The Workmen?s Circle/Arbeter Ring has just signed on to the ?Save the Internet? Coalition, a campaign to prevent Congress from passing legislation that would jeopardize web neutrality. A group of large corporations, such as Verizon and ATT, are lobbying Congress to enable them to serve as gatekeepers to the Internet, so that they could determine which sites would be easier to access based on fees that would be paid. The coalition was brought to my attention by the folks at NJPIRG and mirrors very closely our resolution on the Internet approved at our 2006 National Convention (copy below).I urge you to sign on to the coalition as well by going to their web site: www.savetheinternet.org Check to see whether your Senator supports web neutrality, and if they do not, contact them and urge that they do so.
This is not an American Atheists position, just my opinion. Allowing megacorporations to have a say in which sites get “priority” sounds terrifyingly like allowing them to block sites altogether, effectively squashing free speech on the Internet. Where would the NoGodBlog sit on their list of priorities?
phreddy:
So, in accordance w/that rule, maybe no one here should ever respond to you…?
Oh, I thought it was you Xians that were the doom and gloom crowd, what with predicting the end of the world every 2 weeks or so. Rapture, The end of days, We are not fit to grovel at the feet of the mystery man in the sky. That is doom and gloom my friend. Some scientists examining some data and making some educated guesses on what that data means is just, well science. But thats OK as you christians are the ones who are trying to destroy the world just to prove some sort of maniacal point about the end of days or somthing. I can just see the smug look on Bush’s stupid mug as a nuclear holocaust engulfs the planet.
Oh yes indeed! We atheists are probably being called dispensers of Gloom and Doom, because atheists lack the belief that ‘god’ will rescue us & allow us to “dwell forever with Him” in heaven. But the atheists point-of-view is NOT the “gloom and doom” one. Our point of view (that god does not exist) is a *realistic* one. It’s the X-ians (and other “believers”) who are the Foolish Dreamers. They imagine their carcasses will be “saved” so they can live forever in Valhalla with Big Daddy In The Sky. More than likely that delusion is why folks like Duh-Dubya don’t feel there’s any need to worry about us humans destroying the biosphere. The stupid lug-nuts must believe that Daddy God will ultimately save their carcasss. Thus, from that insane point of view, there is NO NEED TO WORRY about anything. Just let “God” sweat the small details.
RA,
Sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. I didn’t realize I could change my handle until you did.
So, you’re my inspiration. *snif*
Yea, phreedouchebag has once again dominated a thread. Big surprise. See, I just like to frustrate him. I know there’s no hope to enlighten him. The only time I saw him act like he’s human was when Dave lost his cousin a few weeks back. Otherwise, he’s not worthy to to wipe my ass with.
“Oh doom and gloom”. Well, if idiots like phreedouchebag weren’t so damn gullible, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in.
Oh and douchie, I do remember the Japanese economy damaging ours. I’m 37. It decimated the market share of the American auto industry and electronics. Luckily, Clinton was able to undo some of the damage Reagan and Bush 41 did by allowing lasseiz faire/free market horseshit they enacted. Not that Clinton was a great president either, with NAFTA, the Telecom Act of 96 and his role in helping Wal Mart for decades. The only thing Clinton had going was the greatest expansion of our economy-ever. So he’s got that going for him.
Now, as far as you claim what I say about the energy industry scientists being not true? I say you’re just stupid, living in denial, or a damn liar.
Still deny it? Here’s a BUNCH of relevant links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1399585,00.html
http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/27/leaked-memo-global-warming/
But of course, phreedouchie will ignore this info because he’s nothing but sheep.
I find it hilarious that phreed is harping about how Europe pays a tax to the UN and then to prove his point qoutes:
French officials said 10 other countries had signed up for the Solidarity Tax: Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, Congo, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Madagascar, Mauritius, Nicaragua and Norway.
Which means that when those 10 actually do it that there will be a total of two EU countries doing it.
All phreed accomplished is showing that like most rightwing christians he is a euro-phobe, disingenious and unable to put an argument forward without blurring out the truth.
DRB:
Oh my, I AM a bad influence. Hehehehe.
Oh, you shoulda seen it when he FIRST got here. Called me a revisionist & threatened to ‘expose’ me here on the NGB.
I called him out on it. He’s a paper tiger, & at this point he’s just a sparring bag I use.
Kite777:
Ooooh, nice catch. I usually just skim the his meanderings. Confronting him’s a waste of time. He’ll just change the subject, run away, & never, EVER take any correction from those of us he considers his ‘inferiors’.
