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Strategy Videogame Upsets Chinese, Gets Banned
An anonymous reader writes "China's State News Agency, Xinhua reports that China's Ministry of Culture has banned a computer game for 'distorting history and damaging China's sovereignty and territorial integrity'. Paradox's PC strategy game 'Hearts of Iron', was accused of distorting historical facts in describing Manchuria, West Xinjiang, and Tibet as independent sovereign countries in the maps of the game. 'All these severely distort historical facts and violate China's gaming and Internet service regulations,' the Ministry's Game Products Censorship Committee said. 'The game should be immediately prohibited.' [via China Digital]"
no matter how much it may sting, you can't repress the truth forever. I'm sure the people whom you've stomped on won't forget the truth.
Tibet *was* an independent sovereign nation before China took it over. Just because you don't like being known as a bully doesn't mean you aren't one.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
Wow, I hope they never get their hands on Civilization...
Hope they dont see this.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
... And this surprises anyone because...?
;) )
I admit, that this takes it to a new extreme though - what's next, censoring science fiction because the physics in the book violate the sci-fi laws that the government approved of?
I wonder if because the game is banned, will it push it underground, and make it more popular. (In that case, start hosting torrent files, people!
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
Capitalism has little to do with freedom. The issue here is not one of capitalism, but one of freedom of speech.
...maybe they can just lump it - after all, they're giving refuge to some of the biggest spammers in the US and pumping the garbage back to us.
Until they learn to "play and work well with others", they can just learn to live with everyone else's fun.
This sounds bad for the video game company, but it sure is a lot of free publicity. Maybe they did it on purpose to anger the Chinese after all. /me smells a conspiracy to get more business by pissing off chinese!
Help! I'm being repressed!
their collective heads will explode.
A government can't get much weaker than this. Stomping out dissent is low. This is even lower.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
That's basicallly what I've been telling to Japan, but they won't heed my warnings about Godzilla even though Sim City clearly proves their existance!
To really piss them off, send them a copy of Shadow Warrior.
Unfortunately, I don't have good hard figures on the death toll from China's genocide in Tibet (as opposed to the genocide committed against ethnic Chinese during the great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, estimates for which range between 30-60 million), and Rummel doesn't have an seperate index entry for Tibet in Death by Goverment. Here's a protest poster that claims 1.2 million Tibetans have died as the results of China's occupation. We probably won't know the real number until (like the Soviet Union) after China is liberated from Communism at some future date.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
did Tibet have to be "taken over" if it wasn't a sovereign nation?
China is already a thoroughly capitalist country-- that is, a state capitalist country, in which the whole country is basically run for the profit of the state-owned industry. It is already quite removed from the old Soviet system, and is largely devoid of the traditional Maoist rhetoric about the dictatorship of the proletariat et al. They also seem to be moving fairly rapidly (by Chinese standards) in the direction of a more traditionally capitalist economy, with more privately-owned companies and foreign investment. Of course, that hasn't really resulted in a decrease in the state authority over speech, the press, etc.; it's just that now the state uses its authority to ensure corporate profits rather than the victory of the workers' revolution.
There is a sense in which China is taking a realistic road: they realized decades ago that the Soviet-style command economy wasn't going to get them anywhere, but they were also keen enough to realize that rapid reforms like glasnost and perestroika led to the sudden decline of the Soviet state before a stable alternative economy could be developed, with the resulting economic hardships, explosion in organized crime, and civil unrest. So in a sense they're taking a gradual course out of traditional Communism to avoid the problems of Gorbachev. On the other hand, those in charge of the state-run industries aren't just going to give up that power, so they want to insure that in the post-Communist economy they're still the majority shareholders, so to speak.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
If I post "CHINA SUCKS!!", how long do you think it will be before the Ministry's Game Products Censorship Committee bans slashdot as a violation of Internet service regulations??
is your point that "they have reason to fear that the game could influence people's view of history" or that "they're right that this game is a lie"? depending on the precise date, those areas did consider themselves not under chinese rule (at least.)
... there should be a big debate about the truth of the matter (however postmodern that might need to be) and also a discussion about the responsibility on the part of content creators to either make things "obviously" false/parody/fiction/alternate, or be entirely accurate (well, in the opinion of those who care.)
if your point is only that they should fear such games as intruding on their hard work to make everyone believe the official story of their nation, then i couldn't agree more.
if it's the other
It IS ridiculous, because they complain that: 'Moreover, "Manchuria", "West Xinjiang", and "Tibet" appeared as independent sovereign countries in the maps of the game. In addition, it even included China's Taiwan province as the territory of Japan at the beginning of the game."
Well, Taiwan WAS a Japanese colony in 1936, (following the 1894 Sino-Japanese war Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese) and Tibet WAS independent till 1959 when China invaded it.
Although this is not banning or censoring, strictly speaking, the Bush administration and the corporate media is not much better than its Chinese equivalents.
They distorted the facts about the real reason for the Iraqi war -- the claim that there were WMD were at best speculative, and at worst plain lies.
The US (and European - the Danish, at least) mainstream media have been very US-friendly and projected into most people the sense that somehow, the war was 'OK', even though there were no WMD, and therefore no valid reason (besides money, oil, power, and influence) to invade a sovereign nation.
The US surely can't point fingers at China for not upholding the basic human rights. The imprisonment of many people in Guantanamo Bay with no trial, no evidence, and for basically no real reason other than show the right-wing voters (who sadly seems to be the majority of US voters) that "we're doing something about terrorism".
As a Dane, it's just so sad to see how the Danish government is following the US lead in practically everything. "Oh, we'd sure like the Danish prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay, but if we cannot, they probably deserve to be there anyway. And we sure don't give a flying fuck about any other prisoners than the Danish."
to the Great Firewall of China.
China bans games (and other things) all the time. Command & Conquer Generals was banned for how it portrayed the Chinese. When I played c&c generals, I didn't expect the screwy accents and "propaganda center" to necessarily agree with the Chinese people, much less the Chinese government. In defense of c&c, though, after playing it I did have a greater realization of the threat terrorism could have on China due to geography. The U.S. has it much easier being isolated between two great oceans.
Anyway, the annexation/aquisition/takeover/whatever of Tibet has been a controversy (for some) over recent years. So, it doesn't surprise me that "territorial integrity" is an excuse they cited. They can be picky about how you draw their borders.
A more fundamental question, though, is how serious people take this. It's just a game. Who actually believes what they see in video games?
Banned is so in. If you get your game, film, book, music, t-shirt or pretty much anything you can banned then everyone will want it. Even if you cant get it banned, just get it disliked by some authority and you've got a sure winner, infact even the people who hate it will want to see what all the fuss is about! Just some recent examples:
The Passion of the Christ (have you seen it?)
GTA (Australia, germany, blood-patch?)
Michael Moore films (Always winning Oscars)
Teenage Sex (Its all about Bush!)
CSS t-shirts (ok no-one outside slashdot cares but still)
Nick-Berg video (No-one gave a url... 3 days later everyone had it)
and ofcourse (see sig) the Vanunu interview by the BBC which has been smuggled out of Israel and gets aired tomorrow (like totally in your face sharon!)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Israel banning video games that label palastine as a nation before it was taken over in 1948 ?
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
I've always loved Paradox's games, ever since the original Europa Universalis (I was one of the first Yanqui Pigdogs (tm) to get hold of EU!) and I'm still a rabid fanboy. This is rather disturbing..
When they say it is banned is it just that it cant be sold in China? or does it also mean if I warez it from a US server and get caught playing it I will be sent to a prison.
Never could figure out why my girl liked my bitch tits, then I found out she was a lesbian.
So the Chinese government is censoring free speech? Do you support that, or not?
Everytime you go to Walmart, Target, and other "Made in China" clearing houses, you are supporting China, and placing another fatal blow to locally owned American small business.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
But it is inaccurate. This is communst dogma at it's height and it's an ego trip about geopgraphy. Tibet had been a long-standing independent tributary to imperial China and was not a true part of China until the reds forced it into becoming a secular province in the 50s and kidnapped their second highest religious leader. And at the time of the Tibetan takeover, let's remember that the Republic of China was internationally recognized as China, not the People's Republic of China until the 70s. It's completely inaccurate to leave Manchuria out as a separate entity (sovereignty is up in the air though) because Japan occupied most of northeastern China and did in fact set up the puppet state of The Empire of Manchuria. So I can't see how you got a +5 insightful by not knowing any of the history that the evil communist Chinese government are supposedly trying to rewrite.
ahh.. well, I did a search for Risk first, though. sorry I missed it.
My hippy neighbor's VW van is literally COVERED with "Free Tibet" stickers. And since the muffler doesn't work for crap, it makes a noise a LOT louder than a mere peep.
>i>"If you had invaded a country, committed genocide against it's people, done all you can to stamp out their indigenous culture ... ...colonized it and incorported it into your own nation, I'm sure you'd want to repress all mention of it as well."
_ american2.html).
You mean like every stolen land-based "state" in the western hemisphere, such as the USA, which gave aborignals disease infested blankets, hunted and killed with efficiency, and then moved them onto reservations of mostly useless land far away from their original farming/hunting grounds?
Hmmm sounds mighty familiar to me. Hell, the US Supreme court even ruled way back that the dispossession of Cherokee and other aboriginal nations was illegal, according to law, but the US just decided to send the army and IGNORE> their own courts/laws (ie: consititution)
(see a description here: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/native
Nobody much wants to hear about that, do they? Nor do you hear anyone (well, except proud newfoundlanders) talk about how the Beothuks were exterminated in Canada....
or how current government policies of "racial quantum (purity) assessment" allows the government to say who IS and ISN'T Aboriginal, thereby stripping them of their last shred of power: The right to self identify and gather as a nation. It also has the great effect of pitting "status" Indians with their 'on the dole' rights against "non-status" who often seek some of those rights, but are denied due to shrinking government handouts.
Pretty world we live in here in the west, eh? Nope, nobody being colonized HERE. Oh, right, we just call it immigration.
Oh my gawd, they killed kenny's mod points!!!!
Both China and Cuba are extreme Left dictatorships that were formed by revolution. Israel is country that WE (the US and the UK) resurrected from thousands of years ago in order to asuage our guilt for the Holocaust (the fact that the we let it happen) and to give a home for the displaced Jews. Israel is not defending itself in some 'just war' situation but is fighting to hold onto land that does not belong to them. Besides it's not like Cuba or China went from happy go lucky democracies to repressive Communist regimes. Remember Batitista? Nice guy... US loved his ass... Back to my point... equating Fidel to the Left is like equating Hitler to the right. They are extreme right and left. Idiot.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
Yes, Tibet is just a misunderstanding.
And those religions that China keeps persecuting? Yes, just a difference of opinion.
Who said anything about surprise? Our expectation of Chinese mafia lies strengthens our opposition to them - it doesn't let us accept them.
--
make install -not war
Even right now there are a number of conflicts where nations are fighting for their "historical" provinces or territories.
These are the same rational that Hitler used when annexing areas like Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Rhineland , or when Saddam Hussein attempted to annex Kuwait, which started the first Gulf War.
Unfortunately, these policies will probably continue, but with the Internet and other information sources available to more and more people everyday, hopefully there will be a more educated people to fight such actions when taken by their governments.
"Snoochie-Boochies? Who talks like that? That is babytalk!"-Jay, Chasing Amy
one commentator put it "Imagine if the Nazis upon invading France had pulled down every church except Norte Dame, and burned and looted every museum except the Louvre. That's what China did in Tibet."
He forgot "forcibly sterilized", "imprisoned & tortured clergy", etc. but I guess the guy didn't have a spare half hour to extend his analogy. The Chinese gov't = teh suck. Evil, hypocritical old men. Thank god they're our allies (mostly).
Freedom: "I won't!"
"Free Tibet" sticker owners are nothing but bandwagoners. Do you see stickers about "Free Algerians who got their heads cut off by extremists" or "Free [insert oppressed African minority group]"? The only reason the "Free Tibet" sticker is on is because some celebrities endorsed it. Nothing more. Some people go a little further and deify the Dalai Lama as some saviour of human rights in Tibet. What a crock. This is the same guy who at one time ran a theocracy in Tibet (and sicced scorpions on people who didn't pay their taxes on time) - yes, the same guy who got the obviously politically motivated Nobel Peace Prize. History has repeatedly shown that the whole "my enemy's enemy is my friend" thing usually doesn't work out too well in the end.
Well, seriously, the damage has been done a long time ago. Tibet has been continuously ruled by China (via the Qing Dynasty) for several hundreds years prior. Waiting another few more years before the Communist Party disintegrates in the very near future won't be too bad. The rising Chinese middle class will inevitably change things in that region - all for the better.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Well, Taiwan WAS a Japanese colony in 1936, (following the 1894 Sino-Japanese war Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese) and Tibet WAS independent till 1959 when China invaded it.
You are missing the point. Leftists regimes really think that they have the right to dictate history and the "official version" of facts. The ChiComs really love to cry about the Rape of Nanking but seem to forget that Maoists murdered millions of their own people too.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
33000 civilian men women and children casualties in Iraq, journalists shot at and killed, tortured prisoners. I guess the difference is China tries to do these things in secrecy.
That's because the government of China isn't Communist, look at what they do, just to stay in power. The government of China is a DICTATORSHIP.
Nice to see they are keeping up on their censorship of games. They're in good company, what with Wolfenstein still being illegal in Germany.
Actually, the majority of the Left I've talked to (including myself, good convo's), are always up in arms about the things you mentioned. Stop lying about other people to push forward your own agenda.
How did the US and the UK "let" the Holocaust happen? It took place in Nazi-occupied parts Europe which we were busy attempting to liberate. Should we have fought harder to get there sooner?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
We probably won't know the real number until (like the Soviet Union) after China is liberated from Communism at some future date.
Well, Rummel which you referred to estimates that about 35 million have been excuted in communist China so far. Additionally, the "black book of communism" estimates that IIRC about 60 million people starved to death during Mao:s "great leap forward" (no natural disaster or such, just plain mismanagement of resources in the name of communism).
...to point to the West's (undoubted) human right failures, and say "we are no better than they." Guantanemo Bay is just one example; you could add the goings on at the prison in Iraq, or the temporary "extradition" of terror suspects to regimes like Saudi Arabia, who do torturing for the US government.
