I'm sorry...

[alfonso]

what if i make a mistake?

i'm not going to kill someone cold-blooded and after the fact. if i kill someone, that will be absolutely horrible. do you really think that i'm in love with killing people? if i'm in that truly life threatening situation, all bets are off. there's no retribution involved. if there's a mistake, i never caused it. leave the rhetoric for someone else.....

To be sincere, for what I perceive of you, I think you feel in trouble also if you face a mosquito....

[braincell]

Gary is perfect everyone. He can't make a mistake.

What about the other people? The wife beaters, alcoholics and insane people? How do you prevent them from buying guns? They might be sober or sane at the time they buy the weapon and go off later. There is no way to read minds.

The Europeans are much wiser in this regard and about many other issues. I feel sad to be a member of such a backward thinking nation as The USA plus they are so stubborn. If I didn't have to take care of some family members I would strongly consider moving.

[hubird]

it's all about trusting the authorities in having the monopoly of violence.
If you don't trust the authorities you (have to) believe in selfdefence.
If you don't trust the authorities there are two possibilities.
Either you are right because the authorities are bad, or you don't wanne believe in any authority.
In case of the latter you're back in stone age.

It's all about statistics:
if you have a society with good functioning authorities and justice with a gouvenmental monopoly on violence, you have the best chance to survive, statistically that is.
Proof: just check the crime rates of the US compared to European countries.

By your own words, your believe in selfdefence and the right to it is caused by a lack of trust in your own societal organisation and gouvernment (possibly combined with stubborn remains of southern Wild West romantic? (no offense)).

One could argue, if a gouvernment that promotes or activily supports gun possession and selfdefense to a high degree, your lack of trust is even right...

But what makes you a little suspect ( ) are your theories about and believes of totalitair elite world domination and the principal impossibility to change that .
In the end (and unintended) it makes you also a non-democrat by yourself.
You'll act according your believes.
What's left for the neighbour is the question if you're good or bad.
Because that's the only relevant thing left.

(on a side note: the chinees elite is trying to buy huge American properties by stock aquiring etc., heavily feared by the US elite, so the theorie at least should include the possibility of more than one elite, with opposit interests; this undermines the theory in it's heart).

So, if you'd be right about the elite theory, and you thus have to rely on own gun protection, the safety of your neighbours will depend on your personal goodness.
They are lucky, as you're a good guy, but you could also be a bad guy.
The same is true in case of the mirrowed situation.

Hm, what am I trying to say?
If you think the elite theory (which excludes societal controll of violence) is true as a matter of nature, you will always (have to) deny the possibility of real democracy and societal safeness (sorry for bad and simple terms and so, it's hard to discuss this for me).
This attitude is cinical by premisse, as humanity is declared to be incapable by nature and forever.

Yet there's enough evidence we can do better, the statistics proove that.

Wouldn't it be easier and more human to say, I don't like my gouvernment and the way the trias politica is orginized in my country?
At least it'd demonstrate a positive believe in future and humanity.
It leaves room for improvement, in general (f.e. vote for citizen unarming).
The elite theory (fact if you like) is dead end street, it's deterministic, non-dynamic and therefor a-historical.
Can't be good, can't be true

[garyb]

no, that would be stupid.

power is always corrupting and the corrupt always gravitate to power. governments that ban weapons always kill their subjects. this is a factual statistic. it's also wrong to say i have "theories". i've only spoken of verifiable facts.

it's also stupid to rely on the government for protection. keeping the toilets running and making sure that the effluent doesn't cause problems? the government is good at that, picking up the garbage, administering roads and the like....anyone who has ever called "911" for help in an emergency can tell you, the best the government can do is clean up the mess later. if you're banning guns because people are too deadly to be trusted with them, that is the most cynical move. you'll be needing to ban knives, baseball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs, stun guns, pens, pencils and every other club sized or sharp object. just put people in padded rooms...

hubird, as to the chinese thing, the elite are in NO WAY threatened by China. as David Rockefellor brags in his autobiography, his family has financed the Chinese revolution and funded the government(read the book before you doubt me, you with the lazy mind!). also, the Li family itself is among the top elite families on the globe, others include Astor, Bundy, Collins, Dupont, Freeman, Kennedy, Onassis, Reynolds, Rockefeller, Rothschild,Russell, Van Duyn and Merovingian (European Royalty). CHINA IS ONE OF THE COUNTRIES THAT THE ELITE ARE MOVING TO(along with Dubai and Emerites). RUPERT MURDOCH himself married an avowed chinese communist and moved to China recently. these people don't need to meet your version of logic. they have their own agenda. they only marry each other, keep power across generations and are real, whether you like it or not. these peopel control the flow and supply of money and resources. is there no hope? NO. not in centralization. LOCAL, COMMUNITY control is where hope is.

