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Gates Nose-Dives at CES
Lots of submissions this morning about Bill Gates' performance at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. His Media Center PC presentation crashed. (The presentation is online.) He also gave an interview to CNET, where he described anyone who doesn't support ever-increasing intellectual property laws as "communists". Boingboing has some commentary on that interview as well.
Since Bill feels free to label anyone who disagrees with him as a communist, may we all feel free to label him a twat?
I hate to do this ... especially since the Crusades (which was a defensive war, contrary to popular belief - the Arabian leader sacked the holiest of Christian churches, which was basically without defense, making Europe mad - the first Crusade was retaliatory) were a reasonable example from the threads above. However, I have to.
The Inquisitions, also contrary to popular belief, did not kill people. It was the authority of Kings who didn't know theology who killed people. Inquisitions actually were set up to save people from death. Many people were being accused of heresy (a crime punishable by death according to the king's law at the time - anything that ran contrary to faith also undermined the King's God-appointed power, so it was treated like treason). However, the civilian lawyers and judges were not versed in theology enough to actually rule fairly on the subject. The Catholic Church set up Inquisitions in various European nations where the judge and lawyers were all theologians (usually priests). This cut the death rate to a mere fraction of what it was before the Inquisitions. The Inquisitions, especially the Spanish Inquisition, were the height of fair trials for the time period - in fact, much of our current court system is derived from the expertise of the Inquisitions.
That's not to say that the name of religions haven't been used as an excuse to kill people, just like the name of other ideologies (especially Naziism and Communism) have been used to kill people.
Arguably, however, some ideologies/theologies are more prone to violence than others. However, that's another debate for another day in another section of /. :-)
I am not advocating any unlawful behavior. I just think that when powerful individuals such as Gates (or CEOs of Big Corporations) make these kind of anti-egalitarian, neoliberal statements, they ought to be tried for treason in a court of law and if guilty, hung by their necks (publicly) until they are dead. We put marijuana smugglers in jail for life, but when ultra powerful creatures such as Gates are warring on us, we do nothing?
Try him for treason and HANG GATES!
Just my ever-humble opinion....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Parent comment is fundamentally WRONG. Has either never really read up on the events that happened during the crusades and inquisition, or believes every word that spews forth from the Church's holy mouth.
I need to dig up my inquisition books to formally refute the comment, but the Crusades were initiated by the Church to capture the Holy Land from the infidels (This could possibly be mistaken as defensive AFTER they took Jerusalem and ruled it for years). And the Inquisition was most DEFINATELY about weeding out Heresy. Genecide was committed in God's name... There was a large group of French Christians whom I forget the name of which were eradicated by the Inquisition (and this is only but one example).
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