. . . In 1951, Bill Buckley made his name with God and Man at Yale, which critiqued his alma mater for its hostilities to capitalism and religion. Four years later, Buckley founded National Review. He was 29.
In its fecund early period in the 1950s and '60s, National Review helped introduce a modern conservatism into American political life. Buckley and his talented stable of editors and contributors gave coherence and shape to what he called "a fusion" of traditionalism, anti-Communist internationalism and free-market economics. Equally important, the magazine worked to discredit fringe elements like the John Birchers, the Jew-haters and the Lindbergh isolationists.
This coalition served as the intellectual foundation for the rising architecture of the conservative movement. In 1964, Barry Goldwater defeated the Eastern establishment's Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican Presidential nomination. Though Goldwater badly lost, the ideas that animated his candidacy continued to gain support, and the 1980s saw the Presidency of Ronald Reagan and its fruits, a revolution in domestic economic policy and the undoing of the Soviet empire. . . .
Buckley himself never lost his faithin God, his country, the obligation to engage in the controversies of the age, and the wonders of the mind. His half-century at the center of the American scene was a model of thoughtfulness and political creativity that remains as relevant today, perhaps more so. Ave atque vale.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/28/2008 06:52 ||
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#1
Soros really is no different than Ernst Stavros Blofeld. He wants to be the absolute ruler of a country, and he doesn't care which country. His agents have now been expelled from half a dozen such, where he was trying to rule from behind the throne.
Noteworthy also is that he has given lavish support to all three presidential candidates, hoping to buy future influence.
Soros is a menace, and hopefully, he will make enough enemies so that somebody decides to stop him for good.
No, he wants to abolish them all, and establish a world government. And he sees organized religion and other things standing in his way -- he even espouse Esperanto to eliminate language as a barrier to uniform culture, whose standards are all set by the "educated elites".
America the Resilient Defying Terrorism and Mitigating Natural Disasters
Summary: A climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness caused by the threats of terrorism and natural disasters are undermining American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Rebuilding the resilience of American society is the way to reverse this and respond to today's challenges.
STEPHEN E. FLYNN is Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, 2007), from which this essay is drawn.
When it comes to managing the hazards of the twenty-first century, it is reckless to relegate the American public to the sidelines. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear weapons placed the fate of millions in the hands of a few. But responding to today's challenges, the threats of terrorism and natural disasters, requires the broad engagement of civil society. The terrorists' chosen battlegrounds are likely to be occupied by civilians, not soldiers. And more than the loss of innocent lives is at stake: a climate of fear and a sense of powerlessness in the face of adversity are undermining faith in American ideals and fueling political demagoguery. Sustaining the United States' global leadership and economic competitiveness ultimately depends on bolstering the resilience of its society. Periodically, things will go badly wrong. The United States must be prepared to minimize the consequences of those eventualities and bounce back quickly.
Good news for us civil engineers -
The United States' aging infrastructure compounds the risk of destruction and disruption. One of the rationales for building the interstate highway system was to support the evacuation of major cities if the Cold War turned hot; in 2006, the year the system turned 50, Americans spent a total of 3.5 billion hours stuck in traffic. Public works departments construct "temporary" patches for dams, leaving Americans who live downstream one major storm away from having water pouring into their living rooms. Bridges are outfitted with the civil engineering equivalent of diapers. Like the occupants of a grand old mansion who elect not to do any upkeep, Americans have been neglecting the infrastructure that supports a modern society. In 2005, after a review of hundreds of studies and reports and a survey of more than 2,000 engineers, the American Society of Civil Engineers issued a scathing report card on 15 categories of infrastructure: the national power grid, dams, canal locks, and seven other infrastructure sectors received Ds; the best grade, a C+, went to bridges, and even in that case, 160,570 bridges, out of a total of 590,750, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.
More good news, for Bush Haters.
These downward trends in preparedness and infrastructural integrity could be reversed by stepped-up investment and more effective leadership. Unfortunately, Washington has been leading the nation in the opposite direction. Since September 11, 2001, the White House has failed to draw on the legacy of American grit, volunteerism, and ingenuity in the face of adversity except for the Military. Instead, it has sent a mixed message, based on its friends in the MSM touting terrorism as a clear and present danger while telling Americans to just go about their daily lives unless you or a loved one are in the military. Unlike during World War II, when the entire U.S. population was mobilized, much of official Washington today treats citizens as helpless targets or potential victims starting with Harry and Nancy, John-Boy and Teddy. Whole (unreviewed) essay at link. I just cherry-picked some juicy bits.
