What do you think of this idea?

[flagreen]

Please look at this thread over at SR's Bar and Grille;

http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=4987&sid=0de4a903c76aa396690e8a5c382d91e3

Ignore the first 75 or so posts as they are not germane to this poll. Beginning with "Yuyo's" first post in that thread (76th post or so overall) the conversation took a very interesting turn. Yuyo's post was of several questions regarding the current situation as to possible US action against Iraq. From that point the discussion progressed and has developed into a very interesting and informative debate. After reading or skimming through the next 225 or so posts (suggestion - skip the ones about the definition of Liberal and such) you will come to one in which Yuyo, who is a professor in International law, makes an interesting proposal as to the how the discussion might be yet made more meaningful. He follows that with his thoughts regarding the possibly of publishing it some day. I would like to take him up on his offer. However I'm not sure that with the limitations as to one's options in posting and SR and the lack of moderation there that the discussion should continue in their Bar and Grille. I believe that here at SF where the conversation could be posted as a sticky and carefully moderated would be a far better place to have it. We could also lay some very firm guide lines as to how the conversation is be conducted here which cannot of course be done or enforced at SR. In addition, there are some very fine minds here which could contribute very significantly to the discussion.

If there is a consensus here to go ahead with this, please know that both The Giver and I will be on our very best behavior. This is far too important a discussion to screw up. I would suggest that if we do "move" the discussion here, that we invite by email those who have participated in it at SR to join the conversation here at SF.

Though I have not discussed this with Eugene, I don't think he would mind as I am sure he will understand the reasons I am suggesting this as you undoubtedly will as well once you've read the thread.

So please cast your vote above and then post a brief note below so we'll know who you are.

Note: I do not know how to link directly to Yuyo's first post but if you do please post a direct link to it below so it will be easier for folks to find it.

Thanks,
Bill

 

[CougTek]

After reading or skimming through the next 225 or so posts...

You expect me to read 225 posts, of a challenging thread I never followed, before your poll expires? Crazy or what?

 

[Jake the Dog]

interesting for sure... although i have not read the SR thread, from what you have said Bill, this may be the better place for it. however, i care not one iota to participate in a discussion which has certain predetermined rules of conduct applied to it. of course there are the commonly accepted rules of conduct that we already hold to now and these should apply to all discussions. if you wish just to remind everyone of these commonsense rules of etiquette and respect of these then i'm all for your idea.

my 2c.

 

[flagreen]

Jake - You're right actually. Just ignore that part of my post above.

Coug - You can have longer my friend and then post your vote in this thread vs. the actuall poll. Or you can just save yourself a lot of trouble and vote yes now and not worry about reading the 225 posts at all.

 

[time]

Link to Yuyo's first post

I read it all, Bill, but I can't decide whether or not it's a good idea to bring it here. I'm a little concerned about potential traffic.

Much of the thread is vacuous, including most of the contribution from The Giver's cheerleader, BWW. Once you take out all the rubbish about definitions of a liberal, I'm not sure that what's left is as portentous as you seem to think.

I will say that the prof's comments on the meaning of "liberal" are 100% correct. It's misuse is confined to the US.

 

[flagreen]

Thanks for posting the link. You may right about right as to the rest of your post. I won't move it here if the trend against doing so continues much longer so no worries.

 

[Pradeep]

More traffic the better in my opinion. We still have plenty of bandwidth left don't we?

 

[jtr1962]

I think it's a good idea but honestly I haven't had the time(or desire) to read that thread. I've been trying to limit the time I spend online and it's far too easy to get sucked into these types of discussions. Additionally, I think I've discussed terrorism ad nauseum and said everything that needs to be said on the subject. It's a shame most of my posts on the topic we're lost with the MBFU, but if Tannin ever gets around to posting my saved threads somewhere, they'll live again.

Regarding invading Iraq, I honestly haven't given the matter much thought. One thing that struck my mind, and that I think I agree with, while skimming over that topic was a post by Future Shock quoting a columnist mentioning that we should have nuked Tora Bora with low yield tactical nuclear weapons. There wouldn't have been huge amounts of civilian casualties(at least not like nuking a city), and we might very well have ensured that everybody would be too scared to mess with us in the foreseeable future. Why we didn't nuke the caves at Tora Bora when we had Bin Laden pinned down there is beyond me. That was exactly the situation these tactical weapons were made for, and there would have been few, if any, civilian casualties in that case. Also, since it was a remote, largely uninhabited region, the effects of fallout would have been irrelevant. World opinion? A problem, but I think most of the world hates the US anyway.