“I do understand how those living without Hope can fall prey to the “doom and gloom” crowd…”
Gee, phreedm, could you let us atheists in on what other basic human emotions we’re incapable of? Love, Pain, Joy?
(notice I capitalized them just for you!)
I’d like to be enlightened, since you apparently know me better than I know myself…
Dearest phreetard,
I contended that:
A) Miniaturization of a nuclear weapon so as to make it into a warhead for a missile is very difficult to achieve without testing.
B) We can tell if testing is going on because a significant release of radioactivity will be released.
C) They do not have ICBM capabilities and that ICBMs are another significant technological hurdle to overcome.
You come up with nothing to refute anything that I said and, again, show your ignorance by mining the internet for a news article rather than look into the science behind something.
A Shahab-3 missile is most emphatically not an ICBM. It isn’t even close. Here is a quote from your favorite source (Wikipedia):
“An intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is a very long-range (greater than 5,500?km or 3,500 miles) ballistic missile typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery, that is, delivering one or more nuclear warheads”
They don’t call them “inter-continental” for nothing! The missiles this article describes are only 1/3 the range of the lowest end of ICBM range. They a lot more barking to do before they can run with the big dogs.
This is not an insignificant hurdle. Achieving the great range and accuracy of an ICBM is well out of their reach, for now. They would still have an even longer way to go before they can figure out how to make a nuke that fits on a missile.
robguy387,
I, for one, do not try to change phreddy’s mind. I know he won’t. He has been programmed to parrot Fox news and whatever apologetic statements he can find that don’t contradict his worldview.
I do fight the idiotic things he says because other people who can change their minds will see what he does. They will realize how he distorts the truth to suit his worldview. He isn’t honest and doesn’t even try hard to be. He would rather back a statement with an newspaper opinion article or poll than hard scientific facts. He truly is intellectually dishonest.
I’ve come to suspect that he is not even xian. I suspect, but cannot prove, that his persona may be one invented by a particularly clever atheist and that he is little more than a strawman set up for us to knock down over and over again. It’s hard for me to believe that there is an actual person that can suffer from this level of cognitive dissonance and be so proud of it. His very name, phreedm, is a distortion of “freedom” and everything he says is a distortion of the truth.
It is certainly cause to make me wonder if there is an atheist among us that is so well versed in the ridiculous arguments of xians in this country that he can imitate our impression of them so flawlessly.
I am probably lying to myself, attempting to shield myself from the fact that there are, indeed, people as stupid and ignorant as this. Maybe it’s nothing more than a protection mechanism my brain has enacted in order to protect me from the cold honest truth that people really can be so horribly brainwashed by religion and neo-conservative politics that they can do nothing more than repeat fallaciously held positions like a broken record.
I’d like to think that people do think for themselves. But, alas, he may very well be precisely what he appears to be. If that is the case, I truly fear for humanity.
AT:
I think the term you’re looking for is ‘sock puppet’, an extension of the strawman.
Having battled phreddy since his ‘inception’, I can fairly say that I think he’s for real.
It’s either that, or
A. Someone somewhere is VERY good at the Stanislavski System, or
B. Somebody has DID (aka MPD).
I can provide some outlined synopses why I think so.
You are correct, “sock puppet” is what I meant. Straw men are arguments, sock puppets are individuals designed to repeat strawmen arguments to satire real people that propose such arguments.
I do confess having thoughts about creating such a monster, for the sheer purposes of studying the responses and honing the technique to provide the most possible impact with the least work.
Phreddy’s hit-and-run tactic was precisely what I imagined when mentally compiling my idea of an effective device. The idea would be to follow a thread of commentary only so far as to advance an opposing position and then pull the rug right out from under it every time. It’s demoralizing and leaves people with a sense of futility.
I gave up consideration of the production of my own sock puppet on the mere possibilities that:
A) I could actually be doing an effective job of advancing an idea I was satirizing, particularly among people whom are not regular readers and would not be able to recognize what I really was.
B) I could be causing psychological and physiological problems (mostly related to stress) among some people that could be directly attributable to my influence.
C) I would be nettling and stinging people that I admire with little more purpose than to better understand the nature of argument and how to provoke a response using already proven successful techniques — I’d basically be learning nothing new and mostly proving to myself that my observations were correct.
Don’t let it fool you into thinking that I haven’t intentionally advanced radical positions in the past for precisely this reason. I do have a history of creating such causes, merely for my amusement (and among people which I have absolutely no respect for).