Uh oh. I offended a Republican

[Biggirl]

*Originally posted by Freedom *
**Biggirl

I ain’t scared of ya. Wanna Pit me?

Please…

If you’re on the rag and looking for a fight, then keep on looking. Go take your third party offended attitude elsewhere.
**

Brilliant. Your debating skills really put me to shame. I’m sorry I even took up for the newbie. I am bowed.

So do you want to address my point now?

[Kimstu]

tracer: Environmental protestors?!

Yeah, according to the link, asbestos helps keep buildings from collapsing. (I don’t get it either.)

I think Freedom and Biggirl both have a point, to wit:

• Terrorists hate and attack us because they are violent, fanatical nutcases.

• Many non-terrorists resent and fear us (and thereby create a more receptive climate for promoting anti-American terrorism) not because they are violent fanatical nutcases, but in response to some of our own actions and/or stupid, ugly, self-centered claptrap spouted by some Americans.

Those two statements don’t actually contradict each other, so I don’t think that Freedom and Biggirl necessarily even have a debate here (which makes it all the more a pity that Freedom thought it necessary to toss in a gratuitous menstruation joke. If I thought Freedom was being unnecessarily aggressive, I wouldn’t express it by taunting him about “testosterone poisoning” or some such).

And Jackmannii, yeah, I think you can count Saudi Arabia as a repressive government; moreover, its repression is largely made possible by lavish arms purchases from the US.

Thanks to Captain Amazing for trying to rescue the reputation of the much-maligned original “Ugly American”, but I’m afraid it’s a lost cause.

[december]

Originally posted by Kimstu *
Yeah, according to the link, asbestos helps keep buildings from collapsing. (I don’t get it either.)*

I saw this explained somewherem but can’t fing the link right now. Here’s the story, as I remember it.

Those who built the WTC knew that if the vertical steel beams buckled, the bulding would collapse, so those beams were well-protected by astestos. The law prhibiting asbestos from being used in construction went into effect when the towers (or one of them) had the bottom 64 floors done. So, the remaining floors were protected with a less effective heat insulator.

An expert made a prediction at that time of the sort of collapse that actually occured.

I found the link. I first saw this in http://www.andrewsullivan.com/ Sullivan linked to the column http://www.accesstoenergy.com/view/ate/s41p1043.htm

Not so widely quoted – apparently spiked by most media – was the statement, often made about the Trade Towers in the 1970s by expert in the insulation of steel building columns Herbert Levine, that ‘‘if a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down.’’ See ‘‘Asbestos Could Have Saved WTC Lives’’ by Steven Milloy, Fox News, September 14, 2001 at http://www.foxnews.com.

[GIGObuster]

I posted this before so take note next time december:

One graphic explains the layout of the columns affected:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0109/13/graphics/13wldcollapse.gif

The more I think about it, the original crash severed many of the colums, if asbestos was used as a coating, I think it would have not done much of a difference. Asbestos does a good job with a regular fire, but this fire was fueled with hundreds of gallons of jet fuel and the impact and heat would have stripped most of the coating. Incidentally, many reports do mention that the steel colums did have fire protection.

There are reasons why I am a skeptic of the Junk science guy:
http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/tscience.htm

There’s a huge irony at work here, of course. It’s science, after all, that has effectively laid some of those controversies to rest (no authoritative study has found that EMFs from overhead power lines cause cancer, for example). But others, such as global warming, are still part of a serious ongoing debate. And so it should be. If there is one clear way in which science is abused, it is by reducing its deliberate, complex method of discovery to the kind of epigrams that you can display on a coffee mug. Yet, here is the self-proclaimed “Junkman” calling the ball dead on controversy after controversy.

On top of that, FOX and the Cato institute do not look to me to be really fair sources of information.

And how scientific one can be if we do not have all the data yet?:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010912/us/trade_center_construction.html

We believe that any speculation regarding the specifics of these tragic events would be irresponsible,'' the statement said. For obvious reasons, MYA has no further comment at this time.’’

And from the original article:

We may now be paying a horrible price for junk science-fueled asbestos hysteria.

IMHO The word “may” is used like an escape hatch, very cute for a reporter that claims to deal with science. I think his opinion in this case is junk science.

[Jackmannii]

*Originally posted by Kimstu *
**Jackmannii, yeah, I think you can count Saudi Arabia as a repressive government; moreover, its repression is largely made possible by lavish arms purchases from the US. **

I made an effort to be as clear on this point as possible in responding to rjung, Kimstu, but perhaps my words were not sufficiently crystalline.

A statement was made concerning our supposed responsibility for creating a climate that encourages terrorism, in part through our “supporting local repressive governments”.

My response was intended to show that while we do support governments in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait etc. that are repressive, we act through sanctions or other measures against other regimes that not only deny their citizens fundamental rights, but also menace their neighbors and/or support murderous terrorist groups (i.e. Libya, Iran, Iraq etc.). Syria dominates Lebanon and its citizens have no voice in electing a Syrian leader. There’s another viciously repressive regime we have taken military action against (remember the Taliban?). Yet there’s considerable local sympathy in the Middle East toward these toxic regimes and corresponding dislike of the U.S. for countering their plots.

So there seem to be a lot of people, in the Middle East and in this country, who excuse the behavior of the worst offenders and define “local repressive governments” as those who get U.S. backing.

