Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Rex Widerstrom,
That is to say, recycled where possible (I'm a donor) and then run through one of those tree shredders, or something, and used for compost. The Swedes do it already though not in quite that way.
You've still invested some thought into a disposal that suits your "belief system". Just sayin' :-)
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I'm not voting for them unless they actually have a pirate ship.
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Bart Janssen,
On a less serious note, I remember going to Star Wars IV, I think it was at His Majesty's on Queen Street.
I remember queuing so long for it that I missed the start. Ah, those were the days.
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Russell Brown,
I'm definitely quite curious what his porn collection will be like.
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Because mine gets antsy with fucking around with the basic, and non-negotiable, taboo that you don't disrespect the dead.
Death customs are one of the least rational of our morals, hence the enormous variance in them. In some cultures the dead are left for scavengers to eat. In others, humans eating them was a sign of respect. We also have divergent morals about what to do with enemy dead. I'm not so sure any way is more "moral" than any other. But I do think there are practicalities involved which, at least in this case, favor respecting the customs of the culture from which the dead person came. For starters, tit-for-tat is a likely outcome of disrespect.
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Russell Brown,
If you want to call that "craven Nazi butt licking", then I say, Sir, you have no decency.
It seems to me that this was again a case of practicality triumphing over understandable human expressions of rage (as we saw with Mussolini's body). The war was over, and this time the Allies understood that humiliating the Germans was actually part of what caused the conflict. Also, they wanted West Germany to be a buffer against the Russians.
Symbolic gestures of respect for enemy dead are mostly practical. You want the war to finish? Start treating the enemy like they are human.
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Hard News: For the kids, if nothing else, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If you can’t act better than God-damned Nazis, I don’t know what we’re actually fighting for.
Perspective, dude. I wouldn't go desecrating bodies myself, but I can fully understand how people feel that way with respect to this particular body.
However, it seems to me that the way it was done was actually quite sensible. Some care taken to avoid offending Muslims directly. Some care to ensure no symbolic grave site. And in doing so, considerable disrespect to the memory of OBL. James underrates the importance of not offending Muslims, particularly Muslims sympathetic to the US, in particular American Muslims, by the simple observance of some basic rites. Or he overrates the value of the American public's satisfaction at inflicting indignities on the dead. That's not really something to encourage, even if it is understandable.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Stephen Judd,
The Herald had another one of their polls on the same question. I had to think hard, and then figured I leaned slightly toward feeling just that little bit safer, that now the US can put that Mission Accomplished tick in the box they might actually get the hell out of the Middle East, which could mean NZers back from Afghanistan. Once again, I had misunderestimatated Granny readers, 70% of whom did not feel safer.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Having a trial for the big cheese would have led to the motherfuck of all headaches and fears. And for what purpose (from their point of view)? Easier for him just to get shot and move on.
I don't reckon. They would have wanted to interrogate him, for starters, and also to put all questions that it's him to rest with numerous videos of him talking. He could have been tried in any number of courts and found guilty publicly. He could have been kept secretly in a prison for the most opportune moment. A trial would serve good purposes no matter what defence line he took - if he denied all charges he would be seen by jihadists as weak and betraying everything they believed in. If he pleaded guilty, the whole thing would be over rapidly and put to rest every question of the legality of whatever was going to happen to him.
He'd probably thought all this through many times and decided that he wasn't going to be taken alive.
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Busytown: What was lost, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
I have a feeling that in another 10 year's time, we'll start to see teens being disrespectful of 9/11. Why are you guys always going on about 9/11? It was decades ago. It's the '20s now - move on!
I actually hope that will happen. They should still know about it, but will hopefully see it in perspective as just another incident in the long tale of atrocities from the 20th Century, happening by chance shortly after it, a lid closing on the idea of violence being fruitful. With any luck it will be seen that the jihadists mostly achieved the opposite of their intentions, and the idea that war is great for the US economy thoroughly debunked.
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