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I got your piracy economics right here, pal!

Unless he's planning to travel there:
http://www.out-law.com/page-7118

Or unless his country seems to be complicit with others flouting the Geneva Convention:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1792271,00. html

Oops.

To the GP - I will feel able to criticise his lack of fluency in English the as soon as my Romanian is at a similar level. I can't even manage "I'd like a beer please" in Romanian. Can you?

what makes a war illegal?

Overthrowing a sovereign nation. Isn't that the phrase? Google gets me, for example: Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

Then there's the question of the deliberate misleading of Congress into authorizing the war.

"But you can't -- just absolutely can't -- have a system that lets you just swipe a piece of plastic (or not even that, with the RFID ones) and walk away, without any verification at all, and also have security against fraud and theft."

Oh dear: http://money.guardian.co.uk/saving/banks/story/0,, 2074949,00.html

They tried to fit one when he visited the UK. But for once we refused. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,690 3,1086397,00.html

Incidentally, I mentioned those articles -- here's my collection. Let's get them out there to help build our industry.

They range in subject matters that assist me, with the majority being security related.

http://www.nbc4.com/money/11588165/detail.html
http://www.nbc4.com/money/11588165/detail.html
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71032-0.html
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pag ename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Artic le&cid=1135552209280&call_pageid=971358637177
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM .20050704.gtkirwanjul4/BNStory/specialScienceandHe alth/
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=176198
http://www.livescience.com/scienceoffiction/060619 _hyperactive_bob.html
http://www.labour.gov.on.ca/english/es/factsheets/ fs_faq.html
http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/open-source/open-sourc e-legal
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/privacy/story/0,10801,108101,00.html
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&article Id=9004274&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_feat
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=f6f 548f7-9dfd-49f4-9ff8-8ae8f4a2e2fd
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr 2006/tc20060417_996365.htm?campaign_id=bier_tca
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_37 /b4000401.htm?chan=tc&campaign_id=bier_tcst0
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1 781895,00.html
http://panko.cba.hawaii.edu/ssr/Mypapers/whatknow. htm

There is a current experiment by a guy from Microsoft Labs. He wears a camera around his neck which automatically takes pictures every minute so that he can label and save them later in a database I saw that in Spectrum (IEEE magazine) but here is a link from a quick google search : http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,167 4359,00.html

This story is on Panorama on BBC1 tonight at 8.30 for those of you in the UK.. you can see the whole documentary :)

Anyway, I wanted to give some comment on Scientology. I'm not a Scientologist, but I support their right to the same protections as all other religions. From everything I can tell, it's a bona-fide religion (as much as, say, Christianity).

It is very easy to hear about the Church of Scientology and write it off as a cult but I feel it's as valid a religion as any other, and it deserves as much protection (or as little protection) as any other. People who publicly write off Scientology as a "cult" are dangerously misleading the public and using Scientology as a scapegoat for problems that should be pinned on religion in general.

So why isn't Scientology a cult? For a start, its standards are similar to those of other religions. Like other religions, it has a control over its members, dictates norms and standards, and provides its adherents with hope and moral guidance. Some claim that Scientology "brain washes" its adherents, but the practice of turning adherents into evangelicals and servants of the faith is by no means unique to Scientology. Religion in general relies on this process, and almost no theistic religion exists without making adherents believe in fiction and/or believe that various acts are "bad" for almost no logical reason (such as eating pork, masturbating, and so forth). The levels of guilt that, say, Christians have faced when dealing with topics like sex or abortion, even to the point of suicide, make Scientology look quite sane.

John Sweeney writes about his "harassment" (supposedly at the hands of the Church of Scientology), but this pales in comparison to that experienced by dissenters or those who bad-mouth other religions. As we've discovered in the last year, even publishing a drawing of Mohammed can lead to death threats and street protests the world over. Even writing, performing, or publishing a poem about Jesus, a character from "The Bible", can lead to prosecution and snitchery in the UK, a supposedly developed country. Note that in the linked case, Bakewell was "reported to the DPP by the National Viewers and Listeners Association." Many online renegades complain about the way the Church of Scientology supposedly uses the law to harass critics, but is having a religion use bad, secular laws worse than having a religion dictate the laws as in Iran or, even, the United Kingdom? (The UK is referenced because we STILL can't have stores be open more than 6 hours on a Sunday because of some fictional character in some fictional pile of cod-swallop from 2000 years ago).