;-)) are far from perfect. And groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International point to US and European shortcomings on a regular basis.
No doubt, Western governments (not even European ones
But to pretend this somehow means that the US is no better than Nazi Germany, Communist China, or Theologist Iran is absurd and disturbing.
In the US, as in Europe, the people can choose "regime change" every five years, if they don't like the government. Anyone (practically) can stand for government, even former wresters and movie starts. There are a range of different political parties, and even when they do not win power, they could, and they help shape the agenda.
Is that true of China? Or Iran?
In the West, women generally have equal rights to men; whites to blacks; and jews to Muslims.
In Saudi Arabia, and much of the Middle East, your rights are severely curtailed, or practically non-existent, if you fail to have the "right" charectaristics.
Best of all: in the West we have a (basically) free press, and freedom of expression. You can say whatever you want! It can be disturbing (eulogies to paedophilia, or support of mass-murder), but it exists.
In China, or Iran, or so many other places, saying the wrong thing lands you in jail.
Tell me again that the US is just as bad as China. Tell me you would really rather live there. Tell me which of your rights you no longer wish to excercise. Tell me which of my rights you think I don't deserve.
--- My dad's political betting
The difference, of course, is that nothing's being banned in the US because it speaks unfavorably of our past. That is not insignificant.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Apart from some first year psychology college students, America doesn't have a Left. "Liberals" are considered center in the rest of the world. So, it's unfair to compare the American left with with socialist dictatorships.
The reason why the left supports Castro and China is, that both China and Cuba are supposedly communist countries. America is capitalist and capitalism, as you may know, is evil (capitalists were the ones who killed indians, you know), so naturally they root for the communist countries. Their support for Cuba is probably mostly about this guilt -- the US having supported the previous dictators'n'all. The thing with China is a bit different. The Chinese was the "good" communists, as they didn't get along with the Soviet Union. Chairman Mao was very popular amongst the intelligentsia in the 1960's -- i don't think they understood what was really going on in China. All that was important for them was, that the cultural revolution sent university professors to work in the rice fields.
I really don't know what has changed since then (the latest Western book on "theories of revolution" that i've read is from the year 1973), but i guess not much. The intelligentsia still hate the West, blaming it for all the bad things that have happened. And in a sense, they're right, as the roots of many of the problems encountered in the world today are in one way or another in the constant expansion of the Western world, but saying that only the West (or only the US) is to blame for all this sounds, IMHO, kinda biblical. Blaming the Israelis is doubly so.
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
The difference is Americans, Canadians are free to discuss the atrocities against the Native Americans.
No one is allowed to speak the truth about the Chinese atrocities without China taking action.
Thank God I'm not Chinese.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Let's say I made a website or a online video game which features Al Qaida killing the US president, taking over control of the population, and ruling the US.
I dare you to convince me I won't get into trouble with the US government / Secret Service within a week.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
"All these severely distort historical facts and violate China's gaming and Internet service regulations," the MOC said. "The game should be immediately prohibited."
Is it just me or does anyone else think that the real reason is the second one, violating the government-approved version of history?
Interestingly, the article itself does help answer the purpose of banning the game. It claims that it is doing so in the name of regulating "content violating basic principles of the Constitution, threatening China's national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity."
China has proved that it's willing to do whatever it takes to remove anyone who questions the system.
Why should we be surprised?
Actually, this is mostly a British thing and it's called appeasement. One of Chamberlain's worse ideas. Effectively we could have stopped it all from happening but we didnt because we didnt want go to war, destabilise Europe and fuck up our empire. Besides, the persecution of the Jews was going on before the US started liberating anything.
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
So the question is, where were the Jews "displaced" from? The land where Israel currently resides. The Roman Empire all but eradicated the Jewish population and national identity in the region after suffering one too many revolts, but there have been Semites of both the Jewish and the Arabic persuasion in the region for all of recorded history. So my question for you is, who gets to keep control of the land?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Wow, they're even worse at information-control than America. You don't freakin' tell the whole world and issue a press statement about how you have your citizens' minds in your control, you keep the whole deal under the sheets, restrict the press, have schools inform kids on how video games are evil, and only government-issued texts contain the truth, and call anyone who mentions it a conspiracy theorist tinfoil liar terrorist who's out to destroy civilization.
Go back home and play with your dollies, kiddos. Leave the citizen mind-bending to the big-shots and take notes from the Nazis like we did.
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
What are the Tibetans doing already? Why won't they fight for there country?
And, ironically enough, the Japanese like to howl about Hiroshima but seem to forget the Rape of Nanking.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Great, ban legitimate purchase of a game, push the piracy rate higher (if possible) over there. Let's all put our hands on our faces and act suprised.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
And Xinjiang was *CERTAINLY* not an independant nation at any time, ever. It has always been considered an "autonomous region" along with a great portion of that western side of China, but it is by no means independant. It still functions under the rules and mandates of the Chinese government(s), and has done so for the past 2200 years.
So I believe that, although their action because of it was a bit extreme, they were at least correct in their reasoning for two of the states. The first one, Tibet, was indeed an independant soverignty until 1950, and so should not have been on that list. (of course, the propaganda surrounding the Tibetan situation with China is such that they would like people to believe otherwise)
And as a final, humorous note... should the United States censor Risk, that divides our country into five partitions. =)
-Vendal Thornheart
The difference, of course, is that nothing's being banned in the US because it speaks unfavorably of our past. That is not insignificant.
Farenheight 9/11.
Corprate self censorship is censorship none the less.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
China was nearly conquered by Tibet during the Tang dynasty. The Tibetan army stopped miles from the Tang capital, signed a perpetual treaty of friendship with the Chinese, and departed. Today, that treaty is used by the Chinese government as evidence that Tibet was always a part of China. Ugh.
To say that Mongolia, or Manchuria, or Tibet, or West Turkistan are part of modern China because they were part of the Manchu empire is loony - CHINA wasn't part of China then! It was all part of Qing - China belonged to the Manchus, not the other way around! Geez! We're seeing classic disconnection here; a foreign power makes you their bitch for several hundred years, and after you manage to kick them out, instead of saying, "Oh, that was unpleasant, let's try to not do that to anyone else," you turn around and invade your neighbors. Nice.
Imagine, if you will, that Turkey tapped on the US's collective shoulder in Iraq and said, "Oh, thanks, we were looking for that." Imperial claims to territory don't mean jack. And if anyone says anything about 5000 years of Chinese history, my hed asplode - people have been living in what's now Switzerland for what, 10,000 years, but no one but a complete prat would talk about 10,000 years of Swiss history.
Well, considering they can't teach that sort of history in Chinese schools, maybe they just forgot?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
"Whoo wanna some wang!"
Or maybe they'll love:"
"Flaaaaaames are gettin' hiya!"
I have been told they have even banned Maoism as well as USSR banned Stalinism after ca. 10 years after Stalin's death.
...ahem... the most uncorrupted country in the world, so the leap across our eastern border is shocking... you can bribe the guys in customs with vodka if you want to smuggle something. :) But you should remember that Soviet Union was deeper shit than present Russia, they were forced to vote ... and there was only one option to choose. :/
/. news concerning China -- Red Flag Linux, their own internet protocol (?), what else? They are really trying to remain communist but it seems to be a worthless attempt: social democracy is a much better synthesis of liberalism and socialism, if spoken in Hegel's dialectics... I believe that China will make a powerful opponent to the USA in the 21st century (perhaps it will ally with other far east states to make a contra-superpower to replace USSR, like ECON or Eastern COalitioN from Star Trek VIII perhaps?)
The situation in Russia is not superbly good -- Russian mafia and such entities are making Russian Federation really corrupted. My fatherland Finland is
Russia has always been more or less dictatorship since Ivan the terrible. And I guess it will remain so, Russians love to have a powerful leader.
But back to China: they have indeed westernized a lot even if the government has tried to stay as Chinese as possible and avoid westernization. Just look at the past few years for any
(if my grammar is lousy and this message is full of typos, I must say I have drunk today quite a few shots of booze. Also, apologize my light swearing, this isn't PG-13 after all... right? >:I)
The Chinese government is "EVIL" but ti's effective. They are also mostly "Fair". If you follow their rules. You tend to live a normal happy life. If you do not they kill you. Thus, 1 million tibetains had the notiosn of fighting back. They are dead. The rest mostly shut up. Asian cultures aren't as arrogant and stubborn as Islamic/ Arabic cultures. They'd rather subsist under a tyrant then die under a freedom fighter.
Thats why chinese tend not to have too much internal strife. I know I'm chinese and I visit frequently and have a large part of my family there. There are many things that go on that are un fair oppresive and such, but the Gov does try to keep order for the normal folk. For a large number of the population, life isn't bad.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I meant the displacement from Europe. The Jews were displaced from 'Israel' thousands of years ago. When the tanks of Nazi Germany rolled across Europe a lot Jews who could afford to leave, quite wisely left. But they didnt want to go back to the war torn countries in Europe that they didnt entirely trust, so the British offered them Israel. I dont know who should get the land, but I do think the Palestinians deserve to be recognised as a people of a country i.e. Palestine. The problem with Israel is that it shouldn't exist (I mean historically) but it does so what are we going to do about it?
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
Ever played Crimson Skies? It portrays a history of the United States in which the country splintered off into three or four seperate nation-states after the Great Depression. Was it banned in the United States? No. Did anyone bitch? No. Of course, you can buy it in a certain province of China without objection.
Banning a game (or book, or movie) because it portrays a history that differs from the government-approved version of history is reprehensible, and the motivation cannot be justified at any level.
Oh shut up. The government isn't banning the film because it speaks badly about the government. A distributor is choosing not to distribute it, for a myriad of reasons, the most obvious ones being political. The first ammendment gives you a right to expression; it doesn't promise you anyone will give you a bullhorn.
And in that particular case, it looks like another distributor is going to pick up the film anyway.
I have to disagree. Many if not most on the left feel that china's invasion of Tibet was a very bad thing. Remember the whole free tibet concert/bumber sticker thing? That came (mostly) from the left. As for Cuba.. (shrug) I think cuba is fairly well for a 3rd world country. Compare it to Hati, Jamacia, Dominician (sp?) republic, or anywhere in that area. Most of the problems with cuba right now are that the US wont include them in the world. Sanctions for 40 years from you closest neighbor and one of the world's economic powerhouse tends to do that.
Think about how bad Mexico or Puerto Rico would be if the US shunned them. They would colapse in 10 years. I give Castro prop's for playing a good game with a poorly delt hand. This is not to say that he is a great guy, I just dont think he is a bad as many think.
And as far as Cuba goes, my family comes from Cuba. Cuba is oppressive in terms of free speech, but it is far from the bloodbath that you describe it as. In fact, if you look at the latest U.N. statistics Cuba's quality of life is one of the highest in the world and tops among third world nations: it is close to on par with countries with hundreds of times their GDP, and it is only beneath those nations in quality becuase of embargos that limit their ability to distribute the goods that they have to sell. On TOP of that, Cuba holds one of the leading Biotech industries in the world; their advances rival the United States. They have developed a vaccine for Hepititis-C, a strain that has not been able to be vaccinated in the U.S. and that is not available to Americans because of said economic embargoes. They are also in the testing phases of medicine that cures certain forms of breast cancer without the need for radiation therapy. Cuba would be a highly advanced nation right now, if it weren't for the Communist-fearing embargoes placed upon them. If you want to talk about injustice in Cuba, or starving children, you're going to have to point the finger at the wealthy nations that restrict their trade.
You talk of intellectual honesty: perhaps you should consider that the views you hold about the left and about other countries might not be true after all.
-Vendal Thornheart
but as explained in a later post, the other countries that they speak about were not independant nations. Manchuria (or, at the time, Manchukuo) was under the soverignty of Japan shortly after the start of WWII. Xinjiang has been under the control of China for just over two millenia.
-Vendal Thornheart
I think the above post just shows that "Rightists" regimes are just as effective at propaganda. China's no more "Leftists" than Anne Rand.
Thank you. Someone who understands the not so subtle difference between government censorship and business decisions (maybe made for political reasons, but still made by a non-government entity). You have free speech, but no distributor is obligated to sell your speech.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I think the above post just shows that "Rightists" regimes are just as effective at propaganda. China's no more "Leftists" than Anne Rand.
Then you don't understand the political spectrum. USSR, China = Left. WWII Italy = Right.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Interesting stuff, thanks.
And lots of US people like to cry about Pearl Harbour(Which, in light of evidence such as letters and US military archives, wasn't a surprise attack) and the World Trade Center, conveniently neglecting Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the camps lots of asian people were put in during WW2, the genocide campaigns against the native americans etc etc.
There is nothing wrong with corporate censorship. A corporation can decide what it wants to distribute or not, and what it wants to be associated with. Are you saying that corporations should distribute everything, including ant-minority films, or pro-neonazi films, no matter what the backlash?
Disney didn't stop Farenheight 9/11 from being at Cannes, it can't stop the film from going to another distributor. All it is doing is saying it is not in their best interest to be associated with that kind of political movie
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
...they go from being repressed by the state, to being repressed by large corporate interests and the state. Great trade. Basic capitalism says you want to buy cheap, sell expensive, reap the difference.
It is, cruelly and economically put, rational for corporations to preserve the chinese society as a source of cheap labor. If not them, then some other poor people of the earth. That's why you see so little real desire for change among the decision makers.
The state is happy, the corporations are happy, the rest of the world is happy because of cheap products, and the citizens... well, who asks them anyway? That is, if they get to know enough to dissent, and feel their situation is bad enough to want to do something about it.
It's the modern version of slavery, on a global scale. It's a lot cleaner, and a lot less obvious, but the interests are pretty much exactly the same. Produce at subsistance wages, the owner (state) and distributors (large corporations) reaping the profits.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The Book of History : describes an era when China, such as it was, was a collection of feudal states that only covered the Yellow River basin.
The Records of the Grand Historian : describe a time when China controlled the Yellow and the Long river basins, with outposts further out but not much else. Also describes the destruction of a tyrannical empire.