Posted by: Bobby ||
02/28/2008 15:51 ||
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#1
Unlike during World War II, when the entire U.S. population was mobilized..
No. Quasi-militarized to maximize wartime production with limited resources and manufacturing capacity. Tell me the shortages in resources that have created strategic problems for our forces today other than Congress sticking it finger into the process and playing politics with the financing? The man confuses 'mobilization' with 'will' and the reasons for government to effect either.
#2
I think there is something to be said for feeling the pain of wartime. In this case the pain should have been aimed at whatever it took to get us away from oil soon after Sept 11 and securing the border and the pain involved in mowing our own lawns, etc.
"little pink concrete hermetically sealed houses for you and meeee"
/J Mellencamper
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2008 19:20 Comments ||
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#5
FOX NEWS >
*LAURA INGRAHAM - OBAMA is "MR. GLOBAL DIVERSITY".
* MORT KONDRACHE > reminds that the US is spending only 2% of its GDP on the WOT.
*FRED BARNES + KRAUTHAMMER > both roughly agree that, regardless of rhetoric, any POTUS MCCAIN or POTUS OBAMA/CLINTON will likely INCREASE US POST-2008 SPENDING LEVELS AS PER THE ME.
Again, RADICAL ISLAM > priority right now should be to STOP US ENTRENCHMENT EFFORTS IN THE ME, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Year 2008 -2010 > To salvage the Radical Islamist OWG agenda, which by extens also infers agz the validity of NON-ISLAMIST ISLAM AS A WORLD-DIVINE RELIGION + OWG MODEL, IMO OSAMA + RADICAL ISLAM NEED A ISLAMIST-ONLY, UNILATER MAJOR/SIGNIFICANT BATTLEFIELD VICTORY(S) IN THE ME OVER THE USA ANDOR ISRAEL PER SE IN LIEU OF ANY AMER HIROSHIMA = MUTUAL DESTRUCTION SCENARIO.
Unless something changes soon or this year, by the above FOX NEWS scope RADICAL ISLAM CAN ONLY LOOK FORWARD TO A PAR OR STRONGER US EFFORT IN THE ME - IOW, EVENTUAL ISLAMIST DEFEAT. As said before, Islamist-specific dedic hopes for a OWG ILsmaist-Jihadist Radicalist State will become heavily dependent on de facto, EXTERNAL GREAT POWER CONFRONTATION AND MUTUAL DESTRUCTION SCHEMES.
Before the MAD-FOCUSED RADICAL MULLAHS + 9-11, there was 1980's GORBACHEVISM > IFF THE USSR CANNOT BE BROUGHT UP TO THE LEVELS OF THE US-WEST/NATO, THE LATTER WILL BE BROUGHT DOWN TO THE LEVELS OF THE FORMER.
Osama + Moud, etc must be aware that US GMD in Europe will all but nullify the IRANIAN/ISLAMIST BOMB, WHILE UNSTOPPED US ENTRENCHMENT WILL EVENTUALLY TURN A OWG GLOBAL ISLAMIST WAR INTO SO MANY SCATTERED, REGIONAL/LOCAL "POLICE ACTIONS" = SECTARIAN NUISANCES, AND NO LONGER A POTENT/REALIST THREAT TO US-LED OWG-NWO EVEN IFF ARMED WID NUKES-WMDS.
The late political philosopher Michael Oakeshott is not widely known. He should be, because what he said about politics is worth considering as Obamamania sweeps the United States.
Many people seem to see an Obama presidency as the cure for the social and political ills of American society. Journalists covering his campaign describe the adulation of the crowds and supporters as akin to a religious revival. . . .
Politics is not something from which we should be saved, any more than life is an illness in need of a cure. As Oakeshott put it, politics is not "an encounter of dreams," a "jump to glory," or the means for making people better.
This attitude probably has few adherents nowadays. Many assume the function of government is to serve our wants and desires. Some even think it's the government's obligation to improve our lives, make us healthy.
Oakeshott thought people should behave like adults, take responsibility for their behaviour, and accept the consequences of their actions. Such a disposition places a restraint on attempts to use politics for grand social engineering schemes. Oakeshott certainly wouldn't have thought much of a political program based on slogans as mindless and banal as "change we can believe in."
