Slashdot Mirror
U.S. Won't Let Go of DNS
An Anonymous Reader wrote in with a story on the Eweek site, reporting that the Federal Government is going to keep control of the Domain Name System rather than handing it over to ICANN. From the article: "...the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS, and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file..."
And this is a problem how? This is an honest question. The U.S. has had control of the root servers since inception (as far as I have ever known) and things have been running wonderfully since... so what's the issue? We backed out of a plan to hand control over to ICANN because we were concerned? DU-H! Any country as powerful or even close would probably have done the same thing. //here's my solution
Keep one/two root servers in each country based on population of internet users/total population. Really, this is what I could see as being "fair" or "international" as they come in terms of a solution that would benefit everyone. That's a LOT of servers, right? Each country can come up with a solution as to how and what they'll be. Let the other countries make their own DNS servers and agree to everyone just co-operating with each other.
How hard can it be?
Why does ICANN want the DNS servers ?
Or quit as an editor. This is ridiculous.
ICANN Won't Get DNS Root Servers
That's the second time in the last couple of days the US have decided to hold onto DNS. It's starting to seem like a habit.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/01/061825 0&tid=103
rooooar
If you believe everyone plays fair, then put servers in other places, but the root servers need to work together. What happens if a government decides its going to play dirty and screw up the whole system? What about physical security? How can you guarantee that if the root servers are spread out across the world? There have been few problems so far and no dirty pool. Leave it as-is unless theres a compelling case to do otherwise.
Daily News http://newsblaze.com
here.
...the rest of the world things we're a bunch of egotistical maniacs.
(Although I will say ICANN hasn't always behaved consistently.)
Can anyone look at the history of the UN and honestly say that they would be any better, rather than a lot worse? Does anyone want the organization that puts the Sudan and other bloody, human rights violating states on its human rights commission to be the ones to regulate who gets a domain name? I sure don't.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
It doesn't even rhyme.
Seriously though, what's stopping anyone from making free rootserver clones?
Where does this stuff come from ?
ICANN wants it, the U.S. Govt says well you have been doing such a fine job in your assigned role we certainly wouldn't want to burden you with extra duties.
Perhaps The U.N. should just administer it directly, I mean they have done an even better job than ICANN over the years.
Slashdot: Slashdot Won't Let Go of Dupes
An Anonymous Reader wrote in with a story on the Slashdot site, reporting that the Slashdot editors are going to keep control of the Duping System rather than handing it over to intelligent moderators that would be capable of successfully weeding out repeated stores. From the article: "...Slashdot is committed to taking no action when it sees a repeated story arrive for publication on its website, as this would have the potential to positively impact the effective and efficient operation of Slashdot.org.
Yeah well, the agency within the UN that would administrate the TLDs, should the US release control over them, is the very same agency that made sure that the world has one telephone standard, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
The ITU was founded before the UN was, and oviously, it has very little to do with human rights issues, they just happen to share some organizational structure.
This constant ignorant whining of the "the UN is a worthless piece of garbage" kind, is getting on my nerves. Educate yourself instead of repeating soundbites you heard on the news.
More info here: ITU history
So there....
What is the rest of the world gonna cry about it?
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
I think Internet ownership pretty much ends at the borders. Perhaps it's time for alternate root DNS? Sounds a lot like a job for the UN. Sure they'd probably fuck it up with even more politics than US ownership, but it still sounds like a UN project.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
As long as the Internet continues to follow open and published standards for operation of the root servers, and does not deviate from those standards, ultimately the bulk of that power still lies with the local end-user service provider. They are the ones most ably-situationed to censor content - your coment on totalitarian political units is dead on in this respect.
Has anyone heard of the U.S. abusing this authority for particularistic gain?
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I'm going to make my own internet with blackjack and hookers, now that I think of it forget the internet.
This is just my understanding of the situation, and it probably has errors. That said, I've not once seen a good plain language explanation of how this all works, and what the actual powers and obligations are. This is my understanding of what an IETF regular told me.
