Aspies For Freedom

Well, since you asked, if I lived in the USA I would have voted for George Bush, and I am happy that he won (and I don't care what anybody thinks of me for saying that).

Ursula

I'm glad that Bush won so that we can see this Iraqi situation through. I'm also pleased with his moral integrity (abortions etc.) Go Bush! Four more years!  8)

Well, I agree with TaliDaRadical, that I like Bush's moral integrity. He is a conservative Christian, and so am I, and even if he isn't perfect (and who is), I definitely wouldn't have wanted Kerry to win.

When I was in Germany for last Christmas, I found that there has been a regular hate campaign by the German media going on against Bush and the USA, with books, magazines, newspapers and tv all participating. I imagine that much of the rest of Europe did the same thing. I couldn't believe the outright lies and distortions being perpetuated in the media there against Bush!

My oldest and youngest brothers were adamant that those things were true, and I didn't know what I was talking about, when I said that they had all been brainwashed by their media. And they didn't agree that I, living in Canada, across the border from the USA should be a little better informed than they are. They claimed I knew nothing about Bush, and they had heard the thruth. What nonsense.

They were only reading their German newspapers, magazines and books, and watching their own German news. While I obviously check out US newssites on the Internet, read US magazines as well as Canadian ones (of course), follow news stories in several papers etc. Plus, I have been in the US quite a few times (in California, Pensylvania, New York, Texas, Illinois, Florida and others).

So, how can they decide that their opinion, which has been formed entirely by their own very prejudiced media is true, while mine must be false, because I disagree with them? They are across the ocean, but they dare judge people over here just because of what their own extremely liberal media tells them (and Gwynfryn, I dare say that the French media is no better, as they were adamantly opposed to the Iraq war).

Now to Iraq: I know what people say about that in Europe. But I can tell you that again, they are wrong for the most part.

I wonder how many people know many of the gruesome details of what the US soldiers found after moving into Iraq. They found mass graves. They found people starving, because Saddam Hussein didn't like their kind of people, and so diverted the rivers which watered their farms, to create a famine purposely! They found a children's prison, with children aged 6 to 12, who were skin and bones and hadn't seen their families for many years. Their crime? They refused to join the official (and only party, as all others were prohibited) Baath party's children's movement.

They found that without fail each family had lost at least one family member to execution or torture. Every family had at least one family member who had gone insane because of the exreme fear they were all subjected to. They never knew who would be picked up next by the secret police. One mother told them, that they had tortured her little two-year-old son to death in front of her, to get her to tell them where her husband was hiding.

Saddam Hussein had used poison gas on his own population (mainly the Kurds), tortured, executed, imprisoned, starved his people.

Now the US is preparing Iraq for the FIRST EVER in Iraqi history democratic elections. They have never had anything but tyranny and dictatorship.

The media likes to dwell on all the bad stuff. They like to interview the people who hate Americans. They like to tell of the few instances when prisoners (evil people, I am sure) have been mistreated. Those make good stories.

What they rarely talk about is that now people who never had electricity before have that, plus running water, and schooling for their children! The Kurds can come out of hiding, people finally know that NOBODY is going to take away their husband or son to be tortured or executed for made up crimes, just because somebody didn't like them for whatever reason.

Gareth, about abortions. You say women should have the right to decide what to do with their own body. But what about the right of the unborn to their body? When a woman gets pregnant, she is responsible for another life as well, not just her own. You will find no doctor (even abortion doctors) debate that even a just fertilized egg is a human being. All the information is there in the DNA for any development happening. The baby doesn't suddenly turn into a human being once it emerges from the womb. It starts developing when fertilization takes place, and stops changing/developing when death occurs, at whatever age.

Just because we can't see the baby before birth, doesn't make it any less human. The heart starts beating at about ten days. It has been proven that pain is felt by eight weeks.

If a woman is so concerned about the right to her own body, she should make sure she doesn't get pregnant. Obviously, there are many ways to prevent that.

The only time I agree with an abortion is when the mother's life is at stake. There is no point of mother and baby dying, so it is better the baby dies.