I would say the only time an all out invasion of Iraq would be indicated is if they were to develop nuclear weapons, and actually used them. Then as far as I'm concerned, we should nuke the country out of existence(assuming Israel didn't beat us to it), but until that time, maybe we're better off leaving them alone. Of course Saddam is evil, but I don't think even he would be insane enough to use nuclear weapons if he had them, although he might sell them to terrorists who would.

That's about all I have to say on the subject for now. To be honest, I've been a little edgy these past few days, as the anniversary of the first attacks draws closer. I'm expecting another attack, perhaps this time with weapons of mass destruction. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Pradeep]

Isn't Tora Bora in the Pacific? I guess it must be in Afghanistan if Bin Laden was there. The military did use FAE's there, which pretty much have the destructive power of a very low yield nuke, without the fallout.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Isn't Tora Bora in the Pacific?

It is in Afghanistan as you said. The mountains in the South-East.

 

[jtr1962]

Isn't Tora Bora in the Pacific? I guess it must be in Afghanistan if Bin Laden was there. The military did use FAE's there, which pretty much have the destructive power of a very low yield nuke, without the fallout.

Tora Bora refers to the region containing the caves in Afghanistan where Bin Laden hid. I think it means "black earth" loosely translated.

I'm not sure if we used our largest FAE bombs there. In any case, even they can't penetrate to a depth of a few hundred meters like a tactical nuke can, so all we accomplished was scattering the roaches in the caves, and putting on an expensive fireworks show.

 

[flagreen]

Please guys we're catching enough flack in Europe already for having used depleted uranium armor piercing shells in the Gulf War. Just the thought of using actual nukes in Afghanistan brings to mind visions of hand wringing Lawyers lining up in front of the World Court to file their damage suits on behalf of every man, woman, and child within a 100 miles of Tora Bora. Do you folks realize how long the half-life of plutonium is? And the implications of radio active contamination remaining in the region for thousands of generations to come? No, thank God we didn't use them in Afghanistan. Along with the human suffering, we'd go broke paying back all the damage awards handed out in the world court.

 

[Tea]

What? America pay attention to the World Court? Since when?

International justice is for ordinary nations. The US of A is special. It's so special that it expects all the other nations of the world to give it immunity from the law, and exempt the US from any responsibility for war crimes, or punishment of war criminals.
The only other nations that I can think of that try to evade justice like that are Sadam Husein's Irak, Milosevic's Balkan Kingdom (whatever it's called at the moment), and Afganistan under the Taliban.

 

[James]

Yes, and with the treatment of the prisoners in Cuba I fear the US has even found a way to give itself immunity from its own constitution.

Bill, have a read of this week's Economist. There is a good series of articles on human rights post September 11. It's a much more interesting read than the fatous ranting at SR, IMO.

 

[flagreen]

Hee hee.. me thinks you fellows have been storing your ammunition up for a while now. I'd better be careful. :lol:

Both Tannin and James make valid points above. And I will check out the Economist James.

To clarify what I am suggesting we allow here and what has been proposed by Yuyo:

1) The "fatuous rantings" James mentions are not what is welcome in thread I propose creating. In fact that is one reason why I suggested ground rules would have to be established. But as Jake points out we already have the "legal authority" under our site rules to cover that should it crop up. This type of discussion is not what we are after.

2) What we are after is carefully crafted arguments of merit well supported through verifiable sources.

3) Presentation of articles of interest related to the subject taken from reputable sources (such the Economist James mentions) for discussion.

4) Basically a thought provoking discussion which has much more power to influence others than the typical emotion provoking tripe we've seen at SR (to which I plead guilty).

Now Yuyo's mention of compiling the discussion for publication means, I believe, material generated from the above points 1-4, and not what is contained in a vast majority of the posts in the thread at SR.