Posted by: Mike ||
02/28/2008 08:48 ||
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#1
Are there really enough retards in this country to elect this asshole? I'll be really disappointed if they do.
Posted by: Albert Phomomble6021 ||
02/28/2008 9:28 Comments ||
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#2
Well, when people ask what are his accomplishments, he sits on the verge of his biggest right now... Sometime in the next week a stake is going to be driven clear through the vampiress and out her back.
It can arguably said he went up against the political equivilant of the NE Patriots and is now running out the clock on "Ms. Inevitable".
He did it in a fairly savvy, out manuvering her machine. No small accomplishment.
As Dennis Miller said, "He has everything but my vote".
#3
Don't count the Hildebeast completely out. Obama has may have some.... foreign investment, Chicago crime, mortgage, campaign fiance, IRS baggage. Unless they MSM and Washington sweep it all under the rug like they've done some others like him over the years.... he and Omama could be in the ditch in no time.
#5
Besoeker,
NBC, CNN and the rest of the crew are "politely reporting" her demise, but the obituaries are all written and ready for publication.
I don't doubt that the beasts campaign doesn't have at least one more nuclear option, but I think they must realize whatever it is is too toxic to her campaign to survive.
Unless the media is as monumentally wrong as they were in 2004, about noon on election day, when they were already plotting out the assignments for the next three days of news cycles featuring President Elect Kerry, the SS Clinton goes props up in the next ten days and slips under the waterline.
Don't get me wrong, I want then to slug it out for another month or so, but when Nancy and Harry start telling her to surrender, her super delegates will be paddling out Hillary's floating luggage to meet the "Good Ship Obama-pop".
#7
Oakeshott thought people should behave like adults, take responsibility for their behaviour, and accept the consequences of their actions.
That's not what has been taught in our schools, argued in our courts and politics, or observed in the culture since the 60s [with the exceptions usually discovered in Red Country]. It's also why the opposite behavior rationalization which has been adapted is ultimately a terminal threat to any real republic, which is predicated upon human free will and its consequences.
#8
You mean other than its parallels with the rise of nazism (only this time it is 'hugs without arms'). All they need is an incident - wait when is the DNC convention and what did they say/threaten it would be like?
#1
Nah, he'd just make it obvious that any problems that follow racial lines are due to the likes of Sharpton and Jackson and those that believe the crap that issues from their pie holes more than anything else.
#2
Rubbish! Send Phillips sorry race bating wonk arss back to the progressive center of cultural enlightenment from whence he was born, Guyana. Let him not be burdened with evil United States and it's societal undoing.
Frontpage Interviews guest today is Peter BetBasoo, co-founder and director of the Assyrian International News Agency (www.aina.org). He was born in Baghdad in 1963 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1974. He obtained a B.S. in Geology at the University of Illinois Chicago (1980-1985) and a minor in Philosophy. In 2002, he worked in the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, in the Water, Agriculture and Environment group. In 2007, he authored the report, Incipient Genocide: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Assyrians of Iraq.
FP: Peter BetBasoo, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
BetBasoo: Thank you very much, Jamie, I am honored to be here.
FP: Tell us your thoughts on Muslim claims of accomplishments, revisionism and the expropriation of cultures and ideas.
BetBasoo: Let me preface my remarks by saying that I do not claim that Muslims have made no accomplishments. Individual Muslims have been successful in the full range of the human scientific and artistic endeavor. But a closer examination of these successes reveals that they came about because these individuals stepped outside of the Muslim realm. For example, today Muslim scientists and scholars are trained in the West. I claim that Islam is not conducive to the pursuit of rational inquiry, and when Islam asserts itself, it borrows, co-opts and ultimately, when time has passed and memory forgotten, claims that these borrowed and co-opted things were originated by Muslims, not by the native cultures that preceded the Muslims.
If something cannot be so expropriated, it is often destroyed. The most recent example was the Taliban's destruction of the 2500 year-old Buddhist statues in Afghanistan . In Iran , the UNESCO world heritage sites, Pasargadae and Persepolis , are threatened by the construction of the Sivand dam, and the Mullahs simply don't care, though they claim the water line will be below these cities, which date back to 560 B.C..
