Originally Posted by C/1Lt Henderson

EDIT: Ted, the Catholic Pope prohibited condoms because Catholics believe that one should not have sex before marriage. That being said, what do you need a condom for if you arent afraid of getting your wife pregnant. If you are, then dont have sex. And I highly doubt the POPE had sex before marriage...oh wait, did the pope ever get married?

This proves my point of the Catholic church being the remant of a once so powerful institute. One that sold letters saying you'd go to heaven. One that burned/drowned thousands of women for being a witch. One that installed a Blood Counsel to impose their laws on the people. A church that played intricate powerplays to cling on to their worldly power and the list goes on endless.
Simply saying that "you should not have sex before marriage" and thinking that that is the end of pre-marital sex.....pfff. And if they do know that it is not the end of it, then you are letting entire generations get in touch with HIV.

And why is this view ignorant PJ, what am I missing? I am not saying that they are meaningless in this world. The Catholic church is profoundly important to millions! But I see their ban on condoms as a massive error on their part... then again I am a protestant, so maybe I am missing the bigger picture here?

Catholics believe that sex is for pro-creation, not recreation. That is why the Catholic Church does not endorse any form of birth control with the exeption of the "rhythm method." (Something to do with timing the woman's ovulation) If you look you'll notice that Catholics also tend to have large families, several years ago now a family of 15 that lived a block away moved to Florida, a couple years ago I heard they were up to 17 kids, case in point.

I thought it was pretty funny that Reagan was a hero. And that FDR was a villain. And Communism is bad, but this guy makes it look like Satan incarnate. At "scourge of the human race," I almost laughed.

Also, I agree with Ted about the condoms. We got overpopulation and rampant STDs, what the hell man.

[edit] Anyone who thinks sex isn't for recreation is in for a miserable life. At least they will get their heaven. [/edit]

Get back on topic or I am locking this thread.

To get back on topic; it seems that more good people are on the list of bad people and vice versa. This is actually the first time, that I would rather invite the "good" people instead of the "bad" to my birthday or X-mas party!

Eric Margolis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Eric Margolis is a journalist born in New York City to a Jewish father and Albanian Muslim mother. He holds degrees from the International School of Geneva, the Georgetown, the University of Geneva, and New York University. During the Vietnam War he served as a US Army infantryman.


Journalism

He now works in Canada as contributing editor to the Toronto Sun chain of newspapers, writing mainly on Middle East, South Asia, and Islamic affairs. He also writes for Dawn, Pakistan's leading newspaper, and for the Gulf Times in Qatar and Khaleej Times in Dubai,as well as "The American Conservative". He also appears frequently on Canadian television broadcasts – he was formerly a regular guest on TVOntario's show Studio 2 and Diplomatic Immunity whose spot is now filled by Patrick Martin. He appears regularly on CNN, Fox, CBC, Britain's Sky News, NPR, and CTV National.

Margolis is affiliated with several organizations including International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and the Institute of Regional Studies based in Islamabad, Pakistan.


Political views

Margolis identifies his politics as "Eisenhower Republican". Though his domestic political persuasion is moderately conservative (he is a staunch anti-communist and a supporter of capitalism), Margolis' paleoconservative views on the Middle East are sharply at odds with the neoconservatives.

Margolis is best known from his coverage of Palestine and Kashmir. Margolis' mother, Nexhemie Naimi, was also a journalist who spent a long time in the Middle East documenting the plight of the Palestinians during the 1950s[1]. Her influence, plus Margolis's role as a foreign correspondent in the Mideast and travelling with the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War, has given Margolis a strong interest in the Muslim World. He strongly supported NATO's intervention in the Kosovo war (unlike most paleoconservatives) and also supports the rebels in Chechnya.


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I thought this would be of interest as someone called his views eurocentric. Maybe the list is eurocentric (half of it are europeans) but the author certainly isn't.

As most here do I don't agree with several entries in that list. Those that haven't been mentioned yet:

- Margaret Thatcher: I don't see how she managed to overcome the "poisonous class structure" of Britain. As far as I'm informed her policy did increase the inequality between the rich and the poor quite a lot. And she was also an adversary of european integration.

- Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin: I don't think he should be in either list, but I don't think its fair to say Stalin merely expanded his system of red terror. Lenin had to fight a civil war in an already war-torn country against an enemy that committed just as many atrocities. Stalin on the other hand took over an established state and soon enough started systematically killing people that were as loyal as they get.

Originally Posted by loki

As most here do I don't agree with several entries in that list. Those that haven't been mentioned yet:

- Margaret Thatcher: I don't see how she managed to overcome the "poisonous class structure" of Britain. As far as I'm informed her policy did increase the inequality between the rich and the poor quite a lot. And she was also an adversary of european integration.

- Vladimir Iljitsch Lenin: I don't think he should be in either list, but I don't think its fair to say Stalin merely expanded his system of red terror. Lenin had to fight a civil war in an already war-torn country against an enemy that committed just as many atrocities. Stalin on the other hand took over an established state and soon enough started systematically killing people that were as loyal as they get.