Bill

 

[flagreen]

P.S. As this is a panel discussion of sorts being proposed, my usual reservations about excluding certain folks would not apply. This is why I say we would do this by invitation only. The sort of folks I am interested in hearing from would be - zx, Balding_ape and shoemakc, and anyone else you would want to include. I'm sure I forgotten some but under no circumstances would I want to invite Davis. HMTK can be pretty obnoxious but seems to be turning around. I have hopes BlueWinterWaves can be turned to Good side of the Force as well (No offence Jedi worshippers) but the jury is still out on him. Each invitation would carefully worded to include admonitions against certain behaviors which are not welcome.

 

[James]

To be honest Bill - and I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad thing - you're really looking to create a personal forum where you and a few handpicked others can have an organised debate. No problem with that, but wouldn't it be easier to take it elsewhere rather than a public forum?

I'm afraid for an external reader like me the debate as such is much less interesting and profound that it is apparently for the participants. (I suspect this is often the case.)

I'll refrain from comparing at length your proposed inclusion and exclusion of participants in the debate above with your impassioned plea in favour of unfettered free speech at the time of the formation of this forum. Just assume I smirked. :wink:

 

[flagreen]

James,

Fair enough. I knew there would be smirks as to the exclusion issue by some folks given my past comments on the subject. Hence my attempted circumvention (clumsy at it was) of this dilemma (note the careful avoidance of admitting one's hypocrisy) by referring to it as a "panel" discussion. Thanks for refraining from pointing that out.

But I think you're right when you say what I'm looking for is a private forum of sorts. We can just continue the discussion over at SR if need be.
But I'll wait for a little more feedback here first before totally giving up.

Bill

 

[flagreen]

Anyone else wondering if Davis at SR is really Jehh? The guy is a serial poster.

 

[CougTek]

Anyone else wondering if Davis at SR is really Jehh?

I haven't read much of his apparently huge contribution at SR. Only two posts when he had already over 420. I dunno if it is Jason, but maybe he's a relative.

Regarding the thread moving from SR to here, I must admit that I don't really care. After the database lost at SR, I have pretty much stopped paying attention to political threads. I participated at lenght in the past in those, but seeing my contribution vanish in an instant probably killed for good my taste for these debates. I understand why you are so interested in political/morale threads Bill and great for you if you can succeed to bring the debate where you want to, but I can't sincerely answer something else than "My head hurts" here.

During the last month, I don't think I've visited SR's Bar&Grille more than 15 times and I don't even think I have posted there once. I probably haven't spent more than a half-hour there overall. Can you guess that I no longer have interest on the content that's found there?


(making big effort...going to SR's B&G)

I counted 36 threads on the first page of the forum with either Jason or Davis as the author. I'm not even interested to click on any of those to confirm my expectations. I don't plan going back to SR's B&G regularly until SR is cured of its worst disease : Jason.

 

[flagreen]

Yup he's got close to 300 alone in this stupid thread - http://forums.storagereview.net/viewtopic.php?t=2594 Which incidentally was started by your buddy Jason.

 

[jtr1962]

Anyone else wondering if Davis at SR is really Jehh? The guy is a serial poster.

That thought has entered my mind from time to time. It seemed like he only had a few dozen posts not too long ago, and now he has more than me. Most of his "contributions" are just as worthless as Jason's, although maybe 5% of Jason's posts actually are worth the electrons they use.

BTW, I think your idea of an invitation only debate is interesting, but it would mean a different set of ground rules for that one particular thread as opposed to everything else on SF. Still, anything that can be done to exclude vacuous commentary is welcome in my opinion.

 

[jtr1962]

I don't plan going back to SR's B&G regularly until SR is cured of its worst disease : Jason.

I feel likewise. Unfortunately, Jason is aptly named. Like the main character in the awful Friday The 13th movies, he keeps coming back just when you think he's gone for good.

Regardless of how he behaves in the future, I think the damage is already done, and he's left a bad taste in the mouths of many of the regulars with his incessant, mostly meaningless posts. And Davis is starting to get on my nerves in pretty much the same way, except I think he's worse. I haven't read a meaningful contribution from him yet.

 

[SteveC]

I just looked at Davis' profile on SR, and he has over 200 hundred post in the last week! That is a whole lot of posting. I think he's the only one still posting (or even looking) at that long joke thread.

Steve

 

[Tea]

He sure is a demon with the <shift-insert> key combo!

 

[Pradeep]

Tea you WordPerfect hussy!