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: China is split into three parts again, all of which together are nowhere as large as China is today.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Actually, I constantly see essays in the Village Voice about how Cuba and China squash dissidents.
What would happen if a game had all Linux boxen named "SCONIX" instead? Slashdotters would probably push for a ban ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
Your rape analogy has it's roles arse about, as far as the "lefties" are concerned. I think the idea is that it's more like the US raping the muslim states and 9/11 being analogous to the rape victim kicking the rapist in the balls. The rapist then, of course, beats the crap out of his victim for having the temerity to defend themselves.
Note that I don't necessarily agree with this view, but then I don't necessarily agree with your's either. If you want intellectual honesty, take the time to honestly try to empathise with the point of view of those with whom you DON'T agree, rather than just those with whom you DO agree.
How did the US and the UK "let" the Holocaust happen? It took place in Nazi-occupied parts Europe which we were busy attempting to liberate. Should we have fought harder to get there sooner?
Chamberlain. He gave it up more then a Dallas prom queen. Arguably without him and other pacifists, hitler would have had no where near the space to manuever. Also if they didn't bitch slap germany after WWI so hard WWI arguebly woudl never have happened, the Nazi's wouldn't have arisen, and no holocaust woudl have happened.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
And Manchuria was a seperate country, a puppet state of Japan under the rule of Pu Yi, the last emperor.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
But otherwise, your points are well noted.
-FL
Games have been banned before. As well, the people are so well programmed that you don't even need to ban something in order to get industry figures to refuse to carry or distribute it.
In any case, the analogy is not a good one; A game depicting a horror 'What If' scenario like the one described would be promoted here because of the fear factor it would create and the resulting support for Draconian government.
-FL
Good prediction there. :D
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
Yes, the point you nimrods are supposed to be arriving at after FIVE THOUSAND OF THE EXACT SAME POST is that atrocities committed by various powerful nations can not be dismissed by comparing them to other atrocities and saying "Well, X atrocity is worse so it's not bad that Y atrocity occurred just now".
How hard is it to understand that ALL horrible acts are horrible?
You do realise that you dont' get much of the news the rest of the world gets. This is corprate self-censoryship. Farenheight 9/11 is an obvious if somewhat weak example. When a incident arises in the middle east, say you bombed a wedding party. The US media will spin in as positive a light as possible because the majority of the News audience doesn't respond well to havign their side becoem the bad guy. In the rest of the world we hear most of the story. When you bombed A platoon of Canadian soldiers, US media spun it as an accident, while the rest of the world heard how the pilots were told to "disengage" but decided to be heroes and disobeyed orders.
Farenheight 9/11 is propaganda from a anti-republican individual. It's not being activly oppressed but it is havign a hard time finding distibution, for fear of government punishment on the distributor. Think of it this way, a corporation is in business for money. The film is garenteed to make a profit (moore has a build in audience). Disney refused to distribute it, likly for fear of "bad" treatment if they do.
Although the US has very little Active censorship (aside from sex), they do have a lot of filterign that happens for different reasons, thus you get a US positive view of the world. But incidentally most of the world doesn't lik you too much. As someone else pointed out, it's not what you got, but how you behave. Like a grade school bully who has a rich family.
Quickie examples:
the USA promotes free trade. The USA slaps tarrifs on Canadian softwood lumber, because the US lumber lobby put enough money in Government coffers. The USA loses the WTO ruling, this tarrif is said to be unfair by a trade body the US helped create. (hippocrites)
Canada has 1 case of BSF, the US closes all borders to Canadian beef. The US has 1 case of BSF, attributes it to a Canadian supplier, no evidence exsists for this. Canada substatially beefs out it's detection methods, the USA keeps it's old detection methods (the ones the canadians were using before). Border stays closed. Reason: US ranchers lobby put enough money in Government coffers to keep it closed.
And all this is to your "best friend" and neighbor. I hate to see how you fuck over your non-friends.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Karma to burn, but I need to vent. Let's go.
Yeah, that's a courageous position to take.
China is already a thoroughly capitalist country-- that is, a state capitalist country, in which the whole country is basically run for the profit of the state-owned industry.
Is it? Is that the central design coming from Bejing? Or is it just the fact that at the core, it still is a Soviet-style economy, but it's greatly in need of funding to keep things running. And only certain areas of the country are generating enough capital, which in turn goes to line the pockets of government officials, so they look the other way while the influx of capital slowly erodes central control, (brining with it the freedom of discretionary spending).
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
You know, this is both false and needlessly condemnable. When I was in school not four years ago, protesters used to glut the lobby of the student union twice a year trying to Free Tibet. Clinton tried to use the cessation of human rights violations in Tibet as incentive to bring China into most favored nation status. And both sides have been toying with the idea of removing trade restriction with Cuba if Castro should step down. Everybody is worried about China's human rights...but there are only three ways to affect another nation's policy: through espionage, through economic sanctions or through the threat of force. Nobody wants to start a war with China...because, well, we would lose a lot of OUR people. Double standard? Maybe, but no worse than a war that killed over six thousand civilians in Afghanistan, or one that killed nine thousand in Iraq, both for very nobel causes and to prevent human right violations.
The "Left" has been caterwauling about Israel's occupation of Palestine because Israel seems incapable of compromise. The Israeli military and extremist groups are at least as violent and intolerant as their Palestinian counterparts. It's not like blaming a rape victim for being raped...it's like two schoolboys fighting, each blaming the other for starting it. If I punch you and take your hat, do I get to keep your hat just because you punch me back?
The sad fact of Israel is, unless they stop being a military power and start being a friendly nation, they'll never gain the respect and recognition of their peers. And they need that! The whole terrorism issue besides, Israel is a nation that was basically invented in the 20th Century, living in an area that's hated them for thousands of years. Diplomacy might heal the rift...further violence never will, it will only result in the eventual irradication of the state of Israel and the detruction of the important religious areas therein.
Oh. If where you come from "intellectual honesty" means "creating straw man arguments," I suggest you move.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
And the response to that is simple:
You were legally entitled to make the post you just did. No one can throw you in jail for making the argument contained in your text.
Of course a great deal of spin, filtering and self-censorship goes on. Of course Big Media is going to present news in a fashion helpful to it financially and poltically. That's no surprise. But so long as dissent is legal and the marketplace of ideas isn't regulated by men with guns and jails, we're basically OK. You and I and anyone with a set of working vocal chords (or typing fingers) is free to respond to whatever nonsense the powers-that-be present with whatever resources we have available to us.
As Japan refused to surrender, nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki eliminated the need for an invasion of Japan, which would have cost many more lives - for both sides.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm glad you feel also that people should be required to fund others expressions.
I plan on expressing myself by quitting my job and playing videogames. Please send money cash or check to fund my free speech. If you don't you're commiting censorship!
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
You do realize that, fundamentally, there's no difference between the censorship in the US and China, right?
The basic pattern is to threaten people where they hurt in the given context. In China, the natural lever is inprisonment. In the US, it's money. The use of the lever can be direct ro indirect, but the principle stays the same.
Also, the effect of purporting a lie as the official truth is the same, whether the government does that directly or private corporations do it for the government. If you have no access to an alternate opinion, "freedom of speech" is a moot point, as you had been trained to accept the "one truth" without blinking. And even if, after you've been indoctrinated with the official truth, you hear someone voicing a different oppinion, you're more likely to consider that person mad - after all, everyone knows what the "truth" is.
This is the line China is taking now - repeat something strong enough and for long enough and it will become truth.
Free speech is worthless by itself. You need at least an open-minded education to be able to begin and understand/use it.
You are a complete and utter dumbass. Radical Islamists Like Osama and team, believe in one thing only; the re-establishment of the Caliphate for all the Umma. That means that YOU, as a non-believer would face either death, or a life of second class citizenship, should western nations "do the right thing" in the eyes of Islam and submit to Islamic rule. Don't believe their rhetoric that says "leave our lands or face the consequences." They have been saying that to their neighbors and enemies since about 700 AD when Islam started it's march across the globe.
Oh my gawd, they killed kenny's mod points!!!!
Scenario 1: The US bombs a gathering of rebels. The rebels claim it was a "wedding party" (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
Scenario 2: The US bombs a wedding party. US spokesmen claim it was a gathering of rebels (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
Now, I won't say which I think is more likely. Are the rebels lying, or did the US make a mistake?
(Most of the rest of your criticisms are dead on. This particular one just irks me.)
Human/Ranger/Zangband
No, it's not.
If I buy a bootleg copy of Hearts of Iron in China and get caught by the police, what will happen to me? I could go to prison, a nice comfy Chinese prison, for a very long time.
If I buy a bootleg copy of Fahrenheit 9/11, what will happen? I can't get caught by the police, because it's not a crime. (Selling without permission of the copyright holder is illegal, buying is not.) I can pop it in my DVD player and go to town, invite my friends, call the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the President and tell them all, "I'm watching Fahrenheit 9/11, and you can kiss my ass!" Nothing will happen.
In fact, I won't even have to buy a bootleg. The movie is now legally unencumbered, and I'm sure they will find a distributer very soon. Because we live in a, you know, free country, all you need is one maverick movie house who sees the incredible amount of money that film can bring in, and you have a nationwide Friday-night release.
Corporate censorship is bad, but it should never be compared to government censorship. There is an enormous difference between simply refusing to distribute a work, and punishing anyone who possesses a work.
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capable of litigation, making soap and picture frames these days. I would gladly buy American IF what I need was available in "made in the US" version and was higher quality than its Chinese equivalent.
Sorry folks, I don't need "handmade soap", candles, and $50 picture frames. I did appreciate "Assembled in the US" sign when buying my new Toyota, though. It looks like Japanese companies care about US economy a lot more than US companies. They also don't outsource the manufacturing of high quality stuff to third world countries, and think that if you pay big bucks for something you have to get what you've paid for, a genuine Japanese-made quality product.
I feel that Japanese companies have chosen the right overall direction. They focus more on efficiency, not just on the abstract "cost". If you can manufacture ten times more stuff by employing one worker and having an efficient process in place - that's what a Japanese company would do.
An American company will just outsource the manufacturing to the countries which use child labor, hire two dozen workers there and not change the process (to do this you have to have a manager with brains and courage - a rarity in US corporate world).
What we're having now in the US is the direct result of hiring brain-dead hand-waving fast-talking morons to manage people and companies.
My point wasn't the right for moore to get distibuted. I think he's like Billy graham. He preaches to the converted.
My point is there is censorship in america. Whether it be your puritanical network censorship of nudity. or your heavily filtered news media.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
False. No "lefties" would ever say such a thing. They might, however, say that America could have prevented 9/11 by stepping up intelligence or maybe that America's foreign policy created an atmosphere that facilitated 9/11, but no one could reasonably hold America RESPONSIBLE for the attacks on 9/11.
You can't always get away with straw man logic. I'm glad the mods caught it.
They'd rather subsist under a tyrant then die under a freedom fighter.
I used to work with a number of Chinese scientists who'd come to the US for grad school. Some of them clearly intended to stay here as long as possible, but others were more nationalistic. I asked one student (who had pictures of Zhou Enlai and the aftermath of the Naking massacre on his desk) why obviously intelligent people like him continued to put up with the Communists. He said it was because the situation in China kept improving: they now have some form of capitalism, better technology, continuing superpower status, and so on. And as you suggest, as long as you follow the rules you'll do pretty well. He said that if things got worse, they might be more inclined to want a change of government, but right now nobody wanted to rock the boat. I guess if your parents lived through the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, modern China must seem pretty terrific.
I've heard similar claims made about the US, although they're usually made by people who think we're not communist enough.
In my book, buldozing thousands of palestinian homes is a war crime, not winning "fair and square".
Who's the bigger patriot? A man who volunteered to go to war, went overseas, saw first hand combat, killed the enemy and was injured three times, who decided that the war he fought in was not accomplishing anything and needed to be stopped before more people died needlessly?
Or a man who joined the reserves, asked not to be sent overseas, and spent the war skipping out on his duty?
Not supporting an arbitrary war doesn't make you a pacifist. We're telling our troops that they are fighting to protect America's freedom. If the war proves to have no net positive effect, directly or indirectly, on our freedom, and indeed devolves into wholesale slaughter with no gains, what're you supposed to do? Keep fighting and trying to win a war nobody believes in? Or back out in shame?
Incidentally, in the past 40 years, how many generals won the presidency? How many lawyers? Are you claiming we wouldn't vote for Washington or Lincoln anymore just because they weren't governors?
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Yeah, it's so hard for Americans to find foreign news. It would be cool if there was a box you could sit down in front of that would somehow talk to foreign news organizations and get their news. They could hook up to organizations like Le Monde, Xinhua, Pravda, and the BBC, and let you read the stories they put out. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep dreaming.
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Scenario 1: The US bombs a gathering of rebels. The rebels claim it was a "wedding party" (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
Scenario 2: The US bombs a wedding party. US spokesmen claim it was a gathering of rebels (everyone has guns at wedding parties, right?). US and foreign journalists pick up conflicting reports.
This is true. IT could be either side. The BBC stated that the facts were insifficient at this time to tell for sure and gave some time to each idea. How many americans think it's a terrorist sect for sure? Also, it may be even a different scenario. It was a real wedding party but when the wedding was in progress the ussual rifle firing was going on, and soem cheeky guest Aimed for a passing plane. It would not be unlikly. Then is becomes a stupid and tragic incident instead of "another example of US malevolence" or "another example of GI joe getting the bad guys".
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
ehhe. Thats cheeky. You also have to remember language is a barrier. Most Americans don't read french or chinese or russian. And yes, some don't even read English.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
It's disturbing how hard it is for the masses to effectively control their government, and not the other way around. The very few deciding the destiny of millions and rewriting history as they see it.
Here in America we would never have such.... wait a sec, there's someone at my door...
Or he uses a compass instead of a ruler.
Good game. There are a couple of things in the chinese complaint that makes sense. Japan having 'territorial claims' on tibet makes no sense. This is true, but as a gameplay mechanic its needed for the japanese AI to attack china. In terms of soverign nations in the game any sort of semi autonomous region gets independence, in the in game map sense only a small portion of india is direcly under british rule the remainder are several separate nations who are allied with britian (and basically vassals or colonies but technically separate nations) as well as some other wholely independent ones. It is certainly fair if you want to be historically accurate to say japan has no territorial claims on any of china, but from a gameplay standpoint the only way the AI will attack is to give them territorial claims.