In Iraq , history text books teach that the Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians were in fact Arabs -- never mind that these civilizationsexisted a good 5600 years before Arabs/Muslims came into Mesopotamia .
In the Middle East it is nearly impossible to separate Islam from Arabs, they are two sides of the same coin. Hence, if you are an Arab, you must surely be a Muslim, and your accomplishments as well. If you are not a Muslim, then you need to be.
In India , over 3500 Hindu temples have been occupied and converted to Mosques, the most famous being the Taj Mahal. In Kosovo, under the auspices of the UN "peace" keeping force, over 600 Serbian churches and monasteries have been occupied or destroyed by the Muslim Kosovars. Kosovo is the most important religious center for the Serbians.
FP: So how about Muslim claims of accomplishment that arent real?
BetBasoo: Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing to do with. Arabic numerals? From India . The concept of zero? From Babylonia . Parabolic arches? From Assyria . The much ballyhooed claim of translating the Greek corpus of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian Assyrians, who first translated to Syriac, then to Arabic. The first University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988 A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had three departments: Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. Al-Azhar only teaches Theology.
Speaking of medicine, Muslims will claim that medicine during the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world. That is correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu family, Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of doctors, who were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for nearly 200 years.
There are many more examples, but I think these are enough to make the point.
FP: Why, in your view, does Islam fail in producing scholars and thinkers?
BetBasoo: It is a bold assertion to say that Islam fails in producing thinkers. Yet one is lead to this conclusion by a historical examination of Islamic civilizations. The putative "Golden Age of Islam", the Abbasid period, has been shown to be not the product of Muslims, but of their Christian subjects. In his book How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, O'Leary's lists 22 scholars and translators during the Golden Age of Islam; 20 were Christians, 1 was a Persian, and 1 was a Muslim. This covers about a 250 year period. This "Golden Age", incidentally, came to an end after the Caliphs had forcefully converted enough Christians to Muslims (through the Jizya) that the Christian numbers fell below the critical threshold needed for sustaining the intellectual enterprise.
Given that this intellectual enterprise during the Abbasid period was the product of Christians, we ask the question: has there ever been an Islamic golden age? There was none during the rule of the Mamluks, who overthrew the Abbasids. Can we say the Ottomans, who followed the Mamluks, ever had a golden age?
In his book Religion of Peace, Robert Spencer has offered a penetrating and incisive analysis of why Islam fails to produce thinkers. His explanation is theological and theoretical. I will summarize it now and then give my own complimentary explanation, which is practical.
According to Robert Spencer, the Muslim god, Allah, is capricious. He is not subject to any laws and can, in fact, change laws arbitrarily without restraint. Quoting the Pope, Spencer says:
for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.
Spencer continues:
"the Pope was not so much saying that in the Islamic view Allah would command his people to do evil, but that he might change the content of the concepts of good and evil. In other words, Allah would always enjoin justice and kindness, but what constitutes justice and kindness, just as what constitutes innocent blood, might change."
And
"He [Allah] was thus not bound to govern the universe according to consistent and observable laws. 'He cannot be questioned concerning what He does'" (Quran 21:23 ).
And
"Accordingly, there was no point to observing the workings of the physical world; there was no reason to expect that any pattern to its workings would be consistent, or even discernable. If Allah could not be counted on to be consistent, why waste time observing the order of things? It could change tomorrow. Stanley Jaki, a Catholic priest and physicist, explains that it was al-Ghazali, the philosopher that the authors of the Open Letter recommend to the Pope, who 'denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah.' He adds that 'Muslim mystics decried the notion of scientific law (as formulated by Aristotle) as blasphemous and irrational, depriving as it does the Creator of his freedom.' Social scientist Rodney Stark adds that 'it would seem that Islam has a conception of God appropriate to underwrite the rise of science. Not so. Allah is not presented as a lawful creator but is conceived of as an extremely active God who intrudes in the world as he deems it appropriate. This prompted the formation of a major theological bloc within Islam that condemns all efforts to formulate natural laws as blasphemy in that they deny Allahs freedom to act.'"
Thus there is no incentive for Muslims to pursue rational inquiry, since any results obtained can be invalidated by Allah at his whim.
FP: And Christianity?
BetBasoo: In contrast, Christianity derives from the Bible the notion that God works and is subject to natural and predictable laws, which a rational inquiry into would be a fruitful undertaking. This notion is the fundamental basis of the scientific method, which is a Christian invention.
That is the theological/theoretical explanation of Islam's failure to produce thinkers. There is a practical one as well. Allow me to illustrate it by contrast.
There are two aspects of Christianity that every Christian must contend with. The first is the Trinity, the second is the literary style of the Bible.
In the Trinity there is a Mystery that must be understood. Just exactly who is the Father? Who is the Son? What is the Holy Spirit? How do these relate? How does the Holy Spirit interact with the corporeal? Where does it reside? In the heart? the liver? the brain? Does it exist separate from the human nature in the body (hence the Diophysites -- Roman Catholics, Protestants, Assyrian Church of the East) or is it inseparably fused and intertwined with the human nature in the body (hence the Monophysites -- the Eastern Orthodox Churches)?
The New Testament is written in parables. Seldom is the point of the story expressed directly. The reader is asked to read a parable and figure out what it means. Reading the New Testament requires analysis, it engages the critical thought processes of interpretation and deduction.
The effort at understanding the Mystery of the Trinity and of unraveling the meaning of parables exercises the mind and engages the Christian not only on a spiritual level, but an intellectual level as well. To wit, it teaches a Christian to think.
In contrast, the Koran is written in a prescriptive style. There are no parables. The Muslim is summarily told what to do, most of the time without explanation. The Muslim needs to read just enough to get the prescription. It's like the directions on your drug prescription: take two pills every eight hours. Period. No further explanation.
Thus on a practical level, the act of exercising these religions produces two different thought processes. Christianity asks the believer to think and analyze, to interpret and deduce. Islam asks the believer to obey blindly and without question. Indeed, the Koran says "...follow not that of which you have not the knowledge" (Children of Israel, 17.36).
FP: Peter BetBasoo, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
#1
Whilst I mostly agree with this, the scientific method, in the sense of inquiry into the properties of the natural world, came to us from the ancient Greeks.
I'm not interested in a theological debate, but anyone familiar with the history of western thought will know how Christian theology results in large part from the belief that 'the ancients knew everything' and everything since then was 'the Fall'.
There is a large kernel of truth to this. The ancient Greeks did know more than people for nearly the next 2,000 years.
Interestingly, while the Arab empires retained far more of the Greek written texts than did the West. As these ancient Greeks texts translated into Arabic became available in the West, it was a catalyst to the rejection of 'there is no new knowledge' view that had dominated Western thought for a millenia, i.e the Reformation.
So paradoxically, while the Muslim world preserved the knowledge of the Greeks and transmitted on to the West, it resulted in the transformation of Christianity and resulted in the modern world we know.
We owe the Arabs for informing us that the ancients didn't know everything. But the crucial difference is we realized this and they didn't.
#4
Islam, Buddhism, pre-Reformation Christianity were and are focused upon coming to terms with one's existence, that change/reform is internal. The pre-Christian Greeks and post-Reformationists reject the notion that one should just accept what fate has given you and that you have the ability to change the world around you outside of the religious vernacular. Buddhist have found ways to work in concert with and the adapt to change. The Islamists have not. That is why in the end, unless there is meaningful reformation within their ranks, there will never be anything better than a temporary truce between it and the rest of the world.
#6
But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were exclusively Christians
Exclusively Christians and Jews. There was Maimonedes, for instance, personal physician to the whatchamacallam in Spain, then to the whosamawhatsis in North Africa, and finally to the whatchamawhosis in Egypt. He wrote several medical texts as well as texts on Jewish philosophy still studied to this day, and his daughter was famed as a teacher as well.
#7
phil_b, Interestingly, while the Arab empires retained far more of the Greek written texts than did the West. As these ancient Greeks texts translated into Arabic became available in the West, it was a catalyst to the rejection of 'there is no new knowledge' view that had dominated Western thought for a millenia, i.e the Reformation. So paradoxically, while the Muslim world preserved the knowledge of the Greeks and transmitted on to the West,
Well, if this is a truth, then it is barely a half of it. The major corpus of Greek literature has been translated in monasteries during he first millennium, or rather between 400-800 AD.
The issue was then access to it.
The dhimmi christian translators were more prolific from 800 to 1200 AD, so that influened the route of flow of information, but after the anti-reformist wing of Islam's theologists got the upper hand, it all ceased about 1200 AD.
2 centuries later, Johannes Gutenberg's invention resolved the issue of accessibility and things were never the same.