You may say, "What about rape?" Well, I say, 'you don't fight evil with evil'. Why kill the baby for something his father has done? Why execute the baby, for something that wasn't it's fault? Two wrongs don't make a right. And it has been shown that having an abortion will traumatise a rape victim even more. It is better to give the baby up for adoption.

Anyway, just my own little rant here. Even though it is my first here, it probably won't be the last.

Ursula

Gareth, let's just go for a moment with your argument about consciousness (even though I don't agree with that). How do you (or anybody else) know when precisely a baby becomes conscious of being? When will the baby 'aquire' a soul? I personally believe the soul is there from the start, and it is likely that  there will be some form of consciousness once the brain starts growing. But since NOBODY can prove when this 'magic conscious moment' will happen, nobody should therefore put an arbitrary date after conception on it.

And Amy is right, in many countries (including Canada, I am afraid) they practice 'partial birth abortion'. Do you know how they do those? They will deliver a baby feet first (since it will draw a breath and cry if it comes out head first and be legally a 'person' then), until only the head remains inside the mother (if you want to call her that). Then they will puncture the base of the neck with a sharp object and suck the brain out with a machine. After crushing the skull they remove the head.

They are TORTURING the poor baby (who often is a full term baby!!!!!) to death, just because nobody wants it! It is a terrible atrocity.

What will be next? Right, if they can do this now, legalized infanticide of babies who aren't perfect in some way will be next. One thing usually leads to another. You open the door to abortion of 'blobs of cells' (which they in fact are not) first, next come second trimester abortions, then the murder of full term babies, next infanticide, then old people and sick people, because their families will declare their life not worth living (whether these people agree or not that they want to die), and the last step will be that any undesirables will be killed (at that stage you better run for your life, they might decide they don't want Aspies).

That is pretty much what happened under Hitler. That is the natural progression of things. In Holland people with disabilities carry cards in their wallets, asking that doctors will please treat them instead of killing them in case of illness or accident. Because there it happens that a doctor dedides that somebody's life isn't worth living and 'mercifully' kills them. In places where euthanasia is legal, this happens next.

In Germany when I grew up I didn't know any *** grownups. That's because Hitler killed all the *** people in institutions (and in those days, that's where they were all hidden away). In fact, all handicapped or insane people in institutions were killed. Hey, sure, it is easier not to have to look at and look after handicapped people. But they are people, too! And they do enrich our lifes. Life isn't easy, that's a fact, and we better not expect it to be. And raising a kid isn't easy, either, but is that a reason to kill them? They have the same right to life as we do.

Ursula

The reason #1 why abortion is wrong is why slavery is wrong. No one has the right to draw a dividing (arbitrary) line and say over here are humans and on that side is not. I prefer the duck test to test for humanness. If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck chances are its a duck.

The second reason is that in so much a child is an adult. A fetus is a child.
If you take a fertilized egg keep it warm and "fed" it will all things being equal lead to a child. If you take a child keep it warm and fed it will all things being equal become an adult. If u take any cell that is NOT a fertialized egg and keep it warm(whatever temp range it requires to live) and fed, It will NOT EVER become a fetus or a child or an adult. So if  fetushood has the same relantionship to childhood as childhood does to adulthood. Why is ok to kill a fetus but not a child? A child is not an adult with the same capacity for reason or survival?

If you base your argument that children should be treated well because someday they will be Adults then that should apply equally to fetuses and fertialized eggs.

(*NOTE: this is an THEORETICAL ARGUMENT , NO ONE SHOUILD HARM ANYONE -fetus,child nor adult*)

Canada?!

It's no secret that the US has plenty of enemies. But who would have thought that the peace-loving nation it shares a huge unguarded border with - and a daily trade worth $1bn - was one of its fiercest opponents. Matthew Engel reports from the country that loathes its neighbour

Monday December 16, 2002
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Now whereabouts on the axis of evil can we be? The country's long-reigning leader thinks the president of the US is contemptible, a sentiment heartily reciprocated. The leader's official spokeswoman directly insulted Bush, and she was repudiated only grudgingly. Almost every day some new outrage perpetrated by the US is reported in the newspapers, whereupon the Americans are denounced by commentators and letter-writers. Academics travelling across the country on book promotion tours say they are astounded by the level of anti-American vituperation out in the hinterland. Top-level relations with Washington, it is agreed, are at their worst level in decades. Can this mean war?