Alfonso, you're going to mock me? fine. i live with POOR people motherf....you'd piss your pants here, but before you say that this is why we need control, i'll remind you that the poverty and ignorance here is purely artificial and a result of control. these people are the sacraficial lambs for those who consider themselves "well to do". if you had no hope for the future or your children's future you'd grow up twisted and bitter yourself, just like in those ghettos some of the nicer european cities have created to maintain a servant class even while bragging about demonacracy(we've seen a few riots from those places in the last 30 years, huh?). even with that, i have no problems with my neighbors, and i garun-f*k*g-tee you, every single person on my street is armed. the only people that go out of their way to make trouble for others are the extremely hungry(and they usually just beg), the institutionally criminal(the 1 in 10,000 of bad people who is broken and gone crazy) and most of all, the police(crips and bloods are sweethearts compared to those who are supposed to protect us from bad teenagers). and you know what i've noticed about europe? whenever the people who live there disagree with the government and get together in mass to protest, the government dresses men in black uniforms of death with covered faces and beats the snot out of and even shoots that population exercising it's right to protest corruption or injustice, so it looks like the same old sh*t there to me.

Americans distrust their government for good reason. the writers of it's own constitution warned that corruption always follows power and that it's the citizens DUTY to oversee their government and give the civil servants who run it a reason to fear and give pause if they betray the public trust. this is called patriotism in my country. we are red blooded. we are not inferior to blue bloods. blue bloods need to watch their p's and q's. we know that they have hypnotized the masses of the world into thinking that their knowledge and ruthlessness makes them superior. we know that they are truly psychopaths and deviants, not superiors.

hitler banned guns.
stalin banned guns.
mao banned guns.
pol pot banned guns.
idi amin banned guns.

all gun banning governments murder their population either through direct or indirect action. those that don't ban guns, often give them to the ignorant to kill each other(congo and ruwanda). it is the sickness of total power over others, to enjoy the death and destruction of peoples. only power and governments ever are able to murder at this level. governments can't be trusted with the death penalty, nor can they be trusted with guns, nor can they be trusted to administer disarmament. this is common sense. are any of you people denying that your government is totally and thouroughly corrupt? is this really a theory?

you disagree with me? fine. no need to try and paint me as a coward or a wicked person or a wild nut. F-U! any of you who wish to come live with me for a month or two and see how i live are welcome to. then you can begin to say what kind of man i am, whether i am kind or a monster, or even crazy. as i said, i have done my research and i have documentation.......

funny, that i agree that the government shouldn't run executions and i'm treated as an idiot. what do you want? to give these guys the right to use lethal force(or even the thing they call "pain compliance") or not?

[Me$$iah]

Once again the truth is spoken.

Thanks Gary, for so eloquently and beautifully explaining that

Everyone, read and take note.

Garyb knows the scope of the problems in the world, and the world of problems with scope.

[braincell]

governments that ban weapons always kill their subjects.

Oh really Gary? Tell that to the Japanese. This is so wrong Gary. You really need to check the facts before posting such bull.

[hubird]

well, at least my gouvernment doesn't kill the subjects like you say.
And corruption isn't really big or threatening public trust
We had the big constructing fraude case, which lead to a public parliamental investigation (perjury not alowed), and to condemnations.
Corruption is concidered as very wrong in my country, also by the politicians.
Nobody's perfect tho

[alfonso]

Alfonso, you're going to mock me? fine.

