No – its about a man and how he loses his family due to his inability to get out of the local radio-broadcasting business… Are you thinking of Cats In The Cradle, which gets covered by various lousy groups every other year, by any chance?

Flood

Yes, I got confused with Cats in the Cradle! – I’m “feeling all of 45 and going on 15”!

There are hundreds of great rock songs but these have got to be near the top:

Boys of Summer by Don Henley – I saw a DEADHEAD sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice Inside my head said, “Don’t look back. You can never look back.”
I thought I knew what love was

What did I know?
Those days are gone forever

I should just let them go but-

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got that top pulled down and that radio on, baby!

The Boys are back in Town -Thin Lizzie (Phil Lynott greatest song was Sarah)

Born to Run – Bruce Springsteen

U2 live at Red Rocks – Fantastic concert in the thunder and rain, great songs- New Years day, I will Follow etc – Bono at his best

Paint it Black – Rolling Stones

(best Jagger/Richards love song has to be Fool to Cry)

Schools Out – Alice Cooper (I was in school at the time!)

These are the Days of our lives – on Queens last album and Freddie Mercury’s best and most poignant lyrics

Flood, this is great!

For the sake of all things holy STOP SQUABBLING!!!!!!!

Barnowl

No offence, but it’s not squabbling!

It’s a healthy, if sometimes robust, exchange of ideas and views. If we all agreed with one another on everything then it would be very boring!

We’re not going to burst into tears because somebody had a different point of view. If somebody wants to talk about kittens and fluffy clouds good luck to them-it’s the season of goodwill and all that-but supposing you’re not religous like me and cynically view Christmas as a marketing opportunity for many companies!

And anyway, Christ wasn’t even born in December, its just an pagan festival to cheer up people in the depths of winter-and me-I’m all for cheer! No reason why we can’t have an exchange with some humour!

As you can see John no one wants to comment. It might require actually supporting democratic processes in a former Soviet republic and that might reflect poorly on a former KGB agent and we wouldn’t want that would we.

Sauron

Sauron

You just don’t get it do you!

We like America and Americans! (I know you’re from Canada but Dubya is your main man). The music is great-for example, I always liked Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band-Mainstreet (old one), We’ve got tonight etc. The movies are great-The Last Picture Show is as American as apple pie-but what makes it connect to everyone is the universal themes that apply to any one born on Planet Earth-not just those born in the USA!

In Europe, we can and do say it like it is wherever it without exception! We don’t need to give blind and unquestioning support to politicans. Just because a country has democratic elections, like Israel, unlike its Arab neighbours, doesn’t mean we should blindly support Sharon who has shown documented disregard for human life many times (not all mentioned below-no time/space).

Sharon was head of Unit 101 with orders from PM Ben Gurion to directly target innocent civilians.One was the Qibla massacare of 70 mainly women and children. Sharon in his autobiogrpghy say he didn’t know anyone was in the houses he blew up. Major General Vagn Bennike, chief of staff of the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization (which investigated the scene the next day) put paid to that lie when he said: “one story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them”.

There was a mysterious murder in 2002 when Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist commander who ordered the Sabra & Shatila massacres, offered to go to Brussels to testify against Sharon as a war criminal, but he was assassinated by a Mossad car bomb shortly after.

It’s democratically elected PM Begin was head of Irgun, that blow up the British Army HQ in the King David Hotel killing almost 100 people – one man’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist-and he became Israeli PM. Irgun also strangled to death British soldiers by hanging them with no “drop” in retaliation for the execution of those caught for the bombing.

Yizhak Shamir, was part of the Stern Gang killed Britain’s Lord Moyne and the UN mediator Count Bernadotte in 1948, who became another Israeli PM after being with Mossad, but he was a former wanted terrorist/freedom fighter-the look on his face was priceless when he refused to “talk to terrorists” at the Madrid peace conference and the Syrians produced a wanted (British) picture of him as “terrorist”!

Funnily enough Sharon deceived Begin as to the purpose of the 1982 Lebanon war and extended it without authorization. Sharon sued Haaretz newspaper and its reporter Benziman for telling the world in 1991. The trial lasted 11 years, Begin’s own son testified against Sharon and Sharon lost the case (not easy to win libel in Israel) and he was proved guilty of misleading Begin and the government.

In an article called Breaking the silence of cowards by Moshe Negbi,(Israel Broadcasting Authority’s commentator on legal affairs and a senior lecturer in communications at Hebrew University in Jerusalem):

“To say that Arik Sharon doesn’t tell the truth is about as necessary as saying the sun rises every day,” said Yechiel Kadishai, prime minister Menachem Begin’s right-hand man and confidant, a remark confirmed by him in court.