#8
Regarding the availabity of greek texts, I was led to believe the arab source was insignificant, compared to two majors preservers : the byzantine empire, and the irish monasteries, both sources being far more readily accessible, even with the day's relatively limited means of travel, than from the arab/muslim ennemies, who were busy occupying swath of Europe and raiding the north shores of Mediterranea.
#9
But the debt western or at least european civilization "owns" to the muslims and the arabs in particular is a very powerful meme that is being actively propagated, by the inotainement industry, and the chattering classes, national education systems included, with the active encouragement of the EU. Kinda like the tourist literature at the Saint-Denis cathedral, which mentions that the king who had it built was a contemporary of old mo', and explains who is the Gabriel Archangel by saying he's the one who revealed the Holy k'or'an, as seen this morning in a french blog
#10
a5089, The Byzantium empire was largely conquered by 1300. Although much of the transmission may have occured through them, as their empire was conquered.
I am not aware of any Greek texts coming to us through the Irish, and I studied this stuff in Ireland.
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. Ah, the dreaded "Robot Gap".
An expert would never lead us wrong.
"They pose a threat to low lifes humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help. There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
Continued on Page 49
#1
For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems.
Why is this that for tranzis or supposed tranzis, the right response is always to ban whatever can give an edge to technologically superior but relatively undermanned western armies (think cluster bombs)? Am I bad in thinking this is a long term effort of the ongoing marxist memetic warfare (God, I love that expression!) that tried with some good measure of success of persuade the West that it was immoral for it to defend itself?
#12
BOLO
(If you don't know the acronym, shame on you)
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
02/28/2008 14:13 Comments ||
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#13
Oh where do I start. This guy is SO full of shit. Fisrt off, there are NOT 80 additional units of SWORDS on order. Wish it were so, but it is not. As someone else pointed out, these are remotely operated systems. They are NOT robots. Weaponized UGV's, because of idiotic articles like this and stupid comparisons to Terminator and other scifi BS, are not going to be fielded for a long time. The demand for zero error is just too high. In this case zero error means NO collatoral damage or fratricide. It will be a career ending experience when it does happen (assuming weaponized UGV's are eventually deployed). Since there seems to be so much reluctance about fielding a man-in-the-loop system, imagine what would have to happen for an autanomous weapon system to be deployed. Friggin maroon.
#19
I'm assuming an "academic-penis" would have a pointy head?
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/28/2008 19:24 Comments ||
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#20
Pappy, its probably as useful and grotesque as a physical contest of the same organ would be.
And for the record, the state of the art is far advanced from these bots. But nobody has managed to get more than 2 areas hooked up together. Its pretty complex to get multiple areas of "AI" working together.
"Tet was the wakeup for a very young man, myself that what today is called the Main Stream Media [MSM] had become as much a threat as a defender of the republic. That is when Walter Cronkite who up till then I had admired pronounced the effort in Vietnam futile.
For I understood Cronkite had been there in Europe in December 1944 when the 'defeated' Germans launched a surprise offensive in the Ardennes of Belgium. The war was about to be over. The Germans were on the run. Or so our political and military leaders let the American public believe. Our intelligence services detected no action upon the enemyâs part to commit itself to this massive assault. The Germans had resorted to hand carried communications in preparation, thus nullifying Ultra, the Allied decryption efforts. The bitter woods of southern Belgium would see the virtual destruction of the 106th US Infantry Division and the largest surrender of American forces since the Philippines in 1942 . It would result in 81,000 KIA casualties, greater than the entire Vietnam War. The fighting went on for nearly two months on the ground the Germans would contest. In the end, the enemy gained no ground and suffered crippling destruction of manpower and equipment. No where in the record of those events have I found where Mr. Cronkite, as a reporter in theater, make the same evaluation of the American effort there as he would concerning Tet and the work in Vietnam. Yet the military results of both offensives upon the enemy were the same. However, the military loses to the Americans and its allies in both battles were substantially less in the second. Here was a man who was an 'authoritative' observers to both acts, yet his reporting was without question compromised by personal bias over facts.
As more time passes and more historians of the classical school with far less bias and far more critical analytical skill come to write the history of the 20th Century, the judgment upon the popular chroniclers of contemporary news will be adjudged and that judgment is likely not one they will be proud of. ."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
By Jamie Glazov
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. 