One of the other arguements made by the chinese is a hard one to escape. HOI (and Victoria empire under the sun which is their latest 1836-1920 game) don't very well capture things like gas, terror bombing doctrine (say obliterating a city with heavy bombers), concentration camps etc... In game terms in HOI japan and germany are just other nations, they have a different governement yes, but there isn't much of a 'evil' effect from that. If you have a game where the holocost doesn't happen it's not historically accurate, and if you were a victim of the holocost (and the like) that omission is very relevant. The chinese have every right to feel the same about how the japanese treated them. I'm not sure that means banning the game is appropriate but at least requiring some indication of the 'gameplay vs reality' in the box is fair. HOI doesn't use a nazi flag, at all, because if they did it wouldn't be legal for sale in germany, so there's no easy balance here.
Well, I don't read Russian, so I have no idea what the fuck Pravda was saying when I linked to it. I can read Le Monde without any extra effort. I could get an idea of what the headlines on Xinhua are about if you gave me some time and a dictionary; I'd do a little better with a radio or TV feed. (And yes, for reference, I am American.)
Of course, the most prestigious non-English news organizations often have an English version available. Pravda and Xinhua do; oddly, Le Monde apparently does not, which is too bad, but of course it doesn't really affect me directly.
However, many Americans don't pay attention to anything except the horrible 30-minute national news segment on their local network affiliate. My point is that Americans aren't prevented from accessing foreign news. If many of them choose not to, that is too bad, but these people do not represent all of us. Saying something like "you don't get much of the news the rest of the world gets" is patently untrue. I do get much of the news the rest of the world gets. Some people don't, but that's their own fault. No one is stopping them. If nobody has bothered to package it up into sound bytes and cram it into a 30-minute evening TV program with lots of animations, well, life is hard. The ability is there. If the people don't use it, they have only themselves to blame.
Interestingly, this goes for China as well. The Great Firewall won't stop you from reading CNN, BBC, Le Monde, USA Today, or even FOX News. (Yes, I've tried it. No proxies or subterfuge required.)
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Yeah, I used to think this too, and then I started listening to Michael Moore and realized that forming an international coalition to attack a genocidal nutjob who has threatened to destroy other nations is never justified.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
For the wise mod(s) that marked me flamebait, here's what a flamebait should look like - watch and learn:
/. mods care about is the one to download p0rn. Anyway, I'm done, mod/flame away, I have karma to burn today.
If you think that pointing out flaws about the US mithology of freedom is a flamebait, you sir are an idiot. You probably sit on your ass most of the day and wait for others to "guarantee" your "rights" - or maybe they're God-given and all who trample them (muslims or not) will burn in Hell for eternity.
Here's a newsflash for you: freedom is never 'free' - you must pay for it, and the more valuable it is, the steeper the price. There is no free lunch, and the value of some liberty you claim you have is proportional to what you'd sacrifice in order to defend it. You, from your real life and posessions, not some abstract soldier in a corner of the Earth calld Afganistan or Iraq, that you would more often than not have trouble finding on a map.
Nah, why do I even bother - the only freedom most
Okay, I'll play the deconstructionism game. "2 + 2 = 4". Is this objective or subjective truth? If the latter, what's the opposing truth? Or is this sum just a piece of propaganda which has been perpetrated over the course of millennia?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Any film by Michael Moore is the worst example you can give. This is the type of person that distorts everything he doesn't like to make it fit why he doesn't like it. Admittedly I've only watched Bowling for Columbine, but if that's any indication of his style, I don't need to see anymore. There's enough falsehoods and outright lies in that movie to turn him off completely.
And like others have said, corporate censorship is not the same as government censorship. I'd be behind you all the way if it was the government censoring this movie, but it's not, so shut the hell up.
> Tibet *was* an independent sovereign nation
Yes, it was a autonomous repressive theocracy based on a feudal system with serfs with almost no rights while the monks ran everything from controlling currency to taking children from their homes and turning them into monks.
Of course the free tibet people won't tell you this.
I'm not taking any sides on the people's communist revolution vs. a small theocracy but if we're going to talk about history its important to know that the very same Lama who does talk shows and is an inspiration to millions cared nothing for democracy and was the first Lama to use modern arms and sent his men to their deaths when they fought the far more capable (both in technology and training) and numerous people's army.
Basically anything that can be construed as glorifing the Nazis is banned, and that includes playing a game where you can be them. The reason for this isn't because they are trying to pretend like WWII and the Holocaust never happened, but quite the opposite. They still see this as an enormous black mark on their country and they allow nothing that makes it look anything but bad.
An over reaction, to be sure, but an understandable one and something you can respect a little more. China is banning things that don't agree with their offical version of history. Germany is banning things that could be seen as glorifing what they consider to be their darkest days.
When a incident arises in the middle east, say you bombed a wedding party.
Do you have any proof, from independent unbiased reporters (not Al-Jazeera), that a wedding party was intentionally bombed? All I've heard are reports from the afore mentioned news agency, which is so obviously pro middle east it's not even funny, and no one else.
The US media will spin in as positive a light as possible because the majority of the News audience doesn't respond well to havign their side becoem the bad guy.
The US media has been doing everything BUT spin the war positively. All reports that come from servicemen and women over there are positive. All reports that come from the media are negative. Why is that? Because bad news gets ratings. It's as simple as that.
Take a look at the difference in coverage between the prison abuse scandal and the beheading of a civilian contractor. The media was all over the military abuse but barely touched the beheading. Why is that? Because everyone hates the US military of course. If they were reporting on real atrocities (being humiliated is not an atrocity, at least you're still alive) then they would've covered the beheading a whole helluvalot more than they did.
The US media sure is biased, but they're biased against the US (CNN, mainstream news, etc).
I'd be behind you all the way if it was the government censoring this movie, but it's not, so shut the hell up.
ironic isn't it. paraphrasing: I don't support censoring, now stop giving your opinion.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Do you not know anyone who's gotten married in the last few decades? In the USA, women certainly can keep their surname after marriage. Simply... continue using it! If you don't explicitly change government IDs, you retain the existing name. Nothing to it.
Did I or did I not point out that this wasn't MY point of view but merely A point of view? MY point was that if you want intellectual honesty, you have to be genuinely prepared to look at and understand the other person's point of view.
What I put forward was a popular viewpoint and one not entirely without merit. Given that the the US was merrily financing and encouraging the Taliban as a useful proxy to fight the Soviets in the 80s because "fanatics fight better" and because they didn't want to get their own hands dirty, is it really surprising that the Taliban felt somewhat used and bitter when the US dumped them with utterly no support after the part of the exercise that the US were interested in had finished? Whatever their faults might be, the Taliban had reason to be pissed off. Note that this doesn't mean that I condone their actions. Re-read that last sentence so that you actually absorb it before you flame me about allegedly approving of the 9/11 attacks.
Pitting the locals against someone you don't like as a proxy (Taliban in Afghanistan, Kurds in Iraq, etc) works well if you want to function as an annexing power and ensure that no one group gets too powerful, but it certainly won't make you any friends; especially if you promise some kind of support for that group and then abandon them. Again, sound familiar? I'd suggest that the US not be too complacent about counting the Kurds in Iraq as friends or even neutrals in the months and years to come.
I certainly don't like or agree with the bulk of the actions of militant Islamic groups myself. However, this doesn't mean that there isn't good reason for the discontent behind those actions, even if the actions themselves are abhorrent. Nor does it mean that any other militant faction, religious, political or otherwise is any less reprehensible. You're still righteously enraged over ~3000 deaths 2½ years ago. That's fair enough, but don't think that your country is the only one to have suffered unprovoked attacks resulting in thousands of deaths. And don't think that unilaterally invading a country on a pretext that has been shown to be utterly false (and I'll retract that statement when those stockpiles of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons are found) doesn't count as the action of a militant faction. Clear and present danger my pert buttocks.
Oh, and just to bring this all back on topic, how would you and/or your government react to a game entitled "Resistance Force, Iraq!" or perhaps "Resistance Force, Grenada!" where you play as a resistance fighter using guerilla tactics against occupying US forces? It might not be banned, but enraged parent groups and conservatives would certainly lobby for that to happen. Yeah, you're so tolerant...
The US media sure is biased, but they're biased against the US (CNN, mainstream news, etc).
From my point of view in canada it seems the other way around.
There is also a creeping anti-canadian sentiment. It started as light hearted jokes from the Simopsons and Family guy but When I visited america last month I recieved a lot of mean spirited questions and comments. Admittidly from my GF's teenage brother.
Comments like "You guys are free loading off our military spending", "you guys have no military", "Why don't Canadians pull their wieght".
CNN may latch on to the bad stories but their still fairly pro-US. Check out BBC more often to see more balanced stories.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Peter: I'll take it. Hello, China? I have something you might be interested in... that's right, all the tea...
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
I've seen Japan-occupied Manchuria referred to as "Manchukuo" before, but there is no "kuo" character in Japanese (though it's possible to spell it phonetically). The Japanese word for "Manchuria" is "manshuu" and Japan-occupied Manchuria is "manshuukoku" ("koku" is "country"). So is "Manchukuo" a bastardization of the spelling or something? What is the deal?
The 1.2 million figure comes from Tibetan exiles. As Machiavelli noted centuries ago, exiles will say or do anything -- lie, cheat, steal -- to take revenge on the government that expelled them.
Modern examples: the WMD claims made by Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi; and the "baby incubator" story from Kuwaiti exiles that suckered the U.S. into Gulf War I.
I suggest you take that 1.2 million figure with a ton of salt.
Nevermind, I just figured it out. "Manchukuo" is the Chinese word for Japan-occupied Manchuria, written in the old romanization system (Wade-Giles?). The modern spelling (pinyin) would be "manzhouguo." Isn't Chinese romanization confusing?
So you're comparing all Americans to your GF's, more than likely ignorant, teenage brother? Yeah, that makes sense.
And I don't need to check out the BBC to get balanced stories. I can check more than one US news source. For the record, I don't watch CNN or the mainstream news because everytime I turn it on to get a different point of view, I see them leaving things out that other sources have reported. Give me all the facts and then let me make my own decision. That's the news I like and it's the news I usually read/see/hear.
Give your opinion all you want. You seem to be upset about corporate censorship and how it's the same as government censorship. It's not the same, period. Speak out about them censoring it if you like, but until the government starts censoring things I have no problem with it. It really just comes down to 1 individual, the CEO, deciding that he doesn't want to distribute it. It's no different from one friend telling another "Hey, shut the hell up, I don't want to hear it." Same thing.
:P
And let me correct you "I support personal censorship of things I don't want to hear"
So you're comparing all Americans to your GF's, more than likely ignorant, teenage brother? Yeah, that makes sense.
He seems a rather representative individual. Southern Californian. 18. Going to University next year. honor student. Watches TV news.
It is true that most Americans aren't the Unwashed idiots some portray them to be. It's also true that soem are. And little biases work their way into every individual. I have a few, I dislike Islamic governments. Especially psuedo-theocracies and full on theocracies.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"Free Tibet" sticker owners are nothing but bandwagoners. Do you see stickers about "Free Algerians who got their heads cut off by extremists" or "Free [insert oppressed African minority group]"? The only reason the "Free Tibet" sticker is on is because some celebrities endorsed it. Nothing more. Some people go a little further and deify the Dalai Lama as some saviour of human rights in Tibet. What a crock. This is the same guy who at one time ran a theocracy in Tibet (and sicced scorpions on people who didn't pay their taxes on time) - yes, the same guy who got the obviously politically motivated Nobel Peace Prize. History has repeatedly shown that the whole "my enemy's enemy is my friend" thing usually doesn't work out too well in the end.
I will agree that little separates the plight of the Tibetans and the plight of the Hutus and tutsis, the blacks of Darfur, etc. The Dalai Lama can be thanked for raising awareness of the tribulations the Tibetan people are going through. I'd be interested in any of your sources for supposed atrocities the Tibetans committed to warrant Chinese invasion--sounds pretty propaganda riddled to me. And yes, the Dalai Lama WAS a theocratic ruler in Tibet--clearly mcuh worse than the emperors of China, or the modern day communist emperors of China. Perhaps you should read some of the Dalai Lama's works if you're so skeptical, and really don't see what the fuss is about.
Well, seriously, the damage has been done a long time ago. Tibet has been continuously ruled by China (via the Qing Dynasty) for several hundreds years prior. Waiting another few more years before the Communist Party disintegrates in the very near future won't be too bad. The rising Chinese middle class will inevitably change things in that region - all for the better.
China DID rule parts of Tibet for a time under the Qing, yes. How much effective power did they have and for how long? Also, there's that little obnoxious period when Chinese emperors sent princesses and other goods as payment to the powerful Tibetan empire...should China todayt be part of Tibet because of historical political relations?
Your point about the Chinese middle class is both apt and horrifying--the forced movements of people by the Chinese government to reach forced sinicization (sp?) and the destruction of any indigenous peoples is just ridiculous.
Ok, here the leap. A Corporation is a legal entity. It can have great power and is controlled by a few individuals, someitmes they are elected.
A government is a legal entitiy. It can have great power and is controlled by a few individuals, sometimes they are elected.
(note: this is more hahahah it's funny, then a serious attempt at comparing the two. so don't mod me down -10 obviously worng. Also don't mod up +1 insightful.)
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I should clarify... they seek to avoid the mistakes of Gorbachev. I'm aware that Gorbachev wanted a smooth transition, but the particular reforms he implemented had a sort of domino effect that led to the unintended dissolution of the entire Soviet system.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Hogwash. This betrays a complete lack of knowledge of Chinese and Tibetan history. Imperial China routinely claimed sovereignty over every state with which it had diplomatic relations, on the theory that the Emperor could only enter into the relationship of master to vassal, including Japan, Okinawa (an independant country until 1609), Korea, and Vietnam. The Qing dynasty may have claimed sovereignty over Tibet, but Tibet was de facto an independent state and did not acknowledge Chinese sovereignty. The Qing did not exercise effective control of Tibet. Nor did the Qing carry out, or for that matter, even attempt, the cultural genocide that the People's Republic has engaged in. The Qing didn't destroy thousands of temples, kill thousands of monks and nuns, suppress the use of the Tibetan language, and settle millions of Han colonists in Tibet. The destruction of Tibetan culture began in 1951, not during the Qing.