Come on Loki,

I agree with you concerning Thatcher, but Britain was falling to pieces in the 1970s. Something had to be done. And (I am thinking about Germany these days) that something is not pumping more money into a socialist system that does not work. How about a new and improved socialism that actually puts the notion of a functioning economic system back into the term. Since the economy is an important aspect of all our lives, this means putting "general welfare" back into "socialist"?

Lenin was a power-hungry oaf backing a morally bankrupt ideology. Communism was not "a good theory that did not work in practice". Communism, like Facism or Nazism, attempted to create a new homo sapiens by destroying entire classes of people. It was an easy step towards Stalin's bizarre racist-communist mixture that ultimately targetted anyone and everyone.

Originally Posted by Ollie Garchy

Come on Loki,

I agree with you concerning Thatcher, but Britain was falling to pieces in the 1970s. Something had to be done. And (I am thinking about Germany these days) that something is not pumping more money into a socialist system that does not work. How about a new and improved socialism that actually puts the notion of a functioning economic system back into the term. Since the economy is an important aspect of all our lives, this means putting "general welfare" back into "socialist"?

Lenin was a power-hungry oaf backing a morally bankrupt ideology. Communism was not "a good theory that did not work in practice". Communism, like Facism or Nazism, attempted to create a new homo sapiens by destroying entire classes of people. It was an easy step towards Stalin's bizarre racist-communist mixture that ultimately targetted anyone and everyone.

Actually, I see Lenin as the opposite of an oaf. He was a clever manipulative pseudo-intellectual who found himself actually in charge of a dying nation state. I think that is why he became the darling of other pseudo-intellectuals in the 20th century. Those folks who inhabit ivory towers intellectualizing about everything and accomplishing nothing. On the other hand, Khrushchev was an oaf of first magnitude.

Originally Posted by Ollie Garchy

I agree with you concerning Thatcher, but Britain was falling to pieces in the 1970s. Something had to be done. And (I am thinking about Germany these days) that something is not pumping more money into a socialist system that does not work. How about a new and improved socialism that actually puts the notion of a functioning economic system back into the term.

Yes maybe it paid out in the long run but seems to me it still wasn't much of brilliant plan, it just accepted that certain people would have a hard time till things get better. On the other hand I'm not really familiar with the details of her policy, only that she disempowered unions and cut social contribution. But I guess there is a reason nobody votes conservative today in Britain.

Originally Posted by Ollie Garchy

Communism was not "a good theory that did not work in practice". Communism, like Facism or Nazism, attempted to create a new homo sapiens by destroying entire classes of people.

Yes and I was not trying to euphemize communism, I just think theres a difference to accept the killing of people in some sort of misguided idealism (for the cause, i.e. the revolution to suceed) or to kill and enslave people (lots and lots of) without any apparent reason. Also the numbers are simply of a different magnitude.

Originally Posted by loki

Yes and I was not trying to euphemize communism, I just think theres a difference to accept the killing of people in some sort of misguided idealism (for the cause, i.e. the revolution to suceed) or to kill and enslave people (lots and lots of) without any apparent reason. Also the numbers are simply of a different magnitude.

Actually, communism and fascism were essentially the same phenomenon.

A good argument: "According to Hannah Arendt, the only identifiable purpose of the fascist and the Bolshevik revolutions was the "radical destruction of every creed, value, and institution". Unlike the American and French revolutions, these "revolutions" had no program or purpose. Arendt identifies five distinctive traits of totalitarianism and finds all of them exemplified in both the Nazi and Bolshevik regimes. The five are: 1 / replacement of rational persuasion by violence and terror; 2 / an anti-bourgeois rhetoric and sentiment; 3 / a devotion to the mass man as opposed to class, region, or élite; 4 / a reliance on internal terror as an instrument of social order; 5 / the absence of any goals or policies. She tells us that "the practical goal of the movement is to organize as many people as possible within its framework and to set and keep them in motion; a political goal that would constitute the end of the movement simply does not exist"."

[Communists will not like this argument and call me a fascist because I refuse to accept their binary argumentation. For me, communism is actually worse than fascism because it continues to mobilize killing squads and support the extraordinary repression that made it so famous. Lenin was only smart in exactly the same way as Hitler. Lies work. By the way, Nazism espoused the concept of social-darwinism in the same manner as historical materialism. The Nazis killed Jews, for example, because this group ostensibly constituted a threat to the master race. For the communists, the non-working classes were the target because they threatened the workers and had no right to exist because the future inevitably belonged exclusively to the working class. When you argue that the communists had a reason, you might as well agree that Hitler did as well. The only difference here is that some academics between around 1850 and today somehow find the extirmination of the upper classes to be a good thing. Killing a race is the same as killing a class...both are just mental constructs since classes and races are nearly impossible to define.]