Well, maybe not. This is Canada that we're talking about.

Every country in the world is screwed up about its relationship with the US. But in Canada it is a national obsession, even a neurosis. Imagine, if you will, a homely kind of girl - well-liked but usually ignored - who lives next door to the town hunk. He is the centre of all her thoughts. She peers through the net curtains as he swaggers out for a night on the town. She reads major significance into every gesture: every time he ignores her on the street; every time he gives her an affectionate pat. She despises his unruly ways but, deep down, desperately wants to believe this is true love. He barely even gives her a thought. In romantic fiction, you end up with a white wedding and happy-ever-aftering. In international diplomacy, you get the US-Canada relationship.

This is a tricky subject for a non-Canadian to address because everyone outside the country traditionally considers the very word "Canada" to convey the uttermost tediousness. In the US, the most boring imaginable headline is held to be "Canada! Friendly giant to the north!", analogous to Britain's own, "Small earthquake in Chile: not many dead". Merely addressing the subject here is risking expulsion to some remote and Arctic corner of the newspaper.

This is an absurdity. Canada's tedium is a by-product of its success. Instead of scorning it, we should study it. Despite the country's geographical, ethnic and linguistic unwieldiness, it has made itself into perhaps the most functional democracy on earth. It is prosperous and (according to the recent Pew Centre international survey) remarkably contented. The crime rate is low, and the general tenor of day-to-day life polite and good-natured. It welcomes migrants, in unparalleled numbers relative to its population, with a minimum of fuss and conflict. Both at home and abroad, it pre-empts the possibility of conflict by a disposition to negotiate at great length.

Therein lies both the boredom, and the current anti-American seethe. Since George Bush came to power, the neurosis has begun to turn in the direction of psychosis, because the current Washington orthodoxy is wholly inimical to the Canadian political culture. Canadians care about the environment (they have a lot of it). They are instinctively drawn to multilateral bodies, such as the UN and the international criminal court, which the Americans scorn. The idea of an inessential war against Iraq is widely regarded as insane. The most startling recent poll showed 84% of Canadians consider the US wholly (15%) or partly (69%) to blame for September 11. It is a remarkable indication of fundamental antipathy.

Furthermore, the Bush administration has compounded this with a series of gratuitously casual snubs. When the president spoke to congress after the attacks and praised Tony Blair and Britain to the skies, Canada - whose cooperation was crucial to the return to any kind of post-attack normality - was forgotten. When four Canadian soldiers were killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, the American response was slow and brusque. And there have been various new-normality incidents involving Canadians, of Arab descent and otherwise, being given a disagreeable time by US border guards and cops.

North of the border, these incidents send the letter-writers bananas. Some of the trouble stems from the awful relationship between Bush and the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who was less skilful than Tony Blair in keeping his preference for Al Gore quiet during the 2000 election. Bush at least appears to know who Chrétien is: only 8% of American adults, in the most recent poll, could name the neighbouring country's leader, and even that number suggests a sample skewed towards Harvard - the usual figure is around 2%, with an undertow of support for Pierre Trudeau, who happens to be dead. Even so, only one-in-five knew that Ottawa was Canada's capital.

These kind of polls, always well-publicised in Canada, add to the Canadians' contempt for their neighbours. When Chrétien's spokeswoman, Françoise Ducros, called Bush a "moron" last month, the significant fact is not the remark - which is common global currency - but the circumstances. She said it to a Canadian journalist, in a manner that suggested she was saying something that was obvious, rather than something that could cause any embarrassment. Had she not been overheard by a less sympathetic reporter, it would have gone unreported.

Chrétien accepted her resignation slowly and reluctantly. When he gave in, it was a sign of his own diminishing power after 10 years in office and his own impending disappearance, already scheduled for early 2004. Essentially, Canadians regard all Americans as morons, unless proven otherwise. It is probably only that sense of moral superiority that stops the nation turning into a jibbering wreck.

"For nearly eight years Chrétien had Clinton to deal with," says one of the US's few Canada experts, Chris Sands, of the centre for strategic and international studies. "Love him or hate him, Clinton could make anyone feel like the most important person in the room, from the prime minister of Lithuania to Monica Lewinsky. President Bush is not a softener of disparities and that's been really hard for Canada. They are made to feel they are no longer peers."