In any case, as a matter of international law, the critical fact is that in 1951, at the time of the Chinese invasion, Tibet was an independant state. It had a distinctive population occupying a well-defined territory under the effective control of its own government. The government of Tibet issued currency and passports that were internationally recognized. It entered into diplomatic relations as a sovereign nation with other countries, including Nepal,Mongolia, Great Britain, and Ladakh. In fact, The Republic of China negotiated with Tibet as a sovereign nation at the Simla Conference in 1913-1914.
Notice that the parent contradicts himself. He claims that Tibet was under the control of the Qing, then justifies Chinese occupation of Tibet by the claim that the traditional government headed by the Dalai Lama was an oppressive theocracy. Unless he wants to adopt the implausible view that the traditional government somehow developed between 1911 (end of the Qing) and 1951, by critizing the traditional government he is admitting that the Qing did not in fact control Tibet.
In any case, if the traditional government was oppressive, and it did indeed have its faults, that doesn't justify the introduction of an equaly if not more oppressive foreign government, nor does it justify massive Chinese colonization and cultural genocide. An internal revolution in Tibet might have been justified (though in fact the current Dalai Lama, who was 17 years old at the time of the Chinese invasion, has proved to be a reformist who would no doubt have made considerable changes), but the only legitimate role that China or other foreign countries might have played would have been to assist Tibetans in establishing a more just government.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Christ, you're an arrogant fuck. So we should assume that most "non-americans" can all ready french, chinese, and russian. Your point it moot.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
It's also true that not all canadians aren't beer swilling lumberjacks, but some are. Wow, really representative huh? For one who talks so much about ignorance and media brainwashing, it sounds like you might be a little too affected by these independant news outlets (IndyMedia maybe?).
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
It seems that everyone is so sure about theire position. And blame propagandat affecting their mind.
:P
But what is the REAL truth, because after all, in North America, there is a BIG propaganda that Tibet is NOT part of China. Whereas, with in the contry it is saying that Tibet IS.
1) Are you all historians?
2) Can you actualy read Antique Chinness Caligraphy Which Survived WWII?
3) Do you actualy have these documents?
So we are stuck with one major problem, the only people who can actualy verify the facts are chinesse historian living in china. which for a fact, may or may not saying the truth due to political enforcement. Yet, outside the contry, strong political reason makes Tibet a strategic military stronghold in advent of invasion of china. In short, both party (inside and outside) will or may curently have strong interest of persuading their point of view.
The truth is out there, not what the news is saying, in ancient chinesse scroll
Actually, in 40 years, no generals, 3 lawyers. 17 of the 43 Presidents were governors, and only 3 of the 8 in the last 40 years were governors, so I would hardly say that's the trend.
To answer your political point, I would harther have a president who served without distinction, than one who served only to return to criticize his peers. Or to put it in terms you would understand, I would rather have someone who joined the reserves and did his time without incident (obviously since little records exist, he did nothing that drew attention to himself), than one who joined the military only to tell his fellow soldiers he had joined for political gain, who exited early under the 3 purple heart rule yet will not release any records explaining his injuries that led to the medals. And I wont even go into how he threw "his" awards away...
"No one is thrown into jail because of this game. They just banned this game, so no one can make money from distributing it."
You'd be punished (through jail time? I have no idea.) for distributing it after it's been put on the banned list.
Spoken like a true A/C. Kudos to you and your A/C brethren for invigorating this discussion.
Perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough, but I have not seen any US denial or suppression of those events. As I recall every single one of them was covered in my highschool history class. We also spent quite a bit of time on slavery and the US civil war, which you missed (chuckle).
The US does not make a game illegal for depicting any of those things, or for portaying Alaska as part of Russia or for portaying Texas as part of Mexico (all ture at certain historical dates). A game might be ridiculed but never illegal for portraying factually false borders or for making New York an independant nation.
Pearl Harbour
There is no question it was intended to be a surprise attack. There is no question that the attack occured before Japan declared war.
There is certainly speculation that some Americans may have known it was coming and kept quiet. Maybe there's some recent evidence I'm not aware of, but last I saw it looked like a weak and irrational conspiracy theory. The US would certainly still have gotten into the war based on that attack even if Pearl Harbor had been alerted and defended themselves, so there was really no purpose to cover up an impending attack.
Knowingly sacrificing almost the bulk of the fleet seems pretty implausible. The attack was devestating - Japan expected it to simply knock the US out of the war in one shot. US commanders would have viewed such a loss pretty much the same way. The aircraft carriers were not in port, but aircraft carriers were still pretty much untested and untrusted in war. Military doctrine still placed huge emphasis on battleships ruling the seas.
Had one or two of those aircraft carriers then been lost somehow the US would have had HUGE problems in the pacific. A tip in in power like that and all of the Aircraft carriers could have been lost. Japan could have wound up owning the entire pacific - Midway, Hawaii, Alsakan Aleutians, everything. Ground strength is nullified in a Pacific war with zero navy to transport and support them.
Maybe someone would sacrifice a ship to manuver a country into war, but no one sacrifices the bulk of their strength in the face of superior enemy forces. Japan had the superior force even before the Pearl Harbor. Japan had 10 Battleships to our 8. Japan had 11 carriers to our 6. Japan had 40 cruisers to our 34. Japan had 112 destroyers to our 67. Japan had 63 subs to our 56.
Conspiracy theories are easy to bake in hindsight - yeah Japan wound up losing. But at the time it simply would have been stupid to toss away the bulk of military strength like that. People certainly conspire to do nasty or even evil things, but when a supposed conspiracy has people doing stupid things then it's generally a crackpot theory.
As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
They were certainly horrendous, but are you so sure they were really worse than the war itself and the alternatives at that point? They certainly had no "smart bombs", consider the effect of daily bombers dropping thousands or tens of thousands of bombs to take out Japaneese military industry which was extensively cottage industry in civilian areas. Instead of two historic and horrific bombs and cities there would have been vastly more nameless death and destruction everywhere.
However the REAL atrocity would have been the women chidren standing on Japan's beaches armed with pointed babmoo sticks. Japan was attacking with kamikazis and accepting 10-to-1 losses of armed and trained soldiers in entrenched positions. Japan was going to continue fighting and line the shores with civilians fully expecting them "fight" and die by the million.
Women and school children with pointed sticks.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly horrendous, but the comming mainland invasion to end the war would have been absolutely obscene.
I dunno. I really do not envy the sitution and alternatives they were faced with.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You know, this post is just a short version of the post below it. This one got a -1, and the one below it a +5.
This place never ceases to confuse the hell out of me.
--- I'm going sane in a crazy world.
I own eight or nine Japanese products: Olympus digital camera, Canon film camera, four Canon lenses, Canon flash, Sony stereo, Sony DVD burner. Out of these products, only the DVD burner is made outside Japan. There goes your "they outsource everything too" argument.
Many lefties would go so far as to say 9/11 is America's fault.
Name me one year in your lifespan in which the U.S.A. has not bombed another country.
What comes around, goes around.
He who lives by the sword, dis by the sword.
You can't take the sky from me...
no one could reasonably hold America RESPONSIBLE for the attacks on 9/11.
I do.
I've been watching the U.S. bomb nation after nation, year after year, ever since I was old enough to watch the news. It was only a matter of time before it got bombed back. Karma.
I don't defend the bombing, it wasn't nice, but it wasn't unprovoked, or more cowardly than when its the U.S. that's doing the Shocking and Awing.
And since Osama was trained and funded by the CIA, the words "you reap what you sowe" come to mind...
P.S. I'm Canadian and pissed at the states for daring to say that we left you down on 9/11.
Remember those hundreds of planes that were over the U.S. or heading there on 9/11? They were all possible weapons, possibly full of terrorists. The U.S., understandibly spooked, closed its airspace. Where did those planes go? To Canada. When you were too scared to let them fly in your aispace, Canada let them come, by the hundreds, while the images of the planes hitting the towers were playing on a loop on TV, I was watching plane after plane coming from the U.S., going over the city's skyscraper...bunch of ungratefull bastards, you just go ahead and keep on making more enemies, pissing off more of your former allies...
You can't take the sky from me...
Delete the word "fiction" and change "physics" to "biology", and you'll find that very thing happened in the Soviet Union, in the form of Lysenkoism.
The world's energy supply? Since when was the world entitled to an energy supply? You're mistaking the status quo for physical reality and using it as a reason to justify all the non-combatants that have been killed. Just keeping the wheels greased is no reason to murder people.
You seem to have done your research and you know for a fact that Donald Rumsfeld has been evangelising the invasion of Iraq to 'secure future energy supplies' for over 15 years. Not to otherthrow a murderous dictator, but to keep the petroleum economy running smoothly. A lot of people in OPEC nations will see this as pretty good first step in channelling the last of the world's oil reserves into bootstrapping the next generation of energy production techniques for the benefit of the USA and leaving them penniless and marginalised. And they're going to feel very threatened and hurt more folk. And this is going to be used as a reason to drop a bunch of ordnance on more folk that have nothing to do with any of this. Cycle of violence. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. A cosy reason to buy more of everything that goes bang, as we've used them all up now. Now who gets that money?
Find some other way of getting your SUV moving and you can forget all this crap. Anything else is just being a sucker.
How many of those contracts can force a US company to return funds in the event of breach of contract, malfeasance, or mismanagement? Hmm? What are the penalty clauses? And who appointed the auditors? Has there been any public scrutiny of the contracts by any independent legal teams before the Iraqis were indentured for a generation?
The Iraqis are locked into contracts they can't get out of without serious economic backlash from US corporations, government, and courts. At the very least. If a democratically-elected governement tried to throw out US interests after taking control of their own country it's dollars to donuts they'd get re-invaded in a heartbeat.
And don't think I missed the qualification of direct taxes.
Oh, yeah, and I forgot:
The one motherfucker the Alliance didn't manage to kill, maim, or torture.One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
As an expanding oppressive regime, no.
As a check on the power of another expanding oppressive regime, absolutely.
You leave out a third and entirely possible scenario:
3: The US bombs a wedding party taking place amongst a gathering of rebels...
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
...is always interesting to observe.
But damned depressing, too.
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
Keep trying, you fools. I have karma to burn. In fact, what I think I will do from now on, if I see someone unjustly modded down, is repost their statement and use my karma bonus to push it to +2.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The "Palestinians" have a native land - it's called "nearly the rest of the middle east". They're ARABS! And if you want to be more specific, they have Jordan! That's the eastern part of the Palestine Mandate, and that's where the Arab population was to have (and has) sovereignty.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It's a crazy world, isn't it?
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors - Plato
Apart from some first year psychology college students, America doesn't have a Left. "Liberals" are considered center in the rest of the world. So, it's unfair to compare the American left with with socialist dictatorships. That's not America's problem. That's the "rest of the world"'s problem. Maybe when the spoiled teenage brats who are running EUnuchistan realize that Daddy's taken the car keys and gone home, they'll grow up a bit.
... in that area of the world, most males own firearms, usually at least an AK, for various reasons, and YES again, it is a big part of their culture to shoot them off at times of celebration.
That stuff is widely known, BTW, so it's not far fetched at all to believe the people's story at that massacre site. It's happened all over, just last week I was listening (radio interview)to a soldier who just got out, describing how his unit would shoot civilians at the drop of a hat.
You'll just have to face it, the US is starting to get pretty trigger happy over there. And right off the bat, just think on this, EVERYONE "detained" is automatically a terrorist, instantly a non human basically. That's official US policy. All you have to do is follow the news from more than a few places and you can see that. And they really don't care too much about killing innocents (collateral damage), because they had to go in and save innocents from getting killed, on the way to the WMD giant stashes, that were one second away from being launched towards the US. It's a sham really, and we are looking worse and worse every day around the world. On 9-11-2001 everyone around the planet sympathised with us, now they mostly distrust us, and it's PRECISELY from our governments official actions since then. No other credible explanation except that.
I live here, and I am fully confident in saying the bulk of the population here is just plain old fashioned jingoists. Wish I had a dime for every "nuke the ay-rabs!" I have heard from people or read on forums. And the less informed they are,by talking to them to find out, the more stupid sounding and violently racist they sound. That's the PLAN, that's why we have a mass media that operates like that, it's to keep people faked out, dumbed down and following in good little goose stepping fashion, whatever these "elites" think they want. And it WORKS. The theme of genocide is still alive and kicking, unfortunately it's coming from a lot of places, INCLUDING the US, and it's reflected in our governments actions, it speech patterns into officially recognized propoganda newspeak ("detainees"? how utterly intellectually dishonest, and almost every journalist out there still uses the term), and in our controlled large news media which DEFINETLY censors and massages anything important.
Beware of making broad statements like "Russians love to have a powerful leader." There are many nations in the world which have long histories of autocracy before converting to more liberal democratic systems. The fact that Russia hasn't made it so far is more likely due to the specific facts of Russian history and less likely due to broad cultural phenomenon. (Not that the latter can't have an impact on the former.)
Nationalism seems to really blind the Chinese.
They still overwhelmingly believe the US pilot in the slow, prop-driven plane rammed the Chinese jet fighter. R-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght.
If they can't build jet fighters that can keep up with those things, they can buy some WWII surplus planes from the Phillipines. I don't know where they'll find competent pilots.
They also resent it when their government is criticized for...oppressing them! Go ahead, I guess.
I don't read any "indymags". I read the Edmonton Sun (sorta like the fox news of the local papers. I do so because my father subscribes), BBC news (website), Edmonton Journal (more lik the bbc), and ocassionally google news.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Whoa whoa whoa cowboy. I didn't say a thing about any government lies or anything like that. I was simply stating that disney's decision to not carry Moore is not an infringement of his freedom of speech.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Internet access isn't available everywhere. And a large section of the US has no access. what the penetration? 60% of all house holds? that leaves 40%. not an insignifigant number.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
:). I'm just suggesting go look at an international source. And no I didn't suggest the alternative websites. Me I read only english but speak chinese and english with a little bit of filipino and indonesian.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
He's a Chinese national, but resides in Australia, reportedly.
