Carthago delenda est

Bush says Iran threat to world security

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush accused Iran on Sunday of threatening security around the world by backing militants and urged his Gulf Arab allies to confront "this danger before it is too late."

This thread is for Giles...

...from here. Go ahead.

Still banned from commenting...

... by this self-described leftist.

Reasons? For making bad arguments.

Bad argument 1: that the word 'antisemitism' has so often been misused that its meaning is now corrupted beyond recognition. The good professor interprets this as if I said that antisemitism doesn't exist.

Bad argument 2: that "the Chinese government isn't really that repressive" (his paraphrase). He finds this particular 'argument' (doesn't this sound more like an opinion?) "not useful".

And also I, apparently, tried to steer threads in directions that are not "fruitful". Talk about repressive Chinese government.

Stay tuned.

It's not about China, it can't be.

This here, I mean.

I don't have an agenda. I'm not a winger of any kind.

And I'm not an idiot: IQ tests place me in the top 1%. Well, OK, a quick one I took recently (when called 'idiot' again) put me in the top 3%, but I wasn't really trying. And being in the top 3% hardly makes one an idiot; top 5% - maybe, anything below - for sure.

China is a superpower and its policies are incredibly restrained - is this even controversial? I don't think so.

Nah, obviously this is not about China, this must be about Italy, see this thread - in which I tell them that they have gelato for brains. That was outta line; I feel I should apologize. Sorry, fellas.

An excellent piece in Slate (of all places)

The N-Word by Diane McWhorter.

A coupla links:

The Evening of Empire by Werther.

Where Is America's Politkovskaya? by Mark Ames.

Government and Politics

From pollingreport.com:

Gallup Poll panel survey. Sept. 21-24, 2006. N=1,010 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3. Sample was randomly drawn from Gallup's nationally representative household panel, which was originally recruited through random selection methods.

"Generally speaking, do you think Americans are ready to elect a/an [see below] as president, or not?"

	Ready	Not Ready
Atheist	14%	84%
Gay or lesbian	7%	91%