tommytomlin

"And during a war, patriotic Americans don't blame the deaths on our government. We blame them on the enemy that persists in trying to kill our soldiers. " That's bullshit. If there's ever a time to criticise a government, it's when they're decisions are leading to the deaths of your country's men and women. Being patriotic is supporting your country and what YOU think it stands for, it's not supporting your government or the decisions it makes.

My point about Osama and Saddam wasn't to criticise U.S policy (my point about Vietnam, on the other hand...), it was merely to show that sometimes conspiracy theories aren't as crazy and outlandish as you may think. I never said the U.S arming the Mujahideen wasn't justified. And as for the point about the U.S being able to win the Vietnam war at anytime, I still think it's bullshit. You acknowledge the role of the media in the U.S' decision to pull out, but then say they 'could have stayed there for as long as they like'. Yes, they could have, but that wouldn't have been winning the war. The media would still have been reporting U.S casualties, North Vietnamese successes and U.S errors like the My Lai massacre. You're acknowledging the role of the media in one part of the sentance and then ignoring it in the next. The U.S military and economy could have easily supported decades more U.S involvement in Vietnam, but the media and the American people wouldn't have put up with it. The NVA mightn't have had a hope in hell of defeating the U.S, but that still doesn't mean the U.S could win the war. Oh and SideFX, why am I a liberal? Does every conservative or moderate have to share the same views on Vietnam? Why does everyone on this board have to be categorised into two easily distinguishable categories?

And it was British and Aussies who trained and saved Ho-Chi Minh from dying back in WWII, yet we don't blame them for Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh and Osama Bin Laden are just a LITTLE bit different. Ho Chi was fighting for his country's independence from the French, the Japanese and later the Americans. Australia and Britain supported him because he opposed the Japanese. I normally think that type of 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' thinking is idiotic, and creates more problems than it solves (see America, United States of), but it was WORLD WAR TWO. Australia was at a very serious risk of losing South East Asia completely. If there was ever an excuse to say 'Oh, this guy is a communist guerilla insurgent leader, but he hates the Japs so let's give him stuff', it was THEN. And how exactly can Ho Chi Minh, and therefore Australia and Britain be blamed for Vietnam? What about the French, whose colonial ambitions created the conflict in the first place? Or the Japanese? Or the Russians or, gee, maybe those Americans who spent billions continuing a war they were never going to win for a supposed strategic interest? And who (along with others in the international community I'll admit), turned a blind eye to the actions of the Khmer Rouge across the border until years later? My point about Sadaam may have been exaggerated, but at least it was grounded somewhere in reality.

Yeah, outlandish conspiracy theories are great. Like that one that's about America giving arms and propping up a dictator named Saddam Hussein until he went a bit wacko in the late 1980's. Or that one about the U.S giving arms to that dude who was behind the whole 9/11 thing way back when because he and his mates were fighting Russians. Man these wackos come up with some STUFF!

Tony Blair just confirmed it. Ten bucks he used the word 'imperative'.

Of course, in Australia's case, we're a member of the Coalition of the willing and STILL get screwed over, albeit less than Canada. The administration in Iraq decided to give a $50 million mobile phone reconstruction contract to the near-bankrupt MCI-Worldcom, a company embroiled in accounting scandals on a massive scale, and which has never built a mobile network (let alone a GSM mobile network which America does not use). Australian companies have complained of being shut out of negotiations, and no face-to-face talks have been held between the administration and Australian companies. Our contribution may have been small, but in supporting the U.S we alienated ourselves from our region, and angered every dude with a bomb in South-East Asia. I know we have a very nice free trade deal in the works with the U.S, but I can just see it being put on hold come election time in 2004. Ok I think I've bitched enough about America for now. Boy those French sure do suck.

Rock and Sock Connection reuniting for Wrestlemania 20 would be awesome, but a Six-Man Tag with Austin against Evolution is dumb. I say Rock and Sock vs Flair and Orton. Flair/Rock was done on RAW once but they never really hyped it. And Orton/Foley has been rumoured for a while, so why not.

This is sad.

I hate when PWTorch run stories like this. The TNA/EA deal was off months ago, Mike Tenay said so in an Ask The Professor column on TNA. He also said that other companies were interested, yet the Torch's selective reporting ignores this.

I vote for the Australian Labor Party here, and they're close to the Democrats, so I guess Dean's getting my vote if I was kidnapped and turned into an American citizen through drugging and then a 24-hour monster truck marathon

60,000 buys?

I also hate the 'creative doesn't have anything for you''. I hate how people make out writing 4 hours of wrestling each week with the best talent roster in wrestling history is difficult. It's NOT. Even with the backstage politics, and the spectre of Vince looking over everything, neither RAW or Smackdown are so complex that you need a whole TEAM of people to write four hours of a wrestling show each week. Any 16 year-old fanboy could plan out a 6 month run to Wrestlemania in about a day, I don't see why it needs 'creative teams', 'consultants' and soap opera writers to come up with four hours a week of the most boring wrestling television in years. How many people does it take to come up thrilling storylines like 'Kane runs in and beats up Goldberg', and the classic Jindrak and Cade backstage promos? What do these people DO for the other 6.8 days a week?