Neither the US or ICANN actually determines what goes into the root name servers: It's just by convenience and general agreement (but not obligation) that the root nameservers decide to humour ICANN, and let them maintain the list of names. There is no law or contract that says they have to do anything that ICANN says.
Congress doesn't control this, and never did, if I understand right.
Please correct my understanding; I'm sure at least some of this is wrong.
How hard can it be?
Its amazingly easy to divide up something that isn't yours. Its like me telling you how to spend your money, and we all know how thats going to end up.
No, see, that would have been funnier this way:
ICAAN!
US: You can't.
ICAAN!
US: You cannot.
ICAAN!
US: No, You can't!
The unofficial
Time for an organisation to come up with FreeDNS. With enough cooperation, it's not impossible to bring FreeDNS networks. It might seem utopia but as in any other thing, having an alternative is always better than monopoly.
Am I alone in comming to the conclusion the the eds are realy not checking stuff.
Oh yeah the refence about is a refence to a very old media distrobution methord.
So I can't speel, I am lsydexic
Basically, the identities of the root nameservers are defined by the contents of the root hints files in the nameserver software used by every company and ISP on the planet. If a release of BIND comes out and it has a certain IP address in its root hints, then that's what the people using that release of BIND will use. If Windows Server 2010 uses a different IP address, people using that nameserver will get that root server instead.
So, most of the big nameservers out there are using BIND, with dedicated Windows shops running AD or running BIND on Windows and everyone sane using UNIX, it's really up to Paul Vixie at ISC. So long as he plays ball with the Commerce Department, nobody needs to get hurt...
The origins of the ITU are meaningless to this discussion because the ITU is now a UN agency. Do you know what that means? It has become part of a world body that has done precious little to actually help the world rather than trying to become a one world government accountable to no one but the rich and powerful.
If I am so ignorant of the real, good accomplishments of the UN, the please post them here. Let's see them.
I am distrustful of the UN because most of its members are completely undemocratic tin horn dictatorships that wouldn't know good government if it bit them in the ass. Actually, they probably would since they have spent so much of their effort to ensure that their people don't have it!
People like you need to just accept the fact that there are a lot of well-informed people who disagree with you based on what they have learned about groups like the UN. The UN has never "kept the peace" anywhere it has ever been, nor has it ever done anything of substance elsewhere. It'll always been a pawn of the richest and most powerful nations because they are the ones with the largest individual populations and the most wealth. The US, EU, Japan, Russia and China account for half of the world's population. Even if we "democratize" the UN, it'll still be controlled by the G8 and China.
Besides, WTF does the ITU setting the standard for telephone systems have to do with anything? Is that supposed to be like some special dispensation from the pope that whitewashes all of the shit caused by the UN around the world? We already have a world standard for the internet in the form of TCP/IP and no one, last I checked, is debating whether DNS should stay as a standard. The only debate here is ownership, and that is a very relevant concern when it is a UN agency that wants to take over ownership.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The UN may have its problems, but it does succeed sometimes.
Have you ever heard of the World Health Organization, a part of the UN? They are working hard to eradicate polio, which is a terrible disease, and things are looking good so far.
Do you still think the UN has been useless for the last 40 years?
They want to keep the DNS so they can justify the new internet tax!
If the government controlled DNS, it would be completely screwed up and the porn sites would be deleted. Also, the CAN-SPAM legislation would not have been necessary. They would just delete spammers.
Daily News http://newsblaze.com
To Kofi Annan's kid. Just like the money that was supposed to buy food for hungry Iraqis.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
most of the opposition is knee-jerk and FUD. Like the "evil Bushies" are going to take away your pr0n collection.
(insert rolling eyes emoticon here)
I think the US government is well aware how dangerous the Internet and the flow of information across it is to its enemies. Iran and company can only be ever destabilized by the Internet and cutting themselves off completely will leave them behind more and more. Opening up access will accellerate disaffection in those nations more and more. Either way, the days of these totalitarians is numbered.
Yet supposedly the US government is suddenly going to do all sorts of nasty things with their control of the root servers.
I doubt Microsoft, IBM, General Motors, CitiBank, etc. would put up with that nor would any of the other many thousands of businesses and in short order, their money would do the talking to congressmen.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
It should be trivial to make your own root servers. There are only 100 or so tlds. Then you don't have to care who owns it. Plus you could just leave out the .biz domain and get rid of a lot of spam.
Now there's a man who's demonstrated a hard-charging, can-do, UN un-criticized attitude.
Just the man for the job.
I just can't understand the US reticence.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Slashdot: Slashdot Far From Dupe-Free
Anonymous Reads writes: Despite efforts by a coalition of the willing and intelligent moderators, Slashdot refuses to relenquish control of its Duping System - capable of successfully weeding out repeat stories - to the aforementioned group. Says a Slashdot source: "...Slashdot is committed to taking no action when it sees a repeated story arrive for publication..." When asked about the reason for this, our source commented that efficiency and effectiveness would not suffer. Editor: How long can this go on? This is rediculous!
(I kid, folks. The dupes don't bother me.)
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
" Personally, I'm distrustful of them because the US veto has consistently kept them from being effective. When the #1 threat to world peace and prosperity has a veto on anything you do, your options are pretty limited..."
Yes, vetos of ridiculous resolutions by anti-semetic nations condemning Israel for defending itself is hampering world peace and prosperity.
Vote for Pedro
is the decision that will result in all words up to four letters being TLD's. Then someone can finally register a .fart domain, and we can declare all of the domain names officially taken.
...I had misread it as "DNF", and wondered what could be Broussard's excuse this time.
Circumcision is child abuse.
When you put them all together they transform into the Arc of the Covenant.
Yeh, we did it years ago. The first non-IANA domain was the "dot" TLD.
Americans (and I speak this with citizenship and with no regret as to holding that citizenship) would rather the problems be glossed over with their nation, thus it's great to criticize the UN and other powers and nations when they do things that are wrong or just plain morally reprehensible, but America? Doing something wrong? You leftist, freedom hating bastard!
;).
Actually, living in Canada right now, it's kindof the same issue as far as America-bashing goes; people go "god-damned Americans, screwing up the world and not taking any responsibility, and why the fuck are they so dumb as to elect that fascist blah blah blah blah", Canadians basically define themselves by the fact that they're not Americans, and the general lack of achievements in recent years are glossed over by a constant tirade against all the things that the States does wrong, and everything percieved to be wrong with americans.
When it comes down to it, people just can't bring themselves to believe that the place they live isn't the best; it's hard to justify not doing anything about it otherwise (fixing it, moving, anything, people would rather just live their lives lazily and pretend that they're living it as best as they can). Hence Americans bashing the UN, hence Canadians bashing Americans, hence people bashing other things and people in general.
(As a further note, I actually have Canadian citizenship as well, I've had both since birth . . . it gives me an odd measure of both affinity to both, and a lack of commitment to either; it has upsides and downsides . . . I write this for the benefit of anyone flaming me, so that they can flame with their facts straight
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
The Internet was funded with US taxpayer dollars and has been open to the world to use without financial consideration or gratitude for the research money that went into it. If the US Govt wants to run the root servers that is purely a domestic US issue. Like the GPS system (also US taxpayer financed in the billions and used by the world without gratitude or financial consideration), if people in other countries or Americans don't like the US govt administering it, go build your own.
hopefully that puts all the arguments to bed.
DNS is a network service just like HTTP or whatever else. If theres any reason, the smart masses can just redirect their DNS queries.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
Why is it that in dupe posts, there's always half a dozen posts rated up about how it's a dupe? And, once there's already been a first post pointing out that it's a dupe, why are there still many more to come?
Once a link's been given to the orginal post, that's great; continue the discussion either here or there, but let it go.
Look out!
The U.S. won't "let them go"? Are the servers trying to escape?
suddenly I feel very tired
Maybe that is why the Bush regime wishes to retain control of the root servers. Makes you think !
Of course it would, I see no surprises here. First, this is the U.S. we're talking about here, now come on. Second, the simple rule, if it's not broken [enough
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Come on, now. I don't like it any more than anyone else when the government runs my life, but ICANN is one bunch of slobs that I wouldn't trust with a water gun. I don't see any reason for slashdot to have its feelings hurt so much :)
I'm going to try to make sense of our post, which is not a trivial task. I'm an American and I love America, by the way. I just don't agree with you.
... world?" I can't really argue against two different opinions so pick the one you're going with.
Don't blame the UN, eh? I didn't see Russia, or South Africa, or France, or Belgium, or any other country doing jack fucking shit to help the people of Sudan.
What's your point? Because no one else helps we shouldn't either?
The only "big part" of the UN the United States plays is its seat on the security council and the assload of money we hand over to the useless, corrupt ambassadors of the rest of the world so they can buy their children faster cars.
I'm not real sure what this has to do with your point (if you have one). Anyway, the UN has done some good. Look at the WHO as an earlier poster pointed out. It's not just a big money hole that does nothing, although it has been corrupt in the past. Oh, right, so has the US government. Remember the Nixon administration? Our government is not the saint you think it is.
This is the fucking problem with the rest of the world. You bastards are too fucking lazy/appeasing/pussy to stand up against ANY wrong doing. The second someone does stand up to fix a broken region of the world, you all harp in about how self cenetered and evil they are. You totally fucking ignore whatever evils are being comitted, and turn on whoever is doing something like a pack of wild dogs suddenly turning on its own.
When did America stand up to fix a broken part of the world? No, really? Don't say Iraq. That was for oil and nothing else and you know it. Deep down, you know it. Why aren't we helping the areas that are even MORE broken than Iraq but would cost less to fix? Oh, right, oil.
Yeah, I think what happened in Sudan was terrible. There's not a lot I can do about it, however. But saying America did nothing - what, we're supposed to police the hole fucking world so that everytime some group of backwards, cave dwelling fundamentalists decide to go to war with their neighbour, it's our fucking fault? What the fuck do you think the UN was created for?
Earlier you say we should stand up to evil and fix broken parts of the world, now you basically say "What, we're supposed to police the whole
Now you go into an anti-Islamic rant that I'm not even going to bother pasting. Again, I'm not real sure what your point is.
Don't fucking defend the UN when they fail to do their job by trying to make this the United States or any other countries fault. The people at fault here are those who are comitting the attrocities in the Sudan, and its the responsibility of the UN to keep the peace. (SURPRISE! That's why they call them UN Peacekeepers!)
Why don't you apply this logic to Iraq, and let the UN do its job there? Oh, right, oil. When the UN doesn't do its job in one area (in your opinion) we should invade and "fix" it ourselves, but when it doesn't do its job in another area we should just stick our thumbs up our nether regions and wait for someone else to fix it?
In conclusion:
I know you're smarter than this. Realize your potential by thinking for yourself and not letting the Bush administration form your opinions for you. We may still disagree, but at least you'll be worth arguing with.
Please reply.
Le français vous intéresse?
...[enough] don't fix it.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Nope, sorry. HTTP was Europe.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I find it amazing that you believe this. Try looking here: the history of http.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
no problem, with the US in control, it will probably be outsourced to india or another country before too long...
Gekido's Lair
I really have no clear idea what this has to do with anything.
Le français vous intéresse?
And this is a problem how? This is an honest question.
It's the US government that has hyped up cyberwarfare. If you believe their hype, then keeping control of the root DNS servers gives the US the equivalent of full first-strike, ICBM, nuclear capabilities. Even if you don't believe their hype, it suggests bad faith.
Each country can come up with a solution as to how and what they'll be. Let the other countries make their own DNS servers and agree to everyone just co-operating with each other.
That's what the other nations want, and that's what the US is trying to prevent.
What god? Oh you mean that figment of the imagination of those who need an emotional crutch.
But you are also unaware that over in degenerate Europe we were also building our internet. For the sake of interoperability we agreed a common standard that included elements of many standards. We could equally claim that JANET was the start of the internet - it was a public network unlike DARPA which was after all a military network.
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
My guess is, he knows he was wrong and is trying to save face. ;-)
If you're old enough to get screwed, you should be old enough to get hammered.
and has the most net users by far
The UN is the world's last best hope for peace.
... will mean perpetuating war."37
This cliche has achieved near universal acceptance because of sheer repetition; it has been repeated so often that people assume it must be true. However, only by some tortured application of Orwellian "Newspeak" can the UN be referred to as a "peace" organization.
During the summer of 1945, Ambassador J. Reuben Clark, Jr., one of America's foremost scholars in the field of international law, prepared an analysis of the UN Charter. His learned appraisal and cogent remarks fly in the face of popular platitudes and conventional "wisdom" concerning the "revered" document. Ambassador Clark's examination led him to conclude that the Charter "is a war document not a peace document," and that it "is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace." The Ambassador noted:
[T]here is no provision in the Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the Charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war.33
Moreover, said Ambassador Clark,
Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.34
The Ambassador's predictions were soon borne out -- first in Korea and then in Vietnam, the first two wars America fought with UN involvement and the only two which the United States has ever failed to win.35
Dr. J. B. Matthews, former chief investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities and one of America's outstanding scholars on Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, was but one of many leading Americans who exposed the UN-as-peace-dove myth. Dr. Matthews was not one to mince words. "I challenge the illusion that the UN is an instrument of peace," he said. "It could not be less of a cruel hoax if it had been organized in Hell for the sole purpose of aiding and abetting the destruction of the United States."36 Senator William Langer (R-ND), one of only two senators with enough courage and foresight to vote against the UN Charter, said "I feel from the bottom of my heart that the adoption of the Charter
The UN's monstrous war against the people of Katanga should forever lay to rest any reference to the UN as a peace organization. The UN and its supporters may persist in the charade of calling the UN's warmaking powers "peacemaking" or "peacekeeping," but no sensible person of goodwill should give the slightest credence to such patently deceitful abuse of language.
Ron Paul
Remember Katanga:t ml
... will mean perpetuating war."37
http://www.neusysinc.com/columnarchive/colm0036.h
-=-=-=-=-=
The UN is the world's last best hope for peace?
This cliche has achieved near universal acceptance because of sheer repetition; it has been repeated so often that people assume it must be true. However, only by some tortured application of Orwellian "Newspeak" can the UN be referred to as a "peace" organization.
During the summer of 1945, Ambassador J. Reuben Clark, Jr., one of America's foremost scholars in the field of international law, prepared an analysis of the UN Charter. His learned appraisal and cogent remarks fly in the face of popular platitudes and conventional "wisdom" concerning the "revered" document. Ambassador Clark's examination led him to conclude that the Charter "is a war document not a peace document," and that it "is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace." The Ambassador noted:
[T]here is no provision in the Charter itself that contemplates ending war. It is true the Charter provides for force to bring peace, but such use of force is itself war.33
Moreover, said Ambassador Clark,
Not only does the Charter Organization not prevent future wars, but it makes practically certain that we shall have future wars, and as to such wars it takes from us the power to declare them, to choose the side on which we shall fight, to determine what forces and military equipment we shall use in the war, and to control and command our sons who do the fighting.34
The Ambassador's predictions were soon borne out -- first in Korea and then in Vietnam, the first two wars America fought with UN involvement and the only two which the United States has ever failed to win.35
Dr. J. B. Matthews, former chief investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities and one of America's outstanding scholars on Marxist-Leninist theory and practice, was but one of many leading Americans who exposed the UN-as-peace-dove myth. Dr. Matthews was not one to mince words. "I challenge the illusion that the UN is an instrument of peace," he said. "It could not be less of a cruel hoax if it had been organized in Hell for the sole purpose of aiding and abetting the destruction of the United States."36 Senator William Langer (R-ND), one of only two senators with enough courage and foresight to vote against the UN Charter, said "I feel from the bottom of my heart that the adoption of the Charter
The UN's monstrous war against the people of Katanga should forever lay to rest any reference to the UN as a peace organization. The UN and its supporters may persist in the charade of calling the UN's warmaking powers "peacemaking" or "peacekeeping," but no sensible person of goodwill should give the slightest credence to such patently deceitful abuse of language.
Ron Paul
Anyway, the UN has done some good. Look at the WHO
...
... but the people who are still stuck in oil-chanting mode are not among them.
... yes. Absolutely. That's why we have the US Army, the US Navy, the US Air Force, and the US Marine Corps ... and not the US-contingent-of-the-UN Army, US-contingent-of-the-UN navy, etc.
I agree, and the WHO is a good example.
However, the fundamental problem I and many others have with the UN is that there seems to be this growing crowd of people who think the UN is, or should be, some kind of democracy of nations. This is neither a practical nor a desirable goal.
Inefficiencies aside, I don't want my nation's actions to be subject to veto by China or impassioned speeches from the UN Commission on Human Rights chair Libya.
When did America stand up to fix a broken part of the world?
WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq/Kuwait 1991 for starters.
Oh, wait, you meant to write, "what have you done lately"
No, really? Don't say Iraq. That was for oil and nothing else and you know it. Deep down, you know it.
Iraq. Oil? Right. Bush has done a stupendously inexcusable job of articulating why we invaded Iraq, but that doesn't mean he did it for the oil. Iraq was invaded because it is of immense strategic importance and had an unstable, corrupt, historically dangerous regime. Oil is one reason why Iraq is strategically important. To imply that oil is the only reason Iraq is important is almost childish in its naivete.
Why aren't we helping the areas that are even MORE broken than Iraq but would cost less to fix?
Because the United States, while rich and powerful, is not omnipotent. We have to carefully consider where our blood and economic/military resources are best spent. The fact that Iraq has oil and occupies a strategic piece of land are two factors that made it intervention there viable.
Oh, right, oil.
This oft-chanted answer is a moral and intellectual cop-out. It's so obviously wrong, on so many levels.
Rational, intelligent people can debate whether or not invading Iraq was necessary or wise, or whether Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/etc have made mistakes managing post-invasion Iraq
Why don't you apply this logic to Iraq, and let the UN do its job there?
I'd rather not digress into a discussion of the UN's endless resolutions condemning Saddam's actions, its endless promises of action, and its ultimate failure to do anything at all over the course of a decade.
When the UN doesn't do its job in one area (in your opinion) we should invade and "fix" it ourselves
When we a) have the capability, b) feel our national interests are at stake, and c) the UN declines to help
but when it doesn't do its job in another area we should just stick our thumbs up our nether regions and wait for someone else to fix it?
As noted above, our resources are not infinite. Intervening in Sudan, and other places, would be nice - but Iraq and Afghanistan were felt to be more important places to focus our efforts.
During the summer of 1945, Ambassador J. Reuben Clark, Jr., one of America's foremost scholars in the field of international law, prepared an analysis of the UN Charter. His learned appraisal and cogent remarks fly in the face of popular platitudes and conventional "wisdom" concerning the "revered" document. Ambassador Clark's examination led him to conclude that the Charter "is a war document not a peace document," and that it "is built to prepare for war, not to promote peace." The Ambassador noted...:
I did not say the UN would prevent war. I never called its charter a revered document.
I said that it was supposed to prevent World War III. And it did, by ensuring that the two cascading networks of alliances that caused WWI were instead one single worldwide network of alliances, with two big sub-knots of communists and democracies.
Are you one of those socalled 'Americans' we Europeans hear so much about? Let me guess: You voted for Bush because he's sooo pro 'peace and democracy'
So "used" cases that used "unused" could break, though older compilers in essence used "unused" to mean both "used" and
Fucking Uberyank, get you facts right imbecile, you guys start to resemble Nazi Germany of the 30's more and more each day, if you didn't' invent it you steal or ignore it, No the Sun does NOT shine out of your arse.
You never catch me alive
We were involved in Bosnia and Kosovo, at the cost of many American lives and billions of American dollars, while the pusillanimous Europeans turned their back on the suffering. . . No oil there.
We evacuated civilians from dozens of nations from any number of African shit holes during their many revolutions over the past twenty years. . . No oil there.
We were in Aceh shortly after the tsunami. Our military field hospitals were doing operations in knee-deep muck by the light of propane lanterns, and our choppers were dropping MREs and bottled water over hundreds of miles of coastline, days before Kofi Annan swanned into the Jakarta Hilton. While he and the feckless NGOs and UN agencies were holding task force meetings and press conferences, our boys were sweating and bleeding out in the field, saving the lives of bloodthirsty Muslim fiends who a week previously would have gladly beheaded them all. . . No oil there.
No oil in Somalia. No oil in Haiti. Just hopeless suffering people under the thumb of despotic governments, crying out for freedom and security. Some thanks we got for trying our best to help!
No oil in Vietnam. No oil in Korea. And we didn't get much in the way of oil out of either of the World Wars.
Sophisticated, cowardly, jaded Europeans, in their pampered, self-centered cynicism, do not believe anyone could truly go to war to relieve the suffering of others. They see no imperative to spread the blessings of free markets and democratic self-government, as they have themselves lost faith in it. They observe the corruption and lack of principle in their own governments, and project the same venality on the American government and military. They are craven fools. They will soon be living under Sharia law if they do not change.
I proudly acknowledge that the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are being done in my name and with my tax dollars. I believe that they will succeed, and that future generations will remember them with favor.
Many more such operations will be necessary if civilization is to survive. When possible they will be humanitarian in nature, to relieve suffering directly and spread good will towards our nation. When this is not possible, military force will be used to prevent the suffering of millions under collectivist tyranny or medieval religious fanaticism or nuclear terrorism.
We'll hit hard in the interests of our country, and we won't apologize to anyone. We'll laugh in the face of multi-culti asswipes who think that some people are unfit for free-market democracy. We won't ask permission from quavering intellectuals, or bickering diplomats, or corrupt dictators. Get used to it. This is just the beginning. The world has changed forever. We are going to sweep away the debris of millennia.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
I wasn't joking [nt] (although I'd take a +1 mod)
Jay | http://oldos.org
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that because people sign a piece of paper, that it must have value.
I'm australian you idiot (not that you would now the difference)
You never catch me alive
I don't like text. I put none here. I'm burning karma. OMG WHEE!
Jay | http://oldos.org
All of this tangental discussion about the UN and the USA overlooks a particularly salient point. The UN is a representative body; the US is a representative government. As with most such institutions, the official position of the body is a view with a particular bias behind it. Far more often than being truly representative, such a position more usually a view distilled and refined many times over. Rather than being the view of the body's constituents, it is instead the combined view of those few people in the rarefied heights at the top of the pyramid. The little guys at the bottom of the pile (who, granted, hold a highly diverse field of opinion) will often feel entirely differently, if they are indeed even aware of the subject at hand. I am an American myself, and do not at all share the views of the current powers that be. Therefore, fellow slashdotters, in just spirit: please if you would, take care to criticise the body and not the entirety of those that the body represents.