Benziman, the Israeli journalist who believed that when the person in question is a prominent public figure, it is important – even imperative – to remind the world, over and over again, that he is not trustworthy. “Emet Dibarti: Sippur Mishpat Hadiba, Sharon Neged Ha’aretz” (“Nothing But the Truth”) by Uzi Benziman, Keter, NIS 79

“For evil to triumph,” said the British statesman Edmund Burke, “good men have to do nothing.” Benziman met many during the course of the trial, who were prepared to help cover up the misdeeds of a powerful man rather than face his wrath.

“Public figures, former politicians and senior officers in the reserves joined forces in a conspiracy of silence on the subject of the Lebanon War. They did not want to be involved, preferring to let the lies remain, although they were intimately familiar with the details (and even said so to the media).”

“Israel’s top military and political echelons are full of cowards (some of whom apparently feel that they are accomplices to the crime), afraid to tell the truth about the Lebanon War lest it get them into trouble with Ariel Sharon. These individuals prefer to gloss over his indiscretions, motivated by cynical vested interests.”

“The sweet moment of victory, when the judges exonerated Benziman was clouded, by the grim and depressing realization – the book’s most significant message – that the moral dysfunction of Israeli society is so severe that the honesty and integrity of the leaders doesn’t even matter to it.”

So don’t get all holier than thou and think the West is clean-in all democracies there is plenty of corruption: how much bootleg liquor did Joe Kennedy, the Hitler supporting US ambassador to Ireland, sell that helped fund paying the Mafia to buy votes in Illinois for his son, John F Kennedy’s, election as US President in 1960?

A week before Dubya new best friend visits America, the billionaire Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s ( closest business colleague, Marcello dell’Utri,has just been sentenced to 9 years in jail for colluding with the Sicilian Mafia. Berlusconi only just got off the hook because too much time had passed since the offence!

His right hand man, Dell’Utri, a senator and fellow founder of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and a former chairman of the Berlusconi’s own advertising firm Publitalia, was accused of acting as a link between the mob and Italy’s top business and political elite, including payments from Berlusconi’s company Fininvest to the Mob.

A day before, Berlusconi himself avoided a jail sentence on corruption charges. Although found “responsible” for bribing a judge in Rome in the 1980s, technically he was not guilty because of the statute of limitations.

You should know the Ukraine story is big in Britain. We’ve all seen the before and after pictures of Yushchenko’s Dioxin poisoning-not just 3 months ago but again more recently! It doen’t need Putin’s secret police to do that as that country has a long legacy of corruption under Kuchma. British and US support for Putin is questionable because he has used the so-called generic term “worldwide war on terror” as an excuse for unbelievable state terror in Chechyna.

What we don’t always agree with sometimes is the policies of the President or the US Government. I cannot disagree that the US has been a force for good in the past but at the same time it has done a lot of questionable things in the past.

There is a long list of murders or attempted killings of politicans by the US: the South Vietnamese PM Deim was bumped off in 1963 to get a more compliant man. The democratically elected President Allende of Chile was killed in the CIA backed coup of Pinochet-is Kissinger ever going to get tried as a war criminal for this and the secret bombing of Laos and invasion Cambodia to go with his Nobel “peace” prize!

How many times did the CIA try to poison Castro! Remember the murderous ******* Castro overthrew, Batista (as nasty as Sadaam in torturing opponents to death), who made Cuba an American playground and a haven for the Mob (you might find a book “The Real CIA” by a CIA man, Lyman B. Kirkpatrick,published by Macmillan, New York, 1968, quite helpful). So if we do it it’s ok because we are the good guys, but if anyone else tries assassination they are murderers!

Get a grip Sauron! I just watched a great movie by Woody Allen, in the days when he was funny (1971), called appropriately, Bananas -it says it all! Some great gags, like the US troops in a plane heading for South America, saying which side are we on, the rebels or the government-and the reply was “this time the CIA aren’t taking any chances-we’re on both sides!”

Yeah? Did you hear that WMDs had been discovered?
Colin Powell didn’t – at least he hadn’t when he apologised for invading on suspicion of WMDs… And it is pronounced Colin – none of this stupid Col-lyn stuff. Is he too stupid to be able to say Colin?

Flood (Thats Flood – not Floo-oid)

I had wondered if anyone else noticed how daft it was to pronounced Colin as “Coh-Lyn” -nice guy though. It’s almost as daft as Charles Powell, Margaret Thatcher’s Chief of Staff, insisting his name be pronounced “Pole”. I kept wanting to shout “it’s P-o-w-e-l-l as in B-u-c-k-e-t not B-o-u-q-u-e-t!”

Charles Powell is possibly the most pompous man you’ll ever see, with his head stuck so far up his own a*** as to be out of sight. If their childeren ever to marry would we get a “Coh-Lyn Pole”?