Anybody who says the U.S is disadvantaged in the WTO is a moron. It took Australia a coalition with a dozen or so other 'middle' powers like Canada in the form of the Cairns Group to get agricultural trade liberalised, and even then all the members of the Cairns Group get screwed over by the massive subsidies the U.S and European Countries still place on their agriculture. I know that's just the balance of power in the world, but compared to every other country outside powerful blocs like the European Union, the U.S has it very easy.

I'm an Aussie too, and find this thread (and most of the topics in this forum) fascinating. The whole Liberals/Conservatives battle that seems to dominate American politics and news media has never really picked up in Australia. Here we have more of a focus on the two major parties, the Liberals and Nationals (two seperate parties who form a Coalition and currently govern) and the Labor Party (the other major party). The Coalition are right wing and Labor are left wing, but for some reason the conservatives/liberal debate has never really intensified as much here as it has in America. Australia seems to have more of a focus on class over political ideology. The Labor Party has strong ties with the unions so it represents the working class, whereas the Liberals represent the 'forgotten' middle class and the Nationals are predominantly supported by rural supporters. There's extreme left and extreme right parties like the Greens (hippies) and One Nation (redneck racists), but that's about it. Both major parties have similar foreign and economic policy, they really only differ when it comes to social issues such as health care and education. I've never lived in America, and my contact with Americans is limited to the occassional vacation once or twice a decade, but it seems as though in the past few years in your country there's been a push to define every newsmaker, news service, political issue and person in the context of liberal and conservative. Organisations created with a specific ideology in mind like Fox News or this Liberal Radio Network strike me as retarded, as does the idea that there are a few million Americans who only get news from sources which share their political ideology and disregard the rest as 'liberal bias' or 'FAUX NEWS'. I don't know if any of this interests anybody, but that's just the thought I've collected through reading this thread and others. Or in other words, YOU YANKEE BUGGERS ARE WEIRD!

Apart from the Starrcade mess which has already been talked about, how can Sting's most successful run ever as the ultimate megaface during WCW's most successful year be called a 'fall'?

Don't the fans just choose what type of match?

What Vicious Fish said. I think Test's problem is that every storyline he's been in since the Stephanie thing has been so uninspired and plain boring. The UnAmericans, the 6 month long Steiner/Stacy feud and his brief run as a face when he was the European champ around Wrestlemania 17. I'm not going to say that it's the booker's fault, but at the same time it's hard to get over when you're in shitty storylines.

I'm going to take a wild swing at it and say because it's much easier to organise a protest against the most visible world leader in the entire world than a guy like Ceausescu, who most of the people who attended the protests would think was that French dude who did lots of deep sea dives. The average Brit wouldn't care about Chechnya, but something like Iraq has been front page news for years. I'm not saying Brits are a bunch of uneducated slobs because it's the same in any country, but the only way you can mobilise public opinion on such a massive scale is by protesting a guy as visible as Bush. I think the people comparing Bush to Hitler are morons, but you seem to be invalidating their protest just because they haven't protested in the past. They still have a valid argument to protest in such large numbers against Bush, whether or not they protested against Putin, or Mugabe, is irrelevant. And what's with the massive generalisations? 'The British Left'. 'The European Left'. The British Conservative Party is about as right-wing as you can get, and many of their MP's opposed the war in Iraq. You don't have to be a left winger to oppose British involvement in the Iraq war. I'm Australian and I didn't have a problem with Australia's involvement in the war because it increased our chance of getting a favourable free trade deal with America. For Britain, the benefits aren't as obvious. British soldiers have died, British money has been spent and the country has been divided for a war that the British people stopped supporting a month before it started. That's why people are protesting.

I hope they put that picture in the pre-match stats

lWo?!

Haha! Blind Nidia! Hahaahah This better be a thing where she pretends to be blind just to trick Tajiri or else it's going to be corny.

They need to do at least one blindfold match a year. So many funny spots they could do. Maybe a Blindfold division, and then a real blind guy comes in and does a Goldberg streak because he's used to being blind. Yeah!

Can't wrestle like he used to, but WWE has stripped him of everything that was good about his character. Ever since turning heel, he hasn't had one decent length promo to get over. Nobody draws heat as quickly as Steiner can, but WWE just books him like they book everyone else. I know the last thing RAW needs is less wrestling, but when was the last time someone not named Bischoff, Austin, McMahon, Undertaker or Helmsly got a decent length spot to cut a promo? How are we meant to care about guys like Steiner, Jericho, Booker and Eddy when all we see them in is 4 minute matches and backstage vignettes?

I tried to read Slimm's post but Triple H's giant man boobs mesmerized me.

But Angle, your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.