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
I'll reply more later. But here's how it look to everyone else. A set of pilot attacked and killed allies. They killed people. They were told not to engage the target but did so anyways and they KILLED a group of allied soldiers that were doing some fire training. Now they only hurt some these men then slap their wrists, gound them for a week and moev one. But they KILLED 4 people.
They made a decision, they should face punishment for it. They did not get punished. Military is military but if you train your military men to disobey orders and to attack without confirmation, why the fuck are you sending these people out there.
Lets not forget THEY KILLED 4 people.
War is War, but don't tell me this is right in any way. Blame the pilots, fuck yeah. They killed 4 people on a whim. They were not taking on direct fire because they were not beign fired at, they could have flown away, rifle fire is not good at downing a retreatinf jet. But they wanted to score up a few more kills to stamp on their wings so they KILLED 4 servicemen. And there is no comfort for the families of those 4 because no one was punished. Lets also put this in perspective, they KILLED 4 people and they disobeyed orders, and got off scott free.
I'll repond more later.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
If they were reporting on real atrocities (being humiliated is not an atrocity, at least you're still alive) then they would've covered the beheading a whole helluvalot more than they did.
Being raped by a broomstick is an atrocity. It's more than just humiliating to be beaten with a chair.
Some of them aren't alive anymore, in case you aren't satisfied yet that something more than harmless "humiliation" is occuring.
In case you believed the official excuse, it isn't just a few individuals.
Bias and hate don't mitigate facts. There's a reason this is news.
The enemies of Democracy are
[American Heritage Dictionary] You raped a woman and call her a terrorist when she fights back.
After lots of thinking about the right or wrong,
aren't we fighting for a non-issure?
Isn't the rule of warfare something like, if you beat the crap out of the contry, you have full privileged over the land you conqured?
Japan invaded china, along with a few europen contries. They clam the land and mis-treated the chinesses for exception of the british (which i am not sure, please someone correct me, but i am assuming that if HK prospered so well, they were not miss treated). Then the people got pissed off, regouped and kick out the invaders, and in the processed expanded a bit their territory.
for the sake of detailed, the comunist and the capitalist fought for rulling the new piece of land. The Communist robed the rich to fund their army, while the Capitalist robed to poor to fund the their army (all this for obvious reasons). In the End, the communist outnumbered the capitalist because the the capitalist, because theire is just more poor that riches.
This is when the capitalist retreated to tawaii, and the communist seiged the area. and officialy the civil war did not ended yet.
So its all fair games no? you beat the crap out of the other you get to rule and convert them, so they don't fight back? where is the problem?
If this is not fair game, by all mean, please give back out land to the native americans, and destroy the whitehouse, to replace it by a giant tottem, and make peace with nature!
it isn't all bad actualy, no more polution, safe drinking of river waters.. blablabla.. it wouldn't be that bad neither.
And all this is to your "best friend" and neighbor. I hate to see how you fuck over your non-friends.
We bomb the everloving shit out of them and take over their country. Where the hell have you been?
Perhaps Vthornheart was thinking of Canada and Mexico? Not generally thought of as part of the United States, but sometimes folks do forget...
No, seriously, you really did misspell "Berkeley, California".
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
> Your point about the Chinese middle class is both apt and horrifying--the forced movements of people by the Chinese government to reach forced sinicization (sp?) and the destruction of any indigenous peoples is just ridiculous.
According to BBC news sources about 18 months ago (documentary on BBC World), the middle class Chinese have moved into Tibet and now the Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own region of the world. Chinese companies won't hire them, instead bringing in workers from further east. The best work they can get is selling tourist junk to visiting middle-class Chinese.
Tibetans seem to be effectively excluded from the benefits of development sent from Beijing.
Of course, this may not be deliberate on the part of Beijing central - there are a lot of middle-operators in there with their own agendas (which usually involve nepotism and pocket-lining, as with everywhere else in the 'developed' world).
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
As of 2002:
CHINA - - - - - -IRAQ
===================
authoritarian gummint?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
invades its neighbours?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
supports bad people who do bad things to us?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
have lame taste in pop music?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
Have weapons of Mass Destruction?
Yes - - - - - - - - No
has murdered many thousands, if not millions of its citizens?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
corrupt to the core?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
is opposed to free speech?
Yes - - - - - - - - Yes
has hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed at us?
Yes - - - - - - - - No
is an economic threat to our working classes?
Yes - - - - - - - - No
Is an up and coming superstate, to rival US (Oceania) and the EU (Eurasia)?
Yes - - - - - - - - No
has the world's second largest oil reserves?
No - - - - - - - - Yes
So, let's see: why didn't we invade China to liberate THEM from their evil gummint? Oh- that's right: the Chinese have nukes... So we'll invade Iraq on the pretext of it having WMD.
You think this is bull? Read THIS: it's intense and amazing. Iraq is just a side show. China's the main course, and don't forget it. They are the only thing standing in the way of Eurasia and Oceania. Eurasia will get Oceania to blow its military power on side shows, and founder on the rocks of China. This will leave China spent, the USA a leftover empire in a death spiral, and an Expanded (Russia Inclusive) and ascendent Eurasia, spanning from Portugal to Alaska.
No matter what, Europe wins, as long as the USA insists on a unipolar geopolitic. IF we agree to a multipolar system (like what Clinton was trying to wedge us into) then we can use the down time to develop ourselves and surpass both EastAsia and Eurasia, without having recourse to sideshows like Iraq.
The Great OZ has spoken.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Taiwan was under Japanese control since 1895, and "Manchuria", "West Xinjiang", and "Tibet" were not part of China at the time. The first was a Japanese puppet, the second a haven for a warlord and the local Turkic Muslims, and the last was still a free country. It is amazing the mind games the Chinese government tries to play with their history, although it is nothing new. The First Emperor burned all the ancient records from before his reign and the Han Emperor later on made sure they were the ones to tell the story of the wicked Chin dynasty. If they could have banned historically based Strategy games, they surely would have done it.
What I want to know is when that stupid tradition of firing guns at weddings started. Do you think that, during active military operations in your country, you might want to break tradition?
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Which is exactly in accordance with their training. Their training specifically said that they do not need target confirmation to defend themselves, but always ask for confirmation. This was a carefully designed system that allows the pilots (whose lives, safety, and sanity depend on their confidence in combat) to react without second guessing their every decision.
They have fire-and-forget weapons. They cannot function in battle if they fire a weapon and then spend the next 3 minutes worried that their career is over. They will hesitate to fly into combat if they need someone else's permission to defend themselves - and that someone else is hundreds of miles away, supporting multiple aircraft, and "informed" via satellites and computer systems which are never failsafe. The target confirmation system works marvelously when making an offensive attack. It was never intended to be used for authority to defend oneself.
Now, the pilots thought that they were defending themselves. That was a horrible mistake. These were well trained and experienced pilots. If you punish these pilots for defending themselves according to their orders, what do you expect every other pilot to think? "Those guys followed orders and got shit canned, I guess I'm supposed to sit on my thumbs until some geek 500 miles away says it's ok to shoot back." What's that going to do to their morale? Their ability to perform their duties? Their confidence and sanity when under fire? This situation is wholly unacceptable.
Friendly fire situations like the one we're talking about are awful situations but you cannot treat them like an ordinary crime. Acting in the military is following orders not because it's fun or you think the orders are good, but because that is what you have been told to do. If you follow those orders and something goes wrong, it is absolutely wrong to hold the guy responsible. You can question the system, rebuild the training program, put in checks and balances, but killing the messenger is a bad reaction.
If the pilots in question had not acted according to their training, my response would have been very different.
"There is no vaccine against HCV. Research is in progress but the high mutability of the HCV genome complicates vaccine development."
Now, I need to make a correction to my prior statement, which may have caused to much confusion. I was referring to Meningitis-C and not Hep-C in the above post, that was my mistake. Now, a vaccine for Men-C ***does*** exist in the U.S. (now), HOWEVER it was created by Cuba. In fact, the few relaxations that have occurred in the Cuban embargo took place so that the United States could get access to this vaccine created by the Cuban Biotech industry:
A vaccine for meningitis B--an inflammation of the membranes covering the brain or spinal cord which can be fatal--was developed at Cuba's Carlos Finlay Institute in the 1980s and is now administered to all Cuban infants over three months. This has contributed to a 93% reduction in cases of meningococcal disease on the island. The antimeningitis B vaccine, unique in the world, caught the attention of the pharmaceutical company SmithKline Beecham (now Glaxo SmithKline), which subsequently reached an agreement with the Finlay Institute to market the vaccine globally. The Finlay Institute retains the vaccine patent and control over R&D, production and quality assessment capacities in Cuba. Given the size of the U.S. market, SmithKline was obviously interested in being able to market the vaccine in the United States, a suggestion that Cuba welcomed. Currently in the United States there are some 3,000 cases of meningitis a year, 300 of them fatal, many of which could be prevented by immunizing children and teenagers, particularly in high risk areas. But export to the United States was initially blocked by the U.S. embargo against Cuba. In 1996, passage of the Helms-Burton Act had further tightened the embargo. U.S.-owned pharmaceutical companies anywhere in the world are prohibited from trading with Cuba, a measure which specifically affects Cuba's biotechnology sector. SmithKline Beecham received a license from the U.S. Treasury Department allowing them to finalize a deal with Finlay and bring the vaccine to the U.S. market, providing these vaccines were produced in SmithKline Beecham facilities. Other conditions were imposed by the U.S. government as well, including minimizing the hard currency that the Finlay Institute could receive: Part of the royalties must be paid in kind, through delivery of medicines and other materials to Cuba."
So there you have it.
-Vendal Thornheart
But if you're going to use the Moore argument, then there is censorship EVERYWHERE.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
The pilots thought they were being fired at with some type of 20 year old rocket system. I don't recall the details, but I did follow the investigation a little bit. It is definitely true that the pilots were probably not in a life or death situation themselves, but I reiterate my point about the other pilots in the force. Telling the other pilots that they -MUST- wait until their life is significantly threatened before they can return fire would probably bring about the early retirement of many pilots.
In addition, I've got to say your analysis of the situation is incredibly lacking. You suggest that they saw the gun fire, asked for confirmation, get the response "These are allied troops", and then said, "Dur hur hur, let's kill them anyway," believing that they would become heroes for scoring more kills. If you seriously believe that could even remotely be slightly similar to what actually happened, I have foolishly entered into a discussion with a person lacking reason.
bunch of ungratefull bastards, you just go ahead and keep on making more enemies, pissing off more of your former allies... Why wasn't I told about this former ally stuff? I call shot gun! (te-he-he)
The other 29,999,995 Canadians? They all wanted to lynch them. A typical knee-jerk reaction from people who don't understand the situation, don't understand how air forces work, and want to blame America for everything. It disgusts me.
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
Taking games seriously like this is like... whining to death when I purposely TK you in a game of Desert Combat.
I guess what I'm saying is that the Chinese gov't reminds me of a bunch of 14 y/o whiners. Wake up people! It's a game!
Btw, if anyone else is interested, I find after a long days work, nothing beats TK'ing the shit out people playing DC, or just about any other game. Words cannot describe the level of enjoyment I experience blowing up a plane right before a teammate wishes to hop into it, blowing him/her up in the process. Also, don't for get the manditory "Attention: Flight 402 has been cancelled".
And here's the big difference between us (the US) and them (the Islamic fundamentalists). Those soldiers are standing trial.
But forget I said anything. The guy that killed hundreds of thousands with meat grinders and poison gas should've been left alone and the soldiers that killed a few (not saying it's right) are the devil incarnate and their entire country is evil.
A Corporation is a legal entity. It can have great power and is controlled by a few individuals, someitmes they are elected.
This is true.
A government is a legal entitiy. It can have great power and is controlled by a few individuals, sometimes they are elected.
This is mostly false. At least in the US, the government is controlled by the people. We all have a right, and IMO a duty, to vote. So it's not just controlled by a few individuals, it's controlled by the majority of the population (over 18). The only people that aren't elected are judges and committee members, but judges are appointed by the President who is elected. Committee members end up being elected to their seat in the house or senate so they can be booted as well. People have a lot more power over the government then they do a corporation since they can effectively change all the "management" of the government in one day.
The US Constitution says the government cannot censor things, with some exceptions (yelling fire in a crowded theater for example). It says nothing about what a corporation can and cannot censor.
So while your analogy is true on a VERY basic level, it's false on a much grander scale. EVERYONE at age 18 has the right to vote for their elected officials. Only the STOCKHOLDERS of a company have the privilege of voting for the officers of that company. That's a pretty big difference. If you don't like a company censoring things, don't buy ANYTHING from that company.
There is nothing wrong with corporate censorship.
I'm sorry, but there is something wrong with corporate censorship. Corporations are huge government-like organizations whose sole purpose for existence is making money. There are many corporations that are multi-national, and many of those (and many others) are very powerful. Letting corporations censor stuff is just as dangerous to freedom as letting the government do it.
The way I understand it, Disney laid out terms and said "we'll ship any movie that meets these terms" and Fahrenheight 911 met those terms, and Disney decided not to distribute it. Well, that's a broken promise, and considering the size and power of Disney, I think it's pretty fucking important that they keep their word. Whether the story as I hear it is correct or not is actually irrelevant, since my point is that honor, integrity, and so forth are even more important to society when manifested in large multi-national corporations than they are when manifested in individuals.
Never forget feudalism. Give corporations the power to censor and feudalism is where we're going, except I think under the circumstances it would be called fascism or something or other. Same thing. Some lord who owns everything working us really fucking hard, abusing us, and so forth.
Now, you could have said "There's nothing unconstitutional about corporate censorship" and you would have been at least accurate. But some forms of corporate censorship are illegal (they fall under the heading of Full Disclosure laws, like those nice stickers you get on the canned/jarred food you buy that tell you what's in the can/jar) because our government already knows that corporate censorship is dangerous.
Like what I said? You might like my music
China can keep snapping up land as long as they keep enslaving young boys and politic prisoners to make my crappy, yet cheap, shoes and tacky dollar store items.
