Was thinking collecting a thread digest of intelligent contributions.
That would be nearly the entire thread. So I'll probably leave out some of the
best quotes

JIM HENDERSON
Arguably, you can't bomb them into becoming a western culture, either.

The fact that it is more than just throwing money at the problem of world hunger
doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

GAIL SHAW
.... It's going to take money and a lot of hard work. Probably more of the latter
than of the former. It's also going to take effort over a long period of time.
15 years is probably a conservative estimate.

Education, good governance, sustainable farming practices, mining technologies,
entrepreneurship, etc. Handing out money then sitting back is a recipe for
absolute disaster. On the one hand it encourages corruption (and there's enough
of that around here anyway) and on the other it results in people with a sense
of entitlement, 'the world owes me a living' (and there's a fair bit of that
around here too)

DARREN (seen Samantha?)
I suspect you'd mostly have to replace the government with something
that respected basic property rights before pouring money in would help
anything. If you're going to kick out successful farmers and hand the
land over to cronies who don't know how to manage it, you're going to
have famines regardless of how much cash gets dumped into the economy.

JOHN VAN SICKLE
And if you institute honest government, the charity quickly becomes
unnecessary.

The only reason the West got an economic leap on the rest of the world
is because our forebears reduced the crookedness of the government by a
sufficient degree to free up wealth for capital formation.  In much of
the world the situation is that as soon as you have two pennies to rub
together, someone from the government takes one of them (if not both).

My Fav
ANDREL
I don't know if I have seen this one, but I am sure
Groucho will have some prime examples of being horribly rude while at
the same time being well spoken and intelligent. Watch and learn.





of a better use of government resources than the current situation of a few
dark souls stealing the world blind from America to Iraq and several places in
between. (gotta quit those long sentences)

The thread was about the feeling the Ice Sculpture invoked in some of us. I

except maybe by the words that followed.

The Subjects are clearly not in our visible world (any more). And Something
tragic.

Quote from those who gave their all to investigate and report.
"
Even in the face of this mountain of facts, there will still be those who will
go into denial and casually dismiss this whole case as just another silly
"conspiracy theory". But the silliest "conspiracy theory" of all is the theory
that some Saudi caveman and his "network" of Arab students managed to elude US
investigators and pull off the most sophisticated intelligence operation in
world history. You can continue to believe that fairy tale if it makes you
sleep better at night and if your sense of credulity can stand the burden.
"

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