No way, I think you are a good hart man, I like to use hyperbolic sentences sometimes, but I wanted just to say that I perceive you as a peaceful person. The mosquito thing came to my mind because even the most justified killing of a being leaves me something bitter after I did it....I might seem a bit naive, but I'm starting to feel uncomfortable with the killing of animals, with eating meat (I almost banned mammals from my desk, fish not yet...) and even killing a mosquito or a fly is something that I still do but I stopped laughing at it.

Anyway, the way we analyze things is obviously related to our environment and experience, but I simply don't agree with some generalizations. All this thread came out because someone here feels bad about the decisions taken by his governants on an issue that is so much important for him, and I'd add for the vast majority of the people in Europe if the polls have to be trusted.

Now the way I see this debate going on is that everyone has a view of the world, something important used to imagine a better world. It seems obvious that those recipes are different, as our lives are, but it's very human to forget the differences and extend our own experience to the whole reality. That's naive and brings the most of harshness in the debates.

I think that what seems natural in a certain environment is absurd in some other. In Europe we had two world wars one after the other one, the second one made more than 50 millions deaths, some countries have been "zero grounded", racism became a scientific method of mind control and all this happened because of a militaristic view of society, that's what the fascisms were. I think it can be understood why we basically hate weapons and tend to deprecate war as an inevitable source of failures and useless pain.

Now everyone can get a bit too fast in thinking that all the world is his world, I imagine that if I was living in a dangerous place I would be armed...but there are some generalizations in what you say that I can't fit in my logic.

Hitler banned weapons..I'm not sure, at a certain point all the society was all militarized...but ok, let's say he did, but why did he? Reasons can be very different for the same action.
Hitler introduced also huge improvements in health care, would you say that introducing health care will bring mass slaughters?

I think that we live in complexity, it's not all white or black and arguing and debating can be a way to enlarge mental boundaries, if we understand differences. But we may disagree, I hope.

Sorry again if you thought I was mocking you, I think that I simply entered in a discussion where temperature was pretty high while I was basically of good humour...a bit cold for the game...

Peace.

[garyb]

it's all good.

alfonso, i don't even like killing mosquitos either. i do it with impunity even though it doesn't make me happy though, because they are eating me.....

i don't blame you for wanting to end violence, guns and war. those wars were foisted on people though, they were not the common people's choices(the one's who were doing the fighting and dying). disarm the "officials" first, and then the public can begin to safely disarm. the other way(leaving it to the population to bear the first responsibility for disarming) is foolish, since the guys in charge of disarming are the one's running the wars....

braincell, the Japanese don't kill their population? ok, i guess negative population growth doesn't count...(the same in europe). of course a hundred years ago, they were more open about how they felt about peasants. a wealthy nobleman could just go into the feilds and test a new sword with impunity. noadays that would bring a frown, so some things do get better...and in the bigger world picture, what is the percentage of the population with cancer these days? why are there clinics opening everywhere and why after 18months do so many infants have convulsions and then are diagnosed with autism these days? could it be the cancer viri contaminents in vaccines and the mercury "preservatives" in the baby's vaccines? of course there are official british, japanese, german, dutch, american and Un documents discussing the need for such measures, but that's another issue....

hubird, your government isn't corrupt? wasn't there just a big international meeting with the usual major crackdown on protest? just because your people have been allowed and bribed with a certain level of comfort, doesn't mean that there aren't machinations. who owns dutch royal shell? aren't you guys in the EU? the EU's agenda trumps your elected government anyway(i know you have exaples of this). i really think you guys in europe have the advantage of states that actually are nationalities. in other words, in your country everyone is mostly tribally related. that does moderate certain kinds of hanky-panky. still, personal comfort is no measure of corruption.

of course, there a lot of gray area, things are never that black and white(this is after all a thread of polemic and rhetoric). anyway, thanks for disagreeing with civility. we've made the first step towards a better world, for sure....

[hubird]

the Japanese don't kill their population? ok, i guess negative population growth doesn't count...(the same in europe).

omg Gary, it looks like you almost were seriously

btw, what meeting were you talking about?
Can't remember a recent rave

My 'nobody's perfect' btw was directed to my own gouvernment, in case you read that different.

Sometimes things are quite complicated, like Alfonso said (nice description Alfonso , being 'cold' while stepping into a warm debate ).
Take this for example.
Yesterday the gouvernment made public the decision to not keep a population consultation about the new European treaty as demanded by the opposition and probably also by the members in the parliament of one of the 3 coalition gouvernment parties.

