New 'No Military Use' GPL For GPU

Tina Gasperson writes "GPU is a Gnutella client that creates ad-hoc supercomputers by allowing individual PCs on the network to share CPU resources with each other. That's intriguing enough, but the really interesting thing about GPU is the license its developers have given it. They call it a 'no military use' modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The developers told Newsforge why they did it, with commentary from OSI and FSF." Newsforge is also owned by OSTG, Slashdot's parent company.

Comments

Psssh.

[SatanicPuppy]

I don't want to scream "WANKING!" but I find I can't help it. Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.

Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence. Just being alive, you're in competition for limited resources, whether it's two elephants fighting over a waterhole, or two countries fighting over an oil field. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.

Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick. Same with pacifism. If you want to die, or be a slave, by all means, refuse to fight. That's Darwin at his finest. We're an agressive species. We evolved to where we are by being agressive. You think you're just going to decide it's time for everyone to be all nice and happy?

Fine. But don't act all surprised when someone disagrees.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

"Conflict is a fact of existence"

well, sure, with that attitude.

For serious though. Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

Re:Psssh.

[OrangeTide]

There have been plenty of people in history who are pacifists for religious reasons who have died for refusing to fight. They managed to make it into the history books, so in a sense they still live on.

"Don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you kill them right back!" ~ Mal

Re:Psssh.

[Threni]

> Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating
> Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

What has starvation got to do with veganism? That's possibly the worst example of a strawman I've ever seen on the net.

Re:Psssh.

[Lord_Slepnir]

Sad to say, they may actually be hurting things more than they're helping. I want my military to have the best tools available. Accurate bombs kill fewer civilians.

That being said, I'd really like to see someone try to enforce this. If they miliary wants to use it, they'll just use it. The US miliary will just use it, and good luck getting anyone who isn't the US to honor that 'no military' clause.

Re:Psssh.

[Prof.Phreak]

Pure pacifism pisses me off.

Some things are worth fighting for. Most things are not. Are YOU willing to die (or have your children die) for an oil field in Iraq? Sure, it's nice when it's someone else that does the dying, but how far are YOU personally willing to go to have slightly cheaper driving?

Military feeds on war. No war, no funding. They -do- find causes to fight for when there are none.

The fact is that most pro-war folks (and nearly all politicians) aren't the ones doing the fighting themselves, if they were, they'd be the -first- pacifists. In fact, ask how many senators have THEIR kids in the army in harms way... I'd imagine very few.

Re:Psssh.

[TykeClone]

What has starvation got to do with veganism? That's possibly the worst example of a strawman I've ever seen on the net.

Probably nothing - but it's a great excuse to use the phrase "Bambi on a stick"

Re:Psssh.

[UbuntuDupe]

What has starvation got to do with veganism?

I believe his point was that veganism, like preference for non-violence, must yield to the practical:

-It's great to avoid violence, but not at the cost of your own death.

-It's great to avoid eating meat, but if that's your only alternative, you shouldn't let yourself or your kid die to support such an idea.

If you allow exceptions to veganism for necessity, you should allow the same exceptions to whatever "pacifism" you want to simultaneously endorse.

(on a side note, most "pacifists" in the sense of "no violence at all" aren't. That would imply they can make no defense action except to run away even if someone tries to take all food they are about to eat.)

Re:Psssh.

[kfg]

. . .if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

Presumably Bambi found something to eat?

KFG

Re:Psssh.

[bitrex]

Truly written like someone who has never actually experienced war or conflict. Well done, armchair commando!

P.S. Extra points for using veganism in a straw man argument.

Re:Psssh.

[mnmn]

And who is talking about pacifism here?

Re:Psssh.

[gentlemen_loser]

Ya know, its percisely this kinda of bone headed "beat them with a stick" mentality that gives credence to the theory stating that the primary reason we have not run across other intelligent life yet is that it usually self destructs somewhere in the neighborhood of our level of development.

That's Darwin at his finest. We're an agressive species. We evolved to where we are by being agressive.

This statement is categorically untrue. While we have all varying levels of agression in our species as a whole, we evolved to where we are by uniquely (mostly) being self aware and having the capacity to reason. If we do not exercise our ability to reason, we will ultimately end up self destructing or fighting it out on this rock until we collapse the environment or any number of other planet-wide catastrophic events take place. Use that thing between your shoulders for something other than holding up your glasses and THINK.

The authors of the software have EVERY right to demand that their work NOT be used to kill other people ESPECIALLY given our capcity for reasoning to determine other solutions.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think most pacifists are like myself. They find that very few wars actually serve a useful purpose, so they therefore are pointless. That's not to say there aren't extremist pacifists that wouldn't fight against a Nazi trying to take away their life, but it is to say that there's plenty of people like myself that wouldn't pick up a gun to shoot an Iraqi/Afghan/Lebanese/Iranian/Vietnamese/Korean/Cu ban/Russian/Chinese/whatever-today's-stupid-war-is .

Unless you pose an immediate and direct threat to myself (and that's MYSELF, not my government) that is likely to result in my death / slavery, yeah, I will not pick up a gun.

So I say I'm a pacifist. Because, at least in my lifetime, there's not been a single war a government on my continent has fought that I'd participate in.

And, pacifism *has* been proven to work (Ghandi et al). So it's not like it's some sort of foreign/unproven concept people should be scared of.

Re:Psssh.

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Ghandi would like a word with you.

For some people ideals hold up beyond what you would consider common sense. Just because you can t understand it doesn't mean it won't happen.

Re:Psssh.

[omeomi]

Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.

Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence.

You're welcome to your opinion of course, but why shouldn't someone be able to license their product however they choose? It's not like they're trying to dictate how your stuff can be used, just their own. Sounds fine to me.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I agree, though for slightly different reasons.

Whenever I hear about some kind of "do no harm" attitude I always want to ask "does it pass the WW2 test?" What I mean is, would you really have preferred to have sat by and watched the Holocaust happen rather than fight? If so, then I consider the concept morally bankrupt.

Some things and some people make sense to "do no harm". Doctors, in general, are supposed to do no harm. And I appreciate that in their capacity as doctors they never should. Still, if a doctor was at home and someone broke into their house to try and rape their daughter, I'd hope the doctor would have no moral compunctions against shooting the intruder first (in their capacity as father) and then offering CPR as appropriate second (in their capacity as doctor).

The point is that pacifism can lead to just as much evil as violence. People who don't see that annoy me to no end. I don't like people doing bad things, and I don't like people who let other people do bad things.

'The only thing necessary for the triumph [of evil] is for good men to do nothing.' - Edmund Burke

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[jnaujok]

Sorry, I heard someone address this on the radio at one point (A local commentator actually - Joseph Michelli if I remember right), who went through the Congress and determined that there are 25 congressmen (House and Senate) with children in the millitary, or just shy of 5% of the population of the Congress (25/535).

On the other side, the average volunteerism rate for the U.S. population is about 3%.

So, in fact, the U.S. Congress has a higher rate of military volunteerism than the general public, so your argument falls apart.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Results of a quick google search, unable to comment on accurarcy: http://www.footnote.tv/f911chap7-8.html

The text reads:

Members of Congress with children in Iraq (last updated August 8, 2004)

Fahrenheit 9/11 closes with a stunt: Michael Moore's attempt to get members of Congress to send their children to serve in Iraq as a way of pointing out the class divide between the United States' leaders and the people who serve in the military. Moore does acknowledge that at the start of the war in Iraq, there appears to have been only one member of Congress with a child serving in Iraq: Sen. Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota), whose son Brooks serves in the Army. Two more Congressmen had sons who reportedly were being sent to Iraq in late 2003 or early 2004: Representatives Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and Duncan Hunter (R-California). In addition, there are some other members of Congress and the Bush administration with children or relatives serving in the military if not necessarily in Iraq. For example, Representative Mark Kennedy (R-Minnesota), who was seen in Fahrenheit 9/11, reportedly has a nephew serving in Afghanistan, and one of his four children reportedly was thinking of joining the navy. Attorney General John Ashcroft's son Andrew also reportedly has served in the Navy in the Persian Gulf.

In any event, the larger question asked by Fahrenheit 9/11 is whether the people who make the decisions about war would think differently if they had close personal ties to those who actually have to fight those wars.

Representative Charles Rangel (D-New York), who served in the Korean War, called in late 2002 for a reinstatement of the draft, saying that such a draft would help the military meet its needs and also force political leaders to be more cautious.

"Decision-makers who support the war would more readily feel the pain of conflict and appreciate the sacrifice of those on the front lines if their children were there too," Rangel wrote in a January 7, 2003 op-ed piece (on-line here). "Minorities comprise 35 percent of the military and Blacks 20 percent, well above their proportion of the general population. They, along with poor and rural Whites do more than their fair share of service in our ground forces. Yet the value of our foot soldiers is demeaned by those who promote the unproven notion that high-tech warfare will bring a quick and easy victory in Iraq."

There are no studies tracking the number of politicians with children in the military. Surveys conducted for the Defense Department have find that young people who have better educational and career prospects are less likely to enter the military and that the children of educated, affluent parents were less likely to seriously consider military service, factors which could suggest that children of Congressmen would be less likely to enter the military themselves.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney do not have children serving in the military. John Kerry and John Edwards do not either.

Sources: Kirsten B. Mitchell, Media General News Service, Few lawmakers have children in military (November 16, 2003).

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Ghandi would like a word with you.

When he's done, perhaps we can dig up Gandhi to join in. Gawd almighty, how hard is it to spell the guy's name right?

Re:Psssh.

[Threni]

> It's great to avoid eating meat, but if that's your only alternative, you shouldn't let yourself or
> your kid die to support such an idea.

Yeah, that would be murder, or child abuse. I don't understand the connection, though. There are millions of vegans, and hundreds of millions of vegetarians, and I'd be suprised if there are more of a handful of cases of problems due to the diet. On the other hand, I see a lot of really fat children, where the parents are setting them up for an early grave due to obesity, thanks to diabetes, heart problems etc.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure pacifism pisses me off...

Pure pacifism is extremely rare. I'd esitmate that at a protest against something like the Iraq war only about one in a hundred people would be pure pacifists, if that.

Conflict is a fact of existence.

So is cooperation. In particular, people can accomplish much more by working together than by simply taking as much as they can for themselves by any means possible. One of the great strengths of capitalism is that it allows division of labor. People cooperate so that one person makes one part, another person makes another part and then a third person puts it all together. If you want to see the effect of pure conflict then think about whether you'd rather be part of human civilization or just run around naked in the jungle by yourself. Human civilization is, at it's most basic, about cooperation.

Having said that, most pacifists are not about eliminating conflict but about managing conflict("conflict resolution", to be precise). Essentially, they are interested in how they can stand up for themselves while still allowing others to also stand up for themselves. Imagine a party where one person takes all the pizza and locks themselves in the bathroom and eats as much as he can and then flushes the rest down the toilet verses a party where everyone shares the pizza. Pacifism is about trying to achieve the second option.

On the subject of whether someone has a right to control the uses that their software is put to, I don't have a strong opinion. On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't want to make my computer available to do computations for Hamas (or any other fanatics in the Middle East). If nothing else, I could get arrested as a terrorist if it turned out my computer was being used to perform calculations for a foreign military group.

Re:Psssh.

[intnsred]

Pure pacifism pisses me off...

Lots of Americans feel that way.

And many claim to be Christians and go to church to worship a person who advocated pacifism and told people that when you are attacked you should turn the other cheek.

Meanwhile, the US claims to be a "Christian" country, spends roughly the same amount of money on so-called defense[sic] as the rest of the world combined, and is fighting a war on Iraq that everyone from the UN Secretary General, to the late Pope, to the Dali Lama has bluntly called illegal.

As someone who is "pissed off" about pacifism, you're simply reflecting the attitude of the US, the country which has launched more interventions and wars of aggression in the past century than any other country by far.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I still had mods points, seriously.

Re:Psssh.

[SatanicPuppy]

Oh really? You don't think choosing to ignore a whole class of high calorie food is a luxury? This is the typical problem with Veganism. It assumes you'll never be in a situation (like starvation) where you won't be able to come up with a nice big chunk of Tofu. It happens that, in some countrys, the society is rich enough to make this an option.

But don't for an instant, believe that, without that wealth, it would be an option.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Are YOU willing to die (or have your children die) for an oil field in Iraq?

No, but I am willing to kill. Hence my desire to have the best military force possible at our disposition.

Re:Psssh.

[Have Blue]

You can strive for it, sure, but it's unrealistic to expect that you'll ever get there.

Re:Psssh.

[Guuge]

Before you throw Gandhi to the wolves, consider that the lesser of two evils (eating Bambi instead of starving) is not always desirable if there is a third alternative available. There are situations in which you'd break every one of your moral imperatives, but that's not the point. Those who have the means to effect change -- even a personal change -- are morally obligated to do so. Assuming that it's everyone else's problem is a lousy excuse and an abdication of responsibility that would make any slashdotter cringe.

Re:Psssh.

[nuzak]

Whenever I hear about some kind of "do no harm" attitude I always want to ask "does it pass the WW2 test?" What I mean is, would you really have preferred to have sat by and watched the Holocaust happen rather than fight? If so, then I consider the concept morally bankrupt.

Ahh, the good old excluded middle. Did the firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden pass the WWII test? Would torturing a Waffen SS officer for critical intelligence pass? What about a regular Wehrmacht grunt? How about hundreds of them? Believe me, these questions are quite practical now even if the enemy has a different flag (or none at all).

War is the ultimate generator of moral ambiguities when things are actually happening in the present, as you can gain little from the sophistries of hindsight except perhaps a propogandist's view -- these guys are the next nazis, nothing's too heinous for 'em.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

yeah, ok, sure. So?

You can say that about every ideal. I strive every day to make bug-free code, but I realize it's unrealistic to expect I'll ever get there. It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.

Re:Psssh.

[iCEBaLM]

I don't believe he said war, I believe he said conflict. That being said:

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

If you believe for an instant that millions of years of predatory survival competition with other species, during which evolution has allowed the strongest genetics to survive, hasn't coded violence into our species then I have a bridge in New York for sale.

I believe it is a fallacy to try and strive for a world without war, however we should control it better to prevent unnecessary loss of life and resources.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear about some kind of "do no harm" attitude I always want to ask "does it pass the WW2 test?" What I mean is, would you really have preferred to have sat by and watched the Holocaust happen rather than fight? If so, then I consider the concept morally bankrupt.

While that may be true, WWII ended quite some time ago. The current war is one that a staggeringly small percentage of the world population agree with. I can see why a group would be interested in making sure their product wasn't used to kill other people, given the current military climate. Maybe if a war worth fighting comes along again, they'll modify their license.

Re:Psssh.

[gfxguy]

Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?

The problem is that sometimes peace first requires war, whether you want it or not. I know a lot of poeple have misgivings about premptive policies and interventionalist practices, but there are plenty of examples of when war is not just justified (like in Afghanistan or the first Gulf war), but required (like WWI and WWII).

Now, these people use Asimov's laws for robots, which include not allowing someone to be hurt through inaction. The problem is I can make a machine gun and sell it to the government. They might go off and invade another country. But they might also use it to actually protect my country and fellow countrymen. If I make the best available, and refuse to sell it to my government and we're attacked, then through inaction I may cause the deaths of my fellow countrymen.

So these guys are free to do whatever they want, but I hope they don't experience first hand when war IS necessary.

Now, take it out of the context of the current ongoing conflicts. By banning military use, you also ban the use by forces that are more often a force of good in the world than bad. In that context, U.N. peacekeepers, for example, would not be able to use this. What if an entire military force doesn't use it because they can't all work together, including the parts of the military that rebuild and bring humanitarian aid?

It's one of those things, IMO, you've got to take the good with the bad. You start down this road, and then you get people saying "not for use by the [rebublican|democrat] party." "Not for use by people who eat meat." "Not for use by people who own handguns."

I can see their point, it's just a bad application of their ideals. That's my opinion, they have theirs, and it's their program, so they can do what they want, but I'd be apt to not support it at all with an attitude like that. Same way I support smokers rights (I don't smoke) and gun ownership (I don't own a gun), I'd never support these guys (not that I would, but I HAVE paid for free software before... or I should say I have donated to free software projects).

Re:Psssh.

[utopianfiat]

What? Please contort statistics more. 3% volunteerism, okay, what about OTC? what about reserves? what about the family members of those soldiers? spouses? children? parents? If you counted one parent per volunteer, you'd already be driven to 6%, above the 5% in Congress, so sir, YOUR argument falls apart.

Re:Psssh.

[UbuntuDupe]

Perhaps. But there are more possibilities. For example, if you're locked in the room of a prison, with just you and a rat, and no vegetation. Would a vegan still not eat the rat? (Ignore "ew" factor for a moment.) That's an absurd case of course, but whether your are a "pacifist" or "vegan" depends not merely on what you *actually* do, but what you *would* do. Looking just at what I *have* done, I've been a "pacifist" for the last probably 5 years, because I never actually used violence. However, I stood ready to if necessary, so I wasn't really a pacifist. And had I not been willing to, and people knew this, I'd have a lot less stuff since people would take it with impunity.

So, it's ridiculously dishonest (for anyone -- not attributing this to you) to say, "well, I just don't see a lot of people trying to take my stuff, so I don't see the need to use violence." First of all, they don't take your stuff *because* they expect you to violently defend it or authorize another's use of violence in defense of it. And second, if in other circumstances you would use violence, then you do "see the need to use violence".

Re:Psssh.

[suggsjc]

mod parent up.

Don't have any mod points right now, else I would do it myself. I'm not even going to try to add to that since it pretty much hit the nail squarely on the head.

Re:Psssh.

[RobotRunAmok]

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

Which, as history has shown, is best accomplished when the two largest tribes create the biggest, baddest, most honkin' armaments their weaponsmiths can conceive of and point them, point blank, at each other. All the smaller tribes choose up sides, and if you do it right you get a really neat space-race as a dividend.

A world without war is not possible in a world without weapons.

Re:Psssh.

[michrech]

Yeah, that would be murder, or child abuse. I don't understand the connection, though. There are millions of vegans, and hundreds of millions of vegetarians, and I'd be suprised if there are more of a handful of cases of problems due to the diet. On the other hand, I see a lot of really fat children, where the parents are setting them up for an early grave due to obesity, thanks to diabetes, heart problems etc.

The children you saw that were obese were not in such a state because they eat meat. They are that way becuase the parents couldn't give to shits what their kids are eating and, often times, are as fat (or fatter) themselvs.

I say this as someone who eats virtually nothing but Hamburger Helper (with some sort of vegie, some of the time), who got up to 225lbs before I decided I had enough. I considerably cut back the amount of salt I was taking in (at my doctors suggestion) by giving up 98% of the soda I was drinking (with a *few* other diet changes to reduce salt). I still eat lots of Hamburger Helper, however, I've started going to the gym (since my job pays for it. :) ). I'm down to between 205lbs and 207lbs (different every day). I'm sure I could have lost even more weight in these past few months if I stayed at the gym longer, but as it is all I do is spend 15 minutes on a "random" pattern on the bike and another 15 on the treadmill (at a fast walk -- asthma).

I kinda went sideways there.. Point is, if the fat kids you've seen would be encouraged to do more than sit on their fat asses in front of the computer/TV/video console/all three, there wouldn't be so many fat kids (or people) in the world (well, at least in the US.. (yes, I'm a USian...))

Ok. I go now... heh..

Re:Psssh.

[Evanisincontrol]

...and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.

I wish I could find a link to this study I read about, done years ago. I can't find the proper credits, so you'll just have to take it on faith that this study was done.

Some researchers placed a group of chimps in a confined jungle area, large enough that confinement was irrelevant. Inside the confined area there was no natural food, but the researchers provided the chimps with just enough food to live. The food was placed in ways that the chimps had to scavenge to find it. The chimps actually worked together, helping each other find food, and through cooperation, survived.

Then came stage two. The researchers began have crates upon crates of bananas brought in, more than the chimps could ever need. You know what the chimps did? They began killing each other, stealing food, and hoarding it.

So, even unlimited resources aren't a solution to our human nature problem. And in fact, human nature ISN'T the problem.. it's our animal nature. No matter how evolved we become, our human instincts are still wrapped around our baser animal instincts, and those animal instincts have priority in our brains, not the other way around.

Re:Psssh.

[PFI_Optix]

There have been plenty of people in history who are pacifists for religious reasons who have died for refusing to fight. They managed to make it into the history books, so in a sense they still live on.

More to the point, they made a difference. War isn't always the only solution to a problem.

Now, when the problem is an insane dictator invading his neighbors and imprisoning/torturing/killing hundreds of thousands of people , war is probably the only option.

"Don't you ever stand for that sort of thing. Someone ever tries to kill you, you kill them right back!" ~ Mal

FireFly had the best quotes.

"Oh, I'm gonna go to the special hell."

Re:Psssh.

[chameleon_skin]

I'm not really sure how to respond to this - there is so much mouth-foaming going on in regards to people's dietary choices that the point is rather lost along the way.

Best as I can parse it, the point seems to be that "any statements that amount to a general repudiation of violence, whether against animals or humans, is absurd due to the fact that violence is part of human existence." In other words, because violence is inherent to the human condition, we shouldn't bother trying to lessen it. For some reason, the poster seems to believe that if somebody can't live by their beliefs 100% of the time, then those beliefs become invalid.

So we should throw out the Ten Commandments part about "thou shalt not kill" because it doesn't make specific exception for the case where somebody has broken into your house and is threatening your family, right? Are you paying attention, Christians? Apparently you're all deluded.

Let's take the patently absurd "bambi" example above. Would a vegan let their family starve if the only choice they had was to eat meat? Doubtlessly not. But the fact of the matter is, how many starving vegans do you know? As a practical, everyday matter, a commitment to veganism is as good a dietary choice as any other in an ideological sense. The above reasoning is a straw man argument at best.

So putting aside oversimplified, black-and-white views of human ideology, let's see what the intent of the GPL modification was. The creators' intent was to say, "as creators of this software, we don't allow you, the licensee, to use it for millitary purposes." Unless you make some truly wild-ass assumptions about the authors' mental condition, we can surmise that they mean war as a general vehicle is misused and they want no part of it. This does NOT mean that they would rather have let Hitler kill the Jews, or the terrorist bomb the World Trade Center, or any other of the world's clear atrocities; rather, they most likely believe (and rightfully so) that the VAST MAJORITY of millitary actions are started under false pretenses in order to sacrifice the ignorant and innocent for the benefit of the chosen few.

The above examples are obvious exceptions - I'm willing to bet that if the millitary were to have found itself in the position of requiring software issued under the modified license for the purpose of stopping a 9/11-type event, the authors would have gladly given it to them under a modified license for that purpose. But we're talking extremes in that case, not everyday usage. In practical, usual usage, however, the license means "if you don't like our terms, fine - just don't use the software".

Just because we can't meet our ideals 100% of the time doesn't render those ideals worthless.

Re:Psssh.

[Moofie]

"so in a sense they still live on"

No. In no meaningful sense do they "live on". They are dead. You may not value your life, but I certainly value mine, and I will absolutely fight to protect it.

Evolution says I win.

Re:Psssh.

[Millenniumman]

No it doesn't. Being 1% lower wouldn't be very significant.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd really like to write something very poetic, full of meaning and defense for these developers who chose to make a stand against the military. Sadly, though, I'm consumed with this need to call you an naive idiot. Oh well.

Re:Psssh.

[Threni]

> But don't for an instant, believe that, without that wealth, it would be an option.

Your argument is a joke. It's in the poorest countries that many people are forced to have a vegan, or almost vegan, diet.

Re:Psssh.

[OrangeTide]

Obviously their meme lives on, else we would not be having this discussion.

Re:Psssh.

[wiggles]

*disclaimer: I'm an American. As a result, the 'we' pronouns below will necessarily refer to my countrymen.

Be careful of the phrase "Does it pass the WW2 test", because WW2 started as a war over oil. The Imperial Japanese (and I refer to them as such because the Japanese today can't be compared to their past any more than today's Germans can be compared to Nazis) bombed Pearl Harbor because they wanted to knock out our pacific fleet so we couldn't go after them for taking the oil fields in Indonesia. The whole reason Japan started rolling in the first place was because they had no oil of their own -- they had to take everyone else's, especially after we stopped supplying them oil once they started beating up on China. They bombed Pearl Harbor because they were afraid of our response, which is why they had to strike first, so we would be too weak to do anything about it. They thought that if we were weak enough, we'd just sue for peace instead of kicking their asses right back to Honshu.

Hitler's 'Final Solution' had exactly zero to do with our joining that war. At the time the war started, many Americans wondered why we were going to war with Germany since it was Japan who had attacked us, just as many Americans today wonder why we went to war with Iraq when it was Al Qaeda who attacked us.

World War 2 was a 'war for oil' just as much as the current war in Iraq is.

Re:Psssh.

[dnoyeb]

Those sabre tooth tigers are always going to be eating us so its time we just face facts.

When you stop striving is when you stop evolving.

Re:Psssh.

[Threni]

If you're locked in a prison and all you have to eat is a rat, then you eat the rat. That's not being a hypocrite, because if you're a vegan because you don't need to eat meat, and suddenly you do need to eat it then I can't see the problem.

Ditto the violence argument. You can be a pacifist but if someone tries to kill you, and you somehow have to kill them to survive, then you kill them.

It's something of a moot point these days. We pay our taxes to people who are more than willing to kill others on our behalf.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you sir, that no member of congress has a child on the front lines.

Rich, connected, white people don't become anything other than officers and desk-jockies.

A better metric would be, how many members of congress have had children DIE IN ACTION, as opposed to the rest of the population.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Ahh, the good old excluded middle.

Don't make me laugh. The law of the excluded middle has nothing to do with this. Go back to your logic class.

The proposition of pacifism is to NEVER use force. My response is "would you have used NO force in WW2?". I didn't ask "would you have firebombed Dresden". You can have a significant and interesting debate about Dresden, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima (to name a few), but none of this has to do with the question at hand - which is not "how much" violence, but "violence at all?"

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[lawpoop]

You're very good at setting up strawman arguments.

You're telling me that veganism is 'unworkable in reality'? What reality do you inhabit? You're ignoring the millions of vegans in the Indian subconinent, who have lived that way for thousands of years. Now don't start on about how they are all malnurished -- if you do, you are ignoring the fact that you were wrong in that veganism can't exist, and that there are plenty of meat eaters around the world who are starving.

Sure, when it comes down to it, almost everyone will kill Bambi and the family will have a feast. However, especially in this day and age, it never comes down to it. You can go through your whole life and raise a whole family on nothing but veggies. It's been happening for thousands of years. And if you were lost in the woods and starving, you will definately have more success gathering edible plants than you will tracking down, killing, butchering, and safely cooking an animal.

It is also true that conflict is a fact of existence. People will get mad at each other, and respond in a number of ways, from ignoring each other, acting passive-aggressive, sitting down and talking, arguing, yelling, fighting, perhaps murder and gang/tribal fueds, but warfare as an absolute necessity? You're telling me that Ghandi's non-violent resistance didn't successfully overthrow the British Empire in India?

Re:Psssh.

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

We evolved to where we are by being agressive

Pray tell me, what does the prehistory of the human race have to do with ethics? Are we all supposed to behave differently because Darwin discovered we have non-human ancestors? When I'm trying to decide how to treat my neighbor, or who to vote for, the antics of a bunch of apes living a few million years ago are far from my mind.

"Oh, look at this old skull I just dug up in Africa, this showed humans used rocks to beat each other over the head, I think I'd better go and kick my neighbor's head in now."

Or to put it another way, your views on ethics are a shade below moronic.

Re:Psssh.

[Kelson]

Pure pacifism is extremely rare. I'd esitmate that at a protest against something like the Iraq war only about one in a hundred people would be pure pacifists, if that.

Agreed. In many cases, objections to a war are just that: objections to that war. What people on the right tend to forget these days is that there was a lot less objection in October 2001 to the US invasion of Afghanistan than there was in March 2003 to the US invasion of Iraq, or than there is today to the ongoing occupation.

It's not just peaceniks and hippies: there's a large contingent of people who believe that the US presence in Iraq was either a mistake from the beginning or has become a liability. The "problem" is that those are arguable issues. Idealistic pacifists can be dismissed out of hand, their objections ignored without actually thinking about them.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you kill an Iraqi for their oil field?

Seriously, I don't understand, aren't two of the ten commandments "Thou shall not kill." and "Thou shall no steal."?

So by killing someone to take their oil field aren't you breaking 20% of the commandments?

And isn't wanting the oil field in the first place coveting? "Thou shall not covet." So now you are up to 30% violation of the 10 commandments.

Throw in that you are putting money before god and you are breaking 40% of the 10 commandments.

Dude, you are so going strait to hell.

Re:Psssh.

[utopianfiat]

It wasn't the holocaust that finally justified us going to war, it was the intercepted memo sent to Mexico offering them Texas and the attack on Pearl Harbor. We didn't care that millions of Jews were being gassed because it *wasn't our problem* as it should be. When there's a threat towards the nation, THAT is the justification for war. Not this global interventionism.
Still, we've tried using "immediate threat" to justify war despite the double-standard our politicians raise. We tell our citizens one story while we tell congress another, ie:
WWII:
People: They kill lots of jews, let's get 'em!
Congress: They attacked us, let's get 'em!
Korea/Vietnam:
People: Communists are bad!
Congress: The spread of the influence of the communist state presents an immediate threat to the security of the free world!
Iraq:
People: Saddam is a bad man! He kills people!
Congress: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!

So you can actually perform something with an interventionary aim while justifying it as self-defense.

"The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first...The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war." Then the few will shout even louder...Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it ... Next, statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." - Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Re:Psssh.

[farble1670]

there's a diff between saying "i don't want my work to further violence" and "violence is never, ever justified". i think the intent is the former, not the latter.

i guess they should have come up with the "my work shall not be used to further violence except if it's some really bad shit like hitler or something" clause in their licensing.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Maybe if a war worth fighting comes along again, they'll modify their license.

If that was the statement they wanted to make, they could have made it. They didn't say "this war is bad". They said "war is bad". So I'm responding to what they actually wrote.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[acvh]

"Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?"

Sure. Depends on what premise you start with. Given the right premise one can rationally conclude that war is indeed Good.

Now, in this case, to stay on topic, these guys are delusional. If the military wants to use this software, and I have no idea if they do, they will. A silly little license agreement will not stop them. In fact, there is probably an extant, yet secret, executive order giving the military the right to seize for its own use anything it wants.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

"Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?"

Yes. Lots of people make lots of money in wars. Others are simply foolish and do not fully comprehend what war is.

I'll also ask you to reread my post and find where I advanced the idea that war is never justified. I'm not an idiot. Simply because I think that striving for a world without war is worthwhile does not mean I'm blind to current realities.

Re:Psssh.

[Amouth]

I am not a vegan but this is how i look at it..

If i am locked in a prison cell with no food or any way of getting food and it was me and a rat...
No i wouldn't eat the rat, i would let him go as he is small and has a chance of escape where as if I eat the rat i will just be hungry the next day and die a day later than before.

When you are put into the position of no hope you might as well help what is around you as you can in no way benifit.

Re:Psssh.

[Nutria]

"Conflict is a fact of existence"

well, sure, with that attitude.

One word: Testosterone.

Another word: Adrenaline.

A phrase: fight or flight.

Google for George Orwell's opinions on British Pacifism in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They might be instructive.

Re:Psssh.

[Richy_T]

Tree bark.

Re:Psssh.

[ohsnapt]

/cue quotes from Heinlein.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Be careful of the phrase "Does it pass the WW2 test", because WW2 started as a war over oil.

This is what happens when politics get in the way of common sense. You're the second person to respond to my WW2 post with some variant of "are you trying to justify what we did in ww2?"

No, I'm not. The Final Solution may have been completely and totally irrelevant to our entrance into WW2. In fact, if we'd entered the war with 0 knowledge about it, it would not change my WW2 test even one iota. The question is just this: if a nation is systematially massaacring people because of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political view, etc, would you oppose military invention on the grounds that "killing is bad?" WW2 just provides the convenient real-life example. Darfur would work just as well, and I'm pissed that we haven't done more there.

The fact that WW2 was about oil is irrelevant.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[esconsult1]

Bummer that you just shat all over being vegan for no good reason.

Sure, I agree that if it comes down to starving,then I, a vegan, would eat Bambi and her kids (and carve up her mate's antlers to make a spear) without a moments thought.

However, in the USA, there's an overabundance of food, both good and bad. I have a choice, and I use it by being vegan, without shitting over all my near and dear Bamb-eaters (wife, family, etc) for no good reason.

Similarly, with a good choice of distributed software available (and a wide variety of networking libraries, compilers and scripting languages as well), if I were the makers of the software, and I felt like putting restrictions on the use for whatever "moral" reasons I liked, then that's my perogative too.

Lets face it, we live in an abundant society (here in the west), and so we can make at least a few more choices about certain things that we have control of. We even have the choice to not use their software. Last time I looked, it was still a free country!

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God"
(Matthew 5:9)

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."
(Genesis 1:29-30)

Jesus was a liberal jew,
and probably a vegan too.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but it doesn't make preparing for the inevitable (war or bugs in the code) any less important either.

Re:Psssh.

[hey!]

Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence. Just being alive, you're in competition for limited resources, whether it's two elephants fighting over a waterhole, or two countries fighting over an oil field. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.

I'd argue that human existence, or at least intelligent, self aware existence, is qualitatively different than non-intelligent biota. A non-human animal, for example, has no choice but to overrun available resources until it is brought low by disease, privation and predation. People, on the other hand, have a choice.

What's interesting is how often, given the choice that intelligence grants us, we exercise that choice with more brutality and recklessness than unthinking animals. To be sure, there is some truth in "nature, red in tooth an claw", particularly as applies to predation, but it is still a simplification. However conflict in the animal world is by in large limited. Animals do not set out to annihilate other groups of animals. Nor do they have any compunction about "cutting and running". Animals that have no concept of right or wrong, honor or disgrace, cannot be swayed by slogans like Horace's "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" ("how sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country"). The buck who ruts then runs away, lives to rut another day. Ants and other eusocial critters may die for the hive, but arguably they are cells in the larger organism that is the hive.

When you walk through the woods, if have the sense to infer it, you can detect conflict going on between species, only often on time scales that defy perception. In time lapse photography, you could see fungi devouring trees or vines strangling each other. On the other hand, there are countless examples of cooperation and symbiosis that you'd miss, like fungi bringing nitrogen to trees, or plants and polinators with intertwined requirements.

The quality of human experience that makes us moral beings is that we can see these patterns and predict how our participation in them will affect our future selves, and people we care about. My daughter and I were talking about Hiyao Miyazaki's movies the other day, and she said, "The think about Miyazaki movies is that the bad guys aren't really bad, they're just stupid." The irony of the capacity of rational thought is how often it it is expressed in ways that may be internally consistent, but are in fact irrational.

Re:Psssh.

[shmlco]

As the pirate community so often points out, once you've released it, you've released it. If you wanted that kind of control over it you shouldn't have released it in the first place.

Not to mention the fact that all they're doing is making a statement. I'm sure potential terrorists and certain governments who might want to use the software to, say, design WMDs, will honor the "no military use" clause.

They might want to blow up half the world, but violating GPL agreements... I mean, one has to draw the line somewhere!

Re:Psssh.

[iCEBaLM]

Those sabre tooth tigers are always going to be eating us so its time we just face facts.

Straw man.

Striving for a world where humans aren't aggressive is like striving for a world where people have three eyes. Even the most pacifist, calm, level headed individual will still fight for what he believes.

The simple act of striving for world peace is hypocritical. You're essentially fighting to end fighting.

When you stop striving is when you stop evolving.

Agreed. Evolution is the epitome of conflict and therefore you cannot evolve without it. It makes more sense to accept the things you cannot change and put effort in to those you can.

Re:Psssh.

[Moofie]

Um, OK. They're still worm food.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

It wasn't the holocaust that finally justified us going to war, it was the intercepted memo sent to Mexico offering them Texas and the attack on Pearl Harbor

Irrelevant. See above.

When there's a threat towards the nation, THAT is the justification for war.

And you don't think a pan-Eurasiac dictatorship would have been a threat? You're right about why America entered the war, but so what?

1 - The fundamental principle remains: refusal to engage in violence in order to stop violence makes you complicit in that violence.

2 - WW2 presented a long-term security threat to the US that did validate our entry into the war even under the restriction of "national interest".

And the fact that you quote that little speil to me in a thread about pacifism is just ironic. So Sam Clemens says it's bad for country A to attack country B for no good reason. Fair enough. But what about country B that is attacked? Do they have no right to defend themselves? This quote is simply NOT an indictment of all military action, it's incoherent to quote it in defense of pacifism.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[gb506]

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

I live in an area where "intentional communities", similar to communes, are pretty abundant. The "intent" of these communities is normally based around peace, love, happiness, non-violence, and shared wealth. The reality in the majority of these places (IMHO) is that they often mutate into the exact opposite of the intent, where hierarchical power structures develop, animosity abounds, and a constant reliance on invariably ineffectual conflict resolution is the order of the day. Power, animosity and ineffective (or misguided approaches to) conflict resolution (even though many of these communities have many so called "experts" in CR) breed violence...

These places are world society in microcosm. So, if you've got a small number of individuals who come together, strike a covenant, and try to live peacefully and amicably w/ one another, and in most cases it either does not work at all, or the strong rule and the weak are left to cope with being emasculated, humiliated, or otherwise disenfranchised, how do you expect it to work in macrocosm????

When we've achieved a world without conflict or the realistic threat of conflict, we'll most likely have been enslaved.

Re:Psssh.

[dnoyeb]

Did they do a study on what positions Children of Congresspersons tend to hold in the US military?

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

The lesson here is: never strive. /sarcasm

What makes you so sure that humanity is forever destined to be violent? "Ever" is a very long time, you know.

Re:Psssh.

[UbuntuDupe]

Yes, you and I agree -- you're making my exact point. It's not hypocrisy to say, "I'm a pacifist except when violence is necessary". It's just:

a) a non-standard definition of pacifism

b) The military scientist who wants to use the GNU-non-military'd code thinks the exact same thing; he just has a different conception of what's "necessary". Now how morally superior do you feel to him? ("you" referring to an anti-war individual making the statement above in quotation marks)

Re:Psssh.

[kz45]

"Why would you kill an Iraqi for their oil field?"

The war just isn't about oil. This is a naive and simple-minded approach to the situation.

it is about power and control and middle eastern leaders that are not only murdering their people but posing a direct threat to the US.

The reason our oil prices in the US is so high is because of the environmentalists. They prevent more usage of our own oil and keep us reliant on the middle east.

Re:Psssh.

[wiggles]

I agree with you completely on your feelings for what makes a war morally acceptable. However, I have to point out that, if your test were applied at the beginning of WW2, it would have failed. The Nazi death camps didn't open until after we entered the war (1943? Someone correct me if wrong). The Japanese were committing all kinds of atrocities, but we didn't know about them yet.

If your point is that it's only OK to go to war if the above conditions are met, then we could not have gone to war when we did with the knowledge we had.

Re:Psssh.

[Vexorian]

It doesn't really matter, does it? They developed the software and they decide what license to use, it doesn't matter if their reasons are bad, foolish or whatever they have the right to choose.

I for one, don't think that they want to stop war with this but they just wouldn't like the idea of their work to be used in a war

Re:Psssh.

[shmlco]

The authors and creators of books, music, movies, and software make demands limiting the distribution of their work every day... and it's pretty obvious how much THOSE demands are respected...

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

the phrase "for serious though" that followed my quip might have clued you in that it meant tounge-in-cheek.

Re:Psssh.

[ben there...]

Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?

Absolutely. A large portion of the "military-industrial complex", as Eisenhower put it so well, wants war. As do investors in those companies. There is a lot of money to be made in times of war, as is happening right now with the current conflicts.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless Bambi was the vicious, soulless, cannibalistic killer we all know Disney was trying to hide... then you'd be the one on the stick.

Re:Psssh.

[Stanistani]

>It wasn't the holocaust that finally justified us going to war, it was the intercepted memo sent to Mexico offering them Texas...

Dude, that was World War One - google Zimmerman Telegram...

Re:Psssh.

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes)

He said conflict, not violence. A life without conflict is impossible and a naive dream of pacifists. Witness Gandhi's "Quit India Movement" where bombings and arson were used by supposed pacifists.

does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

I suggest that would-be pacifists read the book Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals by Stephen Koch. It tells the story of Soviet controlled German propagandist Willi Münzenberg during the periods of World War one leading up to WW2. One of the most interesting things about the story was the directed use of propaganda against the Western Worlds intellectuals (mostly European at the time with some Americans), particularly with those who spouted the ideology of pacifism. The Soviets understood that propaganda is best used with riding the back of an existing strong zeitgeist and the intellectual current of the time was "peace not war" even to the detriment of protecting one's own people. They also understood that the best propaganda was truthful (and what could be more self-evident than peace being better than war?). So the Soviets, through Münzenberg, started a "peace movement" with the main aim of undermining the morality of Western war efforts. It had a dual purpose too. It both attacked the west and when, so the Soviets thought, they would defeat the west, they would also steamroll over the pacifists who would offer no competition. What am I getting at? Well nothing really, except that a lot of the history of pacifism isn't exactly what it seems.

Re:Psssh.

[rucs_hack]

well, actually acheological evidence suggests that for the largest portion of the evolution of our particuler ape family we've been a passive and predominantly matriarchal society.

Basically, the women were in charge. We even have some very old aboriginal tribes (several countries) who's verbal history speaks of women being completelly in charge of their cultures a long time ago. A handy present day verification for the archeological hints.

Prehistoric women managed the 'cave' (innacurate, but it'll do), cared for the children, foraged for food that didn't try to gore you, and almost certainly did not risk their lives on a daily basis. They ran everything essentially. There is barely any evidence for wars between these ancient humans, or when homo sapiens lived alongside Neanderthal. This was the time when the female seems to have been the dominant partner.

The only exception seems to have been when modern humans crossed into the americas over the land bridge and displaced a group of humans in south america who'd come up from australia. There is definate archeological evidence of the new arrivals killing off the previous occupants. Almost all of them, one group survived till the early 19th century, when we 'helped them' and wrecked an ancient culture before we understood its significance and real importance to understanding early human involvement in the americas. Hmm, one up for the civilised world there....

What I'm getting at is that the ones in charge were not the ones who were doing all the fighting with meat that was inconveniently still packaged in its original owner. This whole 'men in charge' and wars thing is a relativelly new invention which likely followed the advent of farming.

Re:Psssh.

[amliebsch]

Best as I can parse it, the point seems to be that "any statements that amount to a general repudiation of violence, whether against animals or humans, is absurd due to the fact that violence is part of human existence." In other words, because violence is inherent to the human condition, we shouldn't bother trying to lessen it. For some reason, the poster seems to believe that if somebody can't live by their beliefs 100% of the time, then those beliefs become invalid.

I think his point was more along the lines that it is morally facile to categorically condemn actions without regard to consequences. The argument is that violence can in fact be used for morally good purposes, e.g., the application of justice. The parent seemed fed up with people who adopt a categorical aboslutism not just because it is impractical, but because it is immoral in that it condemns acts of good.

Re:Psssh.

[russ1337]

If your locked in a prison and all you have to eat is your cellmate......

Re:Psssh.

[deepestblue]

It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality. I've been Vegan for some years, and am still alive and healthy. Do you care to elaborate on "unworkable in reality"?

Re:Psssh.

[kfg]

His fault for not evolving opposable thumbs.

KFG

Re:Psssh.

[CastrTroy]

Let's take another situation then. You are in the desert. There are no cacti or other plant life in sight. You know that you are a couple days trek to civilization. You have already been a couple days without food, and you know that you will not have the energy to continue on if you do not eat something. You see a lizard walk by. Do you eat it? If you don't eat it, you will surely die. If you do eat it, you will be able to make it to civilization, and live the rest of your life. I'll give you a hint on the answer, the lizard would eat you if he could.

Which brings my biggest problem with veganism/vegetarianism. Other animals eats animals all the time. Why is it wrong for people (who are just really smart animals) to eat other animals. It's not like it's even because we are so superior that it's cruel that we would kill them because it's just too easy. It's also easy for a whale to eat a fish, but they still do.

Re:Psssh.

[tringstad]

I am not a vegan but this is how i look at it..

That's odd, I _am_ a vegan, and if it were me I think the rat would get eaten.

There is a certain nobility to what you propose, and if I knew for a fact that I had no chance of escape, I would agree with letting the rodent walk, but if there is even the remotest fraction of a posibility that surviving just a little longer might earn me enough time to be rescued or to maybe find more food, it's time for rat tartar.

-Tommy

P.S. Original poster is either a moron, or an impressive troll.

Re:Psssh.

[MHDK]

Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence. Just being alive, you're in competition for limited resources, whether it's two elephants fighting over a waterhole, or two countries fighting over an oil field. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.

This argument is: The only solution available to share a limited resource is to compete over it, such that what one person gains, another person loses.

Fortunately, our ancestors were able to see the benefit in cooperation such that one group's efforts in agriculture increased a limited resource, and allowed other groups to divert their efforts towards other goals such as defending land that surrounded a community or even artistic pursuits such as decorating clay jugs or making jewelry.

If people were ONLY able to compete and could ONLY deal with limited resources through competition then there would be no society; we would be fighting over scraps of food and concerning ourselves with petty might-is-right pecking orders.

Re:Psssh.

[crabpeople]

Thats one of the most insightful things ive ever read on slashdot. very zen. I couldn't find the source, or anything similar, on google so i guess its all you. If you did get it from somewhere please post.

Re:Psssh.

[Amouth]

again to qoute "I am not a vegan but this is how i look at it.." hell yea .. lizards are good..

Re:Psssh.

[2short]

Whose a pure pacifist? What if you're perfectly willing to fight for causes you feel justify it, but don't want others to make that decision for you? What if you think the militaries of the world today (orthose who control them) make incredibly stupid decisions as to when to fight, and you don't want your code to help them out, however slightly? It's a bit poseur-ly to it in your license; the military probably won't have any problem re-implementing if they want to; but hey, it's their code, why shouldn't they license it how they please?

Veganism is "unworkable in reality."? Um, in like, really-real reality, there are quite a few vegans, so WTF are you talking about?

"Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick"

So what? It doesn't come down to that. Why can't vegans decide not to eat animals, since it's not, in fact, Bambi or starvation? (FYI, I am not a vegan; venison is yummy) I can't see what you have against people being vegan who aren't facing starvation. ( Even in those parts of the world where people are facing starvation, your starve-or-eat-meat dilemma is particularly unlikely)

"If you want to die, or be a slave, by all means, refuse to fight."

If you really want to die, I'm pretty sure fighting when you don't need to is the way to go.

"We evolved to where we are by being agressive"

Evolution is not a moral code. A behaviour may have been produced by evolution, or have been and evolutionary advantage, but that just describes it, it doesn't justify it. For that matter, I do beleive we got where we are by using our brains and cooperating with one another. Were it all about being aggressive, lions would have kicked our asses.

Re:Psssh.

[Matimus]

I would like to see some data backing this up. I've read that there are no known fully vegan cultures on earth. That includes the very poor. Veganism is an ideal. Just because someone is too poor to buy meat doesn't mean that they don't eat meat whenever they get a chance. In Indian culture it is the lowests (least wealthy) cast that eats meat and the highest (most weathy) cast that that does not (although they do eat a considerable amount of dairy products). I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just asking for data to back up your statement.

Re:Psssh.

[Amouth]

i was pointing of the fact that the parent poster was putting someone in a hopeless situation.

now if there is hope then yea.. eat the rat.. and the post he responded with (dessert walk eat lizard to make it to town) was much better worded.

the whole was people seem to forget that when you put people in hopeless istuations they tend to act alot diffrent then they normaly would..

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Your points are well taken. My WW2 test is meant to be retroactive, and not historically accurate. The objective is to make a moral point, and not to either criticize or support any actual decision made by the US.

However, just for historical accuracy, the roots of the Holocaust can be traced as early as 1933.

Starting in 1933, the Nazis set up concentration camps within Germany, many of which were established by local authorities, to hold political prisoners and "undesirables". These early concentration camps were eventually consolidated into centrally run camps, and by 1939, six large concentration camps, located in Poland, had been established. After 1939, with the beginning of the Second World War, the concentration camps increasingly became places where the enemies of the Nazis, including Jews and POWs, were either killed or forced to act as slave laborers, and kept undernourished and tortured.

As far as exlusive extermination camps, those also started before 1943:

In December, 1941, the Nazis opened Chelmno, the first of what would soon be seven extermination camps, dedicated entirely to mass extermination on an industrial scale, as opposed to the labor or concentration camps. Over three million Jews would die in these extermination camps. The method of killing at these camps was by poison gas (Zyklon B or carbon monoxide), usually in "gas chambers", although many prisoners were killed in mass shootings and by other means. The bodies of those killed were destroyed in crematoria (except at Sobibór where they were cremated on outdoor pyres), and the ashes buried or scattered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust

So I agree that given what we knew then, it doesn't necessarily follow that we should have gone to war for this reason. However my point is to ask the question: if you knew this was going on again (and WW2 is proof that it can happen) then would you continue to oppose military intervention? This is different from asking "don't you agree the US should have entered WW2 as/when/how it actually did?"

Does the distinction make sense?

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

-It's great to avoid violence, but not at the cost of your own death.

-It's great to avoid eating meat, but if that's your only alternative, you shouldn't let yourself or your kid die to support such an idea.

If you allow exceptions to veganism for necessity, you should allow the same exceptions to whatever "pacifism" you want to simultaneously endorse.


-It's great to avoid canabalism, but it that's your only alternative, then be sure to stick your fork into the guy next to you before he sticks his fork into you?

Re:Psssh.

[anglete]

I don't believe he said war, I believe he said conflict. That being said:

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

If you believe for an instant that millions of years of predatory survival competition with other species, during which evolution has allowed the strongest genetics to survive, hasn't coded violence into our species then I have a bridge in New York for sale.

I believe it is a fallacy to try and strive for a world without war, however we should control it better to prevent unnecessary loss of life and resources.

I disagree, we as humans may have violent tendancies but that, in no way, translates directly into war. Sports are a great outlet for violent tendancies that neither purposefully causes death nor destruction.

We do have outlets for our violent tendancies that do not require war. We should strive for a world without war. That does not inherently mean a world without violence. Just because there is violence inherent in ourselves, doesn't mean we can't use our agression in safe ways.

Re:Psssh.

[12AU7A]

      "For serious though" is a silly phrase. Learn how to write!

Re:Psssh.

[Nutria]

Now, in this case, to stay on topic, these guys are delusional. If the military wants to use this software, and I have no idea if they do, they will. A silly little license agreement will not stop them.

US Government auditors are relatively strict about licenses.

Besides, why do they need GPU when they've had GPL-based Beowulf clusters for a decade?

Re:Psssh.

[Amouth]

i didn't get it from any source other than my head..

Re:Psssh.

[Burz]

Poorer societies eat less meat because vegetables are a far more efficient use of resources. And like it or not, sustainability in agriculture points strongly to reducing meat consumption. So I am afraid you have this notion of dietary "luxury" completely backwards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetar ianism

(And please note the article is well-referenced.)

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a lot of money to be made in times of war, as is happening right now with the current conflicts.

Never mind defending yourself when the other guy is trying to kill you... No, it has to be about money. The pacifist movement in America is not about ending violence, it is about ending capitalism. Like a lot of the other fringe left-wing movements we see today, it's little more than a communist front. These groups all rally for different cause, and they all have one thing in common: America, put down your arms, shut down your factories and refineries, put down your books, and go back to the 18th Century -- you ought to be nothing more than poor, uneducated farmers. Kruschev warned that he would take down America without firing a shot, and it's apparent his plan is still grinding away, little by little, eroding the republic.

and no I'm not trolling, just read what some of these groups have to say.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

+800 informative. You deserve to be modded up, but unfortunately /. has too many radical left-wingers out there.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

and told people that when you are attacked you should turn the other cheek.

That doesn't mean what you think it means. More likely "turn the other cheek" refers to Romans slapping their slaves with the back of the hand, which is what you did to people beneath you. You only hit with the palm side to people that were your equal. What Christ meant with this saying is that you shouldn't stand for being treated like a slave and force the oppressors to see you as an equal.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sports are a great outlet for violent tendancies that neither purposefully causes death nor destruction.

That's like saying masturbation make sex obsolete because it doesn't cause pregancy or disease.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

The difference is that embracing pacifism not only won't get you a violence-free world, it's guaranteed to fail. If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.

Pacifism may seem anti-violent in the short-run, but in the long run it's guaranteed to permit violence to thrive.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You made a mistake in your last point. It should read "you're simply reflecting the attitude of the US, the country which has liberated more people and stood up to tyrants in the past century than any other country by far."

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

Depends. If, for instance, Norway was a very poor country, they would be primarily carnivorous, because in Norway, there's not a lot of vegetables that grow. If you need a demonstration of this, look at what the Inuit ate.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I see.

Seems you aren't actually applying a "WW2 test" but are in fact applying a "Rwanda test". Which works as follows:

If a nation is systematially massaacring people because of religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political view, etc, would you be outraged enough to fight to free these people from the torment and stop their nations actions -- even if they ARE NOT WHITE?

If genocide is what you are concerned about (which you seem to be saying) why did you not support military intervention in Rwanda, that is the question.

Re:Psssh.

[BFaucet]

Firstly, No military that kills people is going to let a license agreement get in their way if they really need the software.

Secondly, yeah, there will always be conflict, but if we spend all our time trying to kill the other guy instead of trying to co-exist we'd end up wiping ourselves out. Also keep in mind we are the other guy to a bunch of people we benefit from co-existing with. If China were to decide they'd be better off without us would you like them to try and stomp us out?

Lastly, as a vegan I don't see what's wrong with it. Sure, if it's between starvation and eating a dog, I'd eat a dog... hell I'd eat a person if I really needed it. But there's no reason I need to chomp down on Bambi's butt if I'm happy without it. In fact I feel better physically without it.

By your comment it seems you have a real problem with being nice. You should try it some time.

Re:Psssh.

[Meagermanx]

Getting hit gives you a rush like no sport I've ever played.

Re:Psssh.

[19thNervousBreakdown]

I don't think of myself as a lion. You may as well though, I do have a mighty roar.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about? Okay Mr. McCarthy, whatever you say.

Re:Psssh.

[Jartan]

Avoiding war has nothing to do with pacifism. Pacifisim is about not using violence for anything. It is a concious effort to try and deny that entropy exists.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about revisionist history!

It amazes me how people warp Christ's words. Capitalists make all sorts of excuses revising Christ's repeated slams against the rich. My favorite is that Christ's saying the "camel through the eye of a needle" line really did not mean that the rich will not go to heaven -- which is exactly what Christ meant and is supported by other scripture.

Now we have Christ not being a pacifist and the "turn the other cheek" does not mean what it says. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Neo-nazis obviously do not have a monopoly on warping and revising history.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

It at least promotes the idea of non-violence. The people who wrote this are respected by some, and to see that they support pacifism no matter how ludicrous it might be says something. If ever a day comes that non-violence can become a serious option, then because of statements like this people might decide that it's worth it to try and make that a reality.

As you say, its much like veganism. If one day we can actually mimic meat to perfection and there is no longer any reason to kill animals for sustinance, then we will only exert the effort required to stop killing animals if people have it in their mind that it would be a good thing. If no one even thinks about the possibility that killing animals is a bad thing, then we probably wont stop killing them. People who become vegans may not change the world today, but it helps to change the collective mentality of people.

Re:Psssh.

[alc6379]

Of course, they could just take the code, use it, keep its use private for the sake of "national security." Who's going to have the tools available to decompile code embedded into a fired rocket's circuitry?

Re:Psssh.

[gfxguy]

Yes, but that doesn't mean you WANT war. It's like choosing a presidential candidate... for most of us it's the "lesser of two evils." Sometimes war is the lesser of two evils. Sometimes you MUST defend yourself. That doesn't mean you want it, that means you do what you have to do.

Just like in the first post I was responding to... is a vegan going to die before he'd eat meat, if there were nothing else? Sometimes you choose between the lesser of two evils.

Re:Psssh.

[Distinguished Hero]

And many claim to be Christians and go to church to worship a person who advocated pacifism and told people that when you are attacked you should turn the other cheek.

It should be noted that "turn the other cheek" would not have meant the same thing in Jesus' setting as you probably believe it to (see here). That being said, Jesus (the mythological character presented in the New Testament) definitely suffers from some form of intellectual deficiency, as becomes apparent when Jesus' life is contrasted with the more historical and far less mythological Mohammed (Jesus: killed 0 people, marryed/slept with 0/1 women, led 0 armies into war, conquered 0 land, was complicit in his own murder; Mohammed: killed many people, married and slept with many women, led meny armies to victory, conquered much land and many people, was not crucified). Furthermore, the influence of Jesus' illconceived ideas upon modern faux liberal thought (not to be confused with classical liberalism, or "liberalism" up to and including JFK, but preceding the rise of Carter) is quite apparent, leading me (and I assume others) to cheer the left's de-Christianization policies.

spends roughly the same amount of money on so-called defense[sic] as the rest of the world combined,

Perhaps in absolute terms, but remember that the US also has far higher manufacturing costs and much higher salary costs than a country such as China. This is also due to the non-Communist US economy performing a bit better than that of other countries; if you look at US Military Expenditure in terms of GDP, you shall find that the US is 26th in the world, far behind many countries that you like a lot more than the US.

fighting a war on Iraq that everyone from the UN Secretary General, to the late Pope, to the Dali Lama has bluntly called illegal.

Oooh, a war condemned by three unelected pompous theocrats (including the UN Sec. Gen.). If the war in Iraq was truly illegal (as you assert) and not just poorly thought out and executed, you would not find the need to invoke the name of the aforementioned three theocrats, but could instead produce a logical argument for its very illegailty.

As someone who is "pissed off" about pacifism, you're simply reflecting the attitude of the US

Correct. Anybody who rejects pacifrism as a ideologially sound system, or as a pragmatically functional system is merely "reflecting the attitude of the US." You have certainly won this argument, sir.

the country which has launched more interventions and wars of aggression in the past century than any other country by far.

Aside from your claim being unsubstantiated, let us examine the wars in which the US has participated during the 20th century.
WWI (justified, with the collapse of the Eastern Front, necessary in order to prevent British and French defeat, and ensure Ottoman defeat), WWII (I'm neither blue eyed, not blonde haired, so I cannot say I have much sorrow for the 3rd Reich, as for the Japanese, they attacked the US first, so that was their own undoing), Korea (UN Sanctioned, not that it matters, South Korea -- now rich, democratic country, North Korea -- starving peasants in poor totalitarian, ultra-militarized "country"), Vietnam (poorly executed in that the North Vietnamese were not properly attacked and defeated by the US, noone on the left seems to care as to what happened in Vietnam after the US departed (the invasion of South Vietnam by North Vietnam, the war with Cambodia, the war with China, the Boat people, furthermore, based upon the South Korean/North Korean Model*, a free S. Vietnam would have prob

Re:Psssh.

[Z34107]

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

Of course not. But pacifism assumes we're already there.

Re:Psssh.

[_DangerousDwarf]

I am sure that many in the Congress and Senate support tougher crime laws, safer streets, and less forest fires. Maybe we should see how many of these people have sons or daughters serving the police or fire services?

Re:Psssh.

[ravenshrike]

The wiring. Unless some evolutionary change makes us completely nonagressive, which is highly unlikely given the nature of evolution, then it won't happen. Unless we do it to ourselves, except that won't happen either as the only way to ensure such a result would be to engineer a teratogenic virus and release it, which would certainly be an application of force against the unwilling, which when you get right down to it is what violence is composed of. As such, no true pacifist would do it. Not to mention that engineering such a reaction would be next to impossible and assuming you were able to do such you would probably end up with the sort of scenario found in Serenity. Aggression/selfpreservation ultimately is the fount from which violence stems, and without aggression we would be less than cows.

Re:Psssh.

[dan828]

Those sabre tooth tigers are always going to be eating us so its time we just face facts.

Well, those sabre tooth tigers didn't quit eating us because some people decided that it would be better if we got along with them, and decided to make nice nice with the good kittys. Somehow, I expect some nice sharp spears had something to do with the outcome of that conflict....

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! How quickly we forget that freedom of expression, the right to vote, racial and gender equality were once just as nonexistent as world peace. I'm sure the people who fought to establish these rights were considered unrealistic idealists by many. Its a good thing they refused to listen!

Re:Psssh.

[Pharmboy]

What I found more ironic is that they changed the GPL, a license designed for FREEDOM, yet if you READ the last of the first paragraph of it, it clearly states:

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

So they infringed on the copyright of the GPL document itself to make a modified version of the GPL, a license that doesn't allow changes to itself, but is designed to license software that protects your right to change the software...(hold on, feeling an infinite loop coming on)...so they can claim their software is Free (which it isn't) and feel good about themselves.

Saying "I hate war" is about as courageous as saying "I hate child molesters". It really doesn't require any action, but it makes some people feel good to go out on the limb and "make that stand".

Re:Psssh.

[betsig339]

Just as creating an error-free code is guarenteed to fail.

Pacifism isn't a war propogator, nor is it a war disolver. Killing people makes more people want to kill other people than giving a person a hug does. Some people will still get mad that you gave them cooties, but many fewer than if you kill their brother.

Re:Psssh.

[mdwh2]

The problem is that sometimes peace first requires war, whether you want it or not. I know a lot of poeple have misgivings about premptive policies and interventionalist practices, but there are plenty of examples of when war is not just justified (like in Afghanistan or the first Gulf war), but required (like WWI and WWII).

By banning military use, you also ban the use by forces that are more often a force of good in the world than bad. In that context, U.N. peacekeepers, for example, would not be able to use this. What if an entire military force doesn't use it because they can't all work together, including the parts of the military that rebuild and bring humanitarian aid?

I don't know whether the programmers are total pacifists or not - it's possible though that they entirely agree with you here. The problem is, is it feasible to say "You can use it, but only in wars that satisfy such-and-such criterion"? It's difficult to lay down in strict legal terminology what a "just war" is.

It would have been nice if they made an exception of UN peacekeepers ... but given the wars the US gets itself into, it doesn't surprise me that they rule out military use, even if they believe that war is sometimes necessary (hell, if WW3 breaks out, they can always change their licence). It's not as simple as "our army is Good, their army is Bad".

Re:Psssh.

[pete6677]

Why is this a troll? Because it goes against Slashbot groupthink? The parent is right, what would the world be like if we refused to ever go to war? For one thing, we would all be speaking Japanese or German. And if we refuse to go to war in the next few years, we'll all be speaking Arabic.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

Clearly, pacifism doesn't get you far in the wild. Wolves will simply eat you faster if you don't resist. However, even the anarchy of international politics has some sort of vague moral conscience, and is often sensitive to tools other than violence. If you don't believe this is true, I'd be interested in your explanation of why Ghandi was successful.

Re:Psssh.

[Burz]

I understand, however I think what your statement indicates most of all is that not all regions can sustain the same amount of people.

Also I am not implying that we ought to return to primitive agriculture wholesale. There are many modern and developing techniques that are still applicable when you take excessive livestock and pesticides out of the equation. A country like Norway could probably do very well these days. If Scandanavian countries can grow canola for fuel today, then I don't see why shifting towards veg in their diets would bring about hardship.

Doubly so with the onset of over-fishing.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you kill an Iraqi for their oil field?

Not for their oil but I sure would to get a piece of real estate to put a spyglass on Iran and Syria.

Re:Psssh.

[Pharmboy]

and no I'm not trolling, just read what some of these groups have to say.

I have. And I agree with you. And not posting as AC. (I got nothing to hide, and karma to burn, but no mod points today for a change.)

Many in the leftist movements DO believe in the theoretical purpose of their causes. But not the leadership. A careful reading of what they actually SAY makes it clear that many ARE simply anti-capitalist, self-loathing, and do want to blame America first, even when it isn't our fault.

(You know, sometimes it ISN'T America's fault...)

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Liberation? Don't make me laugh. Wars are an extension of politics, politics disputes are usually based on economics.

Tell "liberation" hooey to the majority of Iraqis who want to see US troops out of their country. Western polling companies have reported this in many polls over the last couple of years.

Or tell that to the dead Europeans who were killed by US-funded right-wing terrorist groups in Germany and Italy in the 70s and 80s, facts bluntly verified by the EU.

Or tell that to the Latin American victims of the US trained and funded "death squads" and military dictatorships.

Or tell that to the millions of dead Vietnamese who the US killed after the US broke a treaty and refused to hold elections because they knew Ho Chi Minh would win any fair election.

Or tell that to the 750,000+ dead Indonesians who were assassinated in the 60s, with the US CIA providing money and lists of people to be liquidated.

WWII you say? Try reading the book "Day of Deceit" by a US Navy veteran which thoroughly documents the US drive to provoke Japan into attacking the US.

WWI? Even the US Congress admitted (post-war, of course) that the reason the US entered WWI was because of US bank loans to Britain and France.

History is an interesting thing once you get past the propaganda we're taught in public schools...

Re:Psssh.

[digitalextremist]

Open source hasn't even had a chance to compare to the impact of war yet, and you're already calling the end game score? Nevermind pragmatic evaluations of conflict. You have to have totally jettisoned the concept of spirit and virtue, or never held the view... otherwise everything makes perfect sense. Pacifism is the only way, otherwise you're manifesting destructive force which is more detrimental to your consciousness than to your victim. Ah but who cares anyway, we live in a disposable society. Pitty we've gotten used to disgarding human beings before we read the fine print and realized there is a serious heavy heavy that warned revenge against the ending of human life. Which reminds me, how do animal territorial pissings and resource squabbles have any sort of relevance to human character and lack there of? That's not even apples and oranges, that's figs and wildabeast

Re:Psssh.

[esconsult1]

rant on/

Being vegan is a total choice, but is not a luxury. Less health problems, cheaper and healther food. Here's the thing. A proper vegan diet does not have to include things like Tofu or other meat "substitutes". Adding meat and dairy to the diet is actually more expensive!

Being vegan is an educated choice where you tune your body and make up for the deficiencies that not having meat bring (vitamin b12 -- available in other non-meat sources and various oils.). Because its a choice, you know that in the hypothetical situation where you would not get any vegetables (in the artic circle as an example), then you would be forced to eat meat, which is fine, but then, you can continue your vegan existence afterwards. /rant off

Sorry for the rant, just tired of people equating veganism with "tree huggers", "the leftist fringe", or "dirty hippies" without educating themselves.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Calorie requirements for life in a polar climate are an excellent argument against veganism for those people.

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

We are not hard-wired for violence. We are hard wired with the capacity for violence. We are also hard wired with the capacity for cooperation. Which of these hard wired strategies gets implemented is chosen in software. There is a self reinforcing element to the system as well. Cooperative societies reward cooperation and punish competition, ensuring more people run the cooperation strategy, while competative societies do just the opposite. This does make a paradigm shift difficult, but not as difficult as you make out.

Without cooperation, we would be less than ants. Cooperation is a more successful strategy, and therefore will win out over competition in the end. Given that, the end of violence is unavoidable. Sorry to rain on your pessimism parade.

Re:Psssh.

[kocsonya]

So, do you say that some dude is doing killing, and *that* killing is bad, so I hop in and do some killing on my own, because *my* killing is good because I kill the guy doing the bad killing?

Pacifism is not about not fighting back - when there is a fight, any fight, there is no peace. Pacifism is about having peace. What you do when there is no peace is a different question.
The issue is that when there's peace you try to keep it. One way of doing it is spending billions on developing technology so that you can kill more people than anyone else and hope that you can scare them enough. Unfortunately it doesn't work with fanatics who are not afraid to die or people who have nothing left to lose and learned not to fear death.
Alternatively, one could imagine the theoretical scenario where you spend the money to mitigate the economic discrepancies so that there is no reason for war in the first place from either side. The problem with that latter approach is that human life is dirt cheap and saving it usually costs you money rather than earning it, while starting/joining/supporting wars is a quite lucrative business, especially is you happen to be in the position of using country A's taxpayers' money to develop weapons that you sell to country B (which of course pays for them from taxpayers' money) to kill the citizens of country C in the (name of|war on) while the *profit* on the sale goes to your very personal pocket. If you can also work out a nice weapons sale to C in the same time (possibly through intermediary countries D, E and F, so that your ideological integrity remains rock-solid) the gain could be enormous. War is about money and currently money trumps human life on a large part or the world.

That is what makes pacifism idealistic, not WW2, IMHO.

Re:Psssh.

[|/|/|||]

I like your reasoning, but I think there's more to human behavior than you point out.

Ants and other eusocial critters may die for the hive, but arguably they are cells in the larger organism that is the hive.

Yes, and humans can be viewed as cells in the larger organism that is human society. Humans, as extremely social animals, are not independent in the way that most animals are. Much of our behavior is influenced by other humans and by the unwritten (and written) norms of our society. Humans tend to direct their most violent behaviors toward those that are "different" in some way. Those who are not seen as a part of the group. Racism and religiously justified attacks are perfect examples of this.

Looking at it that way, it's not surprising that we have war. War is a battle between societies, and humans are merely ammunition. The only hope for peace is to merge all humans into a single cohesive society. You'll always have groups that will turn against the society that spawned them, but as long as those groups are relatively small (gangs, as opposed to nations) the damage should be minimal.

Can we form a single worldwide (or larger) society? That remains to be seen, but we seem to be moving in that direction in some ways. Then again, maybe we have too many people for that to be possible.

Re:Psssh.

[paulyche]

And if we refuse to go to war in the next few years, we'll all be speaking Arabic.

No we won't.

Re:Psssh.

[Wordsmith]

How about I just kick your ass and take that bridge?

Seriously, though, there's no harm in striving for a world without war - it's just a very, very difficult goal to reach. But it's not an impossible one. We're rationale beings, capable of controlling and supressing our undesirable urges. We don't always succeed at doing so, but the ability is there. You insult my mother in a bar, and maybe I throw a punch. Maybe I don't, because I consider the consequence of jail time worse than a bruised ego. Or maybe I do throw the punch, but I stop short of killing you, despite some primal rage rushing through me - because I don't particularly want to get the chair, or because I've got a highly enough evolved sense or morality to see that it's plainly wrong.

Re:Psssh.

[Hentai]

The above comment, troll or not, is spot on. Violence is a very, very powerful tool, and trying to solve situations without it puts you at a disadvantage against those without such compunctions. Intelligently applied violence and coercion will always breed out stupidity (no matter how violent) and pacifism (no matter how intelligent).

Re:Psssh.

[Cyno]

I think Ghandi once said something like "an eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind". But maybe if we were all blind we could see the error of our ways. Fighting fire with fire doesn't always work, not when the fire is in your living room and you live in a high-rise apartment complex with hundreds of other families. And that's precisely what we're doing when we attack a country for the actions of a handful of terrorists.

Yes, there are aggressive people. I could be one of them. But the best way to keep me sedated is to provide me freedom, justice and opportunity. How many people who have freedom, justice and opportunity are violently aggressive? Less than 1%? But what does that mean, freedom, justice and opportunity? What are those things we speak of?

I think being selfish is partially why we're constantly in conflict for our resources. We're selfish with our justice, we're selfish with our freedom and we're selfish with our opportunity, so... FIGHT! May the most evolved win.

Re:Psssh.

[zaq121]

Many Christians and non-Christians alike quote references out of the bible that has nothing to do with the meaning behind it.

You want to read about war and killing, the Bible is a good place to read about it.

How about Judges 19-20. To summarize, we read a story that starts off very simlar to Sodom and Gomorrah. In one of the towns of the tribe of Benjamin, some men raped and killed a girl. The rest of Israel assembled with 400,000 soldiers and judged the situation. In 20:13 we find Israel demanding the men responsible be released to them so they could be put to death. The Benjamites refused and assembled their soldiers. When it was all said and done the Benjamites were nearly removed from the face of the earth. From my reading, I think not a woman or child survived and only 600 men.

Book after book, you will find similar stories.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no American war expert... but right off the top of my head I notice you conveniently left out some obvious examples of US wars in the last 50 years which were obvious contradictory to your point... Bay of Pigs & the whole Regan/Nicaragua mess are the two that come to mind immediately.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

But their license doesn't say "war", it says harm. So if I use the software to make my production line more efficient and can then downsize 1 employee, have I "harmed" a human, and violated thier license? What if I just don't refill a position when somebody leaves? What if the softwar emakes me stay late at work? What if the statistics it calculates hurts my feelings? What if I'm designing a weapon that can seek out terrorists, killing 1 human to save thousands, does the "prevent harm" outweigh the "cause harm"?

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe he said war, I believe he said conflict.

Yes, but the discussion is about pacifism and no military use for GPL. So conflict, in the context of our discussion, is war.

If you believe for an instant that millions of years of predatory survival competition with other species, during which evolution has allowed the strongest genetics to survive, hasn't coded violence into our species then I have a bridge in New York for sale

If you believe that billions of years of evolution on the planet Earth has not evolved species that are well-suited to work with others of their own kind towards a common goal of survival, I have hundreds of nations on the planet Earth not at war with each other today to show you.

I believe it is a fallacy to try and strive for a world without war,

It certainly is easier to believe that a world without war is possible than to believe some invisible man in the sky created us. Yet millions if not billions of people believe some invisible man in the sky created us. So why is believing in a world without war somehow fallacious?

however we should control it better to prevent unnecessary loss of life and resources.

If you can control war, then you certainly can prevent it. The unnecessary loss of life inherent in all war does not need to occur. We can, actually, if we strive for it, share resources.

What needs to be done is the enforcement of international rules (or law) that remove the huge fucking incentive that exists for profiteering from today's business war. Start by outlawing United States Vice President Dick Cheney's Halliburton company, which has made obscene profits from today's wars. Then move on and actually regulate companies like ExxonMobil so they don't allow their pipelines to go bust right at the opportune times to gouge profits from the marketplace.

Re:Psssh.

[the phantom]

The only exception seems to have been when modern humans crossed into the americas over the land bridge and displaced a group of humans in south america who'd come up from australia. There is definate archeological evidence of the new arrivals killing off the previous occupants. Almost all of them, one group survived till the early 19th century, when we 'helped them' and wrecked an ancient culture before we understood its significance and real importance to understanding early human involvement in the americas. Hmm, one up for the civilised world there....

Bullshit. You're entire post is somewhat misinformed, but this is the worst bit. There is no evidence that anyone traveled from Australia to South America before people got there by way of the Berring Land Bridge. The earliest that people may have been getting to South America across the Pacific was probably about 500-800 years ago, and those people would have been coming from Easter Island. You have been reading to much popular tripe, and are obviously completely unfamilier with the peer reviewed literature...

Re:Psssh.

[spazzmo]

"if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick."

That's the point, it's a valid choice in a life-or-death situation, but who readng this is in that situation?

No-one.

There is no reason to eat meat except that you want to.

The amount of land that can feed 60 people with soybeans can only feed one person with meat.

Re:Psssh.

[McGiraf]

Well if the people including the German and Japanese refused to go to war we would not.

Re:Psssh.

[Castar]

Well, fine. But then, choosing not to commit murder is also a luxury. Moral codes like that assume that you'll never be in a situation where you have to kill to survive. Canabalism is the same way. Rape, theft, murder - There are situations where any of those might be seen as a luxury. People still sometimes choose not to commit them because they see the moral act as being preferable to death. And that's not even getting into religious ideals, which many people choose to die in order to uphold. Is there any reason veganism can't be the same way?

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

You think the only reason people kill is because they don't like each other? That's naive. A lot of the time the not-liking but comes AFTER the decision to kill. That's what dehumanization tactics are all about.

The decision to kill itself can be for a variety of reasons, from resource competition to power struggles. But in any case, killing is not always about not liking people or being angry with people. Being nice and weak can easily lead to more violence then being harsh but strong. (Not saying "harsh and strong" is always a better strategy either.) You think Japan invaded China (1930s) because they didn't like the Chinese? They didn't care about the Chinese - they wanted oil. You think Brutus killed Ceaser 'cause he didn't like him (just to bring fiction in for variety)? Need I go on? Your understanding of conflict is infantile if it boils down to "people go to war because they don't like each other". Liking people has nothing to do with war except that it's easier to kill people you don't like, so you might as well hate the person you've decided to kill.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[LurkerXXX]

I can't find the latest stats, or any specific for congress, but...

Last I knew, the average US family had 2.4 kids.

If each congressman has 2.4 kids on average, and 5% off congressmen have 1 child in the military, that's just over 2% of the congressmen's total number of kids, which would be lower than the average volunteerism rate for the US if that is really 3%.

So your arguement doesn't seem to stand up.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

U.N. Peacekeepers a force of good?? Muhahhahahah!

Hezbollah Terrorist: [Fires salvo of Katusha rockets at Haifa from point 3 meters from U.N. Peacekeeper card table]

U.N. PK (French): Sir, excuse me, Sir? What are you doing over there?

Hezbollah Terrorist: Eliminating Zionism!

U.N. PK (French): Well, carry on then!

U.N. PK (other) : Wait a minute...now, this isn't right. I shall note this in my traffic ticket book and present it at the U.N. at our FeelGood(TM) Meeting in 9 months. May I please have your name?

Hezbollah Terrorist : [flips him the bird and fires another salvo]

U.N. PK (American) : [attempts to fire on HT...damn, that's right; no ammo!]

U.N. PK (American) : [slams the butt of his rifle into HT's face knocking him out cold]

U.N. PK (French) : You stupid American! You are under arrest! [cuffs American]

2,000+ U.N. "Peacekeeping" forces have been in Hezbollah Alley for ~25 years...WTF good are they? NONE.

Sudan, et cetera.

Panzy asses is what they are at best; the lowest low of criminals at the worst.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

is often sensitive to tools other than violence

Pacifism means "no violence". I think pacifism, as a general rule, is silly. This means that I think "no violence" is silly.

Please show me where I went further than this and said "violence is the only means to any political end". I didn't. Violence should be a last resort, but I think it's critical that it be available as that last resort. Furthermore, I think that when violence is required, it should be used as decisively and forcefully as possible. That's all I'm saying here.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[RobertLTux]

Still, if a doctor was at home and someone broke into their house to try and rape their daughter, I'd hope the doctor would have no moral compunctions against shooting the intruder first (in their capacity as father) and then offering CPR as appropriate second (in their capacity as doctor).
-----------
of course a very good doctor would have not compunctions against shooting the "punk" in a very painful but nonfatal region (say both shoulders and a knee) and giving the punk first aid to make sure that he stands trial.

Re:Psssh.

[demachina]

"Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?"

I think you just proved yourself pretty naive with that whopper, or cynical for trying to get /. to believe it.

Though I guess it depends on how you define "rational", I guess you could say anyone who likes war is not rational, but you would end up with a large percentage of the worlds political leaders in that category.

War profiteers LOVE war and have throughout history, the Rothschild family were famous for war profiteering on the Napoleonic wars and made their fortune there. If you are providing everything from weapons to beans you can make a lot of money off war, and there are plenty of people in the world who are glad to make a buck off people getting killed. There was a huge line of war profiteers lining up at the Republican trough to cash in the war in Iraq, before, during and after including Bechtel(construction), Halliburton(oil services), KBR(Halliburton subsidiary and DOD's contractor for nearly everything), Blackwater(Mercenaries). Yes the U.S. now has large companies who basically rent out mercenaries to conflict zone, the more conflicts the better. Soldiers of fortune used to be borderline illegal, now it is profitable business. Blackwater and a few other big mercenary companies make a lot of money off conflict so yes they do WANT war. Of course Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop, General Dynamics, etc make a lot more money when there is war and danger than when their is peace. When there is no conflict defense budgets get cut and it cuts in to their bottomline as it did in the 90's. 9/11 was a godsend for a lot of war profiteers. Peace was breaking out in the 90's and defense spending was crashing. We now spend more on defense than we did during the cold war, and its mostly on weapons of no value against shadowy extremists or insurgencies.

Then there are chicken hawks. These are people who managed to avoid military service themselves and never experienced the horrors of war. They then rise to powerful positions and they view war as a means for obtaining power, money and resources. They feign concern for the mostly poor and uneducated people they kill both in their own military and the civilians in their war zones but they really don't care. You will note that their children almost never serve in the military or fight in the wars they make, almost no sons or daughters of our congress or executive branch serve in the military, John McCain being a rare exception. Chicken hawks just weigh the dead and wounded in a calculus of power, and as long as it doesn't cost them their power and money, they don't really care about the carnage. Condi Rice called the devastation of Lebanon by Israel as an "opportunity".

The people in the Bush administration and its neocon camp followers(or is that camp leaders) obviously did WANT war in Iraq, they wrote about it, they lobbied for it since the end of the first gulf war, and finally exploited 9/11 and lied to finally get it. You have to really want a war to go to the lengths they went to. Now I would agree they are not rational people, but they are in charge of the worlds biggest military so if they are irrational the world is in a lot of trouble. They didn't really want it to be as bloody and expensive as it has been but when you start wars you can't usually pre-plan how much carnage their will be.

They are far along on lining up some form of war with Iran, with the war in Lebanon being the opening act, This takes balls considering how disastrous their war in Iraq has been and how bogged down they are there and indicates they really, really like war.

"I know a lot of poeple have misgivings about premptive policies and interventionalist"

I wonder why when the wars in Vietnam and Iraq have devastated the U.S. economically and politically and physically devastated the target countries to no good end. It is all well and good to have a strong defensi

Re:Psssh.

[elefantstn]

Where's all this cheap gas anti-war kids have been promising me?

Re:Psssh.

[syousef]

I don't want to scream "WANKING!" but I find I can't help it. Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.

Yes you'll never eliminate human aggression. Giving up and letting the law of the jungle rule also doesn't work and can be described as "WANKING".

Conflict is a fact of existence. Not even human existence. Just being alive, you're in competition for limited resources, whether it's two elephants fighting over a waterhole, or two countries fighting over an oil field. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be, until we find a magic way of creating unlimited resources.

I disagree with you. This attitude literally leads to a law of the jungle type society where murder, rape, multilation and torture are all accepted as legitimate. I'd argue that the safeguards and general principles of many fundamental laws that aim at restricting the amount of harm we do to each other are good things. Without these laws individuals expend a lot of effort just surviving and society grinds to a halt. Now it's paradoxically the same with the miltary (paradoxically because you do get many inventions coming from wartime necessity). If a society expends all its effort on waging war, technology and science only advance in very narrow ways and not surprisingly the technology that comes out of war is mostly destructive. For example the fruits of all the bridge building learnt in the last century through a need to move troops can very much be obliterated by the destroying technology of a handful or nuclear weapons.

Your argument also falls over in that other species do not possess our "intelligence" and simply can't make ever more powerful weapons. We're very different to the rest of nature this way. No 2 elphants fighting is going to take out half their species and several hundred others in one fell swoop. Monkeys get as far as hurling projectiles or using crude clubs perhaps. However none of them are going to invent swords let alone gunpowder, high explosives, and nuclear arms.

Article said:
Tiziano Mengotti and Rene Tegel are the lead developers on the GPU project. Mengotti is the driving force behind the license "patch," which says "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Obviously someone just read Asimov. Problem is they never understood the message. It's a lot harder to define what will and won't cause harm than one would think. Asimov had to add the zeroth law. It's also often subjective. What if doing one thing will cause more harm than another. How do you quantify more? etc. etc. Basically they've created a very bad license that's open to extreme interpretation and abuse.

More fundamentally why is it accepted as given that an inventor/writer/creator should have any say regarding how the invention is used? Right to compensation I understand. Right to control it is stupid. It's artificial and unworkable such that it only gives the big guy a tool to bully the little guy. Once something's invented and published I believe it's fair game for all. We should have a system aiming at compensating the inventor for their contribution not restricting the use of something new.

Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

I agree Bambi be BBQ'd. Anyone that says otherwise is self-destructive, and unrealistic. However if your beliefs are such that you think it's right not to eat animals when there is an alternative that's a choice I'm willing to respect. Personally I believe that something has to die so you can live and that should be accepted up front. Whether it's animal or vegetable to me makes little difference despite the argument that animals are conscious. I think we should possibly be more humane in how we slaughter them but the fact is we're ominvores and animals are full

Re:Psssh.

[Sponge Bath]

i will just be hungry the next day and die a day later than before.

That pretty much sums up the mechanics of life.
That's why I would train the rat to dance, so I could enjoy some entertainment with my remaining days.

Re:Psssh.

[Dun Malg]

Well if the people including the German and Japanese refused to go to war we would not.

Yeah, it'd be a great world if nobody ever hurt anyone. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass a-hoppin'.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the American stalked some 15 year old girl, then killed her family, raped her, and killed her too, then the troups burned the house to cover it up.

When was there a comical bonking cartoons out cold?

Re:Psssh.

[Sri Ramkrishna]

OK, I'll bite. :-)

> It should be noted that "turn the other cheek" would not have meant the same thing
>in Jesus' setting as you probably believe it to (see here). That being said, Jesus
>(the mythological character presented in the New Testament) definitely suffers from
>some form of intellectual deficiency, as becomes apparent when Jesus' life is

I think a number of people will disagree with you that Jesus was a mythological character. :-) After all, our whole Gregorian calendar is based on his birth.

>contrasted with the more historical and far less mythological Mohammed (Jesus:
>killed 0 people, marryed/slept with 0/1 women, led 0 armies into war, conquered 0
>land, was complicit in his own murder; Mohammed: killed many people, married and
>slept with many women, led meny armies to victory, conquered much land and many
>people, was not crucified). Furthermore, the influence of Jesus' illconceived ideas

I'm uncertain on what you're point is on this history lesson. Mohmmed sounds like any number of conquerors down through the ages. Whether anointed with the light of Heaven or not.

>upon modern faux liberal thought (not to be confused with classical liberalism, or
>"liberalism" up to and including JFK, but preceding the rise of Carter) is quite
>apparent, leading me (and I assume others) to cheer the left's de-Christianization
>policies.

I disagree, I think you'll find the whole "be kind of to others" is in most of the major religions. The reason is that doing good unto others creates a very good feeling within you. I think it's just a logical extension to codify that feeling as something that is close to God into a religious text. Most of what Jesus teaches makes sense to me from a emotional gratification angle.

> Oooh, a war condemned by three unelected pompous theocrats (including the UN Sec.
> Gen.). If the war in Iraq was truly illegal (as you assert) and not just poorly
> thought out and executed, you would not find the need to invoke the name of the
> aforementioned three theocrats, but could instead produce a logical argument for
> its very illegailty.

The war was not "illegal" in the sense that Bush did get authorization to go to war with Iraq. But remember he manipulated everyone to achieve that end. That doesn't make it right does it? The evidence that Iraq had anything that was a threat to the United States was sketchy at best. Do you remember when Colin Powell told us and the world that he knows exactly where those weapons of mass destruction is. None of which were true, and a country paid the price and eventually the U.S. did as well for other reasons. But you don't attack a soveriegn nation without ample evidence of wrong doing if you want to at least show moral leadership.

There was no logical link between Iraq and Al-Qaeda without a lot of hand waving. Even today, the Govt has not presented Congress with it's full findings on the matter. That speaks volumes in my book on what the threat really was. So let's not talk about the legality of the war, it was legal from a U.S. standpoint but nobody else in the world thinks so.

And to invoke Godwin's law, I will submit to you that Hitler's invasion of Austria was also deemed legal since it went through the proper legal channels. Arguing whether something is legal or not is not always the perfect litmus test.

sri

Re:Psssh.

[susano_otter]

How quickly we forget that freedom of expression, the right to vote, racial and gender equality were once just as nonexistent as world peace.

Wake me up when a law actually stops censorship, election fraud, or racial and gender bigotry EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Then we can talk about world peace.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

F*** you.

How do you know I didn't support military intervention in Rwanda? I take this personally. My ancestors survived the Haun's Mill Massacre. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haun's_Mill_Massacre My people had an extermination order decreed against them that was still on the books in Missouri until the last couple of years.

I spent two years of my life in Hungary where I learned what really happened there during the 1956 uprsiing. I've seen the bullet holes in the wall. I've talked to men who stared, open mouthed, as Soviet tanks roared through their villages on the way to crush the nationalists in Budapest. I've seen old men cry in remembrance of what happened during those days, as desperate pleas to the US to intervene were ignored.

And I was angry - outraged - when the same callous shoulder was turned to Rwanda, and now to Darfur as well. You think I don't care about these things? I have never feared for my life because of my religion, but it's not so long ago in our past that I've forgotten it.

Yes, I'm angry enough that I would want to go to Darfur and fight. But what am I doing to do, alone, with my 12-guage (that I couldn't even get out of the coutry anyway?) I've called senators, I've written senators, I do what I can from where I am.

I'm wasting my time on this. You've got no idea who I am, where I've been, or what I care about. You're more than out of line to start leveling charges of racism based on political beliefs I've never espoused.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[composer777]

If you think about it, waging war requires a form of passive obedience from the general population. Most wars are promoted from the top down and require a population that knows how to fall in line. When was the last time you saw grassroots campaign for a war? Given that waging war tends to stifle democracy WITHIN the nations that are waging war, promoting peace would seem to be fostering democratic ideals. So, I think that having a GPL license that does not allow military use makes quite a bit of sense.

Re:Psssh.

[linguizic]

History is never what it seems. How many Americans still believe that the Civil War was actually about states rights? The fact that the Soviets tried to create pacifists through propaganda is meaningless. There's a maxim in advertising(the greatest propaganda machine ever known): "you know you're wasting half of you investment, but the question is which half?". Just b/c the Soviets tried to influence people does not mean that they were successfull.

You wrote: A life without conflict is impossible and a naive dream of pacifists.

As a pacifist, I know that life without conflict is impossible. I choose to seek non-violent means to resolve conflict. Speak for yourself next time.

Re:Psssh.

[replicant108]

If you believe for an instant that millions of years of predatory survival competition with other species, during which evolution has allowed the strongest genetics to survive, hasn't coded violence into our species then I have a bridge in New York for sale.

It's got nothing to do with genetics.

Generally speaking, human wars are a means to an end - eg, power, wealth, reputation.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Moral codes like that assume that you'll never be in a situation where you have to kill to survive. Canabalism is the same way.

Don't equate cannibalism with murder. Most folks who have turned to cannibalism in desperation have feasted on the already dead, a good percentage of the tribal cannibals killed their victims in battle or for religious reasons, not as a food source. There are a few tribes that may have found cannibalism a routine source of food, but they'd be extremely rare.

Re:Psssh.

[samkass]

Would you really want to live in a world so devoid of passion, original thought, and striving for change that no one is ever willing to put their life on the line for what they believe? I personally would prefer war to simply become precise and high-tech enough that the civilians don't suffer so much, and military targets can be eliminated with less collateral damage... therefore, I see this no-military GPL as a huge step backwards for civilians in warzones everywhere. If it catches on, it would dramatically increase the potential suffering in the world.

Re:Psssh.

[Khashishi]

So, what's wrong with veganism when one is NOT starving?

Re:Psssh.

[Dun Malg]

Dunno anything about that Ghandi guy, but Gandhi was successful because he was dealing with a group (the British imperial government) that didn't have any particular desire to hurt him or the members of his movement. They only wanted the people's voluntary cooperation with their onerous rule. In the face of opposition, they were forced to simply pull out because violence was the only option left. Had it been the Dutch in the 18th century rather than the Brits in the 20th, you better better believe Gandhi and his followers would've been been shot and dragged off immediately. The example of Gandhi is actually an example of how non-violence only works if your foe is sufficiently civilized, and that had more to do with the fact that it was the 1940's than anything else. What do you think would've happened if Gandhi had tried that in 1840? You really think the brits would've said "oh, well sorry, old chap; we'll just run along then"?

Re:Psssh.

[McGiraf]

"And if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bump his ass a-hoppin'."

Maybe, but they would risk being hit by the pigs.

Re:Psssh.

[demachina]

"If the war in Iraq was truly illegal"

It was illegal by the definition of the UN charter and the Geneva conventions to which the U.S. is a principal signatory. Now you can argue that those treaties and the U.N. are meaningless but the U.S. does still seem to like to exploit those treaties and the U.N. to its own advantage when it suits the U.S.

Aggressive warfare is illegal, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq was aggressive by any modern definition since Iraq hasn't attacked another country since Kuwait and there had already been a punitive response to that. Yes Iraq was engaged in a perpetual skirmish with the American and British forces over the no fly zone but it was pretty clear the U.S. and British were shooting as much as they were being shot at there.

Preemptive war is in fact a deceptive term for aggressive war. Any nation which bestows upon itself the power to unilaterally practice preemption is engaging in illegal warfare. Any nation which can fabricate a case against any another nation and use that fabrication to topple its government is a rogue state.

The whole foundation of the war in Iraq was that it was building a new and large stockpile of WMD's when in fact it really wasn't. There were small technical violations but there wasn't really any such program. Its become clear the Bush administration either wittingly or unwittingly fabricated their whole case for the war. Since it appears much of their case was fabricated if not an outright lie that pushes them further in to the realm of illegal war. They fabricated a case to justify invading a country for no particular reason other than they wanted to change its government, and they didn't get a U.N. resolution to authorize it, since key countries in the security council didn't buy their fabrications.

Then you tack on torturing prisoners, and murdering prisoners and civilians, which has obviously occurred on a fairly widespread scale. The Bush administration propaganda spins it as isolated and a few bad apples. The obvious fact is it is government policy to allow torture and abuse since the Dick Cheney lobbied Congree for the right to torture and then the White House defied a recent congressional law against torture with a signing statement that they reserve the right to torture, and they've recently sought to immunize all those who are ordering and executing it from prosecution using similar executive orders.

It is a simple fact of life that since the Geneva conventions, since the U.S. is still a signatory to those conventions, and since the U.S. trots them out to demand humane treatment of its POW's, that the U.S. has tilted in to both illegal and immoral by officially sanctioning the trampling of those conventions in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Gitmo and in Rendition. You can argue that the Geneva conventions don't apply to Al Qaeda, but they most certainly do apply in Iraq since it had a sovereign government which was toppled by an aggressive war so it falls under the Geneva conventions on occupied countries.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to be a complete fucking retard to believe that Iraq was ever a direct threat to the US.

Either that or a pussy...

Re:Psssh.

[BlowChunx]

I guess somebody should've told Ghandi that before he wasted all that time...

Pacifism doesn't mean just laying down and rolling over. If I weren't a pacifist, I'd beat that into your head.

Re:Psssh.

[theJamAbides]

Cooperative societies reward cooperation and punish competition, ensuring more people run the cooperation strategy, while competative societies do just the opposite.

Read: Communism rewards cooperation and punishes competition, thus, no-one advances past the level that society has chosen for them, while Capitalism rewards competition and is okay with cooperation if it is for competition's sake, ensuring that individuals are held accountable for their actions.

Re:Psssh.

[linguizic]

As a pacifist I've run into this misconception many times. Many people think that not being violent means standing idly by while people die. This is not the case. What pacifism means is that non-violent solutions for problems like the haulocaust should be sought. Unfortunately for the slashdot crowd, this generally requires faith. Not necessarily faith in a supreme deity but in the nature of human beings. One of the things that Gandhi sought was to bring out the good in the British ruling class so they would see that what they were doing was wrong. To me that requires a great amount of faith, and a great amount of courage. This relies on a couple of things: 1. Most people if not all have good in them; 2. The amount of good people always outnumbers the bad in any population. Unfortunately they can be led to do bad things, but this does not taint who they are permanently and they are still capable of good.

I do not believe as a general principle that human beings are bad, just that most of them are dangerously ignorant.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Pacifism is about having peace.

This doesn't make any sense to me. Pacifism is not about "having peace". The world has peace at least in part as a result of wars. If, to return to the WW2 example, no one had opposed Nazism would you call that "peace"? Is it "peace" when the state can kill anyone who is deemed inferior? Is it "peace" when there is no freedom of religion, of though, of the press. Is this your idea of "peace"?

The problem with pacifism is this: it only takes one person to destroy peace. If you have 20 people in a room and one of them starts beating people up - where is the peace? All 19 people being pacifists won't bring it back if 1 person decides to get violent. Furthermore if all 19 are pacifists then who will defend the weak? If the 1 violent guy starts raping a little girl - what are the pacifists going to do? Nothing. That is my problem with pacifists. They will not stand up to evil effectively. Theoretically some pacifist may step between the man and his rape victim, get shot, and that's the end of it. Some hero.

So, do you say that some dude is doing killing, and *that* killing is bad, so I hop in and do some killing on my own, because *my* killing is good because I kill the guy doing the bad killing?

In short: yes. Maybe you think all killing is the same. I do not - and I don't think you really do either. If a man walks into a bank and starts shooting people, one by one, do you honestly believe that the cop who takes him down is doing morally the same thing? Is that seriously your opinion? I want you to answer this exact question directly.

Alternatively, one could imagine the theoretical scenario where you spend the money to mitigate the economic discrepancies so that there is no reason for war in the first place from either side.

This is as hopelessly naive as the guy that thought all violence was a result of not liking people. Now you want to say that all violence (or at least, all war) 0is the result of economic discrepency. How naive can you be? Not only is this not always the case, it almostt never is. History shows that non-democratic nations are more prone to war. That means that the war is started, for all intents and purposes, by an authoritarian ruler. E.g. somone who's already rich. When, in the history of the world, has a nation gotten together and decided by consensus "we're poor, so let's invade our neighbors". This is absurd.

Pacifists almost always have the same hopelessly childish view of violence. As though there's just one simple cause of violence. As though if you removed this simple cause, violence would go away. Violence does not need a cause. This planet is fundamentally violent. Humans are animals. Find me an animal species that has no violence. There is (practically) none. Maybe fungus or mushrooms. But among actual animals? There is no peace.

Peace is not the default state of nature. Peace is a carefully crafted, fragile construct. It must be created and maintained. It must be guarded and protected. Pacifists, by and large, treat as their natural entitlement the peace that has actually been won by the blood, sweat, tears and deaths of people who thought peace was not only worth dying for, but that it was worth killing for. The fact is that, as evil as the Nazi's were, your average German conscript was no more evil than your average American draftee. They did not deserve to die. But our American soldiers went to war to stop Hitler, and they had to kill a lot of more-or-less innocent kids on the way. It's a tragedy, and nothing to celebrate, but it was the best and the worst way to do it. It was the only way to do it, and it was worth doing.

So we killed a lot of German kids, we bombed a lot of German homes, we slaughtered a lot of German families. We made mothers and daughters, fathers and sons weep for the loved ones they lost. All in the name of peace. And after we earned that peace it is a disgrace to think that the w

Re:Psssh.

[Frightening]

Same as the other reply... you strive to make better code in an effort that improves your work at least a little bit (I hope).

With pacifism and veganism and every other philosophically flawed nonsense, your efforts are of negative utility. If you want to allow yourself to get murdered for an illusionary moral principle, then like the good man said:

Darwin at his finest (and no offense of course).

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, oil prices are high because demand exceeds supply.

And the war is only about oil. Bush and his cronies thought they could go in there, free Iraqi oil to be sold on the open market. Hell, the initial name of the operation was "Operation Iraqi Liberation" or OIL but they realized that they had been too cute and changed the name to "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

So don't tell me that an operation that was named OIL is about anything other than oil. I don't buy it. Go sell crazy somewhere else.

You know why that plan failed? Because our own oil companies wouldn't be making the record profits they are making right now. That is why. The boards running all the major oil companies in the US and the Saudi royal family over ruled bush-co and said that no, Iraq would have a nationalized oil industry ran by foreigners just like it had before Saddam booted their asses out when he took charge.

America has already reached peak oil in the 1970's, we can't supply our own oil without changing the way we live... I.E., building more efficient houses, more efficient factories, more efficient computers, getting rid of SUV's, and promoting public transit. Yeah, right, like that is ever going to happen.

China, India, Africa and South America are all entering the industrial age. What do you think their ever increasing rate of need for oil is going to do to the available supply, especially considering that we are entering world wide peak oil production? Hint, oil is going to get very expensive.

Plus I figure if you add in all the costs of the Iraq war to the oil we are getting from that region it is costing Americans about $2,000 per barrel of oil. That is just dumb business to pay that much for oil. Only an idiot would pay $2,000 for a barrel of oil.

Hell, we could subsidize hydrogen production to give free energy to every American for a tenth the cost of the Iraq war. But the oil and defense companies wouldn't get rich off that plan.

Hey, didn't Bush say that all the gas prices were too high under Clinton and promise us that they would be cheaper if we elected him? I guess that is just another in a long string of lies from the bush family.

No new taxes. Cheaper gas.

The Iraq war is a mistake. The Iraq war is illegal under international law. We should never have have gone in. We should not stay there now. The citizens of Iraq have as their first duty the necessity to free themselves from foreign rule. They are right to resist the American invasion. God, duty, and country is the creed that I was taught as a military man in the United States army. I respect anyone who stands up for their god, who stands up for their country, who does their duty no matter what the cost to themselves.

As an American, I would be right to resist any invasion and occupation of their own country by foreign invaders. It would be my duty to resist the invasion. I would bring glory to god and glory to America to kill the invaders I would only bring shame on myself if I assisted the invaders to enslave my own country.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

What I mean is, would you really have preferred to have sat by and watched the Holocaust happen rather than fight?

History lesson: Nobody got involved in WW2 on the side of the Allies because of the Holocaust.

Re:Psssh.

[mrhandstand]

Heinlein said once, thru Lazarus Long -

"A 'pacifist male' is a contradiction in terms. Most self-described 'pacifists' are not pacific; they simply assume false colors. When the wind changes, they hoist the Jolly Roger."

Somehow that rings a chord with me...

Re:Psssh.

[owlstead]

Irritating are those people who end discussions with. Period.

But I agree, the best way to prevent violence is more violence. Works every time.

Re:Psssh.

[AK Marc]

Never mind defending yourself when the other guy is trying to kill you...

We stayed out of WWII for a long time. Why? Because no one in the US died. We would allow Hitler to come to power and invade friendly countries without trying to stop him. No one in the US died, so no one in the US was trying to be killed. Of course, the "he'll come here next" argument was stated, but that failed as well.

What I don't understand is why the 180 after the war ended. We would happily fight in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, and other places without a single American at risk (until they were sent into an active battlefield). Given the number of conflicts started by the US (like Iraq) or joined by the US when someone else started them (Korea and Vietnam) when no Americans were at risk at all, I'm curious how you think that "defence" is at the heart of any of these conflicts. Afghanistan is the only conflict I can think of since WWII ended where the USA had any risk at all before sending in troops. With a track record like that, I'm surprised you think any of them are for defensive reasons. Perhaps you could explain to me how anyone in the USA was at risk before the invasion of Iraq or our involvement in Vietnam for that matter.

Kruschev warned that he would take down America without firing a shot, and it's apparent his plan is still grinding away, little by little, eroding the republic.

He needn't bother, we have the Bush's for that.

Re:Psssh.

[MisaDaBinksX4evah]

Whenever I hear about some kind of "do no harm" attitude I always want to ask "does it pass the WW2 test?"

Is that the test where you drop two atomic bombs on a civilian population?

Re:Psssh.

[number11]

Would you really want to live in a world so devoid of passion, original thought, and striving for change that no one is ever willing to put their life on the line for what they believe?

Nope. What I want is to live in a world where no one is willing to put someone else's life on the line.

I personally would prefer war to simply become precise and high-tech enough that the civilians don't suffer so much

Well, now we have precision guided weapons that militaries use to blow up apartment blocks and passenger trains. High tech is fun, but don't kid yourself about it being used in war to prevent suffering, it's used to cause more suffering. And that's pretty much the history of high tech, from the invention of the machine gun (which would make war too terrible to conduct) to nuclear weapons (which would make war too terrible to conduct).

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I can't tell if you're joking. I'm going to take you seroisoly.

In the real world this is a stupid strategy.

You take the punnk down with a body shot. This means upper torso. Anything else is prone to a) miss or b) fail to stop the punk (especially if he's on meth or something). There's no such thing as "shooting to wound". This is ridiculous Hollywood fantasy. In home defense, especially if you're not an expert marksmen, you shoot to kill or not at all. This is not some cheesy action film. This is homicide. You're taking a human life - or possibly losing your own. You don't roll dice and hope you manage to hit him somwhere "non vital" and yet still render him incapacitated. You kill him. It's not macho. It's not tough guy. It's not cool. I've never shot someone or killed someone. I've never even seriously hurt someone, and I pray to God I never have to. But when my family's life is on the line it's no time to play Walker: Texas Ranger.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[gujo-odori]

I agree. It's their code and they can do what they want, but the only countries/militaries that will abide by this license are those that are already clearly the "good guys." That is, they subscribe to the Geneva Conventions, follow them (mostly; I doubt anyone does so completely) and are not in the habit of starting wars of aggression to expand their territory, do not use their military to terrorize their own popular, have firm civilian control over a non-corrupt (OK, reasonably; see the part about the Geneva Conventions) military, etc. Basically, this means NATO and the nations closely aligned with NATO, either formally or at least by ideals.

Basically, this means that if Syria, North Korea, Iran, China, or thinks it could use their code to its advantage and its enemies' disadvantage, they won't give a rat's arse about the license. If they even bother to read it.

This isn't meant to be a commentary on whether the NATO countries and those aligned with them are necessarily doing the right thing in all circumstances. I know there are those who will say the US shouldn't have gone into Iraq at all, and others who will say they waited too long and should have done it ages ago, maybe even right after the first Persian Gulf War. There are those who will say NATO waited to long to take on Milosevic. There are those will say NATO should not have gotten involved at all. Afghanistan. So, let's have none of that.

However, overall I think we could agree that the NATO nations and others who subscribe to the same rules of conduct are generally "the good guys" and are not out to harm their own populations or anyone else, use force only when they believe it necessary and without other recourse, and make great efforts in good faith to minimize civilian casualties. As opposed to ones who tend to land on the other side; they generally believe there's no such thing as a civilian, are often not GC signatories, and have a general "anything goes" attitude towards armed conflict.

It is those sorts, who hold no generally accepted rules of war or international conduct in any regard, who will also hold the license in no regard whatsoever.

Re:Psssh.

[MBraynard]

Correct - we'd be speaking Mandarin.

Re:Psssh.

[geminidomino]

Shit, wake me up when a law somehow manages to stop both censorship AND racial/gender bigotry in ONE PLACE in the world. (Laws going after the latter generally employ the former).

Re:Psssh.

[bahwi]

Wait, I don't get the vegan reference. Yeah, most vegans would eat meat instead of die of starvation(Where in the world does that happen currently ?!?!?!). But there's no conflict, if you eat meat you didn't score a victory of an animal anywhere, even if you went hunting, there's no conflict, no victory. Conflict has risk, hunting does not(I've been hunting for over 10 years, by the way).

It really sounds like a cheap way to make a stike at veganism, which is about animals suffering, and has nothing to do with conflict. In fact, veganism brings in conflict, small minded people who just don't get it, challenging the way people have been thinking for a long time(meat == healthy and you need it for protein, the first mostly false, the second completely false).

And pure veganism is unworkable, so is pacificism, but does that mean the opposite is true? Not at all. Being purely conflict based would really damage you, if everything had to be a conflict, "Are you going to eat?" "NEVER AGAIN NOW! MWA-HA-HA!" you'd say. How does that work? Pure anything doesn't work, ever. You're just taking an extreme, making it extreme to the point it can't work, and going from there.

But yeah, in this day and age, you can get really close to pure veganism, when was the last time it was eat or die for you? Last week? Last year? Ever? It's way over a week before you die.

Re:Psssh.

[identity0]

Your argument is bizzare in its complete disconnect to reality. You do realize that your ability to get plentiful meat is itself the luxury of living in a wealthy country with lots of land, right? It's like saying, "We can't afford the luxury of commuting by bicycle! We must use SUVs, because to do otherwise is wasteful! Do you think those poor third-worlders wouldn't ride in SUVs if they could?" The fact that poor people would love to be able overutilize resources like you would does not change the fact that it is in fact the more wasteful option.

In what dimension is tofu more expensive to make than any sort of meat? Okay, I'm sure there are places where regular people don't eat it and tofu has to be specially imported for the 0.1% of the population that eats it, but please realize that in most places where it's regular food, tofu is *much* cheaper than meat. It's like how bread is cheaper than meat over here, since tofu's just processed soybean, and can be made cheaply anywhere you can grow soy. In Japan, eating more tofu than meat is itself a sign that you're poor, not a sign that you're some wierd vegan dude.

What you've said is like some Korean dude saying, "Well, why should we waste precious resources on this expensive 'saurkraut', when kim chi is much cheaper and more plentiful? Saurkraut is obviously more wasteful!" You're confusing the prices based on economies of scale and distribution at a particular location with the cost of production.

Saying, "Well, poor people should just eat meat" is a bit like the old (false)story about Marie Antounette saying "Let them eat cake".

Meat would be a good choice for feeding large numbers of poor people only in certain situations: 1) Fish and other seafood, since we don't eat plankton. 2) Lots of wild animals to hunt, though any large population will exhast is soon, and 3) Land unsuitable for agriculture, like large arid plains.

Outside of those, our best bet for feeding the masses is large-scale agriculture and low-meat diet.

Wow, this has gone completely off-topic. Sorry if I got a bit long-winded, but I've heard this "meat is poor people's food, veggies are for rich folk" type of argument before, and I couldn't stand how absurdly out of touch it was. I am not a vegan or vegetarian (in fact I've eaten more meat than tofu lately), but I don't pretend that I eat meat because I'm poor.

Re:Psssh.

[UnknownSoldier]

> Pure pacifism pisses me off...

Right, because we know all those pacifists are causing all the problems! [sarcasm]

> but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.
Any theology taken to an absolute is absurd.

At least your recognize that your right to live, is more important then the animal's right to life in this special circumstance.

The interesting question comes when what kind of karma are you creating when you kill when there is no need to?

Re:Psssh.

[number11]

The difference is that embracing pacifism not only won't get you a violence-free world, it's guaranteed to fail. If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.

So are you saying that the only way to stop Bush and Cheney is to kill them?

You do realize that there are other means of opposition besides violence, even when the people you are opposing are violent, don't you?

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Many people think that not being violent means standing idly by while people die. This is not the case.

What alternative do you have that would have brought about an end to the Holocaust before the Holocaust brought about an end to the Jews? This is a serious question.

My problem is that pacifists think non-pacifists believe everything can and should be solved with violence. Violence is the last resort, but sometimes it's the only option. This is true on a micro and a macro scale. Macro scale is our holocaust example. Micro scale is a home invasion.

Now I have a lot of respect for what you have to say about believing in the good in people. I respect that. But there's a fundamental flaw in your logic. Ghandi was not opposing people that wanted to kill him. Neither was Martin Luther King. These giants of the civil-disobediance movement were able to be successful precisely becaue they had inhereited an infrastucture of (relative) peace and did not have enemies who wished their outright death primarily. If the British had wanted all the Indians dead do you think Ghandi's resistance movement would have worked? Of course it wouldn't have. Ghandi would have been the first to die.

Obviously racist white KKK members wanted to kill Martin Luther King, but he appealed to the decency of the majority of Americans and they rallied around his cause eventually if not as soon as they should have. In these circumstances pacifism worked. And it would have been wrong of Ghandi or M. L. King to resort to terrorism or civil war first.

But because you can solve some problems non-violently does not mean you can solve them all that way. The Nazi's wanted to kill Jews. If the Jews had practiced non-violent resistanct it would have been that much easier to kill them. Sometimes war is inevitable. It's a sad fact of human nature. If person x really wants to kill you, then nothing but violence will stop them. So, you must either believe that those who wish to kill must go unopposed, or that violence be used. You can't have it both ways in all cases.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you believe for an instant that millions of years of predatory survival competition with other species, during which evolution has allowed the strongest genetics to survive, hasn't coded violence into our species then I have a bridge in New York for sale.

You need to freshen up on your outmoded ideas about survival of the fittest. In many circumstances, direct conflict leads to being less competitive due to overall population decline. If interspecial violence is genetic, then why do so many species and the majority of humans seem to avoid it?