It’s going to be an uphill battle to find viable supporters of republican forms of government in that region. Efforts need to be made. But at least in the short term, our strategic/economic interests compel us to support some less than wonderful leaders while reining in the most threatening and warlike ones. And perhaps we can mount a better p.r. campaign to show people that, for example, while sanctions have taken a toll on the Iraqi people thanks to their leader’s intransigence, there are plenty of people in surrounding nations who owe their security and possibly their lives to our having clamped down on Saddam.

[december]

*Originally posted by GIGObuster *
I posted this before so take note next time december

Sorry

… if asbestos was used as a coating, I think it would have not done much of a difference. Asbestos does a good job with a regular fire, but this fire was fueled with hundreds of gallons of jet fuel and the impact and heat would have stripped most of the coating. Incidentally, many reports do mention that the steel colums did have fire protection.

I know nothing about structural engineering. I do feel that it’s ridiculous to blame the environmentalists. Asbestos is dangers. It should have been banned. If it was an essential component of the WTC, then the builders needed to deal with the problem.

On top of that, FOX and the Cato institute do not look to me to be really fair sources of information.

AFAIK both organizations are accurate with their facts, even though you may not agree with all their opinions. Do you have any exapmles where their facts have been reported inaccurately?

We may now be paying a horrible price for junk science-fueled asbestos hysteria.

IMHO The word “may” is used like an escape hatch, very cute for a reporter that claims to deal with science. I think his opinion in this case is junk science.

I agree with you, GB. Even if it was a mistake to ban asbestos, it was still be the responsibility of the builders to build a safe structure.

[Biggirl]

My larger point was that when Democrats and Republicans start squabbling both sides tend to lose their minds. Freedom wants to Pit istara for making a valid observation about jingoistic hyperbole. december accuses me of making broad generalizations about Republicans when I made it clear I was not speaking about Republicans (or at least I thought I made it clear). jrung eludes that being attacked by terrorist was some how the United States fault because our own evil practices. . …

It’s disheartening to see usually reasonable people responding to anything and everything through this blinding and distorting veil of partisanship.

[december]

*Originally posted by Biggirl *
december accuses me of making broad generalizations about Republicans when I made it clear I was not speaking about Republicans (or at least I thought I made it clear.)

You were clear, Biggirl**; I was unclear. I meant to object to what I saw as broad generalizations about Americans.

[Jackmannii]

As for the “breaking news” on Leo’s site tying the extent of the WTC tragedy to actions by “environmental protesters”:

Asbestosis is a public health issue, Leo, not a point of contention between environmental activists and their opponents.

You’re making about as much sense here as an anti-tobacco activist who argues that the WTC attack proves the need to ban smoking completely in all buildings (after all, if smokers are all forced to go outside to light up, they’ll be protected in case terrorists fly a jet into their building). Think of all the lives that could be saved!

Moron.

[rjung]

*Originally posted by Biggirl *
jrung eludes that being attacked by terrorist was some how the United States fault because our own evil practices. . …

Dunno who this jrung person is, but if you’re referring to me, please cite where in this thread I actually wrote such a statement.

My point was – and remains – that saying Islamic fundamentalist terrorists attacked the United States simply because they were “jealous of our freedom” is not only overly simplistic, but simply wrong. The issue is far more complicated than that, as I hope you’ll agree.

Originally posted by Jackmannii
As for “supporting local repressive governments”, this sort of logic works only if an essential component of “repression” is being friendly to the United States, in which case you can cite Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and so on.

Actually, I was thinking of US-friendly countries like Qatar and Bahrain, whose governments get lots of US support because of continued access to cheap oil, but haven’t exactly been supportive of the locals. At least, I hear they find it repressive…

[Biggirl]

Sorry about the name rjung. No you didn’t write the terrorist attacked us because we are evil. I didn’t say you wrote it either. I said you eluded.

There were many reasons the US is regareded with resentment in the Middle East. They are not Democratic reasons and Republican reasons or right-wing reasons and left-wing reasons. It wasn’t what the Democrats did or what the Republicans did that made the Al-Qaida decide it would be a good idea to bomb us with our own planes.

The terrorists are nutjobs, we’ve made some questionable foreign policy decisions, the US is viewed as arrogant— These are not political party reasons, just reasons. So when the ever so levelheaded Freedom says we were attacked because of our American freedom and the jealousy of the Middle East and you shoot back with

(* = As opposed to, like, anything the United States might’ve actually done, such as overthrowing democratically-elected leaders or supporting local repressive governments)

I say you are both firing shots at each other from your political party stances and neither of you were paying much attention to the other. So when I wandered into the fray and called Freedom on his overly aggressive response to a reasonable post, I was caught in the crossfire.

[Jackmannii]

Maybe next time I’ll try making my point in a different language. English is just not working.

If you’d care to scroll back up a bit, rjung and reread what I’ve said, you can choose to address it.

Or not.

[elfkin477]

*Originally posted by ShinyTop *
**I thought they ate liberal babies. **

What liberal babies? They’re aren’t enough of them that are allowed to come to term to have a market for them; they don’t have the flavor that truffles do, so it’s not worth the effort to search for them. We’re all too busy with the effort towards deforestation to create grazing ground for cattle, anyway.