As you may know, people in Holland and France voted negative on the first try to enforce 'Europe' by a real 'constitution', including hymne (9th of Beethoven), a flag, and other sentimental symbols of nation building.
The consultation wasn't committing, yet politics didn't dare to sign anyway.

Now there's a new treaty, which is not a constitution but rather a multilateral treaty between national states, without the above mentioned symbols, and with more respect for national determined subjects to solve them differently.
One could name that a trick, but a fact is, they 'listened' to the people and lowered the European unifying aspirations.

The same prime minister (first minister, not president) who organized the first consultation now says he won't do it again.
3 Years ago he thought it'd be a piece of cake to get a yes, a huge miscalculation which hit him and the rest of the political establishment hard at the time.

He knows that he will get another 'no' now also, so his decision can easily be called treason of the population.
Tho not according the book, but it's a form of corruption.
He can't risk getting the risé of Europe and the practical exclusion from decision making European circuits.
So in exchange of signing the treaty he gets what he wants, and the price is payed by the people who don't have a voice on a subject like they did have befor when a yes was expected.

Simple?
No
Try this one:
we asked the people to agree with the constitution three years ago, we took the people's voice seriously, changed the things they didn't agree with, and now we're ready to sign it.
If we wouldd get a new 'no', we would have to start the negotations all over, and about what should we debate again? we did agree already.
It was already a hell of a job to get the new treaty off the ground, remember Poland' (sorry Samplaire ).

I'm always sensible to good arguements

(Yet a consultation will follow I think, as the gouvernment can be forced to it with enough votes nationwide).


Today a maybe better example of 'corruption' came along.
The Socialist Party holds back a great part of the mony that local and national politicions get from regular gouvernmental sources.
It lets payment flow through the Party line, so individual members don't have controll on it...some of them protested against this already but the SP wants to stick with that use.
It's a big part of the party's financial power of course, they swim in mony relatively.

Today the minister of national affairs has said that this situation has to end, as the payment actualy is a contract between individuals and the state.
The state shouldn't take part at favouring individual parties.
She (my former mayer btw) just didn't use the word corruption, but she must have had it in mind
Say she has right, then this is an example of the way a gouvernment is doing right, fighting corruption.
At the same time the SP has grown tremendously the last years, and slowly get's to be a real alternative for the social democrat party which is halved recently and which that minister is a member of

Life is complicated, so is truth

[Me$$iah]

Sorry to say this Hub,

But the new treaty they are gonna sign, without popular support, is the old constiturion. They've just given it a new name and dropped the anthem. Everything else remains the same. Permanant president, foreign minister, absolute control from Brussels,(like they dont already??!!)

new treaty, same old crap

In the UK not one person voted to be a member of a European state. I believe the same is true in many European 'states' Everyone voted to be part of a common market, an economic trading power, but at the first vote for a European state, Vast numbers in many countries voted NO. But still the game goes on, the elite carry on with their agenda, Europe becomes one.
Now that is corrupt, and every european government is thus a corrupt government.

[garyb]

thank you.

without facing the truth, things always become worse and worse.....

[braincell]

Oh, like you are an expert on the truth, the Illuminati, Rockefeller, etc.. This all wreaks.

[hubird]

thank you.

without facing the truth, things always become worse and worse.....

with claiming the truth, things always become worse and worse...

[samplaire]

I'm not to spoil the discussion. I just want to remind you the movie featuring Kevin Spacey "The Life of David Gale". I know it's only a movie but...

@ Bingo - I understand his point of view and my blame is not to educate people for voting for other people.

But it's difficult to fight with cliches. For the masses 'liberals' and 'devil' is the same. 'Cyclists', 'masons' and other stuff is like demon... Now new words come like 'oligarchs' which should frighten like a witch. People like simple words... We won't change it. Do you mind 'well educated' is also a person to be frighten of? It's difficult to explain. There is a one minute program in one of our radio stations and it's called 'Thought of the day' - professors or opinion leaders say something and the radio chooses one sentence - one was very accurate - 'if you want to be a lawyer you have to study many years but if you want to build law primary school is enough when you are a deputy' No comment.