And here's another wake-up call, the most-fit genetics in a particular environmental context are not necessarily the most-fit in another. There is no one "strongest genetics" that survives.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Yes.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of land that can feed 60 people with soybeans can only feed one person with meat.

You deride the argument, then you use the same argument yourself. By the way, how much land is it that can feed 60 people with soybeans?

Re:Psssh.

[curious.corn]

Of course, that's why there's no sign of advanced civilizations in the universe! They must have fought for their limited resources a long time ago and given the ubiquity of physics and its laws, blown themselves to dust. All that's left is a faint glow in the sky that still hasn't reached our planet.
Being a cynical monster won't help you out... listen: humanity's main survival strategy is collaboration, not competition. Guess what? Are you a good hunter, agronomist, plumber, physician, engineer, biologist? Can you perform all of these roles appropriately, or do you need to specialize and count on someone else's skill to keep you alive?
It's game theory; play well with the other automata on the checkboard or screw them over and enslave them; how successful is the second strategy? History books tell about a couple dozens psycos and their deeds, humanity as a whole is about some billion people collaborating over the course of time. Given the odds, which is the most successful?

Re:Psssh.

[Valacosa]

but there are plenty of examples of when war is not just justified ... but required (like WWI and WWII).

Tell me, why was World War One justified? Do you even know anything about what started it? Hint: WW1 did not start in 1917.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Thank you. You are dead on.

For further reading: In the English-speaking world, the term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp The Brits had had enough blood by the time Gandhi came around. That's why it worked.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Pacifism doesn't mean just laying down and rolling over.

Apparently it doesn't mean "reading Slashdot posts before you hit 'reply'" either.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

True, and utterly besides the point.

Conflict does not have to mean war. Conflict encompasses all kinds of competitions and disagreements. War is not just conflict, it's organised mass murder on a huge scale. Just because we can't eliminate conflict doesn't mean we can't eliminate war.

Re:Psssh.

[iminplaya]

We don't have to "create" unlimited resources. They're already there. We just have to manage them, like transporting them where needed. Water is the best example I can come up with. We have roughly the same amount as when the planet was formed. Our failure is in management. We can process and transport it to any spot on earth. We haven't even touched more than two percent of it. That we fight like the elephants over the watering hole is a matter of choice. A perfectly natural choice seeing as that we still live like animals. And that's why "that's the way it will always be". But it doesn't have to be. If we all decide to be nice and happy, we will be. Unlike the animals, we have that choice...in theory. But in reality, you're probably right. We will always be "Pavlov's dog", and we might not really have a choice to do anything about it. If that's the case, then maybe the next life is something to look forward to. Refusing to fight does not make you a slave. On the contrary, you will be freer than most. Otherwise you are being a slave to this life. Doing whatever it takes to stay alive does not make you any better. You're just being a "survivor whore". All things considered, it really doesn't make a bit of difference. I'm going to keep my life pleasant, otherwise, what's the point? Death is perfectly acceptable if you have to spend your whole life looking over your shoulder and fighting off the attackers. If that's the kind of life you want , then you're welcome to it. I will die free, absolutely free. And the slaves can fend for themselves on this animal planet. Just because this is the only life we know, doesn't preclude that there might be something better after this one is over. I'm willing to take my chances...or I might scream like a wuss when facing the inevitable...or I might react instinctively and pick up some sticks and stones. As Ted Kennedy once said, "I'll drive off that bridge when I get to it." Either way I ain't fightin' your water wars.

Re:Psssh.

[Astro-pilot]

As I read through the responses, I see so many of the people comment on the futility of pacifism in the context of reality.

Examples:
"The simple fact is that in this world there are certain questions which can only be answered with violence."

"Counterproductive. If restriction this has any effect whatsoever, it's going to be to kill people. War has gotten steadily less destructive as technology has advanced, because fewer people are needed to fight. Lately, this has accelerated as more accurate weapons have cut down on civilian casualties."

"Just try to imagine a scenario where deadly force may need to be used to prevent more harm, i.e., there is a distinctly net positive effect. It's all well and good to talk about doing no harm. Just keep in mind that it's sometimes necessary to 'do harm' to prevent more of the same.

That's not a warmongering view, an American view, nor a Republican view. That's just a very simple fact of reality that would be discovered by an application of common sense. Anyone who might fall back on the refrain of "but we don't know what really would have happened otherwise, do we?" when presented with an example event is quite frankly choosing to delude themselves, and has chosen the path of willful ignorance under a very thin veil of righteousness."

"I believe it is a fallacy to try and strive for a world without war, however we should control it better to prevent unnecessary loss of life and resources."



And I can't help thinking as I read these 'reality' and 'greater good' comments: That, my friend, is why you are no Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ, or even a Mohandas Gandhi.



------

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

You do realize that there are other means of opposition besides violence, even when the people you are opposing are violent, don't you?

Yes, I believe that sentiment was accurately reflected in my reference to violence as a "last resort". This sort of implies there are other resorts that come before the last one. These would be the non-violent resorts.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Those who don't understand history are doomed to repeat it... and drag the rest of us with them.

If you're American, and referring to Americans by 'we,' you really should know that neither Germany nor Japan were ever a threat to 'us.' If it weren't for our politicians ceaselessly itching to get us into 'the great game' we could have easily sat out every war this century, and been happier and richer for it. And today, well, I'm sorry, if you seriously think Iran or Iraq or Syria are capable of posing a threat to the US, even if they wanted to, you're absurdly ignorant. Once again, we have politicians itching to play the great game busy beating the war drums, but the only real threat is the blowback from all that meddling in other peoples business.

Re:Psssh.

[paeanblack]

In a nutshell:
Those who are unwilling to employ violence will always be at the mercy of those who are.

Move Gandhi from 1940s India to 1940s France and see how well he fares.

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[Planesdragon]

The difference is that embracing pacifism not only won't get you a violence-free world, it's guaranteed to fail. If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.

Ghandi, and India, would beg to differ. So would Martin Luther King. So would anyone with an anecdote about how a pacifist Christian managed to save lives.

Embracing pacifism WILL get you a violence-free world--but not until the current hot spots boil out. I know it's nice to think that Eisenhower was wrong and the Military-Industrial complex is a necessary thing--but neither the Cold War nor the Second World War would have even happened if we had intelligent and level-headed people neogiating the Treaty of Versais (sic - could be wrong war, definitly spelled wrong, too lazy to look it up).

We didn't; instead, we had a treaty written to punnish the losing side, which created a situation where Nazism could actually take power. Which had more than a little effect in helping Stalin succeed Lenin instead of being ostraciszed for the crazy shit he was. Which would probably have led to the whole of the 20th century being a bit more happy a time.

(Oh, and we wouldn't be at the moon yet, or have computers. Or nuclear power. And China would be ruled by Japan. And we'd be suffering from a lot of diseases that we've cured since then. Look, I said it would be violence-free, not better.)

Re:Psssh.

[Gorimek]

Actually, there is strong evidence that humans have a very strong evolutionary impulse to not kill each other.

More details here

Re:Psssh.

[tsm_sf]

Pacifism doesn't even rule out violence (for a given value). Here's a great example:

During WW2 a community of Mennonites was occasionally hassled by their neighbors for not participating in the war. One of the men from their community was confronted by several townspeople and asked why he wasn't fighting. His reply was that "violence never solved anything." This angered one man, who rushed to attack. This Mennonite happened to be a wrestler, and tossed his attacker across the room. He picked the guy up, brushed him off and asked if he had changed his mind. The guy replied "of course not".

"Well then, you've just proven my point."

Re:Psssh.

[geminidomino]

counter-rant on/

I'm tired of vegans claiming that its "healthier and brings less health problems" than eating what humans are naturally built to eat. Barring for a moment our lovely meat-tearing front teeth, did you ever wonder why a cow gets so heavy just eating grass, whereas vegetables are such a great "weight-loss" food group for humans? It's because they get everything they need from it, thier bodies are wired for it. The majority of plant matter a human takes in gets passed right through as waste ("fiber" or "roughage") because we don't have the capabilities to break it down. We're omnivores, we're wired for some meat, some plant matter. The health problems don't come from eating meat, they come from the poorly-prepared, cut-with-gods-know-what meat that we get for essentially living off the fast-food industry that becomes more enticing every year with lenghtening workdays and an ever-growing average commute (already almost an hour both ways).

Veganism is a luxury, and the claims that it's unhealthy and/or unnatural are just more mental masturbation.

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[iminplaya]

Simply because humans are predisposed to violence (which is still under debate by our brainy science dudes) does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

There should be no debate. Of course humans are predisposed to violence, just like every other life form. No more, no less. And just everything else, we let our DNA do are thinking for us. The only debate should be whether or not we have a choice. All indications are the answer is "no". In this physical universe "might makes right" will always rule the day. Strive all you will to bring peace, but always sleep with one eye open.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

i didn't get it from any source other than my head..

Please put it back...

Re:Psssh.

[Firethorn]

Pacifism attemts to sidestep the whole violence issue. Unlike error-free code, with pacifism you're depending upon all others to also follow a policy of pacifism. That's like not programing security controls into an OS on the basis that 'nobody will try to do anything bad'.

There are people out there who are perfectly willing to harm or kill you to get what they want. If you lack or refuse to use any means to defend yourself, don't be suprised when somebody uses violence to force you to do what they want. And no, calling the cops is not true pacifism, that's simply getting somebody else to commit violence on your behalf so you can feel good about being a 'pacifist'.

Pacifists can only survive as slaves, or when others are willing to protect them. There's a realm of difference between those who are willing to commit violence to protect themselves and those willing to commit violence for their own ends.

Does anybody really think that an agressive military will pay any attentian to this license?

Re:Psssh.

[dasunt]

Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

If it came down to starvation in an apocalyptic scenerio, I suspect that cannibalism would be popular. There are signs of cannibalism in pre-human hominids, and H. Sapiens has a very long history of cannibalism as either a cultural norm or as a survival mechanism in extreme situations (the collapse of the Easter Island civilization being one notable example).

Yet I don't think I'll ever be a cannibal in my lifetime, unless you count such substances as L-cysteine.

That's why the "if you were starving" argument against veg*nism seems silly to me. The same argument can be used against cannibalism. Yet the motives for not eating meat and the motives against not eating each other tend to be similar. Most veg*ns I know will admit that in a push-comes-to-shove survival situation, they would eat meat. But the world, at least in the rich states of the west, isn't a push-comes-to-shove survival situation in regards to diet, and thus the small vegan minority can live their lives without eating meat, and the large non-cannibalistic majority live their lives without eating each other.

Re:Psssh.

[i41Overlord]

I would eat part of the rat, and leave a piece behind. That way, there's a good chance that it will attract more rats, which I will eat.

It's just like when you go fishing... you catch the first fish, then you cut it up and use it as bait to catch bigger fish.

Re:Psssh.

[rucs_hack]

wrong. there is ample evidence, including cave paintings that depict the fighting. Archeological evidence points to two seperate groups. One that travelled from the north down, and one that had been in south america for much longer.

The small tribe discovered on an island off the southern tip of south america was proven to be related to the humans in australia, and had migrated there from the mainland a very long time ago.

Sounds like your one of those people desperate to claim that the indians got there first.

Re:Psssh.

[baboonlogic]

No! That isn't true.. not entirely anyway. Millions of Gandhi's followers were shot in peaceful parades. The Brit problem was that killing too many made them look too bad back home. Also, Gandhi himself was too famous back home to do anything really bad to him. This wasn't the case when Gandhiji started. This was a situation gandhiji created.

Gandhiji, IMO, above all was a strategist and a great one at that. He discovered that non-violence would work for India against the Brit. And it wasnt just non-violence. It was non-violence along with non-cooperation and a cocktail of other tactics that helped speed India's independence.

In the 18th century or against the Dutch, he might (and IMHO, would) have found another variant of his strategy. Anyway, the point is that non-violence, while isnt a universal strategy, it is different from inaction and a viable strategy for a lot of conflict management. It is not as futile in the modern age as you make it out to be. If yopu take any ideal and take it to it's extreme, it will look bad. Non-violence was and is a very good option in a lot of cases even today. Just depends on if your ultimate goal really is peace. It is peace and not war that leads to better resource conflict resolution.

Happy Independence Day to all Indians around here...

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

no we wouldn't

Re:Psssh.

[Firethorn]

Without cooperation, we would be less than ants. Cooperation is a more successful strategy, and therefore will win out over competition in the end. Given that, the end of violence is unavoidable. Sorry to rain on your pessimism parade.

Not Necessarily.

What happens when the violence capable group decides to steal all of the pacifist group's production? It's not like the pacifist group can really stop them. This allows the violent group to live better than the non-violent group(Look at the Sunnis in Iraq, or various slave holding societies in history). On the downside, the oppressed population lives much worse. Heck, the noble-serf relationship during the midieval periods.

Now, in the end, cooperation is the cheaper, more efficient option, and most of those capable of choosing not to employ violence have seen that in the modern world. I'm normally a very cooperative person, but I acknowledge that, given the right circumstances, I will do my best to kill 'fellow' human beings. Attempting to shoot up a school? Don't be suprised if I do my best to kill you. Get yourself killed attempting to rob, rape, or kill fellow humans? Don't be suprised when I cheer your death, rather than weeping for it.

There are various names for these type of people. Criminals, Critters, Goblins. They stand for the sad wastes of humanity who, in their refusing to abide by the laws of civilized society, waste far more than their share, deliberatly. Steal a $100 stereo, in the process causing $500 damage. Wreck somebody else's $20,000 car 'for the fun of it'. Rape somebody, costing thousands of dollars of therapy to return them to something resembling happy, productive life. Or worse, kill somebody, depriving humanity of their contributions.*

The difference between me and a pacifist is that I believe that there are reasons to use violence. The difference between me and a goblin is that I believe that such violence should only be used in self defense, or the defense of society, humanity.

To use the terms of some self-defense proponents, there are sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves.

*I'll admit, I'm also pleased when I hear about goblin on goblin violence

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

And China would be ruled by Japan...Look, I said it would be violence-free, not better.

So... China would have been ruled by Japan without violence? The Rape of Nanking doesn't count? The Japanese took it without violence? And there's no Chinese resistance? And the Japanese took China and then just stopped? They didn't take Korea? Or they did? How about the Phillipines? You think they wouldn't have expanded into Malaysia? Then maybe India? Perhaps Australia? At the very least, why not take New Zealand?

Yes, the Treaty of Versailles (right treaty, ended WWI) gave Hitler some coin with the Germans. They felt wronged, and they were ready to listen to him. But there's no reason to say they wouldn't have been ready anyway. But what are you suggesting as an alternative? A "nice" Treaty of Versailles? That did what? Give the Sudetenland back to Germany? Oops - guess now the Germans aren't as pissed, but I bet the Czechs aren't too pleased. How about giving the Germans Poland as well, since they felt that was their due? Rats, now the Germans are less and less likely to listen to Hitler, but we seem to have made the Poles and the Czechs a bit irate in the process.

It comes to this: pacifists have this entirely unrealistic and silly idea that war and violence are not the default value for humanity. Despite the fact that there's probably never been a time in the hsitory of the human race where there hasn't been armed conflict somewhere, we still think that the default is peace. This is silly result of people growing up in 1st world nations where they are not in danger for most of their lives. They think that because life as they know it is generally safe and comfortable that the world is by default a save and comfortable place. Violence, especially to most Americans, is a rare intrusion into an otherwise complacent life. So we see violence as unnatural. As though peace just happens, but violence needs a motivating cause. This is wrong.

The fact is that just as the society we take for granted that affords us our lives of relative comfort and ease is both a historic anomoly and the result of great labor and toil of those who went before, our lives of peace are also anomolous and built on top of lives that were anything but peaceful. You can't get to America as it is now, fat, lazy and relatively content, without going through 1776, the Civil War and WW2 - at the very least.

The actual fact of the matter is that when you have 6 billion people alive - all of whom have some rason to feel robbed at some point - conflict is not evitable. Your own alternate history completely failed to account for 1/2 the conflict of WW2, and didn't really account for the other 1/2 either. No matter how you slice it, violence will always be an option. As long as violence is an option for those who would do evil, it must remain an option for those who would oppose them or evil will have the opportunity to grow unchecked. I'm not saying that there must always be actual violence in progress. I'm saying that people who believe in peace have to be willing to fight for it or they will inevitably loose either their peace, their freedoms, or both.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[letxa2000]

It's also absurd if the license is actually worded as it is worded in TFA: "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Well, damn, the execution of that program represents a threat to my business plan and my income. I was harmed! Therefore you can't use the program to do anything that harms me financially. Likewise, if it is used in a city bus and that bus runs me over and your program allowed it to happen through inaction, I was harmed, so you can't do that!

I assume the actual wording in the real license is better thought out. As worded above, it's just silly.

Re:Psssh.

[Mistshadow2k4]

You obviously don't know the history of the British occupation of India very well, because many of Gandhi's followeres were massacred. More than once. But the survivors didn't let the threat of being killed stop them.

By the way, what's with all the preaching pro-/anti-violence in this thread anyhow? So this group codes software that could have miliatry applications and states in their EULA that it's not to be used for such. All of you guys start rants, dissertations and lectures about whether violence solves anything or not as if you were all entitled to tell them what to do. If I were to code something and stipulate in the EULA that, say, a lawyer is never to use it professionally, then that's my damn business. Don't like it? Code similar software yourselves and use a different license.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am at peace knowing that this license will prevent Kim Jong-Il from using this technology for military purposes. Although, I do hope the license is written using a bold font. I worry that Dear Father might not be fully deterred by the use of a normal type face.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd ask the rat where to get some water, because

A) Lack of water will kill long before starvation.

and

B) You know he's going to give up his source because.. well.. he's a rat. In fact, if his father is absent, he'll probably give it up before I even ask.

Re:Psssh.

[Firethorn]

I think it had something to do with a philosophy of 'a pound in time saves nine' or such.

By taking out the problem now, by paying the price now, we prevent far greater expense, in both time and money, in the future.

Re:Psssh.

[FLEB]

It's a discussion group. We're discussing. No one here has the power to nullify their license, however we can (do and should) put it to scrutiny.

Re:Psssh.

[linguizic]

I don't have the non-violent answer to Hitler, but that does not mean that one does not exist. Just because you think there is a violent response to Hitler, does that mean you know the right way to attack? That's why pacifism is an ideal that I try to achieve. I put my energies towards a non-violent solution, rather than violence itself. The Germany that created WWII was the result of horribly punative policies following WWI. It seems that the solution to ending war maybe to work towards things like ending poverty, universal education, and equality. These are the things that I concentrate on. I work for peace, not against war.

You wrote: If the Jews had practiced non-violent resistanct it would have been that much easier to kill them.

What you seem to think pacifism is is exactly what the Jews did when the Nazis tried to kill them. That is not what pacifism is. Pacifism is peacefull non-compliance. The Jews really could have tried to stand up for themselves both violently and non-violently. I highly suggest you read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_resistance.

You wrote: My problem is that pacifists think non-pacifists believe everything can and should be solved with violence.

This is a gross generalization. Who are you to tell me what I think? That is not, in fact, what I think. You have just made a sweeping false generalization of a class of people that you think do the same thing to you. There are smug, arogant pacifists in this world, and it sounds like you have met a few in your time, and I'm sorry for that. But would you want the most arrogant people among whatever class of person you belong to representing what people think of you?

Re:Psssh.

[letxa2000]

I got a chuckle out of that. Of course, the Mennonite was wrong. His point wasn't proven, he was just right in that case but that doesn't prove he was right in all cases. Now, had the guy replied, "Yes!" the the Mennonite's assertion would have been disproven... but, as-is, nothing was proven. :)

Absolutes such as "never" almost never (hehehe) can be proven, but the opposite can be proven by just a single example.

Re:Psssh.

[gfxguy]

It's the same wars, just that after nuclear weapons, the nature of the battles changed.

For example, most of the battles are fought in the media, and by there actions more people die. People stage news footage to win "hearts and minds". Korea and Vietnam were a proxy for the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and in both cases it's debatable that our media cost us any victory we might have had.

I'm not saying it's right, I'm answering the question. And you want to know why the 180? Isn't it enough we learned a lesson about trying to neuteral in a global war? Maybe that's when we decided we need to fight the wars elsewhere, and not let them bring themselves to our shores.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Unfortunately, I'm surrounded by incompetents.

Re:Psssh.

[stanmann]

So what is your nonviolent resolution to the conflict of an armed rapist in your home who wants to kill you and have his way with your wife and daughters?

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been Vegan for a number of years. I do realise that I can be Vegan because of the wealth of the society I live in and the resultant abundance of a wide variety of foods.

But also realise, that this industrialised society is why I am Vegan in the first place: I am opposed to factory farming and the inhumane treatment of farm animals.

People who come up with hypotheticals of "what if you were in this situation?" are missing the point. My choosing to be Vegan is a result of my current situation, and so different situations will of course require different thinking and may have different outcomes.

It's like asking a hardcore OSS only user, "What if you had a computer that only had closed-source software available for it?". The question is nonsense and ignores the point of the protest entirely.

Re:Psssh.

[stony3k]

You can oppose violence and violent people while still remaining pacifist. Gandhi was a great example of this, so were many others. Granted, it's harder to do, but it can be done.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I choose to seek non-violent means to resolve conflict.

You are a master of resolving conflict. As is evident on your blog entry: Let's piss some more people off!!. There's a word for people like you: Hypocrites.

Re:Psssh.

[uimedic]

Perhaps when human beings no longer compete for scarce resources (e.g. mates, food, energy, water, land, etc.) we will be beyond war and conflict. Until then (i.e. for all eternity), we should prepare for the worst and work for the best. Attitude has relatively little to do with it.

Pid

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Newsflash: trying not to be violent is not pacifist. That's just being decent. Pacifist means you oppose war and violence as a means to settling disputes (ripped from Wikipedia). I'm not interested in listening to you try and sound superior for putting your "energies towardsa non-violent solution, rather than violence itself". This is the pinacle of moral hypocrisy: it's more important for you to keep your dainty hands lilly white and guilt free than to actually risk your conscience trying to do something as lowly and abject as defend innocent human beings.

I've already covered the Versailles Treaty. It did not cause WW2. First of all, it had nothing to do with Japanese agression. 2nd of all, it did make Hitler's rise to power easier, but the only way to have appeased Germany would have been to give them the Sudetenland, Poland, and Austira. Guess how lives in the Sudetenland? That's right, the Czechs. Or the Slovaks, I forget which. But they've got ties to Russia. So now Stalin starts WW2 instead. Way to go for peace.

What angers me is that people would rather have pretty phrases like: "work for peace, not against war". If that's really what youi're doing: you're not a pacifist. But you're still an idiot. I'm not trying to be a dick, but do you have any idea what the phrase "eradicate poverty" even means? Poverty is relative. That means it can not be eradicated unless all people have exactly the same goods. But guess what, that doesn't work either because people value goods subjectively. Eradicating poverty is literally impossible. That doesn't mean it's not noble, but it does mean it's stupid policy. That's like saying you want to jump to the moon. Nice thought, but a waste of time. Instead how about alleviating human suffering? How about rising the standard of living, fighting disease, and trying to make sure everyone has a good job. Believe it or not, "eradicating poverty" has a track record of destroying these goals. Don't believe me, look here: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spie gel/0,1518,363663,00.html

What you seem to think pacifism is is exactly what the Jews did when the Nazis tried to kill them. That is not what pacifism is. Pacifism is peacefull non-compliance. The Jews really could have tried to stand up for themselves both violently and non-violently. I highly suggest you read this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_resistance.

Great Scots man, what planet are you living on? You think if the Jews had tried to "stand up for themselves" it would have worked? You think passive resistance works against violence? You're insane. Take a look at the history of the American Civil Rights Movement. When they desegregated schools, who did they call out to keep the black kids from being killed? That's right: THE NATIONAL GUARD. And why do you think the national guard worked? Because THEY HAD THE THREAT OF VIOLENCE. They carreid GUNS. Do you think having the National Guard outside the high school with roses and flowers would have stopped those kids from getting killed?

What would the KKK have done to the Civil Rights movement if they hadn't feared the retribution of federal law officials? They would have killed every black man, woman and child they could have found. Civil disobediance and passive resistance are noble, great strategies. They appeal to the best in us. But when Martin Luther King and Gandhi were resisting passively, they were appealing to the kind of civil support that can only come in a country that is free of tryanny. If you try that tactic in China you end up dead. Did you miss Tianeman Square? You think somehow the Jews would have fared better at the hands of people who wanted them dead then the Chinese students did at the hands of people who had no grudge against them at all? You have no idea what you are talking about. Passive resistance requires an infrastructure of freedom and order that is MAINTAINED THROUGH THREAT OF FORCE.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Do you really believe there's any rational people out there who WANT war?

To the degree that sociopaths can be considered rational, absolutely. Every war makes some people dead, some people poorer, but also some people greatly more powerful and more wealthy. That last group of people tend to be the ones that actually get to make the decisions, and as long as they value their own wealth and power over the life, liberty, and property of the rest, war is a rational choice for them.

The problem is that sometimes peace first requires war, whether you want it or not. I know a lot of poeple have misgivings about premptive policies and interventionalist practices, but there are plenty of examples of when war is not just justified (like in Afghanistan or the first Gulf war), but required (like WWI and WWII).

In fact your examples work against you.

I'm not a pacifist, and I'm not going to argue that violence is never necessary, but certainly in your cases, from a US-centric viewpoint, war was neither justified nor necessary in any of those cases. Afghanistan? Come on. A stupid move, stepping up and hitting the same tarbaby we used against the Soviets not so long ago, completely unecessary, accomplishing nothing whatsoever. There were some legitimate goals that were used to justify it (notably, arresting OBL) but note that OBL was never captured? Note further that there were much cheaper (in terms of money and blood) options to pursue him, which all evidence suggests would have been more effective, and at any rate could certainly not have been less effective, as he's still out there podcasting today.

WWI and WWII were closer, but look at them closely and you'll see that, at least for most of the participants, they were unecessary unjustified and avoidable. WWI was sparked by the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, you'll recall. Austria declared war on Serbia. Unjustified, unnecessary, and monstrously immoral - a handful of criminals killed a man, and the response is to attack an entire nation in retaliation. Lest we feel too smug in our moral superiority over those nasty Austrians, though, recall that this is very similar to the current conflict, however - a violent, criminal act answered by more violent, criminal acts, against entire nations, and not even the nations the attackers came from, in the current version!

At any rate, Austria could have chosen not to go to war in WWI. And, in fact, they didn't immediately go to war - first they delivered an Ultimatum. It was one any sovereign nation would have difficulty accepting, but given the vast superiority of the Austrian armed forces, Serbia had to consider it. And they probably would have accepted it, and avoided war, but for the 'great game.' The Russians, always looking for a chance to best their Austrian rivals in the game, encouraged the Serbs to reject it, promising protection. Thus encouraged, the Serbs refused, and Austria declared war.

Now at that point, the Serbs, of course, had to defend themselves. But no one else had to be involved. But the Russian government wanted in. They mobilised their troops. The German government, also, wante in. They called up their troops, and sent the Russians an ultimatum to stand down. The Russians continued mobilising. The Germans declared war. The Germans, of course, were allied with Austria. The Russians were allied with France. These alliances were not necessary - they were chosen by the governments involved. They were part of that same game. Any of these added participants could have avoided the great war, by avoiding that game. The people of these countries would certainly, in the main, have been vastly better off had they done so - but small, influential groups of people saw vast riches and enourmous power to be gained from playing the game, and those people made the decisions.

The Germans, anticipating that France would strike in support of Russia and Serbia, decided to take the initiative and hi

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

> "No i wouldn't eat the rat, i would let him go"

If you no eat rat, rat eat you.

Re:Psssh.

[linguizic]

You are a wase of my time. I tried being civil but you would rather name call. This conversation is over.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

In WW2 violence defeated hitler. This gave rise to russia, china, communism, vietnam, cold war etc. Whatever was saved by defeating nazis was paid for by the purges and progroms that followed in russia and china.

In the long run maybe pacifism would have worked the same, maybe better, maybe worse. Nobody knows.

Re:Psssh.

[WgT2]

Well said.

This license can do nothing but tie the hands of the lawful. It does absolutely nothing for stopping use by dictators and their ilk.

Shame on them for limiting the good and strengthening the evil.

Re:Psssh.

[kubrick]

I think a number of people will disagree with you that Jesus was a mythological character. :-) After all, our whole Gregorian calendar is based on his birth.

The Gregorian calendar is less than 500 years old. If Pope Gregory XIII had any real evidence of Jesus' existence, don't you think we would have seen it by now?

Re:Psssh.

[EnderGT]

Two words, motherfucker... Pearl Harbor. I'm sure our politicians had a lot to do with that... Maybe they went over and bribed to Japanese to kill thousands of American soldiers and destroy hundreds of American ships. There was also a simultaneous attack at Wake Island, in case you didn't know - again, Japan the aggressor. The US policy prior to WWII was actually quite isolationist - so much so that Germany declared was on us, not us on them. Check your facts next time before making such a stupid statement. I do agree with you, however, that our current politicians are, as you said, "itching to play the great game busy beating the war drums".

Re:Psssh.

[Dun Malg]

Truly written like someone who has never actually experienced war or conflict. Well done, armchair commando!

Sorry man, I've got just short of two very unpleasant years in Afghanistan with the US Army in my resume, and I'd tend to agree with him. What's your war experience?

Re:Psssh.

[L.Bob.Rife]

I think you are excluding some important facts in your interpretation of history. The vast majority of Jews did not die until the last couple years of war. This was after years and years of war and violence, after food shortages became a grave problem for the people of Germany.

Hitler was a racist, and hated Jews. There is no denying that. First, he merely treated them as second class citizens. He disrespected them and restricted their rights. After some years of war, he decided that Jews were hoarding wealth he needed, so he stole their money, and made them work as slaves. After more years of war, when food was running short, he started exterminating them.

Now you could say that Hitler was hellbent on killing them from the start, but the fact is that the war itself caused much of the mass starvation.

What pacifist options are there to stop Hitler? Well, lets look at why the war started: Hitler's ability to lead the German people to believe the terms of the Treaty of Versaille were bogus because it drained their wealth. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of all wars are disputes over money, and one side having an interest in redistributing wealth. However, this is rarely the claimed cause. People make claims about patriotism, and saving people, and protecting the innocent, and defending their nation, but lookng back through history, its clear that almost all wars are over money. What is suprising is for people of every age to think that they somehow are different. That their war is for pure reasons.

All war is about killing people for money, on a mass scale. To believe otherwise is to ignore ALL of recorded history. To believe that pacifism alone will solve that problem is foolish too of course.

Re:Psssh.

[GuinevereTheWhitePha]

>This is the typical problem with Veganism. It assumes you'll never be in a situation (like starvation) where you won't be able to come up with a nice big chunk of Tofu.

Does that mean you are also pro-cannabilism? I mean, you could be stranded on an Andean mountain with your climbing mates as your only source of substainance? What are you going to do, starve?

We all have define food differently. Some folks who meat would never consider eating dogs or whales and yet others do. Would you a dolphin, an ape, an human? We all draw the line at a different place.

Me, I'm a vegan. My rule of thumb is that if the so-called food would try to get away from me if I poked with a sharp stick when it was alive, then it is not food. All animals have will and intent and I do not wish to interfere with their existence. Would I eat fish if I were stranded on desert Island? I don't know; it hasn't come up yet and I hope it never does.

Re:Psssh.

[Marcos Eliziario]

Basically they think that the greatest evil is the US military themselves, as they are the only military force that would probably comply with the license, given the advanced reach of the law in the US. They surelly know that groups like al-qaeda are not going to be restrained by the GPL, so, they are clearly stating that it's not a problem for them. I am not saying that they endorse Al-Qaeda, but that they sincerelly believe that if the US didn't exist, there wouldn't be an Al-Qaeda after all because, for them, the Al-Qaeda and alikes are just a reaction to american abuse. I don't agree with them. But they are entitled to believe whatever they want, and act according to their belief, until, of course, the day the other side wins. My opinion is that they either qualify as idiot-savants (very unlikely), or that they are trying to impress some pacifist girls in their universities to increase their reproductive success ratio (this is my bet).

Re:Psssh.

[computechnica]

Well the Internet is derived from the ARPANET that the Evil Military developed so maybe they should not use it. Of course the freedoms they enjoy are the Military's fault too.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

What names did I call you? I don't remember calling you any. You think I wrote all that text just to call you names? I can call you names much faster.

"Hey, stupid head!"

I wrote all that text because I thought you were horribly wrong, but also respected you enough to give you a serious answer. I honestly didn't mean to offend you. If I was a little too harsh, just take a look at how many posts I'm running at once here.

I'm doing the best I can!

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Hitler was a racist, and hated Jews. There is no denying that. First, he merely treated them as second class citizens. He disrespected them and restricted their rights. After some years of war, he decided that Jews were hoarding wealth he needed, so he stole their money, and made them work as slaves. After more years of war, when food was running short, he started exterminating them.

Kristelnacht is not what I would call "disrespect".

Now you could say that Hitler was hellbent on killing them from the start, but the fact is that the war itself caused much of the mass starvation.

What I would really say is that the threshold for military invetion was met before they turned the ovens on. I'd say about the time they locked the Jews up in the ghettos I'd be ready to contemplate military intervention. Killing the Jews was not the original plan. As far as I know, the original plan was to ship them off to Madagascar or something. But once you're willing to treat people as subhumans the worst will inevitably follow.

All war is about killing people for money, on a mass scale. To believe otherwise is to ignore ALL of recorded history

I disagree. I'd say that war is about power, and money is a subset of that power. But I'm not disagreeing much.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[GuinevereTheWhitePha]

>Same with pacifism. If you want to die, or be a slave, by all means, refuse to fight. That's Darwin at his finest. We're an agressive species.

Yes, we are agressive, but I think natural selection will lead to more peaceful societies rather than more agressive. In fact I believe this is already happening.

Consider that warriors tend to die young. (All that gunfire is bad for your health!) This limits their reproductive lifespan.

Consider also that a group of individuals is always going to outcompete an indvidual no matter how strong and agressive he or she is. You may have be very strong man, but you do not have the strength of 10 men, for example. Those who know how to cooperate with each other and are not overly agressive have a competitive advantage.

Extrapolate this trend out over a very long period of time and I have to believe that we our species will evolve to be very socialable and peace-loving.

The meek shall inherit the earth.

Re:Psssh.

[jmorris42]

> I strive every day to make bug-free code, but I realize it's unrealistic to expect I'll ever get there.
> It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.

Big difference being that pacifism only works if each and every person on the planet (AND any alien races that wander by) adopts pacifism. But each and every intermediate step between current reality and utopia makes matters worse and lowers the odds of actually attaining your goal. On the other hand, removing bugs from code makes the code better with no side effects (other than accidentally introducing a new bug with the patch) so fewer bugs are preferrable to more bugs, while working towards the eventual goal of zero bugs.

Personally I think anyone renouncing violence (one good place for the line being failure to submit to selective service) should be prohibited from voting. Think about it, Government is nothing but an attempt to attain a monopoly on the use of force and then use that monopoly to force the subjects of said government to do things they would not do without the threat of violence. Things like surrender half (or more) of the product of their labor. If you claim to be a real pacifist ANY vote other than for the instant abolition of the State is expressing a desire to use (or threaten with) the force of Government on someone so you really aren't a pacifist anyway so you should join me in my call.

But being a hypocrite you won't. Truth is you love violence, just as long as the right people are inflicting suffering on your enemies. And as long as you don't have to get your hands dirty so you can avert your eyes and pretend it isn't happening and at any rate YOU aren't doing it. But you are. If you eat a hamburger you are killing cows, same as if you did it yourself. And if you vote for some Republicrat who violates his oath of office and steals someone's labor against their will to fund AIDS research/welfare/farm subsidy/etc. you are pro violence. When government threatens to fine/imprision/whatever someone for putting up a billboard too close to election day, what else is it but a threat of violence against anyone rocking the incumbent boat? Ok, you are on the 'correct/non-violent' side of the issues I threw out at random? Bet there are others you ARE on the violent side of, care to refute me?

Getting the mental defectives off the voter registration rolls would be a major win. And yes pacifism is a mental defect. If nothing else it reveals a profound lack of reasoning skills and probably a deep seated suicidal self hatred. Note I'm talking about pacifism here, not the sane belief that intelligent, rational self interested people can almost always work out their problems in a peaceful way. But to believe that the world is currently populated solely with that sort of enlightened folk is delusional at best.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Please read some of the other posts on this subject. Seriously. Like, before you just repeat what's been repeated by people repeating other people before you repeated them.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[ktakki]

You think Japan invaded China (1930s) because they didn't like the Chinese? They didn't care about the Chinese - they wanted oil.

No, not oil, but other important resource: raw materials, food, and labor. The known deposits of oil in Asia were mostly in the Dutch colonies in Indonesia. Japan was largely self-sufficient until the industrialization of the late 19th Century. Industrialization led to two things: a population boom and a movement from rural to urban areas. After 1900, Japan was hard pressed to feed itself (manifested in widespread malnutrition during the Allied blockade late in WWII) and did not have adequate supplies of coal and ore.

Japanese imperialism was apparent long before the 1930s: Japan forced China to cede Taiwan in 1895.

Japanese contempt for the Chinese made it all to easy to commit atrocities like the Rape of Nanking and the war crimes of Unit 714.

k.

Re:Psssh.

[khallow]

In WW2 violence defeated hitler. This gave rise to russia, china, communism, vietnam, cold war etc. Whatever was saved by defeating nazis was paid for by the purges and progroms that followed in russia and china.

Oh, I know the answer! Correlation doesn't imply causation! The USSR and China were already screwed up. In fact, the Second World War actually stopped the USSR's expansion due to the development of nuclear weapons at the end.

In the long run maybe pacifism would have worked the same, maybe better, maybe worse. Nobody knows.

I vote for "worse". Because in addition to the USSR, China, and some variation of the Cold War, you still have the Nazis and Japan and they'd still be killing people.

Re:Psssh.

[Breakfast Pants]

So, China would have been more acceptable under Japanese imperial rule?

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

We had no control over that. Our choices were fight or be conquered.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"I vote for "worse""

Vote for whatever you want. If everybody was a pacifist there would have been no WWII. If pacifism was a worldwide philosophy countries would not be able to gather up enough armies to do their bidding.

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Yes, the Japanese attacked at Pearl Harbour.

What you apparently don't realise is why.

There were a long string of actions, undertaken by the US government rather quietly, to provoke such a response. In 1940 the Panama canal was closed to japanese shipping, and an embargo was placed on them, particularly prohibiting the shipment of scrap iron to Japan, which their industry relied on heavily. In '41, Japanese assets were seized throughout the country, and the US Navy imposed a blockade on all oil shipments to Japan. These are acts of war. All diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation were rebuffed.

Yes, the japanese attacked - but quite relunctantly. Had the US President been truly 'isolationist' rather than simply mouthing the words to match public sentiments while relentlessly working to provoke an attack on the sly...

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on the game theory relevant to this discussion.

To bring a simpler example, imagine 30 people in a class. A really tough exam is coming up. If everyone fails, everyone gets 75%
because the prof said he'll adjust the mark. First, do you believe all 30 would be happy with a 75%? Then how many of those students would trust that none of their compatriats would try to pass?

Similar to pacifism - sure, if everyone's a pacifist, then everyone wins. But if even one person decides not to be (doesn't even have to be a terrorist - think locally like a murderer, armed burgler etc,), he wins and everyone else loses.

Any kind of moral ideology that deals in absolutes fails without question because it is always possible to imagine some scenario where it breaks down.

Re:Psssh.

[Liam Slider]

Oh so we were not only not supposed to fight back when they attacked us, we were supposed to keep trading with them beforehand as well while they were raping and pillaging and mass murdering their way across Asia....

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

strict vegans has a broad spectrum of vitamin deficiency, most notably vitamin B12, unless you don't really wash it, or wish that you had quite a bit of bacterial-contaminated food which contain plenty of bacteria to make vitamin B12.

child abuse is a very common example on these things. more commonly we medical people see are jehovah's witness who would not accept blood products for their child and we have to get a lawyer to explain to them on that they had no ground on forbidding that on their child...

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

your definition of veganism and pacifist seems to be very different from what is understood and practiced these days. argument over.

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

be practical.

take a look downstairs at your nice supermarket and calculate a calorie/dollar for both meat and vegetable.

Re:Psssh.

[winse]

mormons sheesh. When all else fails the use of force is justified


    18 Therefore I did obey the voice of the Spirit, and took Laban by the hair of the head, and I smote off his head with his own asword.


I can't say I disagree ... just don't use the f word ... your bishop wouldn't approve.

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

> But also realise, that this industrialised society is why I am Vegan in the first place: I am opposed to factory farming and the inhumane treatment of farm animals.

however, when you eat vegetables in industralized countries you can only be supporting, not opposing factory farming. you can do that by means of helping the trade, but you will never win.

> It's like asking a hardcore OSS only user, "What if you had a computer that only had closed-source software available for it?". The question is nonsense and ignores the point of the protest entirely.

this question is NOT nonsense, as a hardcore OSS only user, i would use another computer.
people can use another computer, not another life.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

Maybe I've not aware of some kind of pathologically dogmatic pacifism that everyone here seems to be denouncing, but I every pacifist I've met who was older than 16 realized that violence is necessary, although extremely regrettable, on some occasions, and that a world without war was simply an ideal to strive for.

Extremist philosophies in all forms are retarded, whether we're talking abut Islamic extremism, Fundamental Christian extremism, radical environmental extremism or extremist pacifism.

Re:Psssh.

[linguizic]

You wrote: you're not a pacifist. But you're still an idiot.

You crossed the line.

Re:Psssh.

[kaffiene]

WTF?!?!?!

In WHAT way was Afghanistan justified??? Did Aghanistan attack the US when I wasn't looking? If you mean 'a justified war' in the conventional sense of 'in accordance with Just War theory' then you're completely and utterly wrong.

That said, I agree with your point that sometimes war is required (although I disagree that WWI was an example, and I'd assert that the recent Iraq and Israeli conflicts utterly fail to meet Just War requirements)

Re:Psssh.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.

It does, however, have an impact on the freedoms of the millitary to use GPU. Sure, dream if you want to. But if you're planning to drag others down with you, stop right there.

Re:Psssh.

[kaffiene]

Fuck, I knew Budda was a Soviet Stooge. Thanks for exposing this gross injustice haunting history!

Re:Psssh.

[kaffiene]

I think the problem is that /. is peopled by pre-pubescent morons who can't deal with issues that don't display a cardboard cutout level of simplicity.

Re:Psssh.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

A world without war is not possible in a world without weapons.

The last time I heard that from someone, I clawed his eyes out and stomped on his neck.

Seriously though, the only way we are going to prevent war (or any sort of conflict) is total isolation. Conflict is inherent in any human interaction.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever I hear about some kind of "do no harm" attitude I always want to ask "does it pass the WW2 test?" What I mean is, would you really have preferred to have sat by and watched the Holocaust happen rather than fight? If so, then I consider the concept morally bankrupt.

And yet you sit by and watch tens of millions die of starvation and disease every year and do next to nothing about it. You personally sat by and watched millions killed in an African genocide. You did nothing about it. You go about your life, ejoying luxury upon luxury. Food enough to waste. Thousdands of hours spent every year entertaining yourself. Vacations. Toys. Let's face it. People are by and large worthless bags of shit. You are I are no exception. Those currently suffering are no exception, either, because they'd leave you to die if the tables were turned. You really have no room to speak of moral bankruptcy, now, do you?

Re:Psssh.

[khallow]

Vote for whatever you want. If everybody was a pacifist there would have been no WWII. If pacifism was a worldwide philosophy countries would not be able to gather up enough armies to do their bidding.

Well, it's obvious that most people aren't pacificists and that pacifism isn't a worldwide philosophy. But rather than stop with that bald assertion, let's consider the game theory point that A.C. made in his post. Namely, this is a form of the prisoner's dilemma. If everyone is a pacificist, then everyone benefits. If there's a few warmongers, then they score big at the expense of the pacificists. And if there's a lot of warmongers, then everyone loses.

The usual, IMHO naive approach to building a pure pacificist society is to assume it's merely a matter of education. If everyone buys in, then we're ok. The problem is that as seen above, this is unstable. There's strong incentives for someone to start a war with their defenseless neighbors. You can't guarantee that this system will stay in stable pacifism.

So then the question is how do you stabalize such a system? The only way is to make it so that no one gets a net benefit from becoming a warmonger. That means there has to be punishments for hostile actions, and these punishments have to be large enough to outweigh the possible gain. My take is that means you need to have a fairly strong military force with the best weaponry available to put down anyone who tries to start a war.

I see the need for four components to this force. First, a modern military complete with land, sea, air, and space components. Second, a covert component capable of gathering intelligence on anything in the Solar System, and assassinating world leaders or guerilla bands. Third, a manufacturing base that can scale up to total war. And fourth, a stock of nuclear weapons or their equivalent capable of destroying a country or small asteroid.

At first, this sounds suspiciously like the US. However, the US exists in a far more warlike world and it has it's own interests. My take is that if you can get the world's armies to stand down and build up a global force like this to enforce a pacifist order, then you have genuine, working pacificism.

Re:Psssh.

[Money for Nothin']

I strive every day to make bug-free code, but I realize it's unrealistic to expect I'll ever get there. It doesn't make the ideal any less important or valuable.

Yes it does. The ideal becomes less valuable (though not necessarily less important) because it fails to abide by the econ 101 reality of opportunity cost and the law of diminishing returns.

Because a perfect program is impossible, it has an infinitely-long development time. But the marginal returns to your attempts to refine your code decrease as time goes on -- that is time that you could be spending on another piece of software that is "good enough", but not "perfect".

I strive for minimally-buggy code every day, and all too often, I do find myself in the same perfectionist mode, striving to write better code at the expense of much more time. But it's ultimately not a practical stance; at the end of the day, something functional, even if imperfect, must result; your project has to conform to the same limitations of the project triangle that everybody else's has to...

I'll make an analogy to the ideal of freedom and free people. The ideal is fine, and I agree with it 100%. But the reality is that nobody demands freedom anymore in the wake of high-profile terrorist threats (even though the statistical reality is that you're still more likely to die in a car accident than a terrorist attack), and thus, the ideal has become less valuable (though not less important -- but then, questions of importance tend to be subjective)...

Re:Psssh.

[Dun Malg]

You obviously don't know the history of the British occupation of India very well, because many of Gandhi's followeres were massacred. More than once. But the survivors didn't let the threat of being killed stop them.

Oh, indeed. I never meant to imply that there was no violence. Only that the British Raj was loath to institute an official policy of violence. There's an important distiction between reactionary violence at the bottom, and an order to keep shooting until the opposition is all dead.

Re:Psssh.

[andreyw]

You should know your history. Germany declared war on the United States AFTER Pearl Harbor and after the US-Japanese conflict began. They had to, as Germany and Japan were both allies.

Re:Psssh.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

your views on ethics are a shade below moronic.

Put it this way: You can run, but you can't hide.

The question of whether or not we can overrule our nature is an old one. We can treat our neighbour courteously, we can protest instead of revolt, we can all piss in designated places. We can do any number of things, but we are usually denying our nature. That's society's purpose. If we followed our instincts, divided we fall. And we'd have to stop relying on cultural evolution and start relying on *gasp* biological evolution.

It's true that we have come a long way since then, but we haven't really changed biologically. All we've changed is our environment, which doesn't affect our hard-coded instincts. One of those instincts is to triumph over competition. We can ignore it, but it's still there.

Re:Psssh.

[mrraven]

And if you encourage violence what response do you expect in return? Hint, don't be shocked when "terrorists" blow up your shopping mall or airplane if you boast like louts about beating plowshares into swords. "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Of course all you you Christian Zionist supporters of violence have a rather selective memory for your "good book" quotations, don't you?

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

You think it would have been worse then mao?

Re:Psssh.

[betsig339]

Buddy, get over yourself. It was a joke -- I'm sorry you expect responses to your comments to be immature and infantile. Truthfully, most of the wars conducted are for political momentum and holdings. Most of the recent wars weren't started for natural resources, even if your high school teachers convinced you of it. Resources are much easier procured through private sector contracts. Most wars are started for political holdings. Political power is much more valuable money than resources.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

So if everybody can't be a pacifist then nobody should be a pacifist. If everybody can't be a christian then nobody should be a christian. If everybody can't be kind then nobody should be kind. If everybody can't be generous then nobody should be generous. If everybody can't obey the law then nobody should obey the law.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Re:Psssh.

[Ninjaesque One]

Solution: Destroy everything. The rule about the conservation of matters says that there will always be some matter or matter-converted heat around, but there needn't ever be a consumer of matter. Everyone's happy, because everyone consists of nobody.

Re:Psssh.

[betsig339]

Lots of violence on this post. I'm not promoting pacifism. I just wanted to spew a bit of levity. Pure pacifism is never really manifestable; slaves are not pacifisits, they are broken and oppressed. The addition of this license will have no effect on military units, because no civilian court will approach them to prosecute infringment on the license.

Re:Psssh.

[Hosiah]

"If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period."

Day-um, who taught you philosophy? Ross Perot? If no one opposes the violent, the violent have no one to be violent to. Violence, like velocity, requires direction. While living my life personally by pacifistic means (I used to be very violent. It was go Buddhist, or end up in the chair.), I have since defused every potentially hostile situation by simply standing my ground and quietly saying "I am not afraid of you." Didn't matter if they could kill me. I say it anyway. If they're still thinking a minute later, that's my cue to point out: "And you need fear nothing from me." Nevertheless, I am never pushed over, and in fact always get my way.

Your one-liner begs the question that violence always wins. Or is even the only means of winning. Some of us beat the violent by out-witting them before they got out of bed this morning.

Re:Psssh.

[mortonda]

If no one opposes the violent, the violent win. Period.

One of my favorite quotes from LotR: "Those who live not by the sword can still die upon it"

Re:Psssh.

[Kadin2048]

It comes to this: pacifists have this entirely unrealistic and silly idea that war and violence are not the default value for humanity. Despite the fact that there's probably never been a time in the hsitory of the human race where there hasn't been armed conflict somewhere, we still think that the default is peace. This is silly result of people growing up in 1st world nations where they are not in danger for most of their lives. They think that because life as they know it is generally safe and comfortable that the world is by default a save and comfortable place. Violence, especially to most Americans, is a rare intrusion into an otherwise complacent life. So we see violence as unnatural. As though peace just happens, but violence needs a motivating cause. This is wrong.

Holy crap; a Slashdot comment that actually makes sense.

Who are you, and what did you do with the real Slashdot?

Re:Psssh.

[C0y0t3]

... And you want to know why the 180? Isn't it enough we learned a lesson about trying to neuteral in a global war? Maybe that's when we decided we need to fight the wars elsewhere, and not let them bring themselves to our shores.

Maybe when you're the biggest kid in the class, and you look around and no one is challenging you anymore, you get bored and for fun you pick on the runts... what you may not realize is how many grades you had to fail to get to be the biggest kid in the class.

Re:Psssh.

[EnderGT]

I never said differently. It's still a fact that Germany declared war on the US, not the other way around.

Re:Psssh.

[baKanale]

Had it been the Dutch in the 18th century rather than the Brits in the 20th...

Or Nazis, in an alternative history.

Re:Psssh.

[Dun Malg]

And if you encourage violence what response do you expect in return? Hint, don't be shocked when "terrorists" blow up your shopping mall or airplane if you boast like louts about beating plowshares into swords. "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." Of course all you you Christian Zionist supporters of violence have a rather selective memory for your "good book" quotations, don't you?

Huh? Your disjointed ramblings lack sense. Encourage violence? There's a very large gap between encouraging violence and pacifism. The entire point of this subthread is that pacifism is an extreme, and as such is not a panacea. Likewise, fomenting violence is another extreme. Come join us here in the middle, where the actual discussion is taking place, rather than standing there in the corner yelling at a strawman.

Re:Psssh.

[gfxguy]

Well, there's always more than one way to look at such things, some people just always choose the cynical one. I call them the "angry, America hating left."

Re:Psssh.

[kocsonya]

> If, to return to the WW2 example, no one had opposed Nazism would you call that "peace"?

Well, if the nazis didn't attack other nations and start mass exterminate jews, communists, gipsies, homosexuals, retards and so on, then yes, I would call it peace. You may agree or disagree with any ideology, as long as it is just a blurb that you have to echo back to please the Supreme Leader, it is peace. Does not mean that it is not opression or totalitarianism but it is peace.

> Is it "peace" when the state can kill anyone who is deemed inferior? Is it "peace" when there is
> no freedom of religion, of though, of the press. Is this your idea of "peace"?

Well, yes. In the Eastern Block there were (and, for example in China still are) severe limitations on the press, religion, even thought. The state does effectively have the power to kill anyone whom it wants (whether it is formally legalised or not) in practically any country. I don't consider the Chinese to be involved in any war, I consider them living in peace, even though they are subject of ideological oppression (and so are we, actually).

> The problem with pacifism is this: it only takes one person to destroy peace. If you have 20 people
> in a room and one of them starts beating people up - where is the peace?

Yes, you are right. It is indeed the case - anyone can start a war.

> In short: yes. Maybe you think all killing is the same. I do not - and I don't think you really do
> either. If a man walks into a bank and starts shooting people, one by one, do you honestly believe
> that the cop who takes him down is doing morally the same thing? Is that seriously your opinion?
> I want you to answer this exact question directly.

No, I do not think that the cop and the robber are on the same moral ground. However, it is because both you and I share the idea that killing random people in a bank for financial gain is a bad thing. If the cop takes someone out who is urinating on the picture of Chairman Mao, on the other hand, both you and I would scream totalitarian regime, police state, oppression and whatnot. What if the policeman and maybe a lot of his countrymen do believe that desecrating the picture is just as bad as murder? In the early years of the Soviet Revolution most people honestly believed in the whole thing and would have lynched anyone pissing on Lenin's picture.
Probably you would not have minded if someone took out Stalin or Hitler for they were murderous bastards. However, Stalin defeated Hitler, so surely he must be a good guy? On the other hand, Hitler attacked the oppressive red terror state of Stalin, so he must have been a good guy too?

> Now you want to say that all violence (or at least, all war) 0is the result of economic discrepency.
> How naive can you be? Not only is this not always the case, it almostt never is. History shows that
> non-democratic nations are more prone to war. That means that the war is started, for all intents and
> purposes, by an authoritarian ruler. E.g. somone who's already rich. When, in the history of the
> world, has a nation gotten together and decided by consensus "we're poor, so let's invade our
> neighbors". This is absurd.

Hm. Yes, I am that naive. I do believe that wars are waged mostly for economic reasons. I guess you would categorise the US as a democratic nation. Since WW2 I do not know a single nation that attacked the US, yet the US is seemingly continuously waging wars (never on her own soil, of course). On the other hand, how many wars did the totalitarian regimes of the Eastern Block fight? How about say Cuba (apart from the Bay of Pigs)? Pinochet? Pol Pot? Franco? He, a military dictator, remained neutral during WW2. Wars are good for several reasons. One, if you win them, you have direct economic results. Two, if you have internal problems a good handy war can steer public curiosity away from the issues you don't want to air too much. Third, you can pass legistlatio

Re:Psssh.

[chthonicdaemon]

I don't see how it is "more likely" that in a whole piece about not resisting evil persons, giving them your cloak as well as your tunic, walking the extra mile, Jesus is advocating standing on equal footing with your attacker. I am aware of the interpretations of each of these points, but I must say that there is a sense of loving your neighbour, not taking revenge and overcoming through love in my reading of the Bible. I know that people say this attitute is unworkable, but the 10 commandments (never lied to anyone?) are pretty unworkable, too.

It's not so wrong for people to strive for ideals they may never achieve. Those of you who run to the ultra-pragmatic 'I do what I can to survive' dogma -- we live in a luxurious time, we can afford morals.

Re:Psssh.

[Firethorn]

You think that that post is violent? I'd recommend checking out some of my other ones.

slaves are not pacifisits, they are broken and oppressed

What I meant is that, historically, the fate of those who would practice pacifism would end up being slaves(or dead). While breaking and oppressing a people is one way to make slaves, being a true pacifist is doing half the oppressor's work for them. Unless there's a society(capable of practicing violence) willing to protect them, a pacifist is at the mercy of anyone willing to commit violence upon them, and that's not something you can often count on.

The addition of this license will have no effect on military units, because no civilian court will approach them to prosecute infringment on the license

Exactly. The only militaries I see honoring this license is the American/European ones, and they generally already have alternatives.

It's kinda like posting a 'no guns' sign on the door to a business. Do you really think that the robber/distraught spouse/spree killer is going to pay any attention? Or will they inversely view the sign as an opportunity, that there will be no armed resistance here? It's actually been born out. In states where the law provides for posting of the signs*, places that do post suffer an increased robbery rate than those that don't post.

*IE they have legal weight in disallowing CCW permit holders from carrying their weapons onto the property

Re: Re:Psssh.

[Veni Vidi Dormi]

What a beautifully constructed submission. Thank you.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno anything about that Ghandi guy, but Gandhi was successful because he was dealing with a group (the British imperial government) that didn't have any particular desire to hurt him or the members of his movemen

As a point of order... there are those who spell Gandhi, Ghandi, often do so for two reasons.... one bad reason.

1. They know there is an H in it and don't remember where
2. There were a number of dictionaries which listed Ghandi as an acceptable spelling of Gandhi.
3. Microsoft word 97 IIRC set to Canadian English reccomends the spelling Ghandi, i'd have to check modern editions of word.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

bullshit. if I were locked in a cell, with no food, and a rat comes along, you can bet my starving ass I'd eat it. that way, I'd last a few more days, in which I'd hope for another rat to visit my cell. what you wrote is like saying if you and a buddy were the last two guys in the army, and the enemy was advancing, giving no quarter, that you'd kill yourself and the buddy, because just the two of you dying is better than if you took a few of the enemy with you. after all, it's hopeless for you, and the only good thing you can do is help keep a few more (enemy) humans alive.

Re:Psssh.

[tom's a-cold]

Dunno anything about that Ghandi guy, but Gandhi was successful because he was dealing with a group (the British imperial government) that didn't have any particular desire to hurt him or the members of his movement. They only wanted the people's voluntary cooperation with their onerous rule.

That's a self-serving myth promulgated by the British after the fact. A more plausible explanation is that they were war-weary, their resources were depleted after WW2, and they weren't willing to suffer casualties in a colonial war. So they didn't have the will or the means to fight. Far different than the assertion that they were in some way paralyzed by a moral repugnance towards Empire.

And although Gandhi practised nonviolence, Subhash Chandra Bose and others in the Indian independence movement were quite willing to fight. A good argument could be made that the Brits preferred to deal with Gandhi than with a popular armed insurgency. They had committed atrocities in India for generations, as did most colonial powers in their respective colonies, and there is no reason to assume that by some magic coincidence they had suddenly acquired morality and human decency immediately before Gandhi arrived on the scene.

My conclusion as an anti-militarist but not quite a pacifist, is that there are conditions under which nonviolent means of resistance can succeed, but that an assessment of military readiness (will to fight and the means to fight) is a better predictor pf the success of such an effort than fundamentally racist (and probably unfalsifiable) assertions about abstractions such as the decency of everyday Englishmen.

And back to the long-lost topic of a non-military-use variant of the GPL: seems like a good idea. I doubt that the military will honor the license, but non-cooperation is a good start, and I can understand why a principled person would withhold consent from the military machine. Especially since imperialist wars are sadly not a thing of the past, as Iraq shows.

But if the PP is really on the right track after all, I wonder: is the US in its present state "sufficiently civilized" that nonviolent means will effect change?

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Brutus killed Ceaser 'cause he didn't like him (just to bring fiction in for variety)?

Yeah, does anyone really believe in this guy "Caesar"? He was obviously just one more Shakespeare's fanciful inventions.

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

You are conflating competition and violence, two very different concepts. One can cooperate to use violence to protect against sociopaths and psychopaths. One frequently has to, in fact.

Modern economic research has shown that people are more motivated by feelings of reciprocity, justice and fair play than the traditional model of selfish gain. In experimental games, played in India and other less affluent countries for stakes approaching several months salary, people did not act as the "selfish actor" theory suggests. Now, when selfishness can not be punished, people may resort to acting selfish, but when it can, they naturally cooperate. Thus systems that support competition over cooperation damage us all by forcing us to choose the overall less efficient option.

Your points do not really address what I was taqlking about, but I am assuming that you were assuming I was trying to make some sort of justification for pacifism, which I was not. I admire people who's convictions lead them to that philosophy, and who's strength of character allows them to act upon those convictions in forceful and convincing ways. Ghandi and Thich Quang Duc spring to mind as two examples of people who's non-violent actions made a tremendous difference. But I am not one of them, and might act similarly to you in the situations you describe. Goblins, as you call them, are not people and do not deserve to be treated as such. The only thing mitigating this position is our human infallability and imperfect information, and thus we must act as if they are people unless absolutely convinced otherwise.

The use of violence must always be considered carefully, as the unintended consequences of such actions are very unpredictable. Violence, as they say breeds violence. Every act of violence is a justification for another act of violence, and the cycle continues. If I knew that by allowing myself to be killed, I could make a statement that lowered the overall level of violence and suffering in the world, I might do it. Might. I'm no saint. But the point remains, non violence can change the world, and has.

We will always have goblins: the sociopaths and psychopaths. We don't even know if we can afford to breed them out of the gene pool. Many of the genes for those conditions, if you don't get them all, can lead to genius and great leadership ability. So we must live with them, and be constantly vigilant of their potential for wrongdoing. I think perhaps that in a non violent society, the higher functioning sociopaths and psychopaths can be trained to emulate the faculties they lack, primarily empathy. Perhaps they can be shown that, although it does not come naturlly to them, they will be better off as cooperative members of society.

In any case, they make up less than 2% of the population, and we can not base our society around the fear of their potential. By making us more like themselves, they win, because they can play that game better than we ever can.

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

Wow, you best get that knee looked at, it's jerking pretty hard there. Ask yourself this one question: how are corporations arranged, internally? Do they have multiple redundant units that compete with each other, or is a corporation arranged cooperatively?

Now consider, why do you assume that a cooperative society will not hold individuals accountable for their actions? Why do you assume that a competative society will? Does not the very nature of the corporation imply limited personal responsibility? Ambrose Beirce, in his book The Devil's Dictionary called the corporation a device for obtaining personal profit without personal responsibility, and he was right.

Re:Psssh.

[TempeTerra]

Reference please? The claim that native Australians travelled to South America is completely contrary to my understanding of anthropology. Native Australians weren't seafarers, and didn't even travel to Tasmania after seeding a population there. In fact... is that what you're talking about? Your story about "The small tribe discovered on an island off the southern tip of south america" sounds just like Tasmania if you substitute Australia in.

Now, assuming that you're not so thick you got your continents mixed up, perhaps you really mean Polynesians not Australians? The Polynesians were great seafarers, and plausibly visited South America from whence they got their sweet potatos. But once again, I've never heard any evidence of a Polynesian settlement in South America despite the fact that such a settlement would be anthropoligically very exciting. So once again, where's your reference smart guy?

Re:Psssh.

[mrraven]

Many people on this thread have said in essence that the strong survive which was quite literally the philosophy of fascism.. My point if you take that belligerent attitude that has become very typical here in the U.S. that you ought not to be surprised when for example our CIA overthrows foreign governments, and that we take "regime change" upon ourselves and support the aggressive policies of Israel that we will suffer blowback. Really it's inevitable you kick someone in the balls and they want to strike back, that's just common sense and we have kicked a LOT of people in the balls in the last 60 years.

"945-1949

1945-49 Occupation of part of Germany.

1945-55 Occupation of part of Austria.

1945-46 Occupation of part of Italy.

1945-52 Occupation of Japan.

1945-46 Temporary reoccupation of the Philippines in preparation for independence.

1945-49 Occupation of South Korea and defeat of a leftist insurgency.

1945-91 -- Cold War

1946 -- Trieste (Italy). President Truman ordered the increase of US troops along the zonal occupation line and the reinforcement of air forces in northern Italy after Yugoslav forces shot down an unarmed US Army transport plane flying over Venezia Giulia. Earlier US naval units had been sent to the scene. Later the Free Territory of Trieste, Zone A.

1945-47 US Marines garrisoned in Mainland China to oversee the removal of Soviet and Japanese forces after World War II.

1948 -- Palestine. A marine consular guard was sent to Jerusalem to protect the US Consul General.

1948 -- Berlin. Berlin Airlift After the Soviet Union established a land blockade of the US, British, and French sectors of Berlin on June 24, 1948, the United States and its allies airlifted supplies to Berlin until after the blockade was lifted in May 1949.

1948-49 -- China. Marines were dispatched to Nanking to protect the American Embassy when the city fell to Communist troops, and to Shanghai to aid in the protection and evacuation of Americans.
[edit]

1950-1959

1950-53 -- Korean War. The United States responded to North Korean invasion of South Korea by going to its assistance, pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions. US forces deployed in Korea exceeded 300,000 during the last year of the conflict. Over 36,600 US military were killed in action.
The Vietnam War was one of the longest military conflicts in U.S. history.
Enlarge
The Vietnam War was one of the longest military conflicts in U.S. history.

1950-55 -- Formosa (Taiwan). In June 1950 at the beginning of the Korean War, President Truman ordered the US Seventh Fleet to prevent Chinese Communist attacks upon Formosa and Chinese Nationalist operations against mainland China.

1954-55 -- China. Naval units evacuated US civilians and military personnel from the Tachen Islands.

1955-63 US sends military advisors to assist President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. [5]

1956 -- Egypt. A marine battalion evacuated US nationals and other persons from Alexandria during the Suez crisis.

1958 -- Lebanon. Lebanon crisis of 1958 Marines were landed in Lebanon at the invitation of President Camille Chamoun to help protect against threatened insurrection supported from the outside. The President's action was supported by a Congressional resolution passed in 1957 that authorized such actions in that area of the world.
[edit]

1960-1969

1959-60 -- The Caribbean. Second Marine Ground Task Force was deployed to protect US nationals during the Cuban crisis.

1962 -- Thailand. The Third Marine Expeditionary Unit landed on May 17, 1962 to support that country during the threat of Communist pressure from outside; by July 30, the 5,000 marines had been withdrawn.

1962 -- Cuba. Cuban Missile Crisis On October 22, President Kennedy instituted a "quarantine" on the shipment of offensive missiles to Cuba from the Soviet Union. He also warned Soviet Union that the launching of any missile from Cuba against natio

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which brings my biggest problem with veganism/vegetarianism. Other animals eats animals all the time. Why is it wrong for people (who are just really smart animals) to eat other animals.

It seems that you could apply this line of reasoning to anything. Why is it wrong to kill, rape, whatever, since other animals do it all the time ?

I like to think that "don't do to others what you wouldn't want them to do to you" is a good answer to all these questions. I'm not talking about extreme cases here, just everyday life when you're existence is not at stake. Come on, why would you kill and eat something that has a nervous system when you could do otherwise ? Because it tastes good ?

Re:Psssh.

[Vellmont]

It is also true that conflict is a fact of existence. People will get mad at each other, and respond in a number of ways, from ignoring each other, acting passive-aggressive, sitting down and talking, arguing, yelling, fighting, perhaps murder and gang/tribal fueds, but warfare as an absolute necessity? You're telling me that Ghandi's non-violent resistance didn't successfully overthrow the British Empire in India?


I don't know much about the British leaving India, but I kind of doubt it's all because of Ghandi and not mostly because the larger scale decline of the British empire after WWII. It really bothers me when people bring up Ghandi and assume that non-violent protest is applicable to all situations. How do you think that kind of strategy would have worked against the Nazi's? From what I've heard there were small protests and organizing against the Nazi party. Those people were quickly killed. To pick another example, do you think non-violent protests could have ended slavery in the US? The South was willing to fight a war and divide the country to continue slavery. I don't think they'd let some sit-ins or boycotts change them.

Non-violent protest is certainly sometimes a valid option for change, and sometimes the only option for change. But violence is also sometimes a valid option, and sometimes the only option.

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

It is a fact indeed. It's also a fact that the first belligerent *acts*, however, were initiated against, rather than by, them.

Re:Psssh.

[drsquare]

Why should we strive for a world without war? Countries can argue for decades and not get anywhere, but a six month war would solve the problem.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

whereas all other Europeans powers of that time of course were allowed to do the same in Asia (and had been doing that for 400 years). Rember that for some Japanese the war was an attempt to free asian people from the suppression by western powers. They were actually doing a noble thing. However, was being war, it always turns out gory. Which is why i think you should never even consider such option (hint for the people who thought attacking IRAQ was a good idea: learn your history). And I also don't want to say that there were not many 1st class villians in Japan designing this war for less noble purposes (like oil, and money and power, where did we heard that before).

History is written by the winners. And all wars are full of violence. Even Americans did there share of pillaging and murdering.

Point being, the fact that they were doing these things had _nothing_ to do with the real reason the US wanted to attack Japan, long before Pearl Harbor. It was a damn nice excuse to give to the public for getting involved though.

Re:Psssh.

[FrankieBegbie]

In common with many people who *think* they understand how Natural Selection applies to modern humans, you are completely wrong.

You have described animal behaviour in the sense that animals are "slaves" to their genes. This isn't quite 100% true for humans, as we have this nifty ability called long-term foresight that can (and does) make us behave contrary to the best interest of our genes.

This is not a defense of pacificsm (I do of course have an opinion) - merely an attack on those who would drag in evolutionary thinking to any argument that suits them.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

A 'No Military Use' clause would be unenforcable.

Think about it.

If we say they can't use it, they'll just strong arm us and take it, anyway.

That's why they're /military/.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Day-um, who taught you philosophy? Ross Perot? If no one opposes the violent, the violent have no one to be violent to. Violence, like velocity, requires direction.

So the hunters killed Bambi's mom because she was opposing them?

Or maybe the hunters were nonviolent?

Re:Psssh.

[JakartaDean]

Still, if a doctor was at home and someone broke into their house to try and rape their daughter, I'd hope the doctor would have no moral compunctions against shooting the intruder first (in their capacity as father) and then offering CPR as appropriate second (in their capacity as doctor).

Really? I'd hope he would resist as strongly as possible the urge to pull the trigger. Why not just point the gun at the criminal and tell him to back up with his hands in the air?

Is this related to Americans' relatively low reluctance to settle things with deadly force, or am I reading way too much into this? (And, no, I don't know whether parent is American.)

Re:Psssh.

[jcr]

Gandhi was successful because he was dealing with a group (the British imperial government) that didn't have any particular desire to hurt him or the members of his movement.

Exactly. Gandhi's tactics are very good for persuading anyone with a conscience (like the British public), but they would be disastrous in (say) the Congo, where King Leopold's troops would have happily shot someone like Gandhi as soon as he burned his first identity card.

To give credit where credit is due, it was the brits who mostly stamped out the global slave trade, who broke the back of the Thuggee cult, and who put an end (mostly) to the repugnant habit of burning widows to death in India.

It's interesting to compare Gandhi to the Dalai Lama; they both resolutely followed a policy of non-violence, but Gandhi was up against the Brits, and the Dalai Lama is up against a regime that killed 77 million of its own people.

-jcr

Re:Psssh.

[jcr]

Start to get the picture?

Yep, the United States has done a hell of a lot of good in the world. Thanks for pointing it out in such detail.

-jcr

Re:Psssh.

[master_p]

You confuse competition with rentless killing due to greed and arrogance.

History has never proved resources are so limited so as that we have to kill each other.

In fact, most wars are not due to limited resources, but to greed, arrogance, racism etc:

1) WW2 took place because Hitler wanted to conquer the world.
2) terrorism is because of foundamentalist muslims and arrogant western governments.
3) Napoleon wanted to conquer Europe because he had trouble being short (proven fact).
4) Britain fought a lot of wars in order to strip other lands of their gold, diamonds, etc.
5) if you go further back in history, the Romans, the Greeks, Jenkis Khan etc conquered half the world in order to fullfil their need to be "on top of the world", thinking they are superior, rather than because of limited resources.

Re:Psssh.

[koreaman]

I hate this stupid "linguistic war rhetoric". I'm not a history buff, but I'd be willing to bet that the only reason we speak English is because somebody conquered somebody else somewhere along the way, so what the fuck is your point? And I also know that it's not always the case, because the French conquered England centuries ago and we're not all speaking French (although lots of French did enter our language). Third, it's not as if speaking Arabic or Japanese or German would be the least of our problems in such a situation.

I'm all for self-defense, but not in the silly name of being allowed to speak English.

Re:Psssh.

[SenorCitizen]

many of Gandhi's followeres were massacred. More than once.

Ouch. That *is* cruel.

Re:Psssh.

[godless dave]

But this license isn't about pure pacifism. It's about what the most powerful militaries currently in existence in the world are most often used for. I am by no means a pacifist, but I wouldn't give or sell technology to the US or British military because of the very high likelihood that George Bush will use them to do something evil.

Re:Psssh.

[godless dave]

For example, I support the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms, but I wouldn't sell one of my guns to a gangbanger.

Re:Psssh.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Yep, the United States has done a hell of a lot of good in the world. Thanks for pointing it out in such detail.

Oh, such a smug answer! I bet you think you're really clever, don't you?

Re-read the post. mrraven wrote:

Really it's inevitable you kick someone in the balls and they want to strike back, that's just common sense and we have kicked a LOT of people in the balls in the last 60 years.

He never stated that said kicking of people in the balls was good or bad.

Re:Psssh.

[Handlarn]

What about terrorism? (Which is a popular subject these days.) Does anyone seriously think terrorists will respect the GPL? The only forces who are weakened by this addition to the GPL are those who respect the laws where GPL is valid. So, if terrorists finds a use for the software, they'll probably end up using it, but those who are supposed to defend you from terrorist will not be allowed to use it because their hands are tied to their backs by the GPL.

This whole thing is stupid. It's not pacifism that upholds peace, the military (of sane countries) does.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can strive for it, sure, but it's unrealistic to expect that you'll ever get there.

At least as unrealistic as believing that the military will not use something just because they aren't licensed to. Piss them off enough and they'll stamp your code with a top secret classification so even you can't use it. Then have fun getting the present administration to even review your case. The common reference is pissing into the wind.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many Serbian government officials and military officers were involved in the assassination plot. They were not as innocent as is commonly thought.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because heaven forbid the english should do anything oppressive within their empire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_and_tans (IRA and sinn fein then were very different to the ones you know now)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Sunday_(1972)

That's just two off the top of my head.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think Brutus killed Ceaser 'cause he didn't like him (just to bring fiction in for variety)?

That's not fiction, that's pure, simple historical fact. Julius Caesar was killed by a man named Brutus (as a matter of fact one of his distant cousins) in 44 B.C. It keeps amazing me how little most people know about history...

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some things and some people make sense to "do no harm".

Thi is also one of the most misapplied principles in current discourse. It's constantly used ouside the medical profession as pap to control the behavior of ohers. One usenet asshole in particular even uses it to argue against government regulation. He is always able to come up with some reason to justify corporate rapacity. Any regulation is resisted as "harm" to the almighty "free market" system. What absolute shit.

By the way, a strict adherence to "first do no harm" would immediately put an end to the practice of surgery. Ripping my chest open is certainly "harm". So we simply justify it on the basis of "the good to follow".

The Bush administration considers a "preemptive first strike" to be justified in exactly this way.

Re:Psssh.

[cosmanja]

I'd like to say that if you think you can't opose violence without violence your quite wrong and really need to do a bit of research. It's exactly that type of thinking that puts us in the situations the world faces today. Peace is deffinetly the answer if you look at Gandhi, he braught a empire down through peace. He proved that a peaceful process works. It takes sacrifice but it deffinetly works and no one can deny that.

Re:Psssh.

[Jedi Alec]

What about terrorism? (Which is a popular subject these days.) Does anyone seriously think terrorists will respect the GPL? The only forces who are weakened by this addition to the GPL are those who respect the laws where GPL is valid. So, if terrorists finds a use for the software, they'll probably end up using it, but those who are supposed to defend you from terrorist will not be allowed to use it because their hands are tied to their backs by the GPL.

This whole thing is stupid. It's not pacifism that upholds peace, the military (of sane countries) does.

You know what? Fuck the terrorists. That's right, fuck the lot of 'm. Every time you mention terrorists in a /. post that does not involve terrorism directly, they win. Every time you pause to think about what they might or might not do, you win. You do know what the word "terror" actually means, right?

Re:Psssh.

[mdarksbane]

The point of any government's foreign policy is to advance its own countries aims, as filtered through the personal viewpoints of the people in charge.

At the time of Korea, our government had been watching government after government being taken over by communism, and and not the utopian communism that Marx or whoever originally wanted, Leninist vanguard elite, anti-intellectual, anti-law gangsterism. The realities of 20th century communism were that it lead in almost all cases to mass murder, destruction of economies that lead to mass starvation, a reduction in human rights, and hostility toward to the United States and our allies based on rhetorical and economic ties to the Soviet Union.

At the time of the Korean war, there was a very real fear of a soviet ground attack right through West Germany, or at any number of other places of key American interest, and soviet agents were actively working in many other democratic, or at least lawful nations, to bring about the constant revolution of communism. Korea was chosen to show the USSR that the united states would take a role as its opposing major power, creating a stable balance of power that did not erupt into a major world war. Up to that point, we had been dealing with the aftermath of WW2 and Eisenhower's fondness for Stalin that left us a country with no desire to return to war (despite the strategic implications of pulling our troops out of the European front) and a demilitarization that left us no power to wage on. Korea in many ways forced the USSR to change its tactics to more covert operations instead of direct takeovers, as we also started funding anti-communist groups in many countries, sometimes with good, sometimes with bad results.

The important thing to understand is that there WAS some justification for the anti-communist propaganda that the US has been spouting for years, for all that it was, of course, over-simplified and taken too far. Look at the history of the african continent, or southeast asia, to see the devastating results of leninist and stalinist communism in action. Hell, look at China and Russia. Russia was one of the biggest exporters of grain in the world under the tsars - it has been a net importer, despite some of the richest farmland in the world, since the revolution. hundreds of millions died in china, due to lack of law and starvation. In the cultural revolution, Mao basically encouraged farmboys with guns to kill every academic they could find, and burn the universities. I'm amazed at the degree to which chinese higher education has managed to recover. Countries across Africa were taken over by "communist" revolutions that resulted in a dictatorship of the party leader and mass atrocities. These were largely financed, encouraged, and in many cases controlled by the USSR. And no, I'm not just repeating american propaganda - this is straight from the mouth of Krushchev.

The end result of all this is that there was a strong legitimate protection of interest behind much of the US cold war effort, even if much of it was misguided. It wasn't just a desire to play world power (although I won't disagree that that didn't come into it, especially in vietnam. Johnson had an overly idealized view of what american power was capable of).

In Internation relations there is a strong theory that a balance of power will prevent large wars from erupting. Every major war, from the 30 year's war to napoleon to world war 1-2 were caused by a severe imbalance of power that made it too tempting for the aggressors to try to take what they could. The cold war was contained to relatively small skirmishes like korea and vietnam because of this.

What I'm actually most concerned about is what's happening, and what's going to happen now that there is no one to "balance" the US.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Really? I'd hope he would resist as strongly as possible the urge to pull the trigger.

What "urge to pull the trigger"? If I had to pull a gun on someone and use it, I would be shocked and disappointed to find myself with an innate urge to draw blood. Killing someone is not only ethically difficult, it's psychologically difficult. In WW2 (or perhaps Korea) a study was conducted of how many American soldiers actually aimed their weapons at enemies when firing in combat. I don't remember the numbers, but it was a very low percentage. Most just sort of fired in the general direction. The reason? Even in combat it's hard to willfully kill. As a result, the American armed forces began training troops with humanoid targets (as opposed to abstract ones like bullseyes). This desensitized them to the extent that their ability to actually aim for enemy targets in combat was drastically increased. The point? Most people don't like to kill, even with a gun from far away.

Why not just point the gun at the criminal and tell him to back up with his hands in the air?

Many innocent people are killed with their own weapon every year because of this mentality. Someone has broken into your house with the intent to harm. Do you think they are in their right mind? Thinking ratinoally? There's a good chance they are on meth or some other drug. Asking them to "put their hands in the air" is likely to get you a bullet in your face if they are armed.

If you're aiming at someone in a well-lit, empty warehouse, then I'm sure the old "stick 'em up" may be a valid response, but in a 10X11 bedroom with each person having a 3" armspan you've got 4 or 5 feet of space if you've both got your backs to the wall. You're depending on the assailant:

1. being rational
2. actually seeing/believing you really have a loaded weapon
3. actually believing you will use it.

This last point it the most critical. If someone knew you well enough, they'd know how reluctant you'd be to fire. They could easily capitalize on this to overcome you even if they were unarmed. Now they have you're loaded weapon, congratulations.

Here's the key, IF you strategy were to work (and you'd be needlessly and dangerously wasting the lives of your family to try it out) it is precisely because there are people in the world who will fire the weapon. Since the assailant doesn't know if you're a pacifist or not, he would be (more) likely to take your threat seriously. In other words: you're depending on the existence of non-pacifists to provide your threat validity.

This is what annoys me about (most) pacifists. They refuse to engage in violence as though it's somehow a sacrifice on their part. No normal humans like violence. On top of that, they act as though they have the moral high ground when in fact they depend on non-pacifists for protection.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theJamAbides]

RTFR!

I didn't say that a cooperative society will not hold individuals accountable, because that's exactly what it does. But I don't need you or anyone else holding me accountable for anything. I want my actions to directly affect me. I sincerely don't care if you ever own a house or a car or amass any significant wealth. Looking out for number 1 is a pretty good philosophy. Don't kid yourself that cooperation can be successful where no one wins. People end up cooperating to make sure that they win. If a group of people are required to win, then cooperation is necessary. Otherwise, you are living in fantasy land.

Corporations do internally cooperate for competitions sake! I'm in competition with my boss, someday I want to take over his job. But in doing so, I streamline the company and make improvements while advancing. It's a well oiled machine.

Re:Psssh.

[AP31R0N]

Brilliant post, sir.

Re:Psssh.

[Handlarn]

Actually, I think it's very boring to talk about terrorism, sorry to bring it up.

The point was that the military is needed to uphold peace. Without it, people who don't care for it have the possibility to walk effortlessly over anyone and anything.

Pacifism just isn't the road to a peaceful society, because it requires that all people are pacifists. And I'm not one, so there!

Re:Psssh.

[Mant]

I'm sure he means South America, I definitely remember seeing a documentary about it, covering the cave paintings, and genetic tests on the people on the island.

Was a while ago, so I don't remember the details, and I have no idea what the current thinking about the theory is, but I do remember it. I wish I could Google up a reference, but my quick searches just get me stuff on 'traditional' native Americans.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I'd like to say that if you think you can't opose violence without violence your quite wrong and really need to do a bit of research.

I'm getting tired of everyone acting as though I've never heard of Gandhi or MLK Jr. If you'd bother to read through the discussion a bit you'd know that I (and others) have already responded to this.

1. You can oppose violence without violence under many circumstances, but not all

2. Non-violent opposition to violence (as in Gandhi, American Civil Rights Movement) depends on the threat of violence by others to succeed or on the unwillingness of the protestee to actually engage in wholesale slaughter. In Gandhi's case the Brits had no predisposition to kill Indians. As a rulae they had no desire to have blood on their hands. His non-violent resistance worked precisely because he appealed to their humanity. This doesn't always work.

As an example of it not working, consider American Civil Rights movement. Martin Luther King was successful in his non-violent resistance because the U.S. gov't took up the job of threatening violence for him. Nowhere is this more abundantly clear than in school desegregation. Remember Little Rock, AK? The 101st Airborne was called out to ensure the safety of the new black students. That's the army. They showed up with guns. Loaded weapons. They were needed to ensure the safety of the (unarmed) black students from the crazy racist white psychos. This is a specific example of a general principle: Martin Luther King relied on the rule of law, and the rule of law is enforced through violence whenever necessary.