"Ignore" being a euphanism for "invade", "shoot", "execute", "run over with a tank", or simply "threaten".
The US is behind the powercurve then. There's a whole lotta world out there that hasn't been bombed yet. Better speed things up.
ok im sorry, palestine was created BY THE ROMAN EMPIRE! More than a thousand years ago. Israel was created by us 50 years ago. Now, who do you think has a better stake to that land, the people who lived their for 1500 years or the people who lived there for 50 years. Also, the fact that you lump them together as Arabs shows how simple minded you are. I think if you look through history not all of those 'funny Arab' people get on together and neither do they feel any less connection to the place or country they live in than you do. I mean for gods sake youre (insert youre racial denomination here)
Two tears in a bucket. Motherfuck it.
Imagine that a popular japanese movie depicting the americans as nuke-happy jumping southerners who just want to show off there new toy as a way to do dammage to the japanese for the hell after descimating the local populace with firebaombs was released here, and the US powers that be decided to sensort it as 'hate mongering'- would you still be complaining?
What about if the americans created a cartoon depicting the japanese as idiotic monkey faced individuals with awful teeth, actually called them 'monkey face', and ended the cartoon with an atomic-style explosion killing them all to a skippy soundtrack (It happened; watch 'bugs bunny vs the japanese') and the japanese government censored it.
I'm not arguing that china is nessassarily right or wrong with this action, so much as pointing out other perspectives that you can look at the situation from.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
I think someone misunderstood the meaning of the term 'shotgun wedding'.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Besides their neighbouring countries, I can't recall any conflict between the Chinese and any other country. And about the neighbouring countries, that happens all over the world.
If you compare that to the U.S. behavior in regards to Vietnam, Palestine (indirectly by helping Israel), Afghanistan, Iraq and as said the socalled axis of evil Libya and Syria and probably some other countries.
The U.S. president said: You're either against terror or with terror.
With which he actually meant: You're either on our side and will do what we tell you to do, or you're considered a country sponsoring terror so you'll have to bare the consequences.
Actually, I found it particullary interesting, that when a U.S. spy was caught in China, the U.S. demanded the spy back. When the U.S. caught a spy, they wanted to give him the death penalty.
So, in conclusion, I think most of the world fears the U.S. hunger for power more then China, Iraq or Afghanistan.
The US is behind the powercurve then. There's a whole lotta world out there that hasn't been bombed yet. Better speed things up. I'm pretty sure, we'll see alot more havoc in the near future. ...
... and still in recent polls he gets more then 40 percent of the votes... That's sickening... because it means the U.S. population seems to support that appalling behavior.
Besides, his president managed to destroy two entire countries without support of the U.N., support the Turkish occupation of Cyprus, support Israels terror in the occupied territories, have his troops torture POW,
So, maybe he'll be re-elected, and we'll see more of that barbaric behavior.
And the same is happening here in Europe, where Blair against the will of the U.K. people decided to follow Bush into war. The same with the Spanish goverment. And, Bush, hypocrite as he is, is going to war to fight for democracy, while he's applauding Blairs behavior (being undemocratic).
Just like the tortures in Abu Gharib where just one big misunderstanding? Hey, Rumsfeld politely apologised for it! What else can you expect! It's not like he's going to get prosecuted or anything. ... and we get a polite apology...
When Sadam's goverment was responsible for torture, they used economic sanctions to cripple the country, then the country was bombed to pieces.
Now, the U.S. goverment goes to war and tortures people,
I'm awaiting Bin Laden to sent his apologies about 9/11...
I totally agree.
And what is rather shocking is, that they don't seem to ask themselves why they are hated all over the world...
They actually answer that question with a stupid: "Because we have a high living standard" as if Western-Europe and Japan haven't got a living comparable living standard.
Or the completely insane: "Just because we are Americans".
So Americans are cleaner because they used force to steal the Indian lands?
As far as I can recall, Hitler used force to occupy most of Europe as well. Should that be considered a good thing???
During the Roman Empire a lot of people have been displaced. They can't all try to reclaim their lands of more then 1000 years ago.
Because if that were so, the native Americans, the native Australians should start demanding the removal of the English, Irish and other European colonists in their homelands.
In todays politics it seems rather understandable to confuse U.S. politics and U.K. politics are they are virtually the same.
Actually,that is not true. That should have been: The U.K. just blindly follows the U.S. in every possible way.
--the US military is getting attacked BECAUSE they are over in some other nation, fighting people who never attacked them in the first place. this is contrary to even the most basic common sense. If they weren't there, if all those guardsmen and reservists were back home with their families where they belong, they wouldn't be getting shot at or shooting back, would they? And they got sent over there based on some really questionable "data" presented as absolute fact by our appointed leaders. I mean, there's still millions of people who think saddam had something to do with 9-11 based on government lies and media massaging of the news. I would say don't blame people resisting invaders, invaders who showed up with really advanced weaponry, and who have already killed thousands of non combatants.
This isn't a defense of saddam,and he's a freaking goon we propped up and supported in the first place, but it is a condemnation of going to war under false pretenses, then blaming the people over there if they fight back in the only ways they can. You have _one_ choice against overwhelming tech and military superiority, and that's assymetrical warfare. Turn it around, would you fight back if some coalition that was huge enough and big enough and decided to come over here and "regime change" us, even if you disliked the current regime here, wouldn't you consider those people invaders? I certainly am NO fan of the past three "regimes" we have had here in the US, but no way would I have welcomed or assisted some large outside military force coming over here and "helping out", I would consider them "the enemy" and act accordingly.
As to how those folks over there feel about us, I think if a long time ago we had changed two things in our polciies we would be better off. 1-we should have run with the reality wake up call of the OPEC embargo and engaged in a massive national size scale effort to completely eliminate any dependence on middle eastern oil. Totally. 2- we should have stopped the massive support for radical zionism in our policies by at least the early 70s when it became obvious that things weren't as originally presented. And along with those two issues, we should have never shipped so much as one bullet, in sales or direct aid, to any nation in the mid east. That's a blunder of incalcuable dimensions really.
We've failed to hold onto any sort of moral high ground. Look around at all the foreign press, we have alientated a lot of the planet based on our actions. US based international companies have profitted immensely from the continuation of strife and conflict over there for generations now. Granted, some other places would have provided arms, but WE wouldn't have done it, and we could then hold some positions that were more ethical and more practical, improving our national prestige and our national security at the same time.
Eisenhower warned us, he said watch out for the influence of the military/industrial complex. He could smell what was coming, and took his last national appearnace to issue that warning. It was that important to him to say those things. Too bad we didn't heed his warning, a warning coming from one intimately involved in "warfare" and the realities of "business profits" and notions of right/wrong. Everything they have done has now resulted in MORE people who don't like us, so that has decreased national security, not increased it, but it's sure made a lot of profit for a dozen huge military/industrial concerns and the high level people connected to them.
Realistically now, I see no easy answers. The best of all the hard answers is to pull out as soon as possible, and I hope inside this nation we have some credible investigations leading to some serious impeachments and trials for racketeering and treason. I don't think that will happen though, too many people are brainwashed into thinking this system of two paid off and bribed off political parties still works, when it's obvious that people outside the electorate are the real political power here, not "the voters" and not these actors/script readers passing as politicians who are front men for those elite who call the shots.
for the simple reason they have over 1 billion people in their country.
It is simply not fair that the Tibetans wish to live their simple, unproductive life while the numerous Chinese are forced to live in squaler.
The situation you describe only exists because these people refuse to learn Chinese, and many can't even read because the Dahli Lama (or whatever) doesn't want his masses to learn how. These are people who are nothing more than feudal farmers.
The most humane thing to do with them, is what the US did with the native Americans. Just move them to reservation, where they can live out there obsolete native ways.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
America is a strong nation. The strongest in many ways, specifically as a military power and as a market. But it's NOT the only country. Many Americans seem to think that their way is the only way.
The reason I make this comment here is to point something out that's always bothered me about Americans. A Constitutionally Appointed First (I think) Amendment Freedom Of Speech is NOT the only "Freedom of Speech". Here in Australia I can also say what I want, and not get thrown in jail. Why is my freedom of speech less than your freedom of speech? And yes, I HAVE argued with americans on this issue who claimed that I don't actually have freedom of speech.
Citizens of America seem to sometimes think their country can do no wrong. Is this ignorance, or arrogance? Don't let your vaunted Freedom of Speech impare your freedom to listen, and your freedom of thought.
People have fought and died for your right to question your government. So use it.
Even the political compass has left and right.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Thanks for posting.
If you have never played Hearts of Iron, I challenge you to buy it. It is the best world war II strategy game ever.
Daniel
I have foolishly entered into a discussion with a person lacking reason.
Stop with the flames. It makes you look ignorant.
The pilots got a negative target confirmation. They were not in a life or death situation. They then flew back to the area to attack the target. This means they chose to do this, and they chose to risk their saftey to kill the target. Which turned out to be allied. If they were prmarily interested in their own safety, they would have flown away. There was a negative target confirmation. Meaning Command did not think the target was valid. I heard the conversation between air command and the pilots. The pilots chose to attack. I doubt it's because of training, it's lack of proper dicipline in those pilots.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
So while your analogy is true on a VERY basic level, it's false on a much grander scale. EVERYONE at age 18 has the right to vote for their elected officials. Only the STOCKHOLDERS of a company have the privilege of voting for the officers of that company. That's a pretty big difference. If you don't like a company censoring things, don't buy ANYTHING from that company.
Thats yoru government. The statement is true of other governments. Sometimes it is elected. There is no falsehood in that statement. And many Authors and intellectuals (not the most authoratative source) think at some point Corporatiosn will assume government like powers. In the thrid world, large corporatiosn already act like foreign powers so it's not much of a stretch.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Ah, sorry about that. Understood.
The way I understand it, Disney laid out terms and said "we'll ship any movie that meets these terms" and Fahrenheight 911 met those terms, and Disney decided not to distribute it.
Like you said, corporations sole existence is to make money. It is Disney's responsibility to weigh the reprecussions of being associated with a politically charged films. It was their judgment that it would hurt the company to be associated with the release of the movie
The reason there isn't anything wrong with corporate censorship, is that somebody else can report or distribute the information. Broadcast TV censored potentially disturbing video of mutilations in Iraq, but that doesn't stop internet, or other TV networks from broadcasting the information. If people want the information they can get it.
There is a huge difference between corporate and goverment censorship. Corporate censorship is "let people get the information elsewhere" goverment cesorship is "nobody can see this information ever"
Never forget feudalism. Give corporations the power to censor and feudalism is where we're going, except I think under the circumstances it would be called fascism or something or other. Same thing. Some lord who owns everything working us really fucking hard, abusing us, and so forth.
I'm not sure how you got to your feudalism analogy. The structural requirements for a fuedal society are not there. People are not "tied to their land", and the values of free education and free enterprise (the workers can become owners through stock investment) work against fuedalism. If a "lord" works me too hard, I can work for another, or start my own business.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Alright, I have some time now to address the parent:
Blame the training, blame the procedures, blame the information, blame your goddamned dog. Blaming the pilots tells me that you know fuck all about how a military is run - but don't let that discourage you from blaming the pilots.
Blaming the pilots is easy. They took an action which was the opposite of their training. Going back to a presumably dangerous area, against orders to destroy a assumed target. I'd say that has nothing to do with training. Training would be spotting a target, getting confirmation, attacking target. Or spottign target report target, lear area while comman confirms, then come back wiht reinenforcements. They did neither. They attacked, without any orders to do so. So it's not the systems fault 4 people dies, it's the pilots.
So you don't know shit about how a nation is run, but what's your point?
Havign taken many courses in both Political science and sociology I'd say I have as much insight into the subject as you do with your "liberal arts" education. as for an example of a nice thing to do, when the islamic terrorists crashed planes into your nation, Canada opened up it's borders and homes to accept the hundred of passangers that were rerouted. Mexico did no such thing. We opened up our homes and provided nessesities to these passengers at our own expense without need of compensation because we are your neighbors. More examples? America spend billions rebuilding nations into it's own image under the marshall plan. They spent this not because they woudl ever directly benifit but because they chose to do it. The reasons behind it were complex but in the end you created Japan, Germany, and South Korea (later on and not part of the marshall plan).
As for the US and it's treatment of it's allies. The US did not think of it's own citizens and it's own jobs when it was buying support for it's war in iraq. It rewarded any country that woudl help it out. Even the war in afganistan. Do you think it's coincidental that the tech jobs evacuated to India and pakistan near about the same time as the War in afganistan? Those were rewards for allies who behaved well. But as for Canada, I object to the hipocracy of saying "trade should be free" then slappign tarriffs and cloing borders. You signed a legally binding contract,then you keep violating it. This why people hate Americans because so many of them are hippocrites.
As for running an "incompentent" military. Most think you already do. See the SAS, one of the most respect military teams in history. They told the US military to fuck off, because they don't want to work with the US army and the US intelegence because in their proffesional oppinion, you are incompentent.
I am pro-American. I believe if I must suffer under the heal of a tyrant, the US should be that heel. Because their heel is a lot softer. I personally think their war in iraq is a play for power. If they should screw it up (which they have) they will lose the reigns of power. I support the US, I know that, despite the current crop of leadership, they are basically decent folk who mean well. A lot of times they have inssuficient information to form a good oppinion and thus resort to jingoism and turning a complex situation into a single statement like "Nuke the arabs". Thats fine. In my oppinion, the arabs deserve the nuking. They deserve it because they foster hate, and promote violence.
I like the US, I value the same Ideals, I am also right of center. However it does not make them proof against critisism. They have made some pretty dumb mistakes because their current admin. values ideology over practicality. They have doen a horrible job. Like viet nam, they sent soldiers in with vague orders and no over arching goal. thus it was doomed to failure. If the goals were more transparent, and more well defined like "Remove all human life in the area" I could reasonably expect them to achieve that goal. However their goal is to "Bring democracy to Iraq". Well tha
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Actually, it is the other way around. The reason for WWII was that Germany had been "bitchslapped" so hard that it had fuelled a lot of hatred in Germany.
Thats was actually my point but in my haste I forgot the extra I in WWII.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
And here's the big difference between us (the US) and them (the Islamic fundamentalists). Those soldiers are standing trial.
