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Iraq's Open Source Possibilities
An anonymous reader writes "In a Linux Journal article, Iraq's 2 person LUG describes the software consumer market in Iraq today, and their hopes for educating the masses about open-source software: 'Iraq is now a blank, unformatted hard disk and can be loaded with anything. Everything is open in Iraq right now. There are no regimented standards or massive expenditure in a particular monopoly's software'."
"doesn't doesn't" = does?
Oh yeah... Those iraqis were so happy getting oppressed and tortured by Saddam.. So happy that hundreds of thousands of them were just jumping into those great big mass graves for him! What in the hell were we doing liberating them and spending billions of dollars [which will take years and years for us to see a return on even by taking their oil] fighting Saddam and rebuilding their country?
I would it would be hyprocritical but for the fact those same nations (mainly France, Germany, Russia) are at the same time being asked by the US to forgive and restructure iraqs debt that runs at an estimated $120 billion.
You mean $120 billion they made in trading with a dictatorship despite backing the UN resolutions saying no one can trade with them? You mean massive oil contracts with a coutry that can't legally export oil? If you want to know why France, Germany and Russia are so pissy, it is because the US is now doing openly everything they have been doing secretly for the past ten years. Follow the money. Did you take a look at the weapons used in the Iraqi military? Rifles? Russian. Tanks? Russian. Planes? French and Russian. Missles? Russian and Chinesse. They didn't buy all that stuff off of eBay.
Viv
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If you really want to be informed, the answer is not to avoid corporate-controlled mainstream media. The answer, instead, is to read/listen/watch/etc multiple sources.
I do read/watch/listen to multiple sources, and I believe that Rush is right almost always. I do not accept anything he says simply because he said it, but I do agree with most everything he says. After listening to Rush for a long time, I can see how incredibly (and subtly) biased most of the mainstream media. Rush does not at all hide his bias (if you can even really call it that...really its just his opinion. the problem in mainstream media is when they report their opinion as fact, ie when they say that the war that took less than two months to invade and conquer a country was 'bogged down' at any point).
And if you believe that most of Iraq is not better off now than before, you are a fool. I don't want to resort to name-calling, but if you believe that there's really no other word for it, unless you only get your news from CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS/NYTimes/etc, then its understandable.
You're right...it'd be much better to have a dictator who can just order the execution of any rebels, their families, their villages, and anyone they have ever contacted.
I was not lying. Perhaps I am misinformed.
Rush gives a pretty good response for most (maybe all, I didn't check) of those. He admits at several points that he made an error or mispoke, something FAIR does not do once. I definitely do not see a single case where he was lying, not mistaken (Exagerating does not count as lying. If you listen to Rush often, you will know how often he exagerates, and can tell when he does. It is understandable that someone reading a quote from him can misunderstand that).