Most religions have problems and Scientology is only one of these. We should be looking at the problems with all religions, instead of picking on the CoS in particular. Most religions are corrupt, brainwash their believers into believing that fiction is fact, and limit the freedoms of their adherents. Yet people, often "God fearing" Christians, still point fingers at the CoS in particular.

Note: These problems do not make religions inherently BAD (as that assumes some sort of doctrine upon which to judge them), but it does mean most religions should be lumped in with each other in terms of value judgements.. and separating Scientology out is unfair and discriminatory to Scientologists.

ah yes, I know who that is--I just wasn't thinking... This guardian article (which I found through wikipedia, I'll admit) actually makes the anti-point to poster alpahger... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2 020424,00.html

I'm sorry, but this is just blatent revisionism. The entire media fell in line with the Bush administration during the lead up to war. (The New York Times most notably.) During the invasion of they unquestioningly followed the official line. Anyone that challenged the official line was either thrown off the air (Phil Donahue most notably) or simply ignored. The media was played (The white house spreads the disinformation that Iraq has aluminium tubes to create a centrafuge, and then quotes that same story as support for what they're saying). Everyone got they're war on. The media thouugh, "I've got connections! I can get a Pulitzer! Explosions equal ratings!" The White House said, "My God! Our 9 year wet dream of invading Iraq has finaly come true!"

Of course the invasion worked. No one ever doubted that. The media never questioned the official line right up until Abu Ghraib. Then they said, "What the hell?" just like anyone reasonable person would. Then they decided to report that for all the talk of "supporting the troops," the solidiers didn't have enough armor. It's just that now the official line has diveged so much from reality, you can't ignore it. Do you honestly believe Tony Snow believes himself when he compares Baghdad to when Washington DC was the "murder capital?"

It's convient to say that no one know what's going on, but that's simply isn't true. There's a civil war on, and the situation in Iraq has steadily gotten worse. Hell, Cheney is over there in May 9th and says, "Violence is down fairly dramatically," And then an explosion rocks the very building. This week the State Department said that everyone going outside the buildings in the green zone needs to wear body armor. This is bad. 30 bodies a day are being found. That's the work of militia death squads. Four years ago, we didn't have those problems. The Iraqi Ministry of Education reports that only 30% of school aged children attend class, because they're parents fear for their safety. That's down from 75% last year. There's been a steady exodus of highly educated professionals from that country. We're talking doctors, teachers, people needed to maintain a cohesive society. McCain visits Baghdad and says, "Look I can walk though a market, and the generals don't need armor." He had 100 guards, armor, and attack helicopters with him, to walk through a market that mostly closed becaused no one wanted their picture taken with the Americans. The Army issued a statment saying that McCain was "mistaken" when he said Prateaus would go about Baghdad without armor. McCain didn't even belive himself.

This situation in Iraq is is bad. It is very very bad.

It's very convienent and comforting to believe that Fox is telling the truth, and everyone else is lying, but that simply isn't true. Even if you ignore the fact that Fox News has gone lockstep with the Republican party since its inception; you have the entire world media on one side, and then you have Fox News. Who you going to believe? Well obviously Fox, since everyone hates America, including a majority of Americans.

Fox News demostably has lousy coverage. Numerious media studies have show that people that primarily get their information from Fox News are grossly misinformed. But I'm sure that's just because reality has a well known liberal bias.

Shell chairman Sir Philip Watts risks stirring up a controversy in America today when he calls for global warming sceptics to get off the fence and accept that action needs to be taken "before it is too late". - see http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12 374,912530,00.html

In a Stanford University address, BP's chief executive John Browne said the United States together with Britain, China and other heavily industrialized nations need to create an "international climate agency" to reduce pollution linked to global climate change. (Look it up on google, and select the cache, there is registration involved otherwise)

Shell CEO John Hofmeister "It's a waste of time to debate it," he said. "Policymakers have a responsibility to address it. The nation needs a public policy. We'll adjust." - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14733060/

Bush would outline steps the government will take to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/artic les/2007/01/22/bush_set_to_tackle_global_warming/

Just the typical people you'd expect to be convinced by hippies. Stupid oil executives want us to believe in global warming so that they look good to their hippie friends. And that Bush guy just wants to court support from his hippie constituency.

