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Dilbert Readers Rat Out Some Weasels
colinmc151 writes "Well, Dilbert's Way of the Weasel Poll Results are in, with 35,874 people voting. Weaseliest Organization was won by the Recording Industry Association of America. Weaseliest Company was won by Microsoft. The Weaseliest Individual award was won by George W. Bush. Weaseliest Profession went to Politicians. Weaseliest Country went to France. Weaseliest Behavior was 'Blaming fast food restaurants for making you fat.' Congratulations to all the deserving winners."
they knew the war was a fake and they stuck to their stance while UK/USA continue to evade and dodge the truth
id say France was far from being the weasalist country, but making it the USA or UK would be un-patriotic right ?
slashdot?
i voted. and most of the ones i picked were chosen. i love dilbert!
Slashdot editors have been voted weasiliest journalists for posting the exact e-mails they got, line for line, and forgetting that everyone here is already a member of the DNRC and got the results in their E-Mail.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
Who could choose between lawyers and politicians. Hmm, most politicians are lawyers. Hmmm......
How did the ACLU end up more weasly than the GOP? Shows who reads dilbert I guess. Matt
Doesn't it seem interesting that they were are all the stereotypical, most well known weasels?
This has nothing to do with anything remotely Slashdot related, but I need to do something before my head explodes...
As I type this, my roomate and my best friend/recent lover are fucking in the next room over. WHAT THE FUCK. After 10 years of friendship and built-up sexual tension, we finally hooked up and now less than a week later she's banging my roomate. I am so fucking incensed right now I can't think straight. I wouldn't mind if they went to a hotel or otherwise didn't make it known, but she just FUCKING WALKED PAST MY ROOM TOPLESS AND SHUT THE DOOR IN MY FUCKING FACE. How fucking insensitive can you be?!
This sucks. It's 3AM and I'm telling strangers (GEEK strangers, no less) about my personal problems. I am a big pussy and will most likely not say anything to either one of them so I expect this to go on for a while. Fuck.
Feeling low? There's someone else out there that's having a worse day than you. Trust me.
Weasels in local zoos began protesting after slanderous survey compared them to the likes of Microsoft, GW-Bush, and the RIAA.
One outraged animal was quoted as saying "enough's enough, man! We've been portrayed negatively throughout history but this is pretty low."
...election results that I can finally feel good about. I live in California and I had been wondering why I always thought democracy was a good idea.
It would be interesting to find out how many
oh yeah, and Bwahahahahahahahahaa
Oh well, no point in steering now.
But then I'm neither a republican or democrat. I find it interesting that Dubya won his category. I had no idea public opinion of him was so low.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Indeed, how can they label Bush as a known weasel, thus indicating his "war on terrorism" is at least in great part a sham, and still bash the french?
I'm assuming that it's a statement apart from current war-related issues, since the french were often bashed before anyhow.
the weaseliest of them all -
used car dealers
television evangelists
Slashdot editors
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
Weaseliest Organization - Recording Industry Association of America
Weaseliest Country - France
Weaseliest Company - Microsoft
Weaseliest Profession - Politicians
Weaseliest Individual - George W. Bush
Weaseliest Behavior - Blaming fast food restaurants for making you fat
#include
Hey Donald, time for your feeding. Then you get to make another press release.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I think SCO would be disappointed to have missed out on this award. Perhaps the award should be changed to "weasliest company other than Microsoft" to avoid being predictable.
I find it interesting that Dubya won his category. I had no idea public opinion of him was so low.
Ummmm.....depends on which "public" you're talking about. I think it's probably reasonable to say that readers of Dilbert are a self-selecting sample of the general population.
Congratulations to all the deserving winners.
My question is this: How on earth did that summary get past moderation? If Dilbert readers want to vote Dubya a weasel, that's fine; no way should a summary include this comment.
** Slaps editors on the nose...bad editors! bad! bad! ****
Don't become a regular here, you will become retarded. -- Yoda the Retard
I'd of thought spammers would be up there in the top professions list.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Hello, my name is George W. Bush. I've sold the soul of the american government to Microsoft in return for their software to run on all of my computers here in the White House and all of those military bases (you know those remote ones where Solitaire really matters). I have always and will always support the recording industry and I hope that the RIAA wins all of its lawsuits. If you haven't noticed, I've been putting on those extra pounds lately. Thosefast-food places between the White House and my golf course never told me that eating would make me fat. You would have to be blind not to know that I'm a politician (how good/bad I am is debatable), but I am a politican nevertheless. Oh and my good pal Jaques is coming over soon so we can figure out which countries we're going to argue about in that next U.N. meetings so I had better leave now. Anyway, thanks to all of you people out there who voted for me, I probably didn't really win, but hey, my name's up there so I might as well accept the honor. - G.W.B. P.S. What was I running for again?
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
France was right. There was nothing in it for them. I mean aside from *ahem* managing the 40 billion dollars that was stolen from the Iraqi people, and their vastly below market value deals for Iraqi oil that they made with Hussein, known butcher. I mean, God forbid any kind of integrity get between them and the money in their pocket.
Asshat, France and Germany could have stopped the war. Know how? Call the US's bluff. Give in to a hard line for invasive UN inspections backed up by military ultimatum. But they didn't want that. They were worried it would interupt their cash flow, and they'd become accustomed to the sweet sweet taste of Iraqi blood, sweat and tears. After all, the US could never be so foolhardy that it would just use its power as Uncle Sam saw fit, before the flacid and impotent europeons. WHOOOPS. Looks like they're about as wise as Hussein when it comes to predicting US reactions. Maybe they should stay out of the meta-game until they understand how the game itself is played.
In short the abberant, mercinary, apathetic hubris of the eurotrash who for some reason think it's their place to rule europe by Providence that made the war even possible by any measure. So when you're passing out blame, remember who the people who set the table are.
I can't say I'm surprised to see that "George W. Bush" is listed as the weasliest individual, considering that the vast majority of hollywood and half of the politicians in the country are gunning for him, armed with mountains of faux substance... It's almost as bad as the France thing, except there's plenty of really good reasons to pity the French, and not supporting the Iraq war shouldn't even be on the list. (Say what you want about Bush killing jobs, it doesn't even compare with the French enforcing a 35-hour max workweek.)
The solution to this problem involves the general public and natural selection, so I won't go into it here.
SCO seems to be missing from the list, there.
Or... considering it's a HUMOUR(yes, that's how we spell it in Australia) site... maybe it's just a bit of FUN?
Geeze, calm down.
I e-mailed Scott with a late nomination of SCO as the weaseliest company and Darl McBride as thw weaseliest induhvidual but apparently nominations were closed for this year.
...
Oh well, there's always next year. And at the rate the various cases are dragging out, the year after that, and the year after that,
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
I just don't get it! If you don't like the ACLU, your problem is with the courts who keep ruling in their favor.
"A person regarded as sneaky or treacherous." From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=weasel So.....how in the hell is Saddam Hussein less treacherous than George W. Bush, Michael Moore, Yasser Arafat, and Jacques Chirac?
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
But marge! Weaseling out of things is what seperates us from the animals.... Well, except the weasel.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
If I get a Bacon Double Whopper with king-sized fries for lunch every day, I KNOW I'm going to get fat. It's not Burger King's fault, for god's sake. If I go to the bar and order 5 shots of tequila, I KNOW I'm going to get drunk. When I miss work the following day from being hung over, should the bar be held liable?
Fast food isn't healthy. I knew this when I was, like, 10 years old. How is it that some guy in his 30's just wakes up one day after a lifetime of Big Macs and decides "gee, it must be that evil McDonalds conspiracy to make me gain weight..." Fast food restaurants are in business to do one thing, and that's sell food. If you come inside with money, they're going to give you some food in return. How is this wrong?
I guess I must have missed the fraudulent ad campaigns that White Castle put out about "eat our burgers 3 times a day and you'll look like Kate Moss." [Subway and Jared are getting borderline here, but it's supposedly a true story, and I imagine they'd have been whacked by the FTC if it weren't. I also imagine that Jared did a shitload of exercising that they neglect to mention in their commercials. Whatever; the guy didn't sue Subway.]
People need to take some fucking responsibility for their own actions and their own meals.
500 Internal Server Error.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
From the posts so far, I wager this guess:
80% democrats that are pissed they lost the election and will perpetuate lies until 2004.
10% republican who won the election fair and square. argue all you like, but based on law and the electoral process, GWB won.
5% green people, who i do think are from mars.
5% independent people who don't know their head from their ass, and are just natually grumpy cause their party will never have a chance.
see below
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
That they rated our President the Weasliest Individual, but they still rated the Democrats more Weasley than the Republicans.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I don't doubt that fast food is the proximate cause of obesity. Yes - eating Whoppers will make you fat. But nobody says you have to.
Whatever happened to personal responsibility? If you're overweight, go to the damn grocery store, buy some rice and some vegetables. Some fish and lean chicken. Bake the fish. Bake the chicken. Steam the vegetables and boil the rice. When you're starting to get full, stop eating. How hard is that?
It's not as convenient as fast food, true. But if that's your excuse, you're killing yourself for convenience. Living in McDonalds and blaming them for your problems is like blaming the gun in a game of Russian Roulette.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Another respondant noted that if you add Fox News and the Republicans together, you'd end up in the #3 spot. However, if you add the votes for the Republican-controlled White House and Congress together with the votes for the GOP, you get an astounding 11190 votes, fully 3240 more votes than the RIAA.
France is the country that stood up to uber-weasel George W and refused to support a war of choice based on hearsay. They stood on principle and demanded evidence of WMDs (along with an apparent majority of the Security Council, although we'll never know for sure because GWB decided to attack without international sanction). Since when did seeking truth and not backing down to an economic and military superpower qualify as weasely?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
The amazing thing about the French is that, if it weren't for us (America), they would be stuck speaking German and saluting Hitler. They crumbled almost immediately after Hitler attacked. Why we even still bother to consider them a real country after that, I don't know.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
This poll was posted on freerepublic.com several times. It was also posted on sites like democratunderground.com.
It was 'attacked by both/all sides of the issue.
- As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday and employees will receive their cards in two weeks.
(This was the winning quote from Fred Dales at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, Washington.)
- How long is this Beta guy going to keep testing our stuff? (Programming intern, Microsoft IIS development team)
- We recently received a memo from senior management saying: "This is to inform you that a memo will be issued today regarding the subject mentioned above." (Microsoft, Legal Affairs Division)
(Source)when's the last time someone came and pointed a gun at your head and made you eat McDonald's? The guy who's bringing the lawsuit against them because his kids are fat took them to McDonald's for a meal every day. The blame with fast food isn't the restaraunts fault any more than a brewer is responsible for an alchoholic. If you can't use things responsibly and in moderation than you should just get a chip implanted because you're not smart enough to think on your own.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
Pot Kettle you say? Perhaps.. but drugs can also be the answer.