A few are, seven to be exact. Scapegoats, you could call them. That's not justice, it's spin control.
Rumsfeld knew about the abuse for months from a report quoting "sadistic, wanton abuse", but didn't even bother to look at the pictures until they had been leaked to the public. No prosecutions were undertaken until well after the scandal broke. Face it, if it wasn't ordered, our government knew but didn't care about the abuse until it was in the media.
That's the real difference between "us" and "them". When our corrupt leadership is exposed, we can do something about it. Of course, keeping the population complacent with ignorance has shown to be a good way of getting around that.
But forget I said anything. The guy that killed hundreds of thousands with meat grinders and poison gas should've been left alone and the soldiers that killed a few (not saying it's right) are the devil incarnate and their entire country is evil.
If you could possibly show me how U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners had anything to do with ending the atrocities of Saddam, you might have a point. Instead, we're just continuing the legacy. Don't introduce a false dichotomy of "Saddam is evil, or we are evil, but not both".
But don't make the mistake of thinking that must mean they are just as bad. If you'll remember, the attacks on the occupying forces went up sharply last December, after Saddam was captured, reflecting the Iraqi opinion shown in polls: Being ruled by the U.S. isn't great, but it is better than Saddam coming back.
That's not an excuse for one second of the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The enemies of Democracy are
Oops, misread your message :-)
Ahh yes. The expanding border of China. Even though China did have that bothersome Soviet Union to tend with, they have still managed to reach out to their "neighbors" often enough. You'll have to excuse the US for not keeping up with China's pace. Obviously, the US should have come up with reasons to absorb Canada and most of South America by now.
You've forgotten to mention US involvement in Europe and Japan.
I agree. Foolish rhetoric that was uncalled for.
Spying is largely a civil crime. There are stiff penalties in all countries for such activities. Although in practice, thos penalties take a back seat to politics.
Incidently... the US is not a neighbor to China. Yet China has spies in the US? What was that about China only being involved in its neighbors?
And you can thank the US for limiting the threat of China, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Even if it does make the US appear more eager and dangeorus. The world is complex like that.
Riiight... I'm ignorant, but you're telling me that these highly trained, experienced, extremely trusted fighter pilots from the best equipped, best funded, and largest air force on the planet just flipped out one day and willfully attacked Candians so they could get a higher score. But I look ignorant... Keep telling yourself that.
Riiight... I'm ignorant, but you're telling me that these highly trained, experienced, extremely trusted fighter pilots from the best equipped, best funded, and largest air force on the planet just flipped out one day and willfully attacked Candians so they could get a higher score. But I look ignorant... Keep telling yourself that.
Highly trained means shit all. Your troops are only as good as the base of people they come from. Thats why the citizen soldier is often as good as the regular army. Because your regular army is draw froma certain sub group of people. They ignored a order. Thats telling enough.They willfully made a bad decision.
Your comments lack content. You do in fact look ignorant.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
This has already been explained.
They were following orders to defend themselves if they perceived that they were under fire.
The intel officers who identify targets for the pilots do not have authority to give orders to the pilots. There were no orders which were disobeyed. The pilots made a very bad judgement call, but their orders explicitly left that judgement in the hands of the pilots.
I do encourage you to examine the incident a little more carefully.
I'm not against righteous self defense, I am a strict believer in personal and national self defense, BUT, it has to be clearly righteous. Basing aggressive actions on lies and claiming self defense, and involving an entire nation, and killing a variety of people based on those lies is treason with a capital T, and no one's profits are worth it, IMO. And it IS the main issue here, I don't want to get side tracked about it.
and we always had an effective deterrent to the soviet union expansionist aggressive tendencies-back we we actually MADE stuff that wasn't military. People all over the planet used to loke american goods, they were decent enough. We had the really big carrot and stick then-don't be ajerk off nation, we will trade with you. Become a belligerent jerk off nation, poof, not a single one of your people ever enters the US, you are never to do business with any american company or person, and any third party/nation dodges that are discoverd, then that same boycott embargo would hold for them too.
Given the choice between semi crappy soviet arms and even worse consumer products from there, most nations would have opted for trading with us instead. That is only an opinion, but too bad we never tried it instead of the gross tit for tat arms race. We never tried that tact though, because it actually required courage and intelligence and a high moral ground stance, something severely lacking in modern business, government and in it's various militaries with revolving door retired officers and politicians->direct to military "business". I can look at it, clearly see it as a conflict of interest. What else could it be called? Joe general or Joe senator "retires" goes to work in international schmooze and sales for bigbang co, inc. Is it no wonder "crises" requiring their "products and services" always seem to arise?
It's called the heglian dialectic, that is how our government and foreign policy (and domestic as well) is run now. Create a problem, get the desired psychological reaction, offer the solution, a profitable solution.
It's a scam. You can slap shiny paint on it, throw all sorts of noble words at it, academic-icise it all you want to-but it's still a scam mostly.
Maybe you have read this before, most likely yes, but in case anyone else reading this hasn't, I present 'war is a racket" a piece written by a major general of the maries smedley butler. appropriate on this memorial day weekend:
Google link, take your pick
The first link has all five short chapters, it's quite good, I agree with him. He says it better than I can say it.
Scenario 1 is correct.
A) Yes, people do have guns at wedding parties in Iraq. It is customary to fire them into the air as part of the celebrations.
B) There is video footage of the wedding. People shown in that footage (such as the keyboard player - who is semi famous in Iraq - and other wedding guests) have been shown as the same people in pictures of the dead as a result of that bombing.
Now, I can guess at which you thought was most likely before my post (you say rebels lie, but the US only makes a mistake? Why isn't the US capable of lying?), but I hope you see the truth now. Go watch some non-US media channels for further insight.
I don't know about inventing it, but I sure got bitched at for doing it all the time in Action Quake 2. :-(
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Damn, so I did. Too bad they can't mod me "-1 Blind as Bat". I guess Flamebait will have to suffice for now.
The US is more subtle then China, no doubt about it. But they did support several dictators for as long as their control of power was benificial for the US.
And actually, you did absorb a big part of middle America not that long ago.
Furthermore, if you look around you, you might notice that the population of the US have this strange European look. They don't seem to have Indian roots at all. Which might mean that this country indeed was captured from some other population, where the invading people apparantly performed a genocide on the natives.
So, in whatever timescale you look, the US has blood on its hands,and aparantly, just like the kolonists thought they had the right to kill Indians because they were merely beasts, the new US population thinks they have the right to decide the worlds future.
Okay, US treaded Europe very well 50 years ago.
This proves nothing about their current worldpolitics.
Indeed, implying that anyone refusing to join US wars unsupported by the UN a terrorist-supporting country is plain evil. ...
They're using policital, economical and military pressure to force other countries into their insane wars.
And if this angers even the population of your NATO allies, you can imagine how other countries feel towards the US.
Mr. Bush is breeding hatred al around the world, even among the people who once were full of enthousiasm about the US.
You should know that not that long ago, the people of (certainly West) Europe, were extremely enthousiastic about the US. The way this has changed the recent years, especially during the latest Bush reign is shocking.
We, who once saw the US as some kind of leader to follow, are now appalled by the prejudice shown by the US with regard to f.e. the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Obviously, at this moment, some US-citizens couldn't care less about how the rest of the world feels, because of the US's massive military power. But, this is even more disturbing for the population of the rest of the world. We see the US today as a country respecting nothing but its flag, its amendments which count only for its own citizens, their lack of regard to the Kyoto agreements, their openly ignoring of the Geneva conventions in prisons, the barbaric usage of the deathpenalty, the right to carry guns but not see titties on TV,
Yes, but that's enerving a lot of people outside of the US. Seeing the US goverment demand that a US spy be returned immediatly while prosecuting a foreign spy caught in the US, is totally unfair and causes unease around the world. We could be next being treated this unfairly and with the US ignoring the UN, and using military force to get what it wants, I would say we have reason the feal angered by this.
Hey, we are supposed to be allies of the US and we're in the NATO together, yet the US is spying on European countries as well (remember Carnivore?). This is a huge insult for us, the socalled friends of the US.
Can we thank to US for creating an immense amount of pure and deep hatred against the western world? We are being hated for the US's global policies.
Chinese people would be so much better off if China was taken over by Japanese :D
My condensed reply can be found here >
Their votes are important, yet they fail to educate themselves.
Here in Europe, we get television show in which policitians actually talk about their plans for the future, there are games on TV in which you can vote and they will compute how near your answers were with respect to the parties programs.
It would be nice if the US would have things like that, instead of the concerts of some artists, all the flagwaving and all the "God bless America's".
The answer I would expect is: "The US goverment , opposite to the communist goverments does not try to force some way of thinking on its population."
But, as I saw when I was in the US last year, people are fed with nationlism in the US; I saw a huge amount of flags, statements on the wall saying "Support our troops no matter what" , singing the national anthem everyday.
Needless to say, that especially, the "no matter what" part shocked me (and many others).
I don't watch a lot of TV, but here in France, I've never seen TV shows like you talk about. The TV news programs are better than American news programs, but I never saw anything like that weird political quiz show you describe.
As far as disturbing things, every country has them. "Front National" and "Come celebrate May Day with Le Pen" posters, and Le Pen getting almost 20% of the vote two years ago was pretty disturbing to me. The US just gets more attention because of its size and power. Of course, it also deserves that attention, for exactly the same reasons.
Anyway, I don't see where you really disagree with me. I never said the situation wasn't bad, merely that the fact that most Americans don't get a lot of outside news can be blamed squarely on themselves, and nobody else. Yes, this has huge consequences for the rest of the world, but you can't change it by whining about it, any more than you can stop a hurricane with a sheet of plywood.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Would that be the series of three vaccinations? It is? Well, that's the vaccination for Hepatitis "B"!
Where did you get your nursing degree, Sir Speedy's Instant Printing?
No, don't, not.
This is an important example of how blinded by nationalism and biases people can get. The Chinese were wrong in their assessment of who was at fault. It is not possible for a properly trained fighter pilot in a post-wwII fighter plane to be rammed by that type of spy plane. It just isn't.
I was not trolling - which I define as deliberately offending people with insincere posts in an attempt to get them to waste time posting replies.
So go get stuffed.
I'd like references the the specific cases you have in mind.
None-the-less... this is how the spy game runs. Its been happening for decades throughout the Cold War. Some spys are shipped out of country. Some are traded. Some are caught and tried. Some disappear, never to be seen again. It's happened to any nationality involved in espionage. "Fair" has nothing to do with it.
First - the point is that China does involve itself far outside its own borders and that of it's neighbors. Let's not brush by it too quickly since its one of the converstion arcs you started.
Secondly, I'm no fan of Carnivore myself. But what you should be more concerned with is ECHELON. Which, by the way, is ran with the help of several other countries. It has been suggested that this allows the US NSA to search domestic communications by having their foriegn counterparts do the searching for them - avoiding US laws against such domestic monitorying.
Finally, you're rather naive if you think friends don't spy on each other. For example, the French are well known to use Government resources for industrial espionage.
You might want to look at the military hardware and training the USSR dumped in to the region. Here's a hint - the Arab-Isreali war was as much about the Cold War as local blood feuds.
First - Afghanistan sponsored a terrorist organization that is a world-wide network and materminds of the most significant act of civilian terrorism on US soil. WMD's aren't the issue.
Secondly - Iraq had began the 90's with the world's 4th largest standing military. It had been one of the wealthiest nations in the region. And it stands on one of the richest natural resource deposits in the world. Iraq used this military and econmic power to attempt grabbing additional wealth for itself and, ultimately, threatned the world economy. On a side note - Saddam Hussein commissioned an attempt on the former President Bush's life. This is not some small, insigificant, non-threatening country.
I'm sorry - did you just say these countries needed to be bombed? What would you have the US do in these situations? Keep in mind we're already involved in keeping North Korea 1) at bay 2) fed.
Oh - that's right. The country who had seized buffer territory after being attacked by its neighbors. The same country that has suffered decades of civilian attacks. A country who's neighbors have stated constantly that they should be wiped from the face of the earth. What was that about violence and human rights? Are you claiming some kind of moral high-ground in that mess?
The region would do better to have hardliners from both the Palestinians and Isrealis gathered and shot (or at least locked away until a solid peace could be worked out).
than one who served only to return to criticize his peers.
What, soldiers loose the freedom of speech and any right to criticize the armed forces? If a man in the army gets back from Iraq and criticizes the guards at Abu Ghraib, he's a bad person?
I would rather have someone who joined the reserves and did his time without incident
And got a sweet assignment ahead of hundereds of other people, and didn't show up for duty, and had his wings revoked after he failed to take a physical, thus throwing away a few hundered thousands dollars the military had spent training him...
than one who joined the military only to tell his fellow soldiers he had joined for political gain
Uh-huh. I'm sure he signed up with the intention of getting wounded three times and having shrapnel still in his body just so he could run for office (rolls eyes). And of course, anyone who joins the army looking to boost their following career, whether it be politics or for college money, is also obviously a bad person as well. I'd have to guess then that at least 90% of the armed forces must be made up of bad people in that case.
And I wont even go into how he threw "his" awards away...
Why not? You seem to have gone for enough other neocon revisionist history.
I just came back from a roleplaying convention in Germany, and one of the traditions there is to auction a cigarette lighter, that comes with a free copy of one of the two worst RuneQuest supplements ever produced, either "Daughters of Darkness" or "Lost City of Eldarad". We then go out onto the battlements and burn it just after midnight. A couple of years ago, the immolation was in full swing, and a timid german accent piped up from the back, "Don't ve have laws against this, now?"
Absolutely priceless.
My opinion is: banning it is like sweeping it under the carpet. Not only do people forget about it, but the carpet gets bumpy.
No, the difference is that there is no freedom in Tibet and China won't ever get out of there by itself.
In contrast it was the US who has given some sort of freedom to Iraq, and they are already on their way out.
Besides the sheer scale of the respective crimes.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Sorry for the public request, but I've sent a few emails and you've not responded so I don't know if you just don't view that email account often or if they are getting snagged as spam and you don't check the junk folder. Anyways, PLEASE send me an email to my user name at hotmail. Thank you!