Surprisingly convincing BBC documentary.

It's not from the BBC, it's from Channel 4. The Great Global Warming Swindle, as one could understand from its title, is not exactly a balanced documentary, and has received threats of legal action by at least one of the people appearing in the film, Carl Wunsch, who claimed to have been grossly misquoted.

For the sake of open-mindedness, I tried watching this piece of corporate propaganda. I concluded this is crap when I heard the argument that "CO2 in atmosphere is not important because it is only 0.054% of the atmosphere" (at 13 minutes and 20 seconds into the movie). No, they did not say that: they knew it was a lie. So they just "implied" it, selectively and carefully quoting a scientist who is simply stating the obvious ("there is little CO2 in the atmosphere") but without the as obvious consequences ("Since it's so little humans can have a sensible effect in terms of percentage"). They also conveniently mentioned that 95% of greenhouse gases is water vapour, and as conveniently forgot to mention that that is a factor humans cannot influence, because of the enormous buffer represented by the oceans.

Finally, the documentary's author, Martin Durkin, a man with no scientific credentials by the way, handled criticism with class, calling one researcher who pointed out that his CO2/solar radiation correlation data were known to be flawed "a big daft cock" (that was actually all his answer), and telling to "go to fuck [him]self" to another one who urged him to be civilised.

Here's a link about the blood substitute in more detail
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2 075544,00.html

Must be a great doco when one of your sources is considering legal action, and when 37 of the UK's leading climate scientists tell you that you're deliberately misrepresenting data. A formal complaint has been lodged with Ofcom about the programme.

I think that's a pretty good point - I agree that the overall level of violent gun crime may actually be higher in a society with gun control. My point was that massacres are more likely to occur if there is no gun control - for the reasons I gave. The massacres that occur are generally the result of weeks of planning, by young men with clean criminal records. These people find it very difficult to source illegal weapons.

In the UK gun massacres are a significant element of the overall gun murder rate - last year 67 people were killed in gun assaults in Britain, so when 16 children can be killed in a single day, that is a very significant event.

I'm glad you're upfront about saying it's a price worth paying in the US, I think that's a fair argument. As for not reading the articles - I try not to read Daily Express editorials, it's a shitty paper. The editorial swaps between "gun deaths rising in UK" (presumably he's including suicide here) to "lower gun murder rates in Switzerland" (probably not including suicide, since it would screw up his argument, Switzerland has very low crime levels and a very high suicide rate) to "it is hard to disentangle the statistics" (presumably that's true if you have 24 hours to publication). On the bbc article, the research it quotes is from a pro gun lobby, which ignores the severity of crime to simply focus on the numbers, since severity does not appear to suit its argument.

In short - I don't like your sources, your argument doesn't work very well for the UK, but it may well work for America, and you're an honest man for making it so clearly. Here's the article with last years (UK) stats for your info : http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,19992 01,00.html

Rewriting history.

The one reason the US (and its coalition) is at war with Iraq is that president Bush had some kind of fixation against Saddam Hussein. He wanted to invade Iraq even long before 9/11. Listen to what everybody who has been close to the president now says, don't just listen to Fox news.

Bush senior lead a successful international coalition against SH in 1991, but then the international community balked at removing SH from power since this was against the mandate they had from the UN (which was in effect, liberate Kuwait, then stop). Then we had this big mess with the situation worsening on several fronts in Iraq, with SH stopping at nothing to hang to power. We had this "food for oil" program into which several nations including the French tried to get some dibs, and a game of cat and mouse with the UN inspector to disable the WMD. This was disgraceful to say the least.

I can understant GWB wanted to come in and clean the mess, but to invade Iraq and topple SH he had to invent some kind of credible threat. That's where he went wrong IMHO. "The end justify the means" is rarely a good option, and now the end itself is now seriously in question with 3500 US dead and counting, and Iraq nowhere near democracy.

As we now know, SH had no WMD left, the inspectors had in fact done their job (who will ever thank them?).

To blame the French and in particular Chirac who has been president since 1995 for all of what caused the US to invade Iraq for the second time is disingenuous at best.

Truth hurts.

Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00. html

Hope is very pleasant and all but once a nation starts down a road it can be hard to reverse course. Things can get _much_ worse. Empire is incompatible with democracy.

To quote one US airman, who had just strafed and killed solders in a UK convoy - "Man, we're going to jail.". But luckily, US laws only apply when/where they say it does.

If you write a book that is similar enough to,...Da Vinci Code, you will get sued for copyright infringement, even if the words are not identical.

Are you not aware that the author of Da Vinci Code easily triumphed in court? He won specifically because copyrights do not cover ideas. Conflating copyrights with patents is doublethink

I really don't see why they can't make arguments up to the last minute. I wouldn't have minded it from Sarkozy either.

Furthermore, her prediction was quite accurate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2073832, 00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1

And they need it that PR, badly:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2059430,00.h tml?gusrc=rss&feed=travel

ha ha ha ha.....

wrong side of the pond...

and the correct procedure when being defamed is to sue the defamers... but first you have to sue the website to find out who the defamer is...

there IS precedent...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,736 9,460668,00.html

Bad science from ben Goldacre take on the Thailand AIDS dispute

Relevant is this (below are quote):
* Abbott has retaliated by completely withdrawing its new heat-stable version of Kaletra from the Thai market and withdrawing six other new drugs from the country for good measure.
* In fact, the Thai government has a good history of forcing the drug companies to release their wares at more realistic prices and, interestingly, it has broken no laws. The 2001 Doha declaration made it clear that governments should put public health before companies' patent rights, and under the TRIPS agreement from the WTO, governments can sign up to respect a patent, with the caveat that they can make the drug themselves, or import a generic version, in a national emergency.
* So the US, for example, announced its intention to import generic Ciprofloxacin following the anthrax panic, sidestepping the patent on that drug, in the name of practicality in a crisis. The US terrorist anthrax epidemic killed six people, which says a lot about how the definitio
* we are speaking of 100.000's of contaminated and 120.000+ full blown AIDS in Thailand


My take on this : the US administration don't care a slight bit on intellectual property if it is not their own, they don't care a little bit if other country are within their right as soon as they see a bit of $$ loss, they don't care a *shit* about AIDS drug being unaffordable for "poor" people of other country.

But my biggest GRIP is that despite doing something LAWFUL within international treaty bound, and the US admin has the gale of protesting this, Abbott has the gale of taking back half a dozen drug due to that, and NOBODY seems to pick that up on the US side. I am betting there are more than 32 death a day in thailand due to treatment being too expensive (and that's not counting the death in other country due to the same reason).

Seems like quite a few people have been leaving Google lately

True. Read this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2063979,00.h tml

No. Dolphins only. Seriously.

This one http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00. html?

Here's an example of just that, over here in the UK.

http://money.guardian.co.uk/saving/banks/story/0,, 1994533,00.html

Well then, if "multiple" officials have done this, it should be easy for you to find an example...

Unfortunately the Crooks and Liars 'torture' archive only reaches as far back as their last server move, mid 2006, so I can't point to the video clips of the many interviews I watched personally, although I particularly remember the individual ones with Rice, Rumsfeld, Chertoff and Gonzales waeving and dodging desperately about "making sure that the interrogators have all the tools" etc.

It is quite amazing that the net has such short memory, quite an eye opener for me.

I was able to find some printed material, such as this infamous Bybee memo to the White House.

One of the clips now gone from C&L was the CSPAN video of this performance by Infhoe.

Then there is Trent Lott with this.

I could look for more (it seems to be a royal pain in the butt to find proper references to any bloviating official which are older then 2 weeks) but these should give a reasonable approximation of "multiple", although they are Republican elected officials rather then White House ones.

The fact that you think that the criminal abuse that happened at Abu Ghraib (which was identified through internal mechanisms and swiftly prosecuted resulting in several convictions) is even closely related to this tells me that you have already made your mind up on the issue regardless of the facts

You gotta be kidding. "Identified through internal mechanisms"?! Rumsfeld, Miller and Sanchez planned and supervised the whole damn disguisting thing! "Swiftly prosecuted"?! Who?! Oh you mean some hapless idiots who had the bad luck of filming themselves doing the deeds?! What about all the other ones?! The CIA, the "private security contractors" etc and so on. You are surely jesting.

Today's Guardian includes this interesting piece entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Guess how many steps down the path we are?