So can masturbation, which I'm sure many in this crowd are familiar with!
Oh wait, he DID make the list... We should have Al Franken have gay anal sex onboard the international space station and broadcast it live on T.V. Just think, then, Bin Laden would see that gay anal sex w/ Al Franken is bigger than he is. It's in space! There is no Jihad in space yet. Jihad can't get to space. Then Bin Laden might wonder why god lets gay anal sex with Al Franken into space but not him? And he might give up... Just a thought...
SCO: 800-726-8649
Verisign: 800-361-8319, 888-642-9675
Diebold: 800-433-VOTE (8683)
Got to move to one of those poor African countries ... at least for a while!
... NOT diet]
[BTW: A recently published study has revealed lack of exercise is the main cause of obesity in children
But at least the attempt was made -- and it gave you something to whine or laugh about.
-a
I don't think that's a word. If it is, it's right up there with the non-word, company words, at my company...
i.e.
Re-Robsutification
Decisioned
"Weaseling out of things is what makes us different from animals...except the weasel."
Sig? What Sig?
I hate to say this, but you might have the highest "weasel" factor of any /. id. Sorry, but while your post make a lot of sense, your id reduces it down to -1 Posted by a Weasel.
Plus your user id number is too high.:-)
and who helped you out against England huh?
Hadn't even considered my nick here and the thread I was posting in! Thanks for the best laugh I've had in a while =)
Score -1, Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The ACLU has an agenda alright, just that it has nothing to do with the constitution. It has everything to do with what their political objectives are. And right now, they are everything anit-Bush administration.
Like I wrote, the ACLU protects American civil liberties. So what does your last point mean?
Damn, I was hoping that nobody would bring that up. First, the revolutionary war was in our beyond early days. We were only 13 colonies strong, and barely any form of military. Both, England and France, had centries head start over us. Second, WWII was only 2 centries later and France had already crumbled.
Are you telling me that you don't see the connection between government and laughing at people? - Interviewer
Amazing similarities:
- Rush bashes Clinton for weed in college while he himself taking an opiate for years.
- SCO bashes Linux for using it's code, while using Linux code illegally iteslf.
Is Rush working for SCO?
I guess what bothers me most about Rush (other than his racist, sexist, and untruthful banter) is that he bullied his maid into buying the drugs illegaly of the street for him. Yeah, there's a guy of moral standing you can put your trust into.
Guy, get real. Rush is a lying batard (French loaf of bread on the ground).
I have the same question....perhaps we should be saying "most weasly"? But I don't want to be pegged as a grammar weasle.
Nothing says "weasel" more than being AC. Unless your name is "Bob Smith" and your slashdot user id is "BobSmith", AC really has no benefit.
I especially love getting a passionate response on some topic from an AC. "I feel so strongly about this topic that I'm not even going to tell you my fake name I use on slashdot."
Yes, for true weaseliness you can't beat AC.
If the NRA didn't exist, I suppose they'd take it up. But since the NRA does exist and holds HUGE weight and power, what's the point?
John Foreyt applied the ol' seventh grade scientific skill of linear extrapolation. It's ironic how many people you can fool when you know how to draw a straight line, and call it science.
still, a friend is a friend is a friend?... or not?
Gutless Wonder. Has't got the guts to take responsibility for his own comment (by posting anonymously rather than using his login, that is if he ever took the time to create one.)
That's because the agenda of the Bush administration is anti-constitution.
BTW, while your hero Rush is in prison for doing drugs, I'll be available to explain what you see on Fox TV to you.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The ACLU position is that it protect individual rights not those of a well-regulated militia.
This can be debate ad nauseum, but as I wrote in my original post, individual rights.
You have the weasliest response to meaningless polls.
ANd then leave some Santorum behind?
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
And trying to derail the California recall that was prescribed by the state constitution. They are supposed to be non-partisan, but aren't.
ACLU has unfortunately become a whole den of weasels.
-- Len
A) Rush only said something because the Enquirer broke the story.
Is it because they didn't want to do war that they get such a bad opinion??? I simply don't get it. May I ask my Americans fellows to some explanation, It would be very appreciate.
Hint to the bigot. One violation does not make France worse than the US. The US has many many many more than one violation of UN treaties and sanctions. Add to that, it's the only country in the world that has been officially found guilty of international terrorism in the world court.
Of course, the US is so damn weasily that they don't even acknoledge the world court! Really, get away from your US propaganada and read the real news.
It makes me think that if "anonymous coward" was an actual user, not a special case: the user would have a huge negative karma and would never be able to post on slashdot again.
Well, in a closing remark, just to bring this post back on-topic so I don't get modded myself, I congratulate the makers of that pole for making such tremendous nominations. If I were asked to vote I would be overwhelmed like a child on a candy store by how many I wanted to vote for in the same list.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
> As for Bin Laden, I'm sure that with the billions of taxpayer dollars we give the Military Industrial Complex each year, we are only days from finding a man in a cave, and another one on the run in Iraq.
Pardon my cynicism, but I suspect he's not being caught so that the Bush Administration will have a boogeyman to scare domestic audiences with.
Saddam's probably vacationing in the Bahamas while the US military pretends to look for him.
(Sigh.... Before Bush got appointed I used to laugh at conspiracy theorists.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What? The US abide by the UN?
When was that?
(not that any where else does either....)
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
And now she want's more...with other men. It's part of the female role you see. They will fuck who ever they can to make themselves feel important. Seriously, chicks are just as bad as guys. Get over it. Sex is part of life. In fact...it IS life.
Life is not for the lazy.
You do realise that the purpose of an enforced 35-hour work week is to create more jobs? The concept is simple: share the same workload over more workers. For that purpose, it makes more sense than a bunch of tax cuts. Especially dividend tax cuts, which encourage shareholders to pull more profit out of their holdings (as opposed to taking it as capital growth). Such profit maximisation is usually done by *cutting* jobs.
Why can't people accept that Dubya *is* a weasel? It's pretty much fact, he can't even come up with a consistent lie and keeps changing his story on terrorism as it justifies some new goal.
I'm pro-invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. They're better off under military occupation than with the dictators they had. That doesn't mean I have to think Dubya did it for the right reasons. I think they should shoot Osama, but I think Ashcroft is a dangerous McCarthy wanna-be...
You don't have to claim either of them are upstanding people just because they're in the same political party.
Anyways, Jeffery Dahlmer could get 40% approval, regardless of party, because most of the US voters I know support their party's president blindly. It's also traditional for the US to "stand behind" a president in wartime.
While giving them a weasel award might be fitting, as they are weasels, it would also give them free publicity. Let's not do that.
How ya like dat?
There are other interesting differences too. Here are last year's results.
Except they don't complain, they just join the fun! :D
Where's the Cowboy Neal option you insensitive clods?!
some people are getting reaquanted with this as we speak
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Yes, because we all know how intellectually dishonest and misleading Al Franken is.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
So have we. We've often bucked UN Sanctions, treaties and other signs of good will for our own interests.
Anyone remember the ABM-ban we wiped our asses with?
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
So, assuming that "weasly" is a word, then "weasliest" is a perfectly acceptable superlative.
Since language is not static, and that we all understand what is meant when someone says "weasly", I think we can safely assume "weasly" to be a word of some sort, though maybe not officially. ;-)
Why yes. I do happen to be full of sh!t at times. Why do you ask? ;-)
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Add to that, it's the only country in the world that has been officially found guilty of international terrorism in the world court. ...
Of course, the US is so damn weasily that they don't even acknoledge the world court!
I know the US has done a lot of bad things. I've read Chomsky and Zinn and listened to communists speak.
But really, develop some perspective. The US the only country being found guilty! It smells of something other than innocent impartiality and pure want of justice. That's overlooking Hitler to get some low-grade mugger.
It doesn't speak well for the world court and gives the US very good reason to doubt it.
``Marge, don't discourage the boy. Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals!... except the weasel.''
---------
...just my 2 gil.
Comments like this always make me sigh to myself. You do realise that EVERY country that Germany attacked in WWII "crumbled almost immediately" as you so aptly put it.
Save England and Russia of course, who had the advantage of beneficial geography. Can't march an army across the channel too easily, and Russia was able to trade territory for time.
So get off your high horse and stick to arguing a subject you're informed about.
Unless your name is 'Call Me Black Cloud' and it says that on your ID, you're only one thin layer removed from 'Anonymous Coward.'
Or werent' you aware that you're operating under a psuedonym? Hell, you don't even have contact info displayed on your account.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Actualy I have looked at this in some detail, and as long as it is for academic purposes the code is mine to use. For some reason I tend to code out most of my assignments for my Astronomy class and I usualy put a GPL notice so the professor, and the University understand that I have asserted copyright on my homework. Besides it was suppose to be a joke Because I am so l337
Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? gb1990.com
I would argue that a group who's constituites actualy know how to use a voting ballot properly have a better chance of understnading a fair voting system.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
But doesn't it all balance out if you wash it down with diet coke? ;-)
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Thankfuly for us, the 2nd amendment is individual rights (as is the rest of the bill of rights). see here for more info
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
While Wal-Mart may have played a big role in the demise of mon-n-pop shops, it was the consumers thatthat destroyed the mom-n-pop shops.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
You're not suggesting that just because one organization takes up a cause that no other organization should take up that cause too? If that's the case, I guess I'll stop worrying about IP laws because the EFF has that covered.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
What struck me is how the options could help determine the winner. Take the top selections for weaseliest individual, for example. GW Bush won handily over Moore, Arafat, and Chirac.
One could make three separate comparisons. 55% of the people may find Bush more of a weasel than Moore. 47% may find Bush more of a weasel than Arafat. 50% may find Bush more of a weasel than Chirac. In general, it would be the same people calling President Bush the bigger weasel in each of those comparisons; to over generalize, we can call such people liberals. Similarly, people-we-could-overgeneralize-and-call-conservati ves would always tend to defend President Bush.
Because there is only one big name 'conservative' (Bush) drawing all the 'liberal' votes and three big name 'liberals' (Moore, Arafat, and Chirac) drawing the 'conservative' votes, the outcome is preordained: President Bush is called the biggest weasel. Or, the bigger lesson could be that 'liberals' are more focused in their accusations of weaselality.
Granted, I've made some generalizations here. And this is a fun poll, not a national election. But my point remains. I can't get the expression 'lies, damned lies, and statistics' out of my head.
Trolling for karma since 2003.
Yes, that's my point and why AC is the highest (lowest?) level of weaselihood. Unless you're using your real name here you're already anonymous. AC is just hiding a pseudonym.
Different spellings of 'weaseliest' have appeared in this thread. In future, if anyone mistypes or misspells words their posts will be redirected to the VeriSin Kashfinder Weaselservice. Thank you.
Likewise, other people are allowed to express their opinions of your opinions and their opinions of what should happen to you.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Weaseliest Behavior was 'Blaming fast food restaurants for making you fat.
/ transfats.html
What is far more disturbing than people getting fat on fast food is skinny people (who can otherwise handle the calories) getting clogged arteries because of it. And *this* is a preventable situation.
In brief: To make it last longer, the vegetable oil used for frying by all the major fast food joints (and unfortunately most other restaurants too) is hydrogenated. This is an inferior and outdated process that creates trans-fatty acids. Trans-fatty acids clog arteries like nothing else. It's significantly worse than eating animal lard.
Incidentally, this is not just a problem for restaurants. Any processed food that has "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" or "shortening" has at least some trans fats.
Since the early 80's, it has been known through research that trans-fats are really bad. In response, improved processes have been created to eliminate trans-fat production. However, after all this time, most restaurants and food processors have still not switched to the healthier oils because (3 guesses....) it would cut into their profit margins. The better oils are currently more expensive because they are in less supply (due to insufficient demand!)
So, while I have little sympathy for somebody getting fat from eating McD's every day, I do for the uninformed skinny person who thought they could get away with eating certain restaurant and processed foods. It is estimated that at least 30,000 premature deaths occur each year because of the prevalence of hydrogenated oils in the American diet. See the Harvard study below.
For more information:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/reviews
http://www.bantransfats.com/
Somebody mod this up.. This is something that all geeks need to read if they haven't already. I personally have changed my diet significantly, being one of those skinny folk who previously thought they were safe.
An anonymous respose to my post pointed one good example of the ACLU defending the 2nd amendment. I'm sure there are more.
And it's my perception (totally unverified) that the NRA, defending one amendment, is just as big or bigger than the ACLU, defending the rest.
I'd guess (I'm guessing about everything here) that it's just the best use of resources to do so.
Timothy, no doubt about it.
Watch him use his secret mod points to make this -1.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Everybody's heard of Microsoft, Dubya, France, and politicians. The tactics of the RIAA have been making mainstream press.
SCO and Darl McBride are hardly household words in any country, and certainly not in America.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If all you can do is regurgitate what the administration says on FOX news, then you're a tool.
Don't be a tool.
Personally, I've seen more of my freedoms sacrificed by Bush then taken by Saddam or Osama. As Benjamin Franklain said, "He who would sacrifice essential liberty for temporary security deserves neither security nor liberty".
The poll is for weasley people, not murders. For what it's worth, Baddam would beat Bush hands down in a Murderous poll.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
agreed. Probably the most controversial (controversial insofar as it perpetrates the myth that the ACLU is 'Weasly') point brought up is that the ACLU doesn't protect the free exercise of religion. Luckily, it is also the easiest to disspell.
1) Freedom of Religion Bill supported by the ACLU to protect the exercise of religion by individuals.
2) ACLU helps Falwell in VA I'm sure you'll never hear about that on FOX news or Christian press. The ACLU helped the Rev. establish a church with all the rights of normal corporations, ending that form or religious discrimination.
3) The infamous veiled photo for driver's license case The most pressed argument is of course national security. But as is easily seen if anyone bothers to RTFA, 800,000 ID's have been given without a photo, so why worry about this one with an 'incomplete' photo.
4) The ACLU's efforts to keep government influence out of churches and in the hands of the peoples of the respective faiths
5) Keeping religious discrimination out of Head start
I found this in 30 seconds of searching. This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of cases where individual's religious preferences have been protected by the ACLU. If you were to go to each state's press archives, you'd find dozens of cases where the ACLU has helped to force schools to allow students to pray. The confusion comes in because most people (and apparently alot of people on Slashdot and school administrators) are entirely incapable of distinguishing between a state actor and an individual actor. When you've learned 4th grade civics, maybe you can speech more intelligibly about civic issues.
I have to say (Well, okay, I don't have to, but I will.), I am a little surprised Microsoft beat out SCO.
That's the first poll Dubya's ever won.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
Without thoroughly reading comments, I tend to believe the non AC posts.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I agree. Bush should've had many more votes. I suspect foul play.
If you think
Oh, wait, nevermind.
Little Brother, watching the watchers
Good point, but...
once you register you get a link to automatically log you in here. The only time I've had to remember my slashdot password is when I move to a new computer. Also, I've never received any e-mail as a result of posting here. I just don't display my e-mail address...
To keep track of all the (important) logins I use Password Safe, free from here. That's the older version, sourceforge has a later version.
Praising one and damning another is just putting on blinders.
Anyone that can say with a straight face that France defended Iraq for commercial reasons is a tragic illustration of the power of propaganda.
(Hint to the deluded: Iraq at its best was about 0.3% of the commercial exchanges with France. So we'd piss off one of our largest commercial partners for this fraction of a percent? Get real, lamer.)
See Damn french for more info.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
> I have the same question....perhaps we should be saying "most weasly"? But I don't want to be pegged as a grammar weasle.
I was going to suggest the same thing, but I didn't want people to think I was being anal-retentive.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just so you know, Afghanistan is still under the same dictators. The Taliban kept the warlords in line. A bunch of warlords, called the Northern Alliance, didn't like them, and never did. The US backed them up and toppled the Taliban. The warlords got what they wanted: absolute rule back again, like they had before the Taliban. Before, a woman couldn't go to school, and couldn't go out in public without a burka or she would be arrested. The stories told pre-war about being killed were true...but for Northern Alliance territories, not Taliban. The Taliban were very harsh to rapists and woman beaters (Unless he was her husband). Now, she is legally allowed to go to school. and work...but she will be beaten to death. And if she doesn't wear a burka...she will be beaten to death and/or raped. The Taliban may have repressed women, but they protected them, and killed rapists. Things are worse for everybody in Afghanistan. Not that they were very good under the Taliban, but they were STILL better off. The Coalition keeps things in order...but they can barely even control Kabul; the rest of the country is left entierly at the mercy of the same warlords who have always ruled. And the Coalition is hiring most of the Taliban back to work the "new" government anyways. The opium trade, which the religious Taliban condemned, is back in full tilt, flooding the streets of Britain with Afghani heroin again, and the CIA coffers with drug money. Food is a problem, because farmers fields are full of American mines.
Were things bad for Afghanis, especially women? Yes, most definatly. But they are worse now than they once were.
Now, Iraq: Americans have killed more innocents than Hussein is said to have. Also, the "rape rooms?" Bush made them up on the spot. The story about gassing the Kurds? Untrue, at least as far as the CIA is concerned. In the Iraq-Iran war, the two sides were fighting for control of a city, for its hydro-electric dam and water resevoir. Both sides used chemical weapons on each other (Both kindly provided by the CIA for just such a purpose, by the way) and the Kurdish civilians were killed in the crossfire. However, they were killed by some sort of blood-agent. The Iraqis used mustard gas, which is not a blood-agent. The Iranians used some form of cyanide, which IS a blood-agent. The CIA report on this event concluded that the Kurds were killed accidentally, and were not the intended targed (But, of course, what do you expect using toxic gas weapons in a city?) and also, that it was highly likely that they were killed by Iranian chemical weapons.
Gas was cheap (a few cents US per gallon), health care was free, there was food and water (Most of the water and sewage infrastructure had FINALLY been rebuilt after Gulf War I) Political disenters were thrown in jail, or possibly killed. Just like in Saudi Arabia and Kuait, two "good guys". Saddam didn't like the Shi'ites, but he didn't persecute them. Iraq was the only non-secular government in the middle east.
Now, gas costs as much as it does in the US (Since most of the oil is now being shipped to the US and Israel), health care is in shambles (Even wounded US soldiers have to wait in squalid conditions) power, water, and sanitation is out everywhere. The streets are radioactive, measuring 1700x normal background radiation at some parts. The US says it will learn from Israel how to repress a conqured people, and it does: US soldiers beat farmers and buldoze their crops. Collective punishment for the attacks on US soldiers. Collective punishment is a war crime...not that the US cares, they have not signed any treaties, and Bush said he will attack any country that charges a US soldier with war crimes. Women now live in fear, more than they ever have. The Shi'ites are outraged by the murder of a leader. Were they actually allowed to vote for who they want, the next government would by just like Iran's. But it won't, since the US choses who can run.
Ask a random Iraqi, or a random Afgh
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
I suppose you could interpret the comment as "congratulations to those winners which were deserving" (and not to the ones who got it by chance or unfairly).
I guess most Americans only ever saw the video of Jacques Chirac shaking hands with Saddam Hussein and never the one of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with the Iraqi leader.
The French like the Americans have been in bed with Saddam Hussein at some point in time. If the French are weasels because of that, what does that make Americans? Iraq is an important country geopolitically and if any country didn't at one point have ties with it they'd be stupid not to!
The French don't owe the US for freeing them from Nazis just like the US doesn't owe the French for their helping hand during the civil war.
I don't understand why Americans enjoy bashing the French so much! Do you feel threathened by something they have and you don't? 5 weeks of paid vacation perhaps?
> George W Bush has done more good for this country than any president has in the past 225 years. It's time for you shit heads to learn this.
> Next time you un-patriotic motherfuckers get out there are start protesting Iraq or the PATRIOT act or whatever, I hope the cops bash your skulls in!
OK Ashcroft, when you gonna create an account so you can stop posting as an AC?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> It's really amazing how many people forget that there's such a thing as freedom of speech in this country. I'm allowed to dislike GWB's policies and bash him all I please.
So long as you do it in a "designated free speech zone"...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Guess which company secretly did major business with Saddam during the same UN sanctions? That's right -- Halliburton, whose CEO at the time was none other than Dick Cheney, who is now the Vice President of the United States. What's worse is that Cheney proceeded to lie about his company's participation.
Let's face it, the sanctions were leaking all over, not least because U.S. corporations were violating them with impunity.
> If I get a Bacon Double Whopper with king-sized fries for lunch every day, I KNOW I'm going to get fat. It's not Burger King's fault, for god's sake.
I agree with you that some people seem to shirk their personal responsibilities and require a LART.
However if you go into McDonald's, you'll find that their food is advertised as healthy: with photographs of fresh tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese, etc. If you walked into McDonald's for the first time in your life you may not realise that it is so unhealthy (>30g fat/burger usually, enough fat for the entire day). I personally think that this is deceptive behaviour. That it doesn't deceive you or me or millions of others is irrelevant.
It's like someone selling "Health Cigarettes": most of us would know that these things could not possibly be good for you but the _attempt_ to deceive the public is a wrongful act.
Do you believe that companies should not be accountable for false representation such as this?
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
is no less healthy than making a sandwich at home. Although the other thing that Subway mentions is the fact that Jared *walked* quite a ways to get to Subway. Exercise plus eating healthy (which sandwiches like Subway serve are) equals weight loss.
Yes, the exercise is mentioned in the ads. Maybe not as much now but that was huge at the beginning with Jared leading a group of power walking dieters to Subway.
It's not borderline. It's common sense. They also make sure to point out which sandwiches have the least fat. It's not a blanket campaign pretending everything they serve is equally healthy.
It's not like other fast food chains that make money by selling you grease.
It's pretty sad how determined people are to blame other people for their problems and if they can get money out of it, all the better.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Didnt you know its unpatriotic to use AC when posting to /. ? :-)
I am Monkey, the Great Sage, equal of heaven!
Which is why I look up donors before I vote for anyone. Experience tells me that the actual performance of a polititian is much more closely in line with that than thier official stance.
It helps.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
NO TEXT
If you walked into McDonald's for the first time in your life
...Then you've apparently lived off-planet
for the entirety of that life thus far.
...Though you sure as hell will when you take
that first bite dripping with fat.
you may not realise that it is so unhealthy (>30g fat/burger usually, enough fat for the entire day)
Do you believe that companies should not be accountable for false representation such as this?
If they outright lied, as in the WhiteCastle commercial someone mentioned, then sure, put 'em up against the wall. With something like McD's showing pictures of fresh veggies, that gets a little more tricky - Would you also say Birdseye has falsely represented their chopped and frozen broccoli by showing pictures of fresh healthy-looking broccoli on the box? With a fast-food restaurant (as with the broccoli), I think we all understand that the pictures reflect an ideal, but not quite reality.
(Incidentally, I notice this reads somewhat more caustic than I intend - I mean this as wryly tongue-in-cheek, not deliberately insulting).
My girlfriend signed up for something with the ACLU. Before then, very little mail. Now she is DELUGED by stuff. The ACLU sold her info to all kinds of marketers, special interest groups, etc. That's a very annoying brand of weasley.
I am not Herbert.
No point in commenting after > 550 replies, but I'll have to try this one.
I think there's some mighty fine American behaviour at work, voting for Bush as the weasliest person (when do you guys ever stop voting for weasels and start voting for presidents?), meanwhile voting for France as the weasliest country -- being the only reasonably large country daring to voice its opinion against the godforsaken United States Under Bush.
I smell hipocrisy, and nominate the voters for the Weasliest Mass.
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
So Bush is the biggest individual weasel, and the country who was most vocal in disagreeing with him in going into Iraq (France) is the biggest weasel country?
Moo
My dear fellow Americans, take a deep breath, look at yourself in the mirror, and say it out loud: "The government of France was right about Iraq, and the government of the United States was wrong."
That's the truth, and if you can't admit it, then you are a weasel!
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
quote from mookie-blaylock: My girlfriend signed up for something with the ACLU. Before then, very little mail. Now she is DELUGED by stuff. The ACLU sold her info to all kinds of marketers, special interest groups, etc. That's a very annoying brand of weasley. I can assure you this is not true. The national office of the ACLU will not even give their state offices access to membership information for fear of violations of privacy, you must explicity submit that info to your state office for it to be obtained. correlation does not equal causation.
slut: a girl who will fuck anyone.
bitch: a girl who will fuck anyone but me.
Rather than "Insightful", this is sheer nonsense, and it is very ironic coming from someone who calls himself "Call Me Black Cloud".
I don't why this fallacy about anonymity has so much currency on Slashdot, but it is manifestly illogical. A Slashdot post consists solely of words, and its value lies solely in the quality of arguments, evidence and wit that those words contain. The identity of the poster is almost never relevant.
The only situation in which the identity of the poster matters is when the content really has something to do with the poster. For example, if some poster asserts that Bill Gates sleeps in a wedding dress, and the poster says she knows this because she is Melinda Gates, well then it does matter who the poster is. But posts in which the identity of the poster is a relevant fact are rather common on Slashdot and most other discussion groups.
You can understand this best when you realize that everyone who posts on Slashdot is exactly as anonymous as the Anonymous Coward. This is obvious for people who use pseudonyms like me or "Call Me Black Cloud". But even if someone posts as "Bob Smith", most of us will never know, or care, whether the poster really is a person named Bob Smith. For all we know, it could be Hortense Magillacuddy from Peoria, but that doesn't matter, because all we care about is what the posters say, and not who's saying it.
Always keep a sapphire in your mind
As for Chirac, I can only offer the explanation of a French taxi driver: "c'est un vieil escroc, mais c'est notre vieil escroc a nous" - he's an old crook, but he's our old crook. Jospin suffered from being seen as too distant, and because the Left either couldn't be bothered to come out to vote or were trying to teach him a lesson by not voting for him in the first round. Which is more or less how Dubya got in, too.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
1) they don't gice a Sh*t about world (I.E. US ) opinion
2) They support their own countries interest above all, WITHOUT hypocracy and pretending is for the good of the world
3)If their population decides they don't like a political decision they riot, and the Politicians actually LISTEN and change policy
Maybe TPTB (The Powers That Be) would rather everyone where just obedient serfs and would rather people did not emulate them
I'm English so I'll be called a traitor :)!
Did you know that the V sign made with the first 2 fingers actually comes from the habit of the English Longbow men holding up their bow fingers to the French after Agincourt to show they had won , the French used to cut off captured archers fingers, it was considered unsporting of the English for their common born bowmen to massacre French aristocratic Knights
France has been traditionally friendly to the Arab states and it has had a long history of doing so. Yes, it sells arms there probably when it shouldn't, but then so do the US (and their arms exports dwarf France's). Their arguments in favour of granting more time to the weapons inspectors seem to have proved correct after all.
I agree that France argued cogently in the UN, but so did others for the war (except GWB, the term cogent can not apply). It just seems the latter were relying too much on spin.
See my journal, I write things there
I hear most Americans would say yes!
So why is McDonalds any less resposnsible, when they sell a product which is just as addictive?
Hmmm, so a "leech" == someone who doesn't like the current US regime and overall conservative political climate.
I don't think that means what you think it does.
Who says he doesn't pay taxes? Who says he's taking handouts from the government? I can say proudly that I wish this nation would collapse tomorrow, but that does not make me a "leech." I pay my taxes, every April and at the point of sale every time I buy a shirt or a techie gadget. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make him a "leech."
Maybe they're planning to campaign for the freedom of speech of telemarketers next?
What disturbs me however is that they are allowed to market to children, who cannot make good decisions about what to eat. Now, of course thier parents have to buy it for them you say. To that I add - or grandparents, aunts, uncles, friend's parents, coaches, etc, etc. Tobacco got rid of the Camel, alcohol was never allowed to be marketed to children, so why should something that is just as dangerous (heart disease, cancer, diabetes) be able to be marketed to children?
Sera
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Er, France has a Moslem population of somewhere between 5% and 10%. That's hardly "vast", when its Catholic population is over 80%.
CIA Factbook entry for France
Let's see... Weasliest Organisation? American. Weasliest Company? American. Weasliest Individual? American. Weasliest Country? ....France.
Huh? What did France do, except try and prevent America from making a colossal blunder?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/812805.asp?cp1=1
So why is McDonalds any less resposnsible, when they sell a product which is just as addictive?
Yeah, uhh...last time I checked, McDonald's wasn't physically addictive. I can't recall the last time I've seen someone shaking and puking their guts out from McNugget withdrawal. From eating them yes, from withdrawal, no.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
So, in other words, it is in their best interests to get you to eat more.
For example, the companies did some research and discovered that people wouldn't, say, buy two packets of fries, because it makes them look like a glutton. So they make larger packets that cost more and then encourage people to go for them instead.
They also discover that parents would often buy a single meal and share the food with their kids. So they introduce things like the Happy Meal, to get parents to buy their kids a separate meal, thus increasing the ammount of food they buy.
I agree with you that people need to take responsibility for what they eat ... But the fast food companies aren't exactly blameless saints here. They are in the business of selling food, and the more food they sell, the more money they make. So they will use all the advertising tricks in the book to encourage people to buy more...
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
> I especially love getting a passionate response on some topic from an AC. "I feel so strongly about this topic that I'm not even going to tell you my fake name I use on slashdot."
You forgot to click "Post Anonymously".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I don't have any opinion or evidence as to whether the french president was defending an oil deal.
But I'll tell you that the french people definitely didn't.
The french people, as well as the italian, the british (yup) and others were walking in the capital cities of the EU demonstrating against war to Iraq. Polls actually showed majorities of the people of these countries being opposed to that war.
The EU council (it's majority) rejected that war too, are you gonna argue they were bought by oil deals?
It is evident that France stood on principle. The majority of French people were/are opposed to the war and the government stood by what the people that elected them wanted. The british people were/are opposed to the war and the British government supported the war against the wishes of the people they were supposed to represent. I think that the French government has, therefore, a much higher moral standing.
:)
The US government, a 'superpower' (whatever that is supposed to mean) drove us to war against a country that had already been disarmed and acts like a hero??? that is weasly !!! to beat up someone that has had there arms tied behind their back is not heroic. All the lies that were told to justify were just that, lies and the French have been proved right.
As for all the crap about sanction busting, I wish it were true as someone should start to support the Iraqis. They have been oppressed for decades and now they are being occupied by the US and still oppresed.
France said that all this war would do is create terrorism and now we are starting to realise that they were right. The whole world has to suffer the terrorism that the US is creating and the US government gets upset when France will not help create the suffering that ferments the social unrest that breeds terrorists.
I would rant some patriotic French chant here but I cannot speak French
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
>and who helped you out against England huh?
If it were not for the French, we'd still be speaking English!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Hell, the drug (ab)users have to take responsibility for their own lives, not shift the blame to innocent dealers who just try to make a living. After all, everyone knows drugs aren't healthy, it's not the dealers' responsibility to safeguard your health.
So where does this mindset leave you? People get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs. Once you're an addict, it's very hard to get clean all by yourself; the addiction rules you and your feeling of control and responsibility are illusions.
Chirac is a LIBERAL... bloody hell this is going to come as ONE hell of a shock to the French who thought he was the right wing leader. Arafat is a liberal ? Again lets see...
Thinks Killing people is a "Good Idea"(tm)
Believes in using retoric and emotive language
Hardly sounds liberal to me. Yes these organisations also dish out food aid etc but lets not pretend that isn't for their own ends.
Oh hang on I've just understood...
You have no idea what you are talking about, you know nothing of French politics, very little about politics in the middle east.
Chirac is a conservative, Arnie is a "big name" conservative.
Maybe just maybe Bush is the biggest weasel because he has a history of failed businesses, bending the truth, objecting to fair and just process and while talking about a morale crusade is dishing out cash to his friends.
Bush is the low point of the American presidency.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'm waiting for the part where you actually cite any evidence, any reports, anything that substantiates your wild claims. Keep modding this down please, mods.
Why is anything anything?
Do I think that invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein was the Right Thing To Do (TM)? Probably.
Do I think that it was right because there are/were/woulda been WMD's there that could threaten the US? Nope. Maybe Saddam had/has/was trying to get WMD's, maybe not - but no proof of that has been forthcoming, despite hundreds of thousands of US troops scouring the countryside in between dodging those pesky ambushes. Lack of proof isn't proof of innocence, but then again we're Americans, so the burden of proof should be on the accuser. Right?
Why do I think it was right for the US to invade? Because Saddam Hussein is/was one hyper-evil son of a bitch, that's why. His human-rights abuses made Ashcroft's wet dreams look like the work of Mahatma Ghandi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.*
Is G.W. handling the military action properly? Absolutely not. His "hands-off" approach merely gives the military leadership free rein to do what they want. They don't want to take the precautions necessary to provide security for the Iraqi people. They don't want to set aside enough manpower to fix the electrical grid or the water supply system or the telephone network. They're generals - they want to blow shit up with their shiny new toys, and dead civilians are just numbers on paper to them.
Do I think we'll come out ahead in this mess? Nope. Here's why:
In the past, when the US has engaged in a successful large-scale military deployment, said success has been mostly due to three things - all three of which are missing in this war:
We lack all of these, and as a result I believe this military venture will fail.
Do I think Al Gore would be better? I seriously doubt it. Of course, IMHO, the Year 2000 election was a contest between two pretty evenly-matched levels of incompetence, corruption, and disregard for the "regular Joe". The way I perceived the 2 candidates, they were merely out to figuratively assrape different subsets of the public for the benefit of themselves and their cronies. They also had differences regarding the way each would demonstrate his incompetence as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. One wanted to tax me to death and buy electric cars for the street criminals, the other wanted to give the boardroom criminals a license to raid my retirement fund. Might as well ask us to vote on "Do you want your right eye removed, or your left eye?"
So here's how I handle all that on election day: I go and do what most people would call "throwing my vote away" - I vote Libertarian. Sure, they're not any
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
This implies that it is OK for the US to do a lot of bad things, as long as it for the (so called) greater good.
No. How did you read it that way?
The US commits some crimes, but they aren't that bad. Other countries commit much worse crimes, often as policy instead of exception, and no one cares. That's hypocrisy.
But if France tries to oppose these bad things they turn in to a even bigger evil.
What bad things has America done that France has opposed? The war? That's not a bad thing. And France is just looking out for it's own oil contracts. They have serious financial ties to old Iraq that they'd lose in a new Iraq.
> Now, Iraq: Americans have killed more innocents than Hussein is said to have.
That's almost certainly not true. I haven't heard what you're saying about the Kurds, but even if you are correct I still understand that something over 300,000 thousand Shiites were killed after the Gulf War (though that's hardly the kind of thing the USA should be eager to call attention to, seeing as it was us who stirred them up to rebellion and then sat back to watch them get slaughtered). Also, though people don't usually think of soldiers as 'innocents', I would have to say that about a million 'innocent' soldiers died as a result of Saddam's unprovoked war with Iraq. So it looks like he has at least 1.3 million inexcusable deaths on his hands, and as much misery as we've caused with our invasion, I don't think it's even within an order of magnitude of that yet. Likely not even within two orders of magnitude. (Though we should count again after the US pulls out and they're plunged into civil war.)
OTOH, his hands have been fairly tied since the Shiite affair, and though his prison guards were surely kept busy with ill deeds, it would be interesting to know the average montly rate of death and misery he caused over the past ~10 years vs. the average montly rate since the 'end' of the US invasion.
> Now, gas costs as much as it does in the US...
I read somewhere a week or so ago that US taxpayers are subsidizing the sale of gasoline in Iraq to the tune of $1.75 in addition to what the Iraqis themselves are paying. (Chew on that next time you're filling up your tank or looking at how much tax was taken out of your paycheck.)
> Kuait should be next...
Yeah, part of the pathetic humor of the Bush claim that we were going to invade Iraq to establish democracy was that we already had Kuwait packed full of US troops, and didn't have the least inclination to bring those people the blessings of liberty.
> I would accept that Iraq posed a danger due to powerful WMD, only they had none. They also did not have the means to deploy them if they DID have any, and they had no DESIRE to do so.
I suspect that there was a genuine concern that Saddam would eventually obtain WMD that he could deploy against Israel, though of course the Administration could hardly come out and say they were sending US troops to die in order to make the world safe for Israel. But see the rather strange 'logic' in this interview with John McCain, where the interviewer didn't stick to the "right" questions and McCain was left groping for an explanation that justified his position without saying that. (He failed.) [Notice also the prophetic content of the first few paragraphs of that page, before it gets to the interview.]
BTW, I suspect your post has some other substantial factual errors mixed in with the good stuff. No need to overplay the case; to those not blinded by ideology or hypnotized by FAUX News, the whole thing stinks plainly enough on the simple facts.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
.. they were also speaking for the majority of the world. If the French should be named as weasels for the way they handled the iraqi war, then so should almost all of Europe. Even the majority population of most of the countries that did actually enter the war were against it.
Make no mistake about it, the US and Tony Blair were pretty much alone on this one. If Bush tells people that he had wide world support for the war, he is either lying or greasing the conditions a bit.
What is interesting is that France got the top spot and Germany the bottom spot.
Maybe this reflect that Germany was against the war from start to end, while France only decided in the last possible minutte, and the German position thus seem more consistsnt and less weasely.
More likely, this reflect the general US tactics towards Europe: Bribe the Russians, Fight the French and ignore the Germans.
Anyway, I agree with the general sentiment. France more or less sabotaged the possibility of a UN solution. I disagree with US starting a war without UN, but while US took the role of the bully, the Frenmch role was probably more that of a weasel.
Come on.. Sadam was not a weasel, he did everything in your face, there was no back handing sneaky shit on his part, he was an evil son of a gun and a truely heartless bast@rd but not a weasel..
now GWB is another matter all together..
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
well most of the time the arguments can be pulled straight out of your or anybody elses hat.
personally what i feel AC to show is that the person replying doesn't care enough to use his slashdot id and so is very unlikely to care enough to check the counter arguments.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The top 3:
/. temptation never to RTFA but I think that anyone who even looked at that poll might have to think again about who really is being bashed there.
Weaseliest Country
France 12739
*USA* 10761
Saudi Arabia 5845
I know it's hard to avoid the
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The weasels made me do it!
While your post is quite interesting, and very much inline with my views - you need to post a source on all of this. I can't take it seriously until you give me something other than your own ranting.
.
You caught that one perfectly, I tip my hat to you. I do find it interesting that when Anti-Bush statements are made the hardliners want the statement perpetrators killed, not once but three or four times also most of if not all of them are ac,s. I am not going to defend president Carter too much (I do not need the crap replys but I do like him) but it is interesting to know that the eight marines killed in the aborted rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages were the only goverment employees to lose their lives in his four years.
I eat my grapes at room temperature, cuz the cold ones hurt my teeth
Darl McBride
A lot of these polls, just like movie Oscars etc inevitably show how people simply vote like the media advertising tells them to - a few pop stars and influential news anchors propagate their opinions and it quickly becomes common sense opinion amongst the populist crowd seeking to be with the 'in' group. While I'm often ashamed of my fellow human's lack of critical thinking, I have to remember that the average IQ is by definition 100 and most are intellectual followers of leaders.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
What actually happened is that some guy woke up one day and said, "look at all the other people exploiting the law for profit... maybe I can make a quick buck by suing McDonalds for providing me with unhealthy food".
People need to take some fucking responsibility for their own actions and their own meals.
I strongly agree. And, the first step in making people take responsibility for their own actions is to impose strict limits on the size and scope of government. People only exploit government for profit because it's exploitable -- and that's a direct result of an overly complex, ambiguous, bloated system of law. Reduce the size and scope of government, and the ability to exploit it will be reduced proportionately.
If we want to get rid of the cockroaches, we need to put away the food.
You have two right wing politicians. One is pro-life. The other is pro-choice. Now go vote.
So far, there has not been any single demonstration that France sold weapons to Iraq when it was prohibited.
Poland has retracted their claim of having found Roland missiles manufactured in 2003 (probably after being told that the manufacturing of the latest generation of these missiles stopped in the early 1990's, and thus it was materially impossible that France could have sold 2003-manufactured Roland missiles to Iraq).
"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line." President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998
... Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies." Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, Dec, 5, 2001
... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10,
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program." President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face." Madeline Albright, Secretary of State, Feb 18, 1998
"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983." Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998
"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs." Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998
"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998
"Hussein has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies." Madeline Albright, Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999
"There is no doubt that
"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandated of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them." Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002
"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country." Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002
"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002
"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..." Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002
"I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force -- if necessary -- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security." Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002
"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years
Indeed, how can they label Bush as a known weasel, thus indicating his "war on terrorism" is at least in great part a sham, and still bash the french?
That was a poll, not a single person opinion. Out of 35874 votes, 12739 picked France, 13959 picked Bush. As long as the sum for France plus Bush is below the total vote count, there is no contradiction.
From the story:
This happened in a *very* brutal war, where both sides commited atrocities. We certaily know that sometimes civilians get caught in the crossfire. That's bad, and ther is no excuse for that, but using this episode as of of the arguments* to justify the attack is stupid IMO.*The Bush administration have repeatedly before, under and after the war been saying that Hussein's attacks on his own people where a part of the reason behind the war.
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
These numbers themselves are probably inaccurate. According to a 2003 poll, the proportion of Catholics is around 62%, 6% of Muslims, and 26% without religion.
>>If you walked into McDonald's for the first time in your life
;) and have moved to a place where there is one.
>...Then you've apparently lived off-planet for the entirety of that life thus far.
Or in an area where there is no McDonald's (there's still a few thousand miles of this planet that are McDonald's-free i'm sure
>>you may not realise that it is so unhealthy (>30g fat/burger usually, enough fat for the entire day)
>...Though you sure as hell will when you take that first bite dripping with fat.
The McDonald's burgers that I've had (they're all the same across the planet, right?) haven't "dripped" with fat: the sugar-filled brown-painted white sponge around the meat takes care of that. 8)
>With something like McD's showing pictures of fresh veggies, that gets a little more tricky - Would you also say Birdseye has falsely represented their chopped and frozen broccoli by showing pictures of fresh healthy-looking broccoli on the box? With a fast-food restaurant (as with the broccoli), I think we all understand that the pictures reflect an ideal, but not quite reality.
Yes indeed I agree with that but where do you draw the line?
I just find it cynical when such positively bad food in a pervasive "restaurant" is misrepresented so blatantly. It just leads to people getting fat. All "junk food" suffers from this problem though I agree: there are countless examples.
> (Incidentally, I notice this reads somewhat more caustic than I intend - I mean this as wryly tongue-in-cheek, not deliberately insulting).
Heh np.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
The whole thing about Jared losing all that weight eating Subway is true. I subscribe to Men's Health magazine and every month they have a feature where people write in and tell how they lost weight. Then the editors analyze the program, what's good and bad about it, and tell you how it can work for you.
Anyway, a few years ago, Jared wrote something in a college newspaper and it got sent in to MH to tell his story. He said he liked the low fat sandwiches and so he ate them for lunch and dinner every day for a year. He didn't exercise much except for walking regularly.
Long story short, he lost a bunch of weight, someone at Subway read the article and their PR department picked up on it and now he's famous. There's a history thingy here
Find me in ~/.sig
The US was far down the list on takers of oil from the "food for oil" program. France, OTOH, was doing "normal" business with Iraq, against the UN sanctions, as was Russia. In fact, Chirac would greet Saddam as, "Saddam my friend."
Ya see, that's why everyone needs to pull their fucking heads out of their asses and realize that none of our western governments are really all that great. Our governments are a bit nicer than those "terrorist" middle-eastern states, mostly because we have some amount of freedom in our own countries.
Sheesh, smell the damn coffee folks...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Because they sit back and let others do "the right thing".
For France, Culture > *
For the US, Human Rights > *
When the French see Muslim women walking around hiding their face, they just accept that as part of their culture.
When the US sees Muslim women walking around hiding their face, we see a basic human rights violation.
Have you got any proof of what you say? Or are the alleged illegal French weapons in the same location as the never-to-be-found weapons of mass destruction?
To agree with France as the #1, when you have countries with human rights violations such as China hanging out there. Note to moderators. This is not a troll, nor flamebait. Timothy posted his opinion as a front-page /. story. I'm calling him out on it. As others have pointed out, the only "evil" of France these days is not supporting an illegal war that was started on a bunch of lies.
"Population 1,656"
I don't know what the US's motivations truly were, but we're dumping a lot of money, I doubt it was really in our economic interests. That's not to say that it might not be in the interests of some companies, though, companies which may have been able to exert some political influence.
Also, a lot of people died in Iraq every year since Saddam has been in power. Saddam's regime has murdered tens of thousands of his own people, and after Saddam one of his (possibly even more brutal) sons was set to take power. That doesn't make the US right, like I said, I don't know what the real motivation was, but it sure is a damn good thing that Saddam is gone.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I guess the most important part of Jared's diet usually doesn't come to light, but you're right...he did do a lot of exercise. when he went to subway, he walked, and when he left subway, he walked. now take those trips for 3 meals (6 trips) and it's a decent day's exercise...but i'm sure having a "healthy" sandwich (low fat meat, no mayo) also had a lot to do with it....i don't see a problem with the ads.
Hi. Do a search for my nickname. Chances are you can associate it with my real name within the first ten hits on Google.
Some of us have an online identity that is not entirely separate from reality.
(Im not the AC)
.
Stop reading dilbert, he is a spokesperson for the B.S.A. bsa another site
All these people that say that Iraq should pay back the money spent in the reconstruction forget one thing: there' no Iraqi government right now that can accept the debt responsibility. As many posters here point out with regard to EULAs, without a "meeting of the minds" there can't be a contract; right now Iraq has no "mind" with which to meet.
Where do you think the United States would be if it had been required to repay the help that France provided during the Revolutionary War, before the Articles of Confederation were ratified and the first government of the United States came into being?
Making the Iraqi reconstruction monies a loan equals Iraq becoming a United States colony; isn't colonialization one thing we're against?
As the saying goes, war is the health of the state. We'll probably never know whether Bin Laden and Saddam were deliberately "not caught", but nobody can deny the incentive.
According to the medical profession, the sine qua non of addiction is that there is an immediate physical reaction when the addictive substance is withheld. No one has ever had an immediate physical reaction from changing their diet from fatty fast food to, say, a healthy, low-fat diet. At least, no so far as I know.
With respect, saying that "people get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs" is really quite incorrect. Drugs - the ones people get addicted to - change the way the body acts. Food is only fuel. If you eat too much, you may get fat, but nothing has changed in the way the brain works.
Are the thousands of dead innocent civilians better off now? Seriously, I want you to try to answer that question. Put yourself in their shoes, and try to answer that question.
People use fake names on
Is that info from "Fast Food Nation" or somewhere else?
At some point, I think public relations companies and the companies that purchase their services have to hold at least some small part of the repsonsibility for their behaviors and the negative things the promote in the name of profits. I don't think it makes sense for individuals to sue individual companies for "making them fat", but there is a larger issue here that begs to be dealt with, a la the states battling the tobacco companies and their dacades of anti-science P.R.
I saw the lawyer that was suing them on a morning talk show, and after every sentence he said he then tried to compare them to tobaco companies.
I don't feel that's the answer. In fact, if push were to come to shove, I would strongly favor a new amendment GIVING congress the powers it currently takes for granted. You can dream all you want about a world where states interact flawlessly with each other and work together to promote national growth and standards, but in the real world, these things don't happen without something to tie everything together. That something is our federal government. The Constitution is a great document that does exceedling well at scaling and surving - both massive population increase, culture change AND time. But it is still not perfect.
Then again, I'm just an uneducated mass.
Those results are all so fashionable, it leads me to wonder why they had a poll at all.
--
Apparently I didn't clearly make my point. Yes, we're all anonymous, so to me going one step further and being AC is weasely.
However, even though I am using a pseudonym I do conduct myself as I would if my comments were attributable to me. In other words I don't behave differently behind my slashdot id.
Let me clarify my original statement further. I think it's weasel-like to offer valid points, express a point of view, or otherwise participate in a rational discussion under AC. That was the point of the example I gave in my original post. Trolls I understand need to be AC.
I should have explicitly excluded trolls from my comments. By example I meant to narrow my definition but obviously I should have taken the time to write more. Troll on!
This is /., remember.
I'd say it's jealousy of a culture where:
- chicks are hot
- food is great
- body odor is not considered simply a disgusting lack of personal hygiene.
-Styopa
Yes, this I understand. I should have explicitly excluded trolling from my posting. As far as other remarks, well, I wouldn't make a comment under my slashdot id that I wouldn't make using my real name or in person. My original comment was really directed at people who seem to be sincerely passionate about a point of view. Since people can create identities here that are separate from reality (and so be essentially anonymous) why not stand up and say, "I, l33tCoderD00d45, really and truly believe x, y, and z"?
I don't have a slashdot account and don't care to take the time out of my day to create one just to be able to post anonymous messages, AC works fine for me.
This makes no sense. If you're taking the time to post messages you must want people to read those messages. It would be worth the effort of registering to make your messages more visible. If you're a common troll this does not apply of course.
Why can't people accept that Dubya *is* a weasel?
Why are you surprised that a politician is a weasel? The president is *always* the head weasel. Let's see - just the last few: Nixon (defined weasel), Gerald Ford (incompetant weasel)Jimmy Carter (not weasel, not good president) Teflon Man Reagan (irancontra weasel), GW Bush (Mr. free trade/new world order), Clinton (classic shouthern US political weasel), GW Bush (weasel, Texas style). Your point is?
You don't have to claim either of them are upstanding people just because they're in the same political party.
Personal experience: they are all weasels because they are politicians. This is not news.
-- $G
france was buddying up with saddam.. and didnt care if he slaughtered people..
so yeah.
the only good part I see about our war on iraq is that we saved people from him and his rape-happy sons.. that's the only good thing I see out of it.. the rest is politics and economical reasons.. we're there to spread american business empires, get the oil, and spread our ways and laws and copyright laws over there, to make it america jr.
get some good people in power.. shoot the idiots who like blowing others up and fucking leave.
FROM: http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticlei d=13343&intcategoryid=2
, 76 06101%255E1702,00.htmle ws/index.php3?sid=261272 &lang=e&dir=newso m/news.php3?id=513 20k ingn ews/view.asp?msgID=3245o m/News/world/archives/200 3/10/20/2003072649. au/common/story_page /0,5478,7606101%255E401,00.htmli -online.com/bb/mon/oct20w4.htm
Israeli officials shame-faced after
reports on Chirac prove to be false
But, it was reported as true by the following sources.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057
http://www.albawaba.com/n
http://www.israelnationalnews.c
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/brea
http://www.taipeitimes.c
http://www.heraldsun.news.com
http://www.brune
FROM: http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticlei d=13343&intcategoryid=2
, 76 06101%255E1702,00.htmle ws/index.php3?sid=261272 &lang=e&dir=newso m/news.php3?id=513 20k ingn ews/view.asp?msgID=3245o m/News/world/archives/200 3/10/20/2003072649. au/common/story_page /0,5478,7606101%255E401,00.htmli -online.com/bb/mon/oct20w4.htm
Israeli officials shame-faced after
reports on Chirac prove to be false
But, it was reported as true by the following sources.
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057
http://www.albawaba.com/n
http://www.israelnationalnews.c
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/brea
http://www.taipeitimes.c
http://www.heraldsun.news.com
http://www.brune
Wow, there were a lot of unsubstantiated allegations in there! As long as we're gonna take that route, Here's a few "facts" that I think PROVE France's weaseliness:
1. France funded both sides of the Aliens vs. Predator war.
2. France had 30% ownership in the Death Star. When Israeli TIE-fighters destroyed it, France was PISSED.
3. France has the world's largest stockpile of green kryptonite, Superman's only weakness. WHY?
4. I have it on good authority that Jaques Chirac stomps smurfs.
I think I've made my point.
The irony here is that Scott Adams himself, in "The Dilbert Principle", postulated that eventually advertisers would become so good at constructing persuasive advertising that buying the product would no longer be optional.
I believe the case made by the "fast food made us fat" people was that the companies should be blamed for having persuaded them to eat fatty food.
For example, they're always available to help prevent the "establishment" of religion, but they're never around to preserve the "free-exercise" of it.
I invite your viewing of one of the ACLU's more recent cases, where they backed Jerry Falwell in a suit against the state of Virginia. Virginia had one set of laws for businesses, another for churches. Not kosher, and so the ACLU went to bat for him.
The ACLU is more than willing to help religious zealots, even when they usually spit on the values of the ACLU.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Federal spending is not what makes the United States a great country. The American Experiment was not an experiment with strong central power; that had been done for years and was the very thing the American Revolutionaries were escaping. The United States constitution was constructed to balance the needs for some federal power (the Articles of Confederation gave it almost none!) while serverly restricting the excercise of those powers.
I could not disagree with you more with regard to a new amendment abolishing the 9th and 10th amendments that Congress holds in such disdain. Instead, I am for a return to Federal constitutionally correctness and the ouster of those Representatives and Senators that fail to live up to their oaths of office. What does "promoting national growth and standards" conflict with a small, constitutionally correct Federal government? I'm somewhat bothered by government "promoting growth" of any fashion; should not a liberated people be left to achieve what they can imagine? How did the United States ever survive the Nineteenth Century without the programs of the New Deal or the Great Society? Remember: the "General Welfare Clause" is in the preamble, not Article I.
For what it's worth, I'm for the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, as it silenced the voice of the States in Federal Government, giving power to the People that was originally intended for States to hold.
and last but not least... ariel sharon. yes, that is one liberal list! lies, damn lies, and statistics! at least you didn't show us your math skills.
> All you liberal, peacenik, Bush-bashers just can't set aside your pessimism to see how much happier a place the Middle East & Iraq will be once we finish invading it.
"They have made a desert, and call it 'peace'." -- Tacitus, 20 centuries ago
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
All you have to do is look at the political landscape of France.
"France today has roughly four or five million Muslim inhabitants, nearly a tenth of the population. Approximately half have French citizenship. More precise figures are not available, since the French state, being officially secular, is forbidden to inquire into questions of religion. It is generally agreed, however, that France, preponderantly Catholic, now has more Muslims than either Protestants or Jews, its historical minorities. Islam has become the country's second religion."
You cannot forget that in 2002, Chirac's main opponent in his election was a isolationist (Le Pen), illustrating that the french commoners wanted to roll back the recent immigration, and did not like the direction the politicians were taking the country... Chirac has to appease the arabic voters , and the best way he knew how was to counter the United State's forays into Afghanistand and Iraq at every turn, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
You give him too much credit, thinking he was "standing up against the USA", when he is just politicing and covering his ass.
Yes, this is exactly what I'm saying. Dubya's a weasel and the appropriate thing isn't to say "But Clinton's a weasel too". It's not good enough that the "other side"'s politicians are asses as well, you have to admit that yours are, and only then can you make an attempt to get better ones.
Do you have no concept of what a better life is? Thousands of Iraqis would have died because of the crimes of the government. Life would be worse for everyone because that situation wasn't going to go away on its own.
Have you ever heard an Iraqi living outside of Iraq say anything positive about Saddam? All of them that I've heard, in the US and in other countries, have said that he's a dangerous cruel man and is oppressing the country.
Sure, it sucks to be dead, but people were dying anyways. Better that the killer be removed, even if a few people die during his struggles. At least he can't go on killing all the dissidents.
Bullshit.
I recently found an email I wrote to a friend about five months before the Sept-11th attack where I was talking about the Taliban and we were discussing their crimes. Remember, that's when the woman was sentenced to death for being raped, and when they were destroying the Buddha statues, etc. Their solution to stop rape was to make the rapist marry his victim, so it wasn't rape. They regularly killed people who disagreed with them and women were treated intolerably. This was being carried by a wide spectrum of media outlets.
Are they living in a paradise now? No, but at least the religious freaks are gone. The warlords are all seperate and fight each other, at least their power could be broken. The Canadians and other peacekeepers are there trying to make the country actually safe. Are some women killed? Yeah, but not as many as before. And at least the "law" of the land isn't that women are posessions, whose murder is okay as long as it's done with an excuse from the Koran.
Much the same with Iraq, Saddam's crimes were clearly documented by British media. No Iraqi I'd ever talked to (two, about this issue) or seen or TV (from outside Iraq) ever said *anything* positive about Saddam. They all said he was a horrible dictator and that nobody in Iraq felt safe if they didn't agree with him. He ruled with the proverbial iron fist and would have been almost impossible to remove from inside. Once he's gone there are others but they haven't consolidated power and aren't are much of a threat. There's no way everyone would vote a dictator in again, given a real choice.
Perhaps the "gassing" of the kurds didn't happen as intentionally as it was supposed to have but he definately did intend them harm as the ongoing battles with them showed. (I'm sure they hated him too, but he's the one with the standing army.)
Showing that Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, are all nasty countries ruled by assholes doesn't disprove that Afghanistan and Iraq were. The world would be a better place if those countries were walled off. A thousand years ago they were a civilization, now they're a cesspool of murderous religion and sexism. The lucky ones will be liberated, the unlucky ones will keep those systems until they self destruct.
Any chance I could mod this entire thread down?
Slashdot discussions of a Dilbert-related survey are a poor choice of venue for expressing political opinions.
But weaseling out of things is what seperates us from the animals! ... Except for the weasel.
http://www.weasel.com
The war wasn't fought so US citizens could have the Iraqi oil.
It was fought so US companies could have the Iraqi oil distribution contracts.
At least someone sees what's going on...
And if you need a little extra confirmation of that, look at how the administration is hell-bent on assuring that the $20 billion to be spent fixing up Iraq's infrastructure (read "oil production facilities") be given as a grant instead of a loan. If we gave it as a loan then Iraq would have to retain control of the oil reserves so they could sell it to repay the loan. (Remember, the US overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran to prevent the nationalization of Iranian oil) If it is a grant, however, then the US can pressure the Iraqi Governing Council to sell off the oil reserves at ridiculously low prices to private energy corporations and forget about the money US taxpayers gave them.
What a friggin' racket! US taxpayers will be providing $20 billion (and more) to provide good facilities for oil corporations to make a profit. Talk about welfare deadbeats. If there is profit to be had there, then the oil corporations should invest their own damn money, not mine.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
> Are they living in a paradise now? No, but at least the religious freaks are gone.
Since you haven't checked the news lately, you'll be interested to hear that those freaks are murdering westerners and perceived collaborators all around the periphery of the country these days, and and have reorganized themselves to the point that we are now fighting pitched battles with them again.
And the regional warlords think of Karzai as the Mayor of Kabul...
I would guess that actually cleaning up the country would require about 10x the resources that the USA and the international community has actually committed there, and given Afghanistan's long, long history of tribal mentality without any substantial national sentiment, the commitment would probably have to last for about 50 years to make a lasting difference after the foreigners pulled out.
> Much the same with Iraq, Saddam's crimes were clearly documented by British media.
No one doubts that Saddam is a monster.
Nor that he was already a monster when he was our friend...
> There's no way everyone would vote a dictator in again, given a real choice.
Aye, there's the rub. In a year or two they will be able to vote for someone with the USA's stamp of approval. A few years later they'll be able to vote their 100% support for whoever is viscious enough and has enough heavily armed thugs to take over the country.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Two problems: the cheapest food is the least healthiest. In a local mall's cafeteria lunch-line, a cheesburger is 75 cents and a banana is $1.00. Second, fast food companies do have an obligation not to market trash. Especially to children! For galaxy's sake, look at Ronald McDonald and tell me he's not as much to blame as tobacco executives!
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
The Constitution Party was at one time known as the US Taxpayer's Party.
Oddly, for a group with such a name, its primary function appears to be pursuit of extremely right-wing social goals (pro-gun, anti-choice, state's rights, anti-immigration and, bizarrely, a return to the gold standard).
Looking at their Year 2000 Party Platform, I'd say they're a "Racial Purity" plank away from being the Aryan Nation Party.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
> They are in the business of selling food, and the more food they sell, the more money they make. So they will use all the advertising tricks in the book to encourage people to buy more...
...and yet we don't think that people who spent too much on a car should be able to sue the dealership. I'm sorry, but this falls firmly under the concept of "caveat emptor". Basic health education is not lacking in the U.S., and it takes not a lot of effort to learn what's healthy to eat and what isn't. Because it's not a big secret that too much fat in your diet will make you gain weight, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask people to examine what they eat, and if you ask the counter person about nutrition information, that person will hand you a sheet that contains all of the nutrition information you need to see that the burgers are very high in fat. In short, the fact that McDonald's portrays their food in the best possible light does not excuse you from responsibility for examining their presentation with a critical eye.
Wow. And when you go to buy a car, there are people who actually make money by selling you accessories and rustproofing and dealer financing, and they'll use all the advertising tricks in the book to encourage people to buy more...
Virg
Hell would freeze over before the ACLU defended someone in a 2nd Amendment case. The stated position of the ACLU is that there is no individual right to own a gun only a collective right.
There was no absolute rule in Afghanistan before the Taliban took power. Since the Soviets pulled out in 1989 it was a period of civil war until 1996 when the Taliban gained power over most of the country. Also, calling them warlords isn't completely accurate, since they're no longer at war. Afghanistan is a very tribally oriented country, and tribal leaders have regularly held positions of power and influence in areas where their tribes were predominant. At least now the different tribes and "warlords" are resolving differences through diplomacy and negotiations rather than large scale warfare.
The Taliban have the worst record on womens' rights of anybody in recent times. Some tribes may have had similar policies in the past, but are now allowing women more rights to remain in favor of western countries.
Many women are working again and girls are going to school, allowed by those in power. Some women are still wearing burkas, but many are not. The situation for women is a huge improvement since the Taliban was ousted.
Pure BS! Things have been steadily improving since Afghanistan was liberated. Personally, I don't think the West is doing quite enough to help, but the people there are definitely better off.
While the new Hamid Karzai government has little control beyond Kabul, the fighting that plagued Afghanistan for the last several decades has largely stopped now.
In some cases, yes, because people were coerced, or forced at gunpoint to fight for the Taliban. However, the ones responsible for atrocities and repression are being held accountable and jailed.
They officially condemned it, but allowed it to go on if they got a share of profits and all the drugs went outside the country. Maybe people should stop buying heroin in Britain. And the CIA does not make money off drugs.
Pure BS! The only place the US currently uses mines is the DMZ separating North and South Korea. The mines in Afghanistan have been t
> There was a time in your life when, in fact, you DID NOT KNOW that this kind of food would make you fat. Then, at some point, you learned it.
The point is, many people never learn it.
Fine, you say, that's their own fault for not learning it. But in saying this, you are assuming that they had the same opportunity to learn it as you. And it is an undeniable fact that not everyone has the same access to knowledge and education in this country.
Sorry, but your step back for perspective wasn't large enough. While you're quite right that not everyone has access to the same quality of education, this particular piece of information is (and has been for some time) very widely available. Perhaps some schools aren't doing a good job of teaching health education, but one needs only watch one or two episodes of Oprah, or the evening news, to hear that fatty foods make one gain weight, and that a low fat diet will prevent that. Then, it's an easy leap to ask for nutrition information from any fast food joint around. Heck, they have it printed up on handouts so you don't tie up a counter person asking those questions. Since obesity in all social strata outstrips the illiteracy rate, it's a reasonable conclusion that the information is widely enough available for people to make educated decisions.
> It is no coincidence the prevalence of obesity in the lower class is higher than it is, say, in your social stratum.
As is usual for arguments like this, the problem is rather more complex than you would make it. In survey after survey, the reason people in all social strata eat fast food is convenience. It overarches every other given reason by a wide margin. Couple that with the fact that people in lower income groups tend to have less free time, and suddenly you have a completely valid reason for higher fast food consumption that has little to do with a conspiracy on the part of the fast food producers. While the ad campaigns are certainly a part of the problem, it's not rational to imply (as you have) that they're even the majority of the problem without considering other factors.
Virg
And the 2nd amendment shows it even more.
This shows what a looser you are. You are wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Your couldn't be more wrong. So how do you like being wrong?
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
But the do care if you wish to own a gun. I guess their copy of the Bill of Rights has less adms than mine does.
You are so wrong. Read it and weep. Oh, man, I love this thread.
Oh, yeah, did you see the AC's post to your sig the other day? Israeli/Palestininan Facts
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
funny how the ACLU is completely silent when the 2nd or 10th amendments are involved
Only if you call this being silent.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Just as I thought, you couldn't answer the question because you refuse to put yourself in their shoes. You know damn well that if it was you or your family or friend who was murdered, you'd change your mind in a heartbeat. So tell me, just how much more is your life worth than the typical Iraqi citizen?
No no. Goering was the Reichsmarshall for the Luftwaffe.
Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda.
---anactofgod---
---anactofgod---
"Equal opportunity swindling - *that* is the true test of a sustainable democracy."
...because it has two right wings.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
you have to admit that yours are, and only then can you make an attempt to get better ones. that defies the system. The whole idea is to say "I'm not a weasel and my opponent is."
-- $G
Because we kept the receipts.
(Credit goes to the Onion for that one, IIRC. No, I don't actually believe Iraq has WMD these days. We know they tried to make/buy/steal them, but they failed.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
If you think Sadaam didn't have weapons, you've got your head up your ass. Why didn't he let in inspectors without stalling for weeks at a time? Why did he eventually stop letting them in? Why would he rather do the above and be deposed than stay in power?
All France did was waste time, allowing him to get their shit either A) destroyed or B) out of Iraq. I'm not surprised we haven't found anything real, they had months to destroy it.
As for France's motive, they were cuddling up to Sadaam. They had been building Iraq's infrastructure for years (phone, etc) and were pushing to do the same for oil pipelines - hence their wish to end the embargo despite Sadaam's not abiding by the 1991 treaty.
If our motive was oil, so was France's - and they had an interest in keeping Sadaam in power.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
You do know that was not actually about war, right? It was about some crazy fuck who was compelled to kill a lady he pawned some crap to.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
But I was assuming that those who voted most probably voted on all categories. At least it would be what I voted... meaning that much of the same voted for each item.
Nice to see somebody had some forethought on this. After all, yes, the French did have financial interests in the middle east, BUT, would they have not furthered their own interests by being an active participant in picking apart of remnants of the country? That is to say, they could really have profited either way... but it took balls to stand up to the US and take the subsequent media beating.
You are ignoring the recent poll of Baghdad that Gallup did. 71 percent of those surveyed like our presence there and don't want us to leave any time soon.
It's ironic that more Iraqis support the war (percentage-wise) than Americans.
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Is it only me or does Bush Bashing sound like a euphomism for rough sex.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
So tax receipts will be infinite?
I think you outdid the most moronic statement in a while.
Granting your point that consumer spending leads to jobs, the GWB tax cuts went mostly to those whose spending is the lowest as a proportion of income. They were thus the least efficient targets for growth-oriented tax cuts. Payroll tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits would have been much stronger measures to boost the economy.
Are we up to 6th grade yet?
And since when have economists not been retards? Presumably there is a saddle point beyond which taking econ classes decreases intelligence. Fucking pseudo-science.
The U.S. is not upholding its principles.
This isn't my idea or suggestion, it's what the scientists say. There are psychoactive substances called exorphins in some kinds of food, and the body produces endorphins during digestion. Meaning basically everyone likes eating because our bodies produce dope that makes us feel good when we eat, not because we're hungry. Real feelings of hunger only occur after 2 or 3 days without food in normal circumstances, the craving you feel around dinner time in a craving for endorphins. If there is something wrong with the production of these endorphins, or if you have a low tolerance to exorphins, you run the risk of becoming a food addict.
As well, last time I checked fast food was not an illegal substance.
Around where I live, some drugs you call illegal are not quite illegal. This argument is totally besides the point. Do you think it is possible to become an alcoholic? If people are showing real signs of addiction (their habit has a profound negative impact on the rest of their lives, and they show mental or physical withdrawal symptoms when stopping the habit) they're addicted, no matter if their habit is legal or illegal.
If dealing drugs was legal then you might have a point about people blaming drug dealers instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. Until then you are just talking out of your ass.
Duh. I was being sarcastic. Just as well as drug dealers know most of their customers get addicted to the stuff they sell them, fast food dealers know some of their customers become addicted to the stuff they sell them.
I have difficulty understanding your rationale for presenting this argument... Do you or someone you care for have a weight problem that you feel is not your/their responsibility?
I just wanted to point out that food addiction is a real addiction, just like drug addiction. Of course every grown person has to take responsability for his own actions, but how for instance would someone fresh out of drug rehab react to TV commercials praising the joyful good life you live while using drug X. That's what happens to alcoholics, sex addicts, food addicts, nicotine addicts, eg. all the people addicted to legal substances or activities.
(And no, it's not personal.)
I guess all those Kurds gassed themselves, then. The UN never questioned Iraq's possession of WMDs, not France nor anyone else. The UN just put off making any real effort to determine the extent of WMD production and possession for some 12 years.
Try telling that to someone who's eaten a big mac every night for the past six months.
Their bodies get so used to both the sugars in the bread, and their systems adapt to the "hi-maze" fibre which mc donalds uses. For the guy who eats mc donalds every night, a steak or potato could mean constipation.
Because eating in a resurant is so socicly acceptable, nobody stops to think of the coersive environment mc donalds uses. The entire establishment is a big marketing tool designed to make you feel comfortable, sure, but more importantly, to make you want to come back. From the colour choices on the walls to the fake smiles and enthusiasim of the staff, mc donalds is designed to be a consistant, reliable, addictive experience.
When you spend more than you take in, and rack up more than 7 times more debt than you have assets, and are still operating at a loss, that's a bad thing.
Check out David Walker's address to the National Press Club when it is available. I'm pretty sure he's had a few more economics classes than you have, and apparently a buttload more experience. But I'm sure you'll say that the Comptroller General of the United States know about economics, right?
Oh fuck off you dipshit. If you're not going to read what I post, don't respond. I'm serious, you haven't contributed anything so far and it's unlikely to change.
I'd rather a 2% chance of losing a family member than a 6% chance. Do I have to have a family member murdered to have a valid opinion?
But the EFF needs a lot of help and is fighting a very uphill battle. The NRA has far more clout.
Stupid French! I could be getting free healthcare right now!
I know why Billy Bob Clinton's name wasn't on the list -- he was busy under the desk with Monica, right? I mean, come on, that guy takes the cake at being a weasal. He openly admitted it. Billy knew how to lie, not only to a grand jury, a judge (several judges), and Congress -- but he also knew how to look straight into the TV camera and lie to us. 42nd 'President' my ass ... More like 1st National Disgrace and Public Nuisance Extraordinaire, if you ask me.
Bush is a weasal about as much as I am black. And no, I'm not going to dye or tan my skin.
Seth Anderson BTW, I'm not 23 anymore -- I am TexasCowboy26 now. =)
Again, you know damn well that you wouldn't sacrifice your own life for the arbitrary "cause" of some superpower government. No sane human being would. So how can you just shrug your shoulders and say "collateral damage" when other human beings are brutally murdered, WITHOUT being a bloody hypocrite?
Can you answer that question logically, or will you admit that hypocracy a necessary component of war? (Hint: No, you won't be able to answer that question logically. I've already proven that nobody can.)
I hope you realize exactly how lucky you are NOT to be one of those poor people who had their lives stolen from them. After all, you're a human being just like them, equally deserving of life. Right?
Who said anything about shrugging off collateral damage? If someone was going to die, at least Saddam has been removed. If someone had to die, at least they died in the removing of a dictator. What's so hard to understand about that?
I don't expect anyone to line up for their turn to die, but if you're going to be asked to take the chance, wouldn't you want the reason to be worth it?
My point is that you don't have a right in the world to determine whether or not "it was worth it" -- nor does government, nor does a majority, and nor does a "society" (which is nothing but a collection of unique thinking indivudals). Only the actual individuals who had their lives stolen can answer this, but they weren't given the chance. They were stripped of this most fundamental human right, by force, because some superpower government believed their cause to be worth more than the most fundamental human right to life. At the root of it all, you (or government, or a majority, or "society") can only say "it was worth it" because you weren't the one who was actually murdered. In other words, while you are lucky enough to retain your most fundamental human rights, at the same time, you won't respect the same fundamental rights of other individuals. And that is a superb example of hypocracy. If you ask me, that is the thinking of the devil himself. Don't you realize that your own government would strip YOU of your most fundamental human right -- just as easily as they murdered these poor people -- if they saw fit to do so? After all, you are a human being just like the poor people who were murdered in Iraq. Don't you see that the root of everything we're talking about is personal gain, masked by a lie called "the necessity of war"?
Did people get asked about their willingness to participate in Saddam's various killing sprees?
What you say sounds all nice and fluffy, with only the people whose lives would be at risk from the invasion getting a vote, but unfortunately it's simplistic and wrong. The people whose lives would be saved also get a vote. You can't simply draw a line around a small number of people and label them at risk from Saddam, and a small number and label them as potential casualties of war. As such, you can't poll the people involved. You simply have to weigh the sizes of the two groups and see which group is larger.
Haven't you read reports of and seen pictures of mass graves in Iraq? Haven't you heard of the guy who spent 10+ years in his parents attic after faking his death to avoid being tossed in jail and murdered? These weren't isolated cases, people were dying every day because of this, and vanishing so that their families had no idea if they were dead or alive.
Iraqi ex-patriots encourage this, they know what was going on and they want him removed. Presumably many have family there and they know the risks, but they still choose war. Many of them risked their lives fighting Saddam's regime, or simply leaving the country, and aren't asking people to face risks they themselves wouldn't.
http://dir.jayde.com/profile11672106.html
Anyone know the email addresses of the RIAA execs? I want to send them a few copies of this. Maybe we all should. (hint, hint) Really, we all should. (hint, hint!) At 5 pm ET today (hint, hint, hint!!!)