Of course, they never were peers and these neighbouring leaders - possessing what is always said to be the world's longest unguarded border - have often loathed each other. The crusty conservative John Diefenbaker was contemptuous of the whippersnapper Kennedy. When Diefenbaker's successor, Lester Pearson, made an anti-Vietnam war speech in the US, Lyndon Johnson allegedly grabbed him by the lapels and warned him not to "piss on my rug". Richard Nixon called Trudeau, Canada's most charismatic PM, "an ****". The moron remark was countered by revelations that White House staffers call Chrétien "dino", short for dinosaur.

What can Canada do? Normally, when the neighbours are this domineering and irritating, it is customary to think about moving house. It has crossed Canada's mind, in a manner of speaking. As Britain headed into what was then the common market three decades ago, Trudeau tried to push Canada into a much closer relationship with Europe too. The Canadians, with their bilingualism and consensual instincts, would absolutely love Brussels. And in the past year, as argument after argument has seen them pitted with Europe against the Americans, it has begun to seem once again like a natural alliance.

But Europe never wanted to know. A market of 30 million people 3,000 miles away was unenticing. Canada was thrown back on the realities of its geography, concluded what is now an almost total free-trade arrangement with the Americans, and began to cope with the consequences.

Mostly, these are wholly benign. Canada, with its weak currency and high-quality workforce, has the world's most mouth-watering market at its feet: more than 85% of its exports now go to the US, constituting 35% of GDP. Both ways, there is more than $1bn worth of trade every day. Four million jobs are involved. Canada makes many of the US's cars; it even gets to act as its body double - Toronto stood in for Chicago in the film My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because prices there were so much lower. All this rakes in the money. Can such a country hate the Americans that much?

In the business community, they are certain of the priorities. Stephen Clarkson, of the University of Toronto and author of Uncle Sam and Us, was one of the writers who picked up the anti-American vibes on the promotion trail. On the other hand, he also recently attended a charity dinner in Toronto with Rudy Giuliani as guest of honour. "This audience was totally Americanised," he said. "They hailed Giuliani as 'our hero'. They sang the Star-Spangled Banner before O Canada. They would have saluted if Bush had walked into the room. This is the business elite and basically they want to be American."

Viscerally, most Canadians seem to disagree. Canadian patriotism is notoriously hard to pin down, because it rests on a negative: not being the US. "Canadians are proud of the fact that, unlike the Americans, they have the CBC [the equivalent of the BBC], health care, ice hockey, and a peace-keeping military," says Chris Sands. "Unfortunately, none of these is as good as it was."

In practice, Canadians recognise the reality. For many everyday purposes, North America is one country: on the morning of September 11, the Canadian deputy commander was in charge at the joint air-defence headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. When the border was closed over the next few days and the trucks began queuing for miles, all Canadians were obliged to consider what real severance from the Americans would mean.

Thus, even though Chrétien has zero chance of ever experiencing the delights of the ranch in Crawford, Texas, his government has spent much of the past year trying to make integration a greater reality. A week ago, Canadians awoke to discover that the US had effectively been given an emergency right of incursion across the border. One letter-writer to the Toronto Star thought it might be a good thing if the Americans brought their snowploughs; others were outraged.

And so the petty indignities that have gone hand in hand with the economic blessings go on. Soon, perhaps, another ice-hockey team, representing something Canada holds even dearer than whining about the Americans, will head south to a US city where people care less but pay more. Sooner than that, in all probability, the Americans will get fed up with waiting for international opinion to catch them up, and invade Iraq without waiting for UN approval. What then?

"The Canadians will say we would prefer that they go through the security council," said the Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui. "There will be demonstrations, but polite ones, because this is Canada. There will be stinging editorials. Then we will fold and join them, because we have no choice. There is a rightwing cheering section allied with the US that says ra-ra-ra to everything. It's not a majority. But the reality is we cannot have our trucks stalled at the border. They have to keep rolling."