For the benefit of those who won't read it, here's the ten points.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

And in other news: Jessica Lynch comes out and condemns the Hollywood show they made of the incident she was involved in.

Today's Guardian includes this interesting piece entitled "Fascist America, in 10 easy steps". Guess how many steps down the path we are?

For the benefit of those who won't read it, here's the ten points.

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

And in other news: Jessica Lynch comes out and condemns the Hollywood show they made of the incident she was involved in.

There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the well-to-do peasants. This tendency will become rampant if we in the slightest way neglect political work among the peasants during the co-operative movement and for a very long period after.

The spontaneous forces of capitalism have been steadily growing in the countryside in recent years, with new rich peasants springing up everywhere and many well-to-do middle peasants striving to become rich peasants. On the other hand, many poor peasants are still living in poverty for lack of sufficient means of production, with some in debt and others selling or renting out their land. If this tendency goes unchecked, the polarization in the countryside will inevitably be aggravated day by day. Those peasants who lose their land and those who remain in poverty will complain that we are doing nothing to save them from ruin or to help them overcome their difficulties. Nor will the well-to-do middle peasants who are heading in the capitalist direction be pleased with us, for we shall never be able to satisfy their demands unless we intend to take the capitalist road. Can the worker-peasant alliance continue to stand him in these circumstances? Obviously not! There is no solution to this problem except on a new basis. And that means to bring about, step by step, the socialist transformation of the whole of agriculture simultaneously with the gradual realization of socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce; in other words, it means to carry out co-operation and eliminate the rich-peasant economy and the individual economy in the countryside so that all the rural people will become increasingly well off together. We maintain that this is the only way to consolidate the worker-peasant alliance.

In an interview on stage at the Web 2.0 Expo, Google boss Eric Schmidt was asked if it would compete with Microsoft Office, Schmidt said, "We don't think so. It doesn't have all the functionality, nor is it intended to have the functionality of products like Microsoft Office."

Which is true. In fact, it's going to provide a useful extra in helping Office/PowerPoint users to collaborate online, and extend the appeal of the PowerPoint format by making it easier to share slides with people who don't own Office. All this is good for Microsoft. On the other hand, it provides light PowerPoint users with a good reason not to buy a full copy of Office, and in the longer term, there is no assurance that Google's version won't gain extra features that make it a PowerPoint replacement. In sum, Google is just using the "Embrace and extend" approach straight out of Microsoft's playbook.

I submitted this same story earlier this morning but it was voted down to black in the firehose almost instantly. Probably because of the negative spin I gave it. Well, I'm not afraid of losing karma so I'll spout my ramblings in a post instead.

Rupert Murdoch owns News Corporation, a conglomerate business that, among other things, owns many news sources. MySpace is a division of News Corp as well as Fox News, The Sun, The Australian, SmartSource, The Times, New York Post, News of the World, etc.

Something interesting about Rupert Murdoch is his political leanings are often reflected in all of the divisions of his corporation. Guess why 175 of his editors favored the Iraq war.

Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever you need to call me in order to ignore one nagging issue--is it really that safe to have so many different news sources coming from really the same man? The worst part is that there is no perceived relation between the New York Post and Fox News yet they are basically one and the same in how they spin their news on partisan issues. It's the same in Great Britain & Australia. I don't even care that he's predominantly conservative in his views, I just care that if he decided to back any candidate (possibly even Hillary Clinton) that suddenly that candidate is favored in many news sources. He's making political decisions that impact the world and he's not an elected politician.

I fear that if MySpace is edited at all by hand or by automation, it will favor articles that favor his candidates--in exactly the same way he has been running his newspapers and TV news. Beware your free and capitalist media, America because it looks as though a single man has a growing monopoly on it ...

Because people would consider it an invasion of privacy if they feel they have to notify their credit agency of their movements:

Don't bank on your card abroad

Now, this policy was set up to prevent credit card fraud. Fraudster would work in a petrol station in order to clone cards, which were then used abroad, which in some other cases, have been as far as Africa.

People put money in banks for security and for interest. Banks pay interest by putting money to work.

Here is an estimate that puts global assets at $125 trillion: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1965149,00 .html

Global production is somewhere around $60 trillion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(PPP)

So I can see where there is some money sitting on the sidelines, but not where most of it is sitting on the sidelines.