[garyb]

thank you.

without facing the truth, things always become worse and worse.....

with claiming the truth, things always become worse and worse...

sorry. that's how it is, even if you want to hide your head in the sand.

actually, hub, being that the hague is one of the headquarters for the world governement, i'm not surprised that you support it. i also know that in general, the dutch government provides for it's people fairly well compared to other places in the world. of course, if you want to put on "9/11 was an inside job" shirt and talk to people about it, or go around calling the queen really bad names, you will find out what "police state" means, still....

as to the recent clash, you're right, i was mistaken, it was a misremembered incident.

at no time have i or will i criticise the people themselves. the dutch have a long history of humane behavior, it's in the national character. i know you have no evil designs regardless of what you think the best political system would be. the people at the top of the pyramid in the Netherlands do not consider themselves dutch, necessarily though....

[garyb]

true.
there are so many personal truths around.
But some of them want to be more true than the others.
Although both truths know they are personal.

So does the statistical majority of truths prevail ?
Ot the most radical truths ?
Or the ones that are agitated most ?
Or the ones with the best funding ?

sorry, this is not relative or personal.

[garyb]

Oh, like you are an expert on the truth, the Illuminati, Rockefeller, etc.. This all wreaks.

sorry, i'm not an expert, but i am considerably more informed than you on the subject, and as i said, i have documentation, not just a theory.

ps-yes it does REEK, but that's because corruption and rot are basically the same thing. we all know how bad a rotting corpse can smell. please don't be angry with me for bringing up the smell in the first place. ignoring it won't make it go away, the pus is contagious.

[hubird]

sorry, this is not relative or personal.

mwa, you can't hold up this...not only because there are to less people believing the theorie is true.

There's always room for doubt, speculation, interpreting, analysing, etc.
What you consider as top secret dangerous elite plotting happenings may I see as kinda funny rotary club for the -yes- elite.
Etc.
I won't deny your mentioned facts in the first place, I just interprete them differently.
Of course a theory which concentrates on studying elite behaviour through history can reveal great knowledge, but a claim to have the last and definite truth (world secret almighty elite domination) is rather ridiculous today.
The elite would wanne see that theory be true

But you should believe what you want, or even name it a fact, it isn't really interesting to discuss it for ever

You would get my attention however if the theory tried to explain the way a certain elite is forced to changing it's strategy, or tries to understand how the elite tries to fight opposite mass movements or free press relevations which are strong also, or has to fight new upcoming groups from other cultures, like the new big mony elites from China buying Pearl Harbor, etc. etc.

It's the clarification of the dynamics and seeming contradictions of history which makes a theory useful, strong or 'true'.
Otherwise it's just another ideology, if you ask me.

But I give it to you
thanks for the kind words
cheers.

[garyb]

hubird, i think maybe you are deliberatly ignoring a few points.

it's all one "elite".
they claim lineage from Cain, hence the X(his mark) which always shows up regardless of the "civilization" or culture.

even further, there is nothing "elite" about "the elite". they don't fight eachother except for preeminence in their own circles. according to Bertan Russell(Russell, another of those families. in the USA, Skull and Bones' real name is "the Russell Trust"), they aren't even the same species as you. why would they explain themselves to their cattle and sheep? China has an "up and coming" elite challenging the american and european elite? no, i already told you that the Li(Lee) family is among the 13 or so most influentual families(and always has been, china's civilization goes back thousands of years and Li has been the preeminent family the whole time). why do you think royalty doesn't wed the commoners?

there is no "free press". it is controlled by money.

it doesn't matter how you interpret what is happening. what is important is what is happening. what is happening is not subjective. it is fact. this universe does not depend on mankinds' belief to exist, regardless what the insane and mentally ill think.

do you think that nuclear weapons are dangerous? ACCORDING TO THE GROVE"S OWN ANNALS, the manhattan project which dropped two bombs on Japan was planned at the Grove in the building known as the Chalet. is this what rotary clubs do? i'm sorry, i'm near saying something insulting if you would disarm me and yet give these jokers the right to plan, build and drop such weapons on helpless civilians in order to end the war that these builders started.