And insurgents didn’t exactly use chemical weapons on us in Baghdad (semantics, I know…). More like, it was a mistake, insofar as they probably didn’t realize what it was that they had. But since there are no WMDs in Iraq whatsoever, we must have forged the test results that said it was Sarin leaking out of the shell in that particular incident :rolleyes:

Well we know Gas Chromotography samples taken in 1992 in Northern Iraq picked up the unique signature of Sarin, that was used in 1988 against the Kurds. Sarin and mustard gas were also used against Iran in artillary shells. However, I am not aware of any news reports they would have been daft enough to use it against US forces unless as you say they probably didn’t realise what was in those shells (would have thought they were marked though).

J Boyle

I don’t view what Pluto has said as “rantings” or “hate”. We are having a discussion here. People are entitled to believe in whatever they want to, but it is ok to hold a contrary view, and point out contradictions in a belief system.

People purporting to represent Islam and the Church of England are not immune to criticism just because they think what they are doing is right.

So a protestant in Northern Ireland killing a Catholic is ok because he is a member of the Church of England? Killing on the basis of somebody’s religion is absolutely not acceptable. The Spanish Inquistion tortured people to death in the name of God-they were granted permission by the then Pope-does that make it right? I don’t think so.

You might have missed an earlier post refering to the murder by a Islamic fundamentalist in Holland last week of the film director van Gogh just because he made a film about domestic violence against women in some muslim communities. Domestic violence occurs in many human societies, not just Muslim ones. It is wrong and unacceptable wherever it occurs.

I see you’ve discovered myth number one about the US Constitution. Nowhere is there a mention of any separation of church and state-all that it says is that government cannot establish religion.

Where the whole idea of separation between the two came from, I have no idea, but trust me, it’s not in there. That has to be one of the most asinine interpretations of the Constitution, ever.

Sean

Well what do you make of Georgia, deep in the Southern bible belt, where they put stickers in Biology textbooks that evolution is a theory, not a fact!

Do we really believe the world is 6-7,000 years old (something like one Saturday 5,643 BC?? according to some Victorian vicar who added up the ages of everyone in the bible (was it Noah who was 900 years old!)and worked backwards!), and that God created the first humans:Adam & Eve (from Adam’s rib!)? Evidence from astronomy, geology etc however would suggest the Universe is approx 13 billion years old (extraploated from the left over background radiation from the “big-bang”-what is interesting is: what was there before the big bang?), that the local Solar system is approx 4.5 billions years old and the first simple single-cell organisms on Earth occurred about 3.5 billion years ago.

This is what people mean about religous beliefs to guide the foreign policy of the most powerful nation. You got to understand that we don’t worship patriotism or stand to attention in front of our national flag in school assembly every morning and say the references to “God bless America” by Bush are cynically placed there by his speechwriters. He certainly wasn’t religious before he was seeking election-I won’t go into what he did in those days; there are enough first hand sources on the net.

People are entitled to believe whatever ancient rites they want: montheist religon-first one was in ancient Egypt-made up by Pharoh Akenaten-every culture has shamens,holymen and stories of how the world began. But I’m sorry: I just can’t go for ancient texts written on gold tablets dating back to 600 BC (!) found in the deserts of 1830s America by the founder of the Mormon church stating that the Native Red Indians are a lost tribe from the holy land! (these golden tablets now somehow can’t be found!).

This kind of thinking (my religion is right, you’re wrong) leads to lunacy like the murder of the Dutch director Van Gogh by a Islamic fundamentalist last week and the bombing in reply this week. Stem cell research to relieve Parkinsons disease/abortion for a young girl-you’d better not!-not if you don’t want to get shot or bombed just because my religion says so!

So Sean, forgive us if we laugh at the 19% of guilible Americans that believe WMD were actually used against us by the Iraqis during the invasion. We get the impression that in the heartland outside the East and West coasts their view of the world is framed by what they see and are told on TV.
So, we’re not laughing at you-we’re no better and no different-I am sure you could get a similar sample in any country. And just to make sure you get it, we’re glad you won the cold war and not the Russians but that doesn’t mean we have to think everything done in your name is right!

For those who believe literally in everything in the bible: Christians, Jews, Muslims it must be hard to stomach that the words in Genesis,almost word for word, including references to the flood, releasing doves to find land etc,were first written on clay tablets in cuneiform in ancient Mesopotamia (in what is now Iraq) many years before the bible in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The clay tablets are available to anyone to see in the British Museum by the way. If we don’t believe in the bible as being a scared text of supernatural origin and these are just stories that were passed down-than we do not have to believe in any covenant/promise that Abraham (born in ancient Ur, now in Iraq) may have had with God to take the land of Israel.

So for the Christian fundamentalists who give unblinding support to Israel, right or wrong, and neo-cons such as Richard Perle, who unbelievely was allowed to influence US Defence policy as the same time as he was close to the Israeli defence establishment (with its own agenda and national interest not always the same as the US’s), there is no justification to take a piece of land just because it says so in the bible. Supposing some of the stories in the bible are not all true! Shock! horror!