According to Pentagon investigations after the Abu Ghraib scandal, officials cited the fact that interrogation tactics as well as personnel were moved to Abu Ghraib after their success in "breaking" detainees at Guantanamo. More focus was paid to Guantanamo since then, but the military has stonewalled everyone, even the Red Cross.

May I suggest:
The Road to Guantanamo
Tipton Three Complained of Beatings
Washington Post: FBI Agents Allege Abuse of Detainees at Guantanamo Bay and FBI Files Detail Guantanamo torture tactics
Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantánamo

The US did not depend on 678 - they considered 1441 the loophole they needed. Resolution 1441 did not authorize the use of force. In fact, both the U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, and the UK ambassador Jeremy Greenstock, gave assurances that the resolution provided no "automaticity", no "hidden triggers". The US and UK ambassadors agreed that 1441 included no step to invasion without consultation of the Security Council. The US was keenly aware of this and tried desperately to get UN approval via a new resolution, but they could not. And keep in mind that both Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei had just given the UN reports that further undercut the US push for war - they had found nothing worthy of concern and wanted more time to continue the inspections. The American attack forced the weapons inspectors back out of the country. Don't get me wrong - Saddam was jerking around the international community and playing games with the system. Some of those on the Security Council refusing to authorize war were profitting from illegal deals with Iraq. However, none of that gives the US the right to launch a war of aggression against another sovereign nation.

I disagree for two reasons. First, the US and their allies certainly did rely on UNSEC #678 and UNSEC #687. Here is an op-ed by a State Department ambassador laying out the exact same case. You can find the same rational from Australia, The UK, and even the National Security Council, among others.

Second, UNSEC #1441 specifically recalled and reaffirmed UNSEC #678 and UNSEC #687 which gave authorization to use force, and deplored the fact that Iraq was in "material breach" of the requirements in UNSEC #687.

You mean the Al-Samoud 2 missiles that were declared to the UN in December of 2002 and were considered a violation because they could potentially exceed the 150 km range limit by 30 km? The same Al-Samoud 2 missiles that Iraq was in the process of destroying when the US invasion occurred?

Bingo. They declared these weapons to the UN in December of 2002, but had been banned from possessing them or developing them 12 years prior to that. The fact that it took a carrier group parked on their doorstep in the Gulf to make this declaration is hardly comforting.

I have to admit that I'm at a loss to explain your "North Korean No Dong 2000km ballistic missiles" comment. I'm not aware of any reports about No Dong missiles in Iraq and I can't find anything on Google. No Dong missiles do not even have a 2000 km range.

This information is directly pulled from the 2004 Duelfer report:
Iraq entered into negotiations with North Korean and Russian entities for more capable missile systems. Iraq and North Korea in 2000 discussed a 1,300-km-range missile, probably the No Dong, and in 2002 Iraq approached Russian entities about acquiring the Iskander-E short-range ballistic missile (SRBM).

My apologies about the mis-information on the range, however 1300km is still well above the 150km limit.

Again, I'm at a loss. The Duelfer report was considered a scathing rebuke of American rhetoric and propaganda. It indicated that Saddam wanted to restart his weapons programs as soon as the sanctions were lifted, but I don't think that was disallowed. The report demonstrated that his nuclear program was in shambles, and his chemical and biological programs nonexistent. And why do you guys love to reference David Kay's interim repor

First and most importantly, how do you stop him from illegally obtaining a gun?

You don't. But because you make the probability of owning a gun much harder, it is not readily seen as a path to choose. In math: probability_of(dying to gun | guns are available) > probability_of(dying to gun | guns are not available). In the real world it would be something like: "you piss me off, gun is available, I can 'solve' my problem through a gun" but if the gun option wasn't immediately available it'd be more like "you piss me off, I need a way to solve my problem, gun is a potential solution, but I have no gun, I have to figure out how to obtain a gun, etc." If they follow through with their malicious thought process, they might still follow the same path, but it will take much longer and much more preparation. Buying that amount of time alone and because it would be a crime to own a firearm at least gives the police and detectives a chance to catch him in the first crime (obtaining a gun) than in the second crime (murder).

As another poster pointed out, we still have large amounts of drugs in the country, which is just as illegal as you want to make this guy having a gun. (Did he even legally obtain the ones he used in this case anyways?)

First, drugs are different from guns. The purpose of drugs is to provide pleasure while the purpose of guns can vary from "tool to kill" or a "hobby/interest." Secondly he probably did legally obtain the guns: "One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony." Source. Other articles also claim similar or more convincing evidence (like interviewing the person that sold him the gun).

Secondly, how do you determine who a "crazy person" is, and how to you stop that definition from becoming politically "malleable"?

You bring up a good point: it's hard to identify crazy people. So I ask the following question, given that it's hard or impossible to identify crazy people, what sounds like a better solution: allow everyone to have a gun so that they can defend themselves in the event a crazy person murders someone or remove guns (as much as possible) from the picture so that it is much harder for crazy people to obtain guns?

In the former, you can't shoot the crazy person until he actually commits the crime so it is likely he will at least kill or injure one person. In the latter you open up the possibility of catching him in the process of trying to obtain a gun or flat out denying him that option.

Finally someone is bound to bring up the counter-argument that if a criminal wants to obtain a gun, he will get it. But I say this: the only time we label someone a criminal is when they commit a crime, therefore, why do we always ignore the fact that if guns were illegal that the criminal would have to commit 2 crimes (the first to obtain the gun) to kill someone? Right now, any non-criminal can get a gun and it isn't until they use it maliciously that we find out about their intentions. While we cannot assume that with guns illegal that every person trying to illegally obtain a gun is doing so to commit murder, we can identify them as criminal prior to them even getting to that second stage (whatever it may be).

But here are a bunch of reasons why we should keep them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_prot ests_of_1989
http://www.cnd.org/njmassacre/
http://www.greenleft.org.au/1998/313/21534
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,1136440,00.html (Gas chamber horror in North Korea camps) ... ...
Of course I could go on and on and on and cite every massacre and mass murder on the planet but that's what happens in the end to people who are not armed.

But UK bees are going missing too, just not in such large numbers yet, and the Government Bee Inspectors of the National Bee Unit are denying there is anything wrong. http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/sto ry/0,,2055067,00.html

but that doesn't excuse it. It was apparently about AUD50 (from the ABC.

Anyway, this is just another example of how legitimate protests are squashed by authorities. If Putin and Co continue to suppress the opposition, I wonder if Mr Berezovsky will carry out his threat to have a "Russian Revolution"?

Meh, and you wonder why some of the old people want the Soviet Union back.

It changes the situation because if one side allows the other to win a small victory then it tips the balanced scales ever so slightly in their favor...

So, Soviets take Afghanistan, then they take over the world and destroy American cilivation. I believe they call that a slippery slope.

I agree with you that the world court is meaningless.

I didn't say the World Court is meaningless. I said that "When sovereignty of nations is held up as an excuse for war criminals to hide behind," then the World Court is meaningless. So, I might also say that if you are going to argue from the position of the sovereignty of nations, then that means you respect the sovereignty of other nations - like Nicaragua.

The real position that is often behind the sovereignty of nations argument is typically only applied to U.S. sovereignty - never about the U.S. respecting the sovereignty of other nations. This is the problem - one that you are trying to brush aside.

Not to mention the "straw man" of misrepresenting what I have said. I mention this only because you complain about my "straw man" - without specifics I'll point out - while this is the second time I have pointed out specific instances where you have misrepresented what I have said because it's easier than actually addressing what I said.

What the South Africans do is entirely their own affair it really doesn't bother me in the least.

The significance of South African and Chilean mercenaries is that they have been involved in documented human right abuses. I think you simply aren't aware of this issue, but now that you do, I don't think you can maintain the position. Take a look at documents related to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. People involved now work as mercenaries worldwide.

The article that you link has no corroborating sources cited for their figures. In the news world that is the equivalent of hearsay and no respectable news outlet would print hearsay without corroboration or citing sources.

Ok, I'll do the work for you. I'll even pick out the relevant quotes so you don't even have to bother clicking on the links if you don't wish to do so.

Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established. While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground. The investigation has also discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In 1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and women; now there are 10.

There are serious doubts even within the occupying power about the US's choice to send Chilean mercenaries, many trained during General Augusto Pinochet's vicious dictatorship, to guard Baghdad airport.

And it's not just the foreigners - South Africans, who know they are breaking their country's laws on mercenary activity; skilled Gurkhas and Fijians who can't resist the dollars; or the Chileans who trained under General Pinochet - who are involved.

"What are the rules of engagement [for the PMCs]?" asked one coalition military official in Baghdad. "Are they civilians or are they military? I don't know who they are, and I don't

Shhh, Karl, don't tell them any more than they already know.

Actually, if you go back to early 2003 and look at the propaganda leading up to the invasion of Iraq, you'll see that the Bush gang pretty much gave up on the WMD argument during the last month or so. The reason was that it had been so thoroughly debunked by so many people that they realized they needed a new pretext.

Here's an article from the Guardian. It's an interesting Q&A article detailing the ups/downs for the decisions for the Iraq war, it's repercussions, and possible reasons for doing so, focusing on the popular 'lie' as so many people like to call it.

For those to lazy to RTFA, it basically reminds those that France, Germany, Britain, Spain, and the US all believed Iraq had WMDs. Though they did not all agree that War was the best solution. Also, I might remind you that Iraq HAD WMDs. This isn't debatable. They used them against the Kurds. The question was, did they STILL have them. And all of the above nations believed that they did.

The "Bush gang" didn't "give up" the argument of WMDs because it was "thoroughly debunked", in fact, the WMD argument could not be debunked, even by the countries who opposed the war. When one is speculating if a country does or does not have something. Intelligence reports claim they still do, you know they use to, then there's not a whole lot you can say to "debunk" the argument other than "trust" Iraqs government, who was jerking around UN weapons inspectors, successfully leading to the confusion of the "did they or didn't they" argument, and empowering the tin-foil hat wearing people to speak even louder.

Of course, if you mean "debunked" in the terms of, once the US was there, couldn't find any WMDs, got all kinds of egg on their face and embarrassment for believing bad intelligence, or dropping them down a few pegs because the "all mighty Intelligence" was wrong, and in one of the worst ways. It really was a mass deflation given the worlds perception and stereotype of how America has their super secret spy satellites and super organizations of the CIA and FBI and the might American technology as presented in endless popular Hollywood fan fair with their ability to detect a cats fart in Timbuktu. Sure, anyone can "debunk" an argument after the fact.

There's 2 better and logical reasons why you believe they 'stopped' pushing the WMD argument. First, despite the fact that it couldn't be debunked, it also couldn't be confirmed absolutely. It was and always was speculation based on facts, which is still speculation. We know they 'use' to have WMDs, but they were suppose to get rid of them and we cannot find any in inspections (as if we expected them to say, "here they are!"), but then there was this mysterious 'intelligence' that said they did and they where being hidden. You just couldn't confirm it or deny it, unfortunately for Iraq.

So, the WMD argument remained controversial, not "debunked". The US needed more ground to stand on and try to persuade the UN security console (see China and Russia) to not veto a new resolution allowing force(despite older past resolutions that allowed 'force' when broken, which they were). What they did is put more energy into this less controversial argument. The UN resolution was there, on the books, and could be proven that it was broken and that it validated the US's request for force. To promote this new line of arguing, they try to drum up the support by saying that "they used WMD's in the past, they broke these resolutions the UN set that allow force, and they have no credibility that they won't do it again in the future".

It wasn't that the WMD argument was "debunked" so they HAD to add another line of argument, it was that the WMD argument wasn't a strong argument to validate force because it remained controversial. They didn't switch to "Iraq will attack in the future" as the next argument, they switched to "Iraq attacked in the past, broke past r

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,20551 48,00.html

"As I made clear, both in the
preliminary discussions, and in the interview itself, I believe that
global warming is a very serious threat that needs equally serious
discussion and no one seeing this film could possibly deduce that.

What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which
there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why
many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely
accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples,
it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one:
a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only
a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to
infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning
meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases
are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director
not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that
piece of disinformation.

An example where my own discussion was grossly distorted by context:
I am shown explaining that a warming ocean could expel more
carbon dioxide than it absorbs -- thus exacerbating the greenhouse
gas buildup in the atmosphere and hence worrisome. It
was used in the film, through its context, to imply
that CO2 is all natural, coming from the ocean, and that
therefore the human element is irrelevant. This use of my remarks, which
are literally what I said, comes close to fraud."

You don't need a gas-guzzling quasi-military vehicle just to go shopping.

I disagree