для каждого нормального человека является смерть этого выродка. Чтоб ему на том свете было потеплее, вернее пожарче. ;)
Хотел было ввязаться в спор -- но ей богу, не буду. Не стоит он того. Просто не понимаю, как можно было публично защищать этого гада.
Oh for crying out loud.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scorpio
Я не защищаю Басаева. Просто предостерегал от обычного одностороннего подхода к чеченскому вопросу на здешнем форуме. Видимо, напрасно.
С праздником.
I'm quite aware that that's what I'm saying.Quote:
You are saying that the death of Mussolini is just as bad as the rape, killing and partition of a child aged 6.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
Finally we are at the very crux of this matter! This is what it's all about, folks.
This line of reasoning that Joysof has presented here is the real depravity. Not the death of a murderer.
You see when you suscribe to the belief that there is no difference between killing a murderer and killing the innocent because all killing is bad, you have given up the one thing that makes humans different to animals. Our ability to reason, to discern, to make a judgment between right and wrong. After all, denying that humans are capable of making a decision between write and wrong does not alter the fact that there exists right and wrong or good and evil.
So if you cannot or will not make that distinction then you are no better than an animal yourself.
For thousands of years humans in general have generally agreed on what "good" is. It is only in this day and age that some people are questioning what "good" is and who should be allowed to make that decision. This is a very slippery slope for humanity to get into and can only lead to complete anarchy and even more violence (that Joysof seeks to avoid).
We live in a faulty and evil world where we can not always do "good" things in order to be "right". Sometimes we must kill in order to be "Good"...................As it was once written
"All that is needed for Evil to reign is for good men to sit idle."
Humanity must continue to be permitted to make this distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys". To not do so is depravity.
I agree entirely. But doesn't the greatest depravity of all arise when ostensibly decent people, often out of an entirely understandable retributive instinct, sink to the level of the Basayevs and Mussolinis of this world? I think that's the point at which we're done for.Quote:
Humanity must continue to be permitted to make this distinction between the "good guys" and the "bad guys". To not do so is depravity.
This just about sums up the illiterate nonsense that is the rest of your post.Quote:
write and wrong
Well, at least you are good for something Joysof. Spell-Check didn't pick that up.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
If you so sure about that would you clarity for me what "good" means and what "bad" means.
Can a "good thing" for one be the "bad thing" for another?
Can "good" for one nation be "good" for all nations?
Can "good" for one person be "good" for all persons?
Who wrote where about what good is?
Good - is what people believe in. And different people believe in different things. Every bloodshed in the history of the world intended "for good". Western media behaves as if there were some kind of fixed issues on what democracy is, what freedom is and what good is.
Every nation wants its neighbours to live the way they consider good. Unfortunately life is not that easy a thing. And the definitions of good and bad are different. Don't ever make the mistake that your opponent whoever that might be shares your opinions on these concepts.
I agree that it is a problem. But not that it is the "greatest", if these types of retributive instincts and emotions are kept in "check".Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
The world will never be perfect.
Well, exactly. And so what else do we have to cling to (to stop our brains exploding) in a world where one man's invasion is another man's liberation, if not the belief that, as a previous poster had it, 'War's wrong, m'kay?'?Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramil
Well, then why don't you just go out and say it, instead of writing polemics page up and down and trying to insult as many as possible in the process? If you contend that every human life is identical no matter its past history, its potential future, its current frame of mind or how many frequent flyer miles it has gathered, then you are no better than saying "war's wrong, m'kay?"Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
A whole lot of simplification and generalizing to come with a controversial idea. Which you have not justified yet, btw. Vague finger-pointing towards truisms doesn't cut it, my joyous joysof!
Oh, and it follows, in your point of view, correct me if I am wrong, that war is always wrong, because it kills something or another. Is that the gist of this tirade of yours?
Why is 'polemic' a dirty word? And it goes without saying that I mean no offence. Except to DDT. To him I mean offence. Anyway (to misquote Mencken), aren't all successful people querulous and bellicose?Quote:
Originally Posted by kalinka_vinnie
If my posts were so full of simplification and generalization, I'd hope you'd have caught me out before now. As it is, you haven't met a single one of my contentions head on. It strikes me that you're the one peddling vague, friend. That and perverted recapitulations of my words.Quote:
A whole lot of simplification and generalizing to come with a controversial idea.
I miss badmanners. There just ain't no substitute for intellectual stamina.
Who's tirading now?Quote:
this tirade of yours?
Don't misunderstand me wrong! Your posts aren't simplified, your views are. What do you mean I haven't met a single one of your contentions? I know you don't value the life of kids very much, but I felt like that was the one I did react to. If I recall correctly, you answered all my arguments with jokes.Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
I'm sorry, did you just answer my question with a question? I was really looking forward to a proper answer... oh well, maybe next time!Quote:
Originally Posted by joysof
Them weren't jokes. Serious points, lightly made.Quote:
If I recall correctly, you answered all my arguments with jokes.
War is always wrong. I confess that I approach the subject from the vantage point of a proper old-fashioned turn-the-other-cheek pacifist. (Of course, I'd make an exception for TATY.) How's that for a proper answer to your last question?Quote:
I was really looking forward to a proper answer...
Of course, all this misses the point. I'm very conscious that I live in a world of geo-political manoeuvring - and that my little pipe-dreams are little more than...pipe-dreams. But forgive me - I think we were talking about the Northern Caucasus...
Now that is better! You seem like a reasonable fellow who is just out to argue. I can respect that.
I just completely disagree with almost everything you ever said, but I'll survive!