On a street corner in Toronto, Bill Lawrence was selling flags: "for a good cause," he says. "Me." He also says that, since the initial burst of sentiment towards September 11, he has hardly sold a single stars-and-stripes. "It'll change if they invade Iraq, I expect. Half will want to fly 'em. The other half'll burn 'em."

More on the mass migration north ....

Canada, here they come...

They threatened to run for the border if Bush was re-elected. But how many did? Today, as the President is sworn in on the steps of the Capitol, Andrew Buncombe meets the Americans who are choosing to begin new lives in self-imposed exile

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/amer...ory=602513

I also agree with Gareth, about human minds being the dividing point, and while I hope that no child of mine will ever be aborted, I cannot make such a decision for any hypothetical (VERY hypothetical) future partner, much less anyone else.

And as I recall, terrorism was a major deciding factor in the election which is (nominally) the subject of this thread.  So I wish to comment that terrorism is hardly a leading cause of death.  Heart attacks probably kill more people.  Car accidents probably kill more people.  More people probably die of any of several hundred causes of death than of terrorism.  AND WHERE DOES THE FUNDING GO?????  IRAQ!!  While billions upon numberless BILLIONS are heaped onto the struggle (and not even yet successful, at that) to get rid of one little organization, in America there is a moratorium on federal spending for research that acutally COULD take a chunk out of some of the leading causes of death.  Why is this?  because people are SCARED.  The very fact that we are so Terrified (note the capital T) that we feel compelled to waste billions on such a pointless expedition signifies that the terrorists have succeeded in scaring the piss out of us without actually causing serious harm.  2, maybe 3000 people died on 9/11.  Or something like that.  All of the panic that followed, all of the plummeting market values, the airlines going out of business, all the socio-economical equivalent of a human body going into shock (and doing itself significant hurt) because it got a splinter.
In conclusion:  MOST PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS. :evil:

4000 civilians are reckoned to have been killed in Afghanistan.

http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=553

Unfortunately, given the extent to which statistics have been misused by various parties (not to point any fingers... oh nevermind THE REDS DID IT!) I suspect that numbers are no longer really trustworthy in the public mind.  Statistics, an innefficient way of conveying emotional impact to begin with, have been overused and overmanipulated, since it takes little effort to torture statistics into saying anything you want them to.

The US government are much more dangerous terrorists than a bunch of Islamic extremists.  George Bush and his cronies have been working hard to scare the American people and the entire world.  WATCH OUT!  TERRORIST THREAT HAS BEEN RAISED TO CONDITION RED!  BAR YOUR WINDOWS, SHOOT ANY ARAB HANGING AROUND PUBLIC BUILDINGS!

Never was it so hard to be a loyal Democrat. It reminds me of my father's soul-searching when he voted for LBJ in '64, the only time he didn't vote for a Republican. I held my nose and voted for Kerry. But he was really a Zionist Trojan Horse. I can only imagine the longterm damage that would have done by Zionists who supported him financially and woud have demanded government jobs or appointments in return.

     I have read some of Kerry's remarks "on the perfection of Israel" . that he made to rabidly pro-Israel groups and it was really scary. Just do a web search on "John Kerry and Zionism" and prepare to barf.
He kept that viewpoint in the closet while allowing Joe Lieberman, an open Zionist, to whither away in the primary because even most American Jews are just as upset with Israel as I am. Probably more so.

        Get this:  You can support Israel without being a Zionist. In fact, if you really want Israel to have a good future, you won't be a Zionist.

    I travel a lot outside of the USA and love to ask people, "What is the one thing you wish my country would do differently" and by a wide margin, the number one answer is:  Stop giving Israel a blank check.
      
     Ironically, Bush may be the one to finally get a settlement on the Palestine question where Clinton and Bush Sr. failed as did every other President for over three decades.

       Overall, Kerry reminded me of people I knew in college and High school who were over-rated simply because they were tall or their parents had money. He has been a very ineffective Senator and tries to have his cake and eat it too often. He seems like a very shallow opportunist who finally found a level too high to get away with.

            I don't like Bush but I can trust him.

                                 Jerry Newport

if women have a right to abort fetuses because they dont want children, then shouldn't they have the right to abort aspie fetuses because they dont want aspie children?
abortion is wrong. :!: