One cannot serve both God and Mammon...

[PeacefulWarrior]

Oh, ok, so we should support and sustain tyrannical dictators whose ideas of leadership include staying power at any cost, even if it means killing women and children.  

The sad truth is that in this world our motto often has to be:
"Si vis pacem, para bellum."

[kakkarot]

"Oh, ok, so we should support and sustain tyrannical dictators whose ideas of leadership include " lying to the people who voted him into power, using God as a shield to cover his own evil deeds, abusing the power of the position that he was voted into, trying to destroy an entire country merely cause he has some old grudge, destroying his country's political ties with other goodly nations because the other nation won't stand behind him, and bullying, paying off, and just plain forcing other countries on the security council to go with him just because he wants to have a damned war? bush sucks.

bush is no angel either. or would you rather we went with the lesser of two evils? i think we should get rid of evil altogether.

~kakkarot

[travisltk]

[B)]
     notice the first words of the article say
            [:O][] Bush admintistration[:O][]

[MJ-12]

as

[Klaus S]

When posting that article about the US blocking cheaper medicines to the developing countries, I wasn't really angry at the USA as a whole nation. There is so much that is good in the USA, some things are a lot better than in my own country.

I am angry at the unholy alliance between overtly materialistic and egoistic right-wing people and some parts of Christianity. I think they are hi-jacking Christ! There is so much in what Jesus said that totally contradicts those right-wingers, they seem to have focused totally on the POWER AND PROTECTION aspect of God and forgotten about everything else.

Right now, this unholy alliance have far too much power in the world since they have entered the white house. Much suffering will be the consequence of this.

The right-wing and the left-wing and the religious and whatever rigid and intolerant extremists, they really resemble each other a lot. They fight each other but psychologically they resemble each other more than they resemble other people.

They all have a disorder of empathy - they are unable too see themselves, other people, situations or problems from different point-of-views thereby gradually modeling a more truthful perception than the perception stemming from the "single-eye" point-of-view.

Because of that empathy problem, they are not really interested in any dialogue between differing views. They just know they are right. What could be gained from dialogue.

During my ten years as a Psychiatrist, I learned that a hallmark of recovering from various severe mental disorders like paranoia, mania, severe depression, obsessive-compulsive states etc, was signs of the ability to see things from different point-of-views. You could even see that on their eyes that became more looking-around, less fixated and stiff.

I am not proposing any total relativism here. That would be just another oversimplification.

With regards

Klaus S

[Anonymous]

The WTO is one of the most evil things ever made by mankind. It is because of the WTO that slave-labor is legal in some coutries (only they don't call it that, they call it sweat-shops- well, we do). They make in a lifetime what most people make in a day. Child labor and other crimes against humanity are being committed by our tool-of-the-Devil corporations. They are doing Satan's work for him. Mammon is pleased with the progress. He wants to see mankind suffer, and Satan wants to take away our free will.

[kakkarot]

"and Satan wants to take away our free will". i'd have to disagree on that point. see, if satan were to try to take away our free will, God could step in and put it back. but if he were to make us use our own free will to do evil ...

manipulations are a lot more devious than most people think.

~kakkarot

[Anonymous]

yeah, I forgot. The devil needs people to have free will in order to get them to see the illusions of reality.

[Klaus S]

...yet America think it can. It's funny (no, it isn't) that especially many of those right-wing text-worshipping born-again fellows that stresses the absolute, diamond-hard value of every single word in the Bible, actually can't read! (Rather; they do not understand what they read)

In the end (as can be understood from the text below) these neanderthals are so stupid that they don't even manage to serve Mammon properly...

Klaus S

*********

U.S. Unilateralism Worries Trade Officials
By ELIZABETH BECKER

GENEVA, March 16 — Top officials at the World Trade Organization say they are worried that the Bush administration's go-it-alone policy is threatening international trade.
In the normally closed, clubby world of the trade organization, envoys and officials said they feared that American moves within the organization and toward a potential war in Iraq would weaken respect for international rules and lead to serious economic consequences.
In the past several months the United States has compiled a long record of violating trade rules and has single-handedly blocked an agreement to provide medicines for the world's poorest nations, a rare occurrence in this institution that painstakingly builds consensus behind closed doors.
Supachai Panitchpakdi, the director general of the W.T.O., said a war could have a devastating practical impact as the world grapples with a trade slowdown, rising oil prices and rising costs for transportation and insurance.
"I can feel the sense of trepidation," Mr. Supachai said in an interview. "Whatever happens, if the U.S. will maintain the way we use multilateral solutions, it will be highly appreciated."
That delicate expression of concern was repeated by some of America's strongest allies. They said they were worried that all international institutions would suffer a loss of credibility if the one superpower appeared to be choosing which rules to obey.
"Normally you can't go to war without the cover of the U.N., but Americans are doing quite a few things alone — even here," said Carlo Trojan, the European Union's permanent representative to the trade organization.
European officials have complained the loudest about the United States breaking trade rules. In one of the largest such judgments, Europe was awarded the right to impose $4 billion worth of trade sanctions against the United States for giving tax breaks to American exporters through foreign sales corporations. European officials say they are tired of waiting for Congress to approve new laws prohibiting these subsidies, and that they may impose 100 percent duties on items like precious stones, sporting goods and agricultural products by the end of the month.
The most glaring example here of going-it-alone tendencies was the United States' last-minute refusal to sign off on an agreement that would help poor nations buy generic medicines through exemptions from trade rules.
Developing nations had pinned their hopes on this agreement to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other diseases. But the United States, with the strong approval of the American pharmaceutical industry, exercised the veto that every nation possesses and destroyed the deal.
That upended the timetable for a current round of trade negotiations that is dedicated to helping developing nations. This cause is identified with Mr. Supachai, the former deputy prime minister of Thailand and first director general of the trade agency.
Now he has lost the first battle. "That was a great pity," he said. "It would have sent a powerful message that we talk not only about trade deals but humanitarian deals."
Diplomats said they found it striking that Europe was willing to stand up to its pharmaceutical industries and support the agreement, but that the United States was not.
Sergio Marchi, Canada's permanent representative to the trade organization, said the American position not only put millions of lives at risk, but threatened the organization itself.
"You can't operate 100 percent on local politics if you're part of a multinational organization," he said. "Otherwise, one day it's your politics, next year it's mine, and then there is no more international organization."
Bush administration officials said that they, too, want an agreement that helps provide medicines. But they consider the current agreement too open-ended, and say it could lead to developing nations buying generic versions of drugs under American patents to treat diseases like asthma, obesity and impotence.
Linnet F. Deily, the permanent American representative at the trade organization, said developing nations understood the United States wanted to help those suffering from the worst epidemics, especially AIDS.
"The president's pledge of $15 billion in the State of the Union was extremely meaningful to delegates here," she said. She also disputed the notion that the mood of the trade organization toward the United States had changed from the strong sympathy following the Sept. 11 attacks.
"As far as I'm concerned, that energy is more intensely felt today than it was a year and a half ago," she said.
As the world's largest trading power, the United States is expected to lead the movement for more liberal trading rules. But after President Bush imposed steel tariffs and approved a dramatic increase in farm subsidies last year, officials here are wondering if the United States is rethinking its role.
"The World Trade Organization is supposed to be about tradeoffs," said Shefali Sharma, the representative of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade, a nonprofit organization based in Minneapolis. "Before, the European Union was the biggest sinner, but the United States is making Europe look good."
The introduction of this doubt about America's commitment comes as foreign investments have dropped sharply. In 2001, international trade contracted for the first time in 20 years. The world economic outlook is gloomy.