It's hopelessly naive to assume from these two examples that non-violent opposition always works. It works under given conditions. And it should be relied on first. But the fact is that unless the US and allies had invaded Nazi there would have been no one to bring rule of law. And the Nazi's were quite content to bring whole sale slaughter to the Jews and other undesirables in ways that the Brits never were. So, quite simply, passive resistance during WW2 would have been disastrous.

Gandhi proved that a peaceful process can work under some circumstances. You're foolish if you think he proved a peaceful process will always work, regardless of the circumstances.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Does not mean that it is not opression or totalitarianism but it is peace.

Very well then. In that case I simply stand by the proposition that sometimes violence is preferable to peace. I'd rather be risking my life in a war for freedom than sitting at home knowing that there is none.

No, I do not think that the cop and the robber are on the same moral ground. However, it is because both you and I share the idea that killing random people in a bank for financial gain is a bad thing

OK. I really don't understand the relevance of everything you wrote after that. Do you believe then, that the cop was justified in using violence? If you do, then you're not a pacifist and we don't have a problem.

The war is *started* by the rich to remain in power and get richer. Those who send the armies of the poor to slaughter each other on the battlefields are *not* the poor - they are inevitably the rich, for they are in power and want to stay that way and get richer

This is where your logic completely breaks down. Let's say we have country A. A poor nation led by a rich tyrant. Clearly he fits your profile. So he starts a war and invades country B. Clearly A has done everything you said, but of country B? Now a way has been started but B had no say in starting it. If B responds to A's attack, is it doing so for economic reasons primarily? Your fatal mistake is that you think all wars are wars of agrees ion. I'm not going to argue with you if you say wars of aggression are about money. I'd say "power", but money and power are pretty closely related, so it's not a huge difference. But wars of aggression by definition require a victim. I'm not saying the victim is always innocent, or a saint, but the idea that there's no such thing as self-defense is purely false.

Well, America did not went to war to stop Hitler. Hitler could marrily prounce around in Europe killing whomever he wanted. Japan attacked the US and that was when America joined the party and didn't care much about Hitler as such until Normandy.

This is false, but grounded on truth. We're talking about pacifism. So even though America didn't send troops until after Pearl Harbor, they were sending weapons and ammo to the UK well before that to support the UKs opposition to Hitler. That's not "entering the war", but it's decidedly not being pacifist either.

interestingly enough very many of them became pacifists: they thought that there should not be war on this planet, never again.

That is not the definition of pacifism. Every good person thinks there should never be another war. That doesn't make the pacifists, that makes them decent human beings. The difference is that if there was a war, if Hitler rose again, the pacifists would not oppose him with violence (e.g. with result) and the rest of the decent human beings would.

Yes, it was unnecessary. It should not have been started at all. The 60-something million people who died in that war died for no reason.

It was unnecessary in the fantasy world where Hitler could have been stopped another way. But this is lunacy. If you are willing to give someone everything they want to avoid violence, you may avoid war, but think of what some people want. Think of what child molesters and rapists want. Are you willing to sacrifice innocents to avoid violence (not to mention that rape is pretty violent?) I'm not. And that means I'm not willing to appease evil people. Not all people are evil, but some are. And if they are not appeased, they will get violent. So there will be violent, evil people. Given that premise, do you still think WW2 was unnecessary?

Well, have you realised that totalitarian regimes usually get to power when there is sort of a shortage of pocket money?

Yes, I do. The difference is that I think economic parity can reduce violence, you think it can eliminate violence.

Look, here's a metaphor. Y

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I had a hard time believing this was not a joke:

If no one opposes the violent, the violent have no one to be violent to.

Tell that to the victims of child rape, my friend. You don't have to be violent to be a victim of violence. Period.

Your own experiences have only taught you one thing: truly violent people are rare. Even soldiers in combat have to overcome the psychological inhibitions of taking another human life. Humans like to fight more than they like to kill Fighting is competitive and consensual. It's what all higher animals do to compete for resources. You should not oppose fighting with fighting.

Trouble is, not all violence is fighting. Imagine that your current, Buddhist self ran into your former, violent self. If your former self was as violent as you say, then would he really stop from being violent because you say "I am not afraid of you?" That works for school yard bullies. It does not work for people who already want to kill you.

Some of us beat the violent by out-witting them before they got out of bed this morning.

You have never faced the violent. You've face run of the mill animalistic aggression. If you'd faced someone truly violent, you'd be dead. Or are you saying that innocent, non-threatening people are never killed?

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Wow man, I'm really, honestly sorry. I just didn't expect you to be so thin-skinned (and that's not an insult!)

There's generally a pretty rude give-and-take in Slashdot debating. If you really want to be civil, I respect that and apologize for my lack of civility. I'm actually more interested in the discussion than in the insults. I just got carried away (take a look at how many posts I've put up in this discussion).

So please, by all means, rejoin the discussion and respond to my posts. I sincerely promise not to call you an idiot again. I'll do my best to check your name when I respond, but you should realize that it's silly to take what I said personally, I'm generally not even aware of the name of the person I'm responding to - just the comment.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Hal_Porter]

As George Orwell put it

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/pacifism/eng lish/e_patw

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, he that is not with me is against me. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be objectively pro-British. But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious freedom station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U. They would stimulate pacifism in Russia as well if they could, but in that case they have tougher babies to deal with. In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

I am not interested in pacifism as a moral phenomenon. If Mr Savage and others imagine that one can somehow overcome the German army by lying on ones back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. So he will be to the Japanese if they get there. Despotic governments can stand moral force till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force. But though not much interested in the theory of pacifism, I am interested in the psychological processes by which pacifists who have started out with an alleged horror of violence end up with a marked tendency to be fascinated by the success and power of Nazism. Even pacifists who wouldnt own to any such fascination are beginning to claim that a Nazi victory is desirable in itself. In the letter you sent on to me, Mr Comfort considers that an artist in occupied territory ought to protest against such evils as he sees, but considers that this is best done by temporarily accepting the status quo (like Déat or Bergery, for instance?). a few weeks back he was hoping for a Nazi victory because of the stimulating effect it would have upon the arts.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

This is stupid. I'm sorry, there's no polite way to say it.

You're saying "if everyone was pacifist, there would be no war". True, and "if everyone had hair, no one would be bald". So what?

The question here is: "if someone starts using violence to achieve their evil ends, who will oppose them?" YOu, as a pacifist, are saying "no one should". Then guess what - he wins. No one is saying "no one should be pacifists" (Note: THIS is an actual example of the excluded middle, folks.) What we're saying is that there should be enough people who are not pacifists to oppose the ones who are using violence to do evil things.

If you, personally, would rather let violent people do whatever they want to you, that's your problem. But someone has to be willing to stand up and prevent the violent people from, for example, raping children. You can't always non-violently stop a rapist. When you can use non-violent means, you should. When you can't, you should use violent means.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

You're right, my bishop would be sad. Note that I at least self-censored.

I'm not a model Mormon, but I do try.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[lawpoop]

"It really bothers me when people bring up Ghandi and assume that non-violent protest is applicable to all situations."

Why would you have an emotional reaction to a statement of historical fact?

My problem is this: someone says that pacifism could *never* work, because the pacifist are soon killled by the warring people. Then, someone points out that pacifism *has* worked in documented history, and we get a response like this: "Well, it really had nothing to do the actual civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, but it was really something else..." That's called 'moving the goalposts'. You know, the American colonists didn't really win the war for independence -- it was more a factor of waning British influence around that time...

The fact is that there are *always* economic pressures on the occupiers to relinquish control. It's a cost/benefit ratio, and there is always the reality of the cost of controlling people. The only way -- the *only* way -- you can rule a group of people despotically is with *their cooperation*. Once you lose their cooperation, it quickly becomes too expensive to rule them.

In fact, the freeing of the slaves in the American south had little to do with anti-slavery movements, and had everything to do with Lincoln wanting to shut down the south's warmaking ability by removing their source of labor. The war was stared because the south wanted to secede, not because they had slaves. So we don't know whether non-violent resistance would have worked. Actually, we have plenty of examples of violent slave rebellions that failed, and plenty of slaves who non-violently resisted by escaping to the north. So if you were a slave in the south, I would have advised you to non-violently resist your social duty to work your whole life for free, and sneak away, instead of waiting for the North to come rescue you, or take part in an ill-fated uprising.

So we have examples of success with violence, and we have example of success with nonviolent resistance. There are certainly failures with non-violent resistance, and there are certainly examples of attempts of war, coups, and violent rebellion that failed.

Regarding WWII, Ghandi himself said it would be extremely difficult do defeat Hitler no matter what technique was used. We defeated him militarily with *enormous* cost to human life. A non-violent attempt -- and I'm talking about a serious, organized attempt, not simply choosing not to fight and ignore the threat, would have also had an enormous cost to human life.

In fact, there are examples of non-violence working in Nazi-occupied territory. There was a mayor of a Polish town who, when orders came down to have Jews start wearing yellow Stars, had *everyone* in the town wear a yellow star. The Nazis were not able to identify Jews. And we have plenty of examples of people who hid Jews and helped them flee. Jews working on war equipment in labor camps deliberately sabotaged parts. The way you would have to do a large scale non-violent resistance is to let Hitler invade, set up a new government, and then actively subvert it. Nobody likes illegitimate rulers. I'm not saying that there would be no violence, that nobody would die -- certainly people will be hurt and will die. But would less people have died if there was serious, organized, non-violent resistance to the Nazi government than from all-out war with the Nazi army?

So, I recommend you swallow your pride, work through your issues with the idea of non-violence, and have a look at actual history. Non-violence, and we are not talking about inaction here, can actually be successful when done right.

Re:Psssh.

[mdwh2]

Basically they think that the greatest evil is the US military themselves, as they are the only military force that would probably comply with the license, given the advanced reach of the law in the US. They surelly know that groups like al-qaeda are not going to be restrained by the GPL, so, they are clearly stating that it's not a problem for them.

There's more to military than the US and al-qaeda! This would be enforceable against armies in most countries around the world (as much as copyright in general is enforceable in other countries), and that is their intent. There's no reason to suggest they hate the US military more, just that they don't like its actions enough all the time to grant it an exception.

It's a fair point that if a war broke out against the US, the enemy could not comply with the licence and there'd be nothing they could do - but as I say, they could always change their licence if some big war broke out against the US and they felt the war was just.

or that they are trying to impress some pacifist girls in their universities to increase their reproductive success ratio (this is my bet).

So they don't think the US military is the greatest evil after all? And, I'd love to be somewhere where telling girls what licence you released your software under is a good chat-up line... ;)

Re:Psssh.

[ems2004]

Gandhi was a British stooge. When the British could no longer hold on to india, they decided to hand it over to their stooges like Gandhi and Nehru. It was the British who made Gandhi so famous as it favoured their agenda.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You think pacifists don't oppose the violent? I think Ghandi would have something to say about that. Moreover, a good many people would say that simply BY opposing the violent without violence, you have won.

Re:Psssh.

[khallow]

So if everybody can't be a pacifist then nobody should be a pacifist. If everybody can't be a christian then nobody should be a christian. If everybody can't be kind then nobody should be kind. If everybody can't be generous then nobody should be generous. If everybody can't obey the law then nobody should obey the law.

Where did that come from?

First, "can be" doesn't mean "will be". Second, you should look into how society uses rewards and punishment to encourage obeying the law, kindness, generosity, and the religion of your choice. Obeying the law is particularly relevant. If I break the law, it is the police's job it is to arrest or fine me for the errant behavior. We don't just say, "If everyone were law-abiding, then there would be no crime" and expect that to be enough. Nor do we expect that just having a lot of law-abiding citizens is an adequate replacement for law enforcement. It doesn't take a lot of crooks to really screw things up.

A law-abiding society requires substantial infrastructure to keep it that way. You need police, courts, prisons. In the same sense, what is the infrastructure of peace? What will keep your pacificist society that way?

Re:Psssh.

[glesga_kiss]

What I don't understand is why the 180 after the war ended. We would happily fight in Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, and other places without a single American at risk

Another post essentially answered that question by mentioning Eisenhowers "Military Industrial Complex". Simply put; the companies that sprung up to make the vast ammounts of weaponry for WW2 didn't want to let go. Now they are in the Whitehouse in the guise of the Vice President. Cheeny is personally benefiting from these wars. His company, Harrliburton, has multiple massive no-bid contracts in the region. All of the logistics are being provided by them. We're talking food, lodging, shipping & supply, management, the whole lot has been outsourced. Almost everything except the actual fighting has been outsourced. Even base security is handled by mercinaries now e.g. companies like Black Water.

This isn't the case for every war of course. Korea, Vietnam were just coldwar-by-proxy. Kinda similar to the Israeli/Lebanese conflict at the moment; the US and UK are calling for a ceasefire because they want that war! It's an idealogical battle, with the intention of accelerating the second coming of Christ and the rapture. Yes, they actually believe that stuff!

Re:Psssh.

[budgenator]

Wolves eating wouldn't count as violence in my book, now their fighting among themselve for dominace would; in the Bushido code, killing another person by reflex didn't count as violence it was cause and effect, like getting hit by lightning.

Back to your last point I'd be interested in your explanation of why Ghandi was successful.

1. Indo-Pakistani War of 1947,
2. Sino-Indian War (1962),
3. Indo-Pakistani War of 1965,
4. Indo-Pakistani War of 1971,
5. Indian detonation of Nuclear device May 18, 1974,
6. Both India and Pakistan test Nuclear devices,(1988),
7. Kargil War (1999),

We don't hear much about these goings on unless you happen to watch BBC World News and you'd know that even without an "official" war the fighting is pretty much continious low-intensity warefare so I guess we are probably defining the sucess of pacifism differently; and the trend line looks disadvantagious too.

Re:Psssh.

[Firethorn]

You are conflating competition and violence

Nope there's a real difference in my mind. A competition can be as hands off as a track race. Two stores can compete without ever touching them. Pacifists can compete.

When I was talking about violence, I was literally talking about somebody coming out and threatening(and carrying out) threats ranging from beating somebody up to killing them. I was talking about outright theft of products and resources, the reduction of one group to slavery.

I'll admit, I was skipping the whole 'nonviolent competition' angle. I view a certain amount of competition as a very healthy part of cooperation, in a wider sense. Different people have different ideas, and how are you to figure out which way is most efficient if you don't try them? Besides, with human nature, people often perform better when they're trying to outdo their peers.

Ghandi and Thich Quang Duc spring to mind as two examples of people who's non-violent actions made a tremendous difference.

Wow, you were able to name more than one pacifist. Think about this: How many mass murderers, dictators can you name? How many martyrs to the cause of pacifism can you find? Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. All people who would probably have killed Ghandi without a second thought. The tanks of tiemann square.

The only thing mitigating this position is our human infallability and imperfect information, and thus we must act as if they are people unless absolutely convinced otherwise.

That's why, especially if they're not caught in the act, I support the court system. It's primarily a finder of fact. As it operates after the fact, it has far more control in the way of attempting a correction, a rehabilitative course of action, though I feel that the current interpretation of the constitution(the idea that distress=pain=cruel=forbidden) limits the effectivness of our correctional system.

The use of violence must always be considered carefully, as the unintended consequences of such actions are very unpredictable.

I find them to actually be fairly predictable. You have anger and hatred responses, resentment if the offended party recognizes such a force disparity that retaliation will be ineffective. Thing is, Goblins tend to be bullies. They're going to hate and resent authority no matter what, and not respect any authority not grounded in violence. Add in a healthy shot of stupid and self-delusion and you end up with pretty much a no win situation.(See middleeast)

You see, I see violence as a final solution, after other correctional measures are deemed inadequate. Why is it final? Because the other party shouldn't be able to function in the incorrect fashion afterwards.

Violence, as they say breeds violence. Every act of violence is a justification for another act of violence, and the cycle continues.

That usually occurs when you don't use enough of it. Personally, I'm rather fond of overkill. The whole Israel-Hezbollah thing? From what I've read I probably would have been nastier.

If I knew that by allowing myself to be killed, I could make a statement that lowered the overall level of violence and suffering in the world, I might do it. Might. I'm no saint. But the point remains, non violence can change the world, and has.

That's your decision. Personally, I'd prefer to kill the ones who'd otherwise commit the violence. There aren't really any situations that I can think of that would have me allowing myself to be killed defusing the situation. I'm fond of Cold War mutual annihilation scenarios. Actually, I'm happy with the ability to destroy the other side, with them convinced that I'll destroy them if they cross that line.

We will always have goblins: the sociopaths and psychopaths. We don't even know if we can afford to breed them out of the gene pool. Many of the genes for those conditions, if you don't get them all, can lead to genius and great leadership ability. So we

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

We all cooperate for competitions sake. We all do, at any particular moment, just what we want to at that moment. For entirely selfish reasons. There are no others. Most people realize though, that we aren't primarily in competition with other humans.

As for accountability, I will hold you accountabale for anything you do which impacts me in the slightest. And living in the connected world we do, just about everything you do impacts me. We are all co-creators of the world, co-authors of the story. The world you and I make is the world that untold generations of humans after us will live in, and I hold you responsible for that world.

You speak of winning, but I don't think you have thought through the consequences of your philosophy. We don't play any finite game (and I use the term 'game' loosely, to describe any endeavor of more than one person) to determine the winner. No one will argue if you tell them they are a winner. We play those games to determine the losers, so the losers will not argue when told they are losers. You speak as if the "win-win" scenario doesn't exist, yet it is the basis for free trade

In a free market, both parties feel they have gained something of greater value than they gave up. Win win. No one has to lose. People who feel that someone else must lose in order for them to win make me physically sick. It's not reality, it's not healthy, and it's not anything any thinking, feeling human being has to accept.

I'm sure you don't mean to, but you come off sounding like a supporter of fascism.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I never meant to imply people were violent because we're hard-wired for it. People are violent because we have the capacity and the circumstances of the world inevitably lead to it (e.g. limited resources). I'm not saying it's human nature, I'm saying it's a combination of human natural and the reality of the world we inhabit.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Resisting doesn't mean using violence. It could be the use of technology to fence the wolves out, for example. Or to build treehouses and a society above the ground and danger of wolves.

Re:Psssh.

[jcr]

I bet you think you're really clever, don't you?

Oh, it's not that hard to see through your moral-equivalence bullshit. The long and short of it is, the USA has done more to promote freedom, peace and prosperity than any nation in history, exceeding even the great achievements of the United Kingdom. (Although the UK and the traditions of the English common law deserve a lot of the credit for the creation of the USA.)

-jcr

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

Resources are limited, to an extent, because we are violent. Violence and competition are not efficient. Violence destroys resources. Competition duplicates effort and undermines intrinsic motivation. We grow enough food every year to feed everyone, yet we don't. We have enough manpower to ensure that every human being is clothed and housed, yet we don't. Resources are not as limited as some people make them out to be, and the whole thing is a negative feedback loop. Scarcity is used to justify violence and competition, which create scarcity. This cycle helps ensure that those in power stay in power. They claim they will fix things, but fixing things would put them out of business. Instead they bandage the problem and let it fester.

It's a solid business plan for the bandage makers and bandage applicators, but it's bad for the rest of us.

Re:Psssh.

[strikethree]

That is a very interesting analysis of the two world wars... I find myself wondering if you wrote it yourself on the spot or if you had pre-written it at some other time and used it here where it was appropriate.

strike

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

"It comes to this: pacifists have this entirely unrealistic and silly idea that war and violence are not the default value for humanity. Despite the fact that there's probably never been a time in the hsitory of the human race where there hasn't been armed conflict somewhere, we still think that the default is peace."

That's silly: there have been many areas for long periods of time where there has been no violence whatsoever, but hawks think that violence is the normal state of a human being...

Re:Psssh.

[so.dan]

Not eating meat is not a luxury - eating meat is a luxury. How could you possibly think otherwise? The poor of the world are the ones who are least able to eat meat, because meat is a luxury. In particular, it is a luxury afforded by the ability to sacrifice the total number of calories one could get if one ate the food which was fed to the animal to be eaten, over the course of that animal's lifetime. Also, you've completely misrepresented veganism. What is in common amongst vegans is _not_ the belief that one should never eat meat, not even if one is going to die otherwise. There are, of course, vegans who think that one should never eat meat, even if one will otherwise die. What is in common is that one should never eat meat when one has a more humane option. I, too, am not a vegan, but it hurts to see the view or the associated economics misrepresented with so much apparent disregard.

Re:Psssh.

[mrraven]

Yes invading countries and killing their leaders without asking the people of the country involved if that's what they wanted sure is doing sooo much "good" in the world thank for enlightening me as to your imperialist philosophy. I'm sure for example that the Iranians were very pleased when we overthrew their elected leader in the early 60s and installed the Shaw and his Savac secret police. What they weren't grateful, they hate our guts to this day? How could that be? Ditto for Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, etc.

I know you'll have no actual logical response for this so just go ahead and say I "hate America" or some such twaddle and go back to watching Fox. For the rest of you reading who aren't clueless like the parent poster here is a clue from Mark Twain:

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_t wain.html

If you really understand this quote then you are far ahead of the parent poster who is a stooge for the government "right or wrong" at least activists and Libertarians can agree that's bad, right?

Re:Psssh.

[Hosiah]

@storminmormon: Sweetheart, "pacifist" and "innocent, non-threatening" are not even the same thing. Ain't even the same ballpark. And child molestation is a mental illness, not hostility. And the WHOOOOOLE POINT to outwitting the violent before you get out of bed in the morning is so "YOU NEVER HAVE TO FACE THE VIOLENT", and also so their planned attacks (targeting anybody at all) are foiled.

DUMB AAAAAASSSSSSSSSS

Re:Psssh.

[robophobe]

I will eat the rat and hope that if there's one rat, perhaps there's more. If I can live 3 more days on the nourishment that the rat can give me, perhaps I can survive until the next one blunders by.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Go back to your logic class.

Go and take a logic class and maybe you'll learn the difference between the rhetorical fallacy of the excluded middle, and the invalid formal fallacy of the undistributed middle.

In other words, when you correct someone, try not to be such a pompous ass about it yourself, since you can turn out to be wrong. I'll be a pompous ass, because I looked in a book, not my gut.

You're the idiot who brings up WW2 as a litmus test, BTW.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Violence and competition are not efficient.

I call BS. Just as one example, the entire field of Operations Research (e.g. the mathematical study of efficiency) was born directly as a result of WW2.

We have enough manpower to ensure that every human being is clothed and housed, yet we don't.

Agreed 100%. But violence is not the problem. Violence is the symptom. There are enough people out there willing to hurt you to get ahead that you have to take precautions. Precautions are extremely inefficient. That's one problem, and it's not a result of violence at all. It's a result of having some people willing to get ahead. You could still have those inefficiencies even with no violence.

Another problem is simple motivation. People don't work very hard unless motivated. That means that if everyone just gave away the goods they produced, less goods would be produced. It's a sad fact of human nature. Competition spurs creativity, efficiency, etc. It would be nice if we all just produced goods and services and gave them away - and theoretically it would be far more efficient - but it won't happen because we're generally lazy and don't want to work harder than we have to (myself included).

People who blame war as the problem are totally missing the point. Violence reflects the deficiencies in human nature. It's human nature that is the issue - not violence.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[SpecTheIntro]

Rember that for some Japanese the war was an attempt to free asian people from the suppression by western powers. They were actually doing a noble thing.

I'm sure they told themselves that when they were raping women in Korea... and then in Manchuko... and then in Indonesia... and then in the Phillipines. They were fiercely expansionist and committed unspeakable crimes against the Asian population. But you're right; we shouldn't have objected to that by refusing to fuel their war machine.

You know what pisses me off SO MUCH about people like you? (And the posts before yours?) You are more concerned with avoiding "hypocrisy" than actually preventing war crimes. You throw around bullshit phrases like: "that's so hypocritical; Europeans were doing it, why couldn't the Japanese?" as if that somehow reflects anything but your own idiocy. It was wrong when the Europeans did it, and it was wrong when the Japanese did it. Big fucking deal if America was quicker to stop the Japanese than the Europeans--at least they stopped someone. You'd rather attribute our intervention to scheming and political machinations than the very simple explanation that Japan was running rampant through Asia, attacking our allies (China comes to mind), and we decided: "Hey, you know, this is wrong." And suddenly, because we didn't say that every time there was aggression in the history of the fucking world, suddenly the act loses all moral implications and becomes evil and self-serving. Well fuck that. Japan did some horrible, horrible shit between 1930 and 1945, and I am very proud that America didn't stand for it.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Let's break this down.

You said initially that you are living my life personally by pacifistic means If by pacifistic means you meant that you're not a pacifist, you just haven't used violence in your life (since your time of conversion or whatever) then great. You're not a pacifist, why are we arguing?

However, I interpreted your statement to mean you are a pacifist. So let's define pacifism:

Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. (Wikipedia).

So if there's a dispute, and the only effective means of settling it is violent, the pacifist can't settle the dispute. This is simple logic. The question then becomes, are their situations where violence is the only effective means to a good resolution?

Yes, there are. And here's what you seem to thick to realize: the absence of pacifism enable the absence of violence. Let's say the LAPD are pacifists. They don't use violence. They find a child molester holed up in his house with a bunch of kids. They ask him nicely to give up. He doesn't. So they start getting creative. They try sneaking up on him and tackling him with their zen judo skills. So he shoots a few. They try sneaking up not so close and tazering him. So he kills a few more. They finally try tear gas. So he kills the hostages, walks out of the house, kills a few more cops, and takes their car. Wow. Sure am glad they looked for non-violent solutions. Too bad he wasn't as obliging.

On the other hand, if the LAPD shows up with guns drawn, a sniper on the roof, etc. and the molester knows they are not pacifist, what is he going to do? Likely give up.

The problem with pacifism is that by precluding the use of force you hand ultimate power to the person who is not afraid to use it. In your life you've found that most of the time people don't really want to use force. It's all about posturing. And confronted with firm, non-threatening, non-violent resistance they aren't willing to engage in violence themselves. That's great. And it highlights the effectiveness of non-violent resistance. It does NOT prove anything about pacifism.

Because if you ever run into someone that actually wants to hurt you, and not just scare you, they will hurt you. If they want to kill you, they will kill you. You're posturing will do nothing to stop them - literally - if their mind is made up already. That's your choice to make. If you would rather be killed than kill in self-defense, I can respect that. If that's what "personal" pacifism means to you, then great.

But pacifism in general means the LAPD don't carry guns any more (for starters), and that's what I think is stupid.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

I call BS. Just as one example, the entire field of Operations Research (e.g. the mathematical study of efficiency) was born directly as a result of WW2.

Ever hear of opportunity cost? Who's to say what would have been invented or done had WWW2 not happened. Sure, there was a major research push, but that only proves my point: in a violence-centric society, research doesn't happen on that level unless the threat of violence is involved to motivate. Can you honestly claim that a peaceful society would not have created OR?

It's not about getting ahead, it's about playing games where someone has to lose in order for another to win. That is what leads to inefficiency, and violence is only one part of that syndrome.

Motivation is more complex than you make it out to be, and you give people too little credit. In the absence of the threat of starvation, etc. people are motivated by their passions. Why do people chose to take on low paying jobs doing things they love when there are higher paying jobs available? People don't work hard on pointless, unrewarding tasks unless motivated. People work very hard doing the things they love without any monetary of reward.

Please provide some kind of proof that competition spurs creativity or efficiency. If that really were the case, corporations would be internally arranged as multiple, redundant competing units. That was tried several times, and it has failed miserably every time. Corporations are internally cooperative because that more effectively spurs creativity and efficiency. If it didin't, they wouldn't do it that way.

Human nature is more malleable than you give it credit for. I find that people blame human nature when they have a vested interest in protecting the status quo. "That's just the way people are," is a cop out. People are the way they are given that the current system is the way it is. Given a different system, people would act differently. This has been proven in modern economic research experiments.

Re:Psssh.

[prurientknave]

although i agree with the general thrust of your post, i have to make a small correction. The only reason gandhi was successful, was world war 2. The british army was in shambles. Huge indian armies had been raised to defend the british colonies in india and africa. A growing nationalist struggle would only bloodily for the brits. The point is, it had nothing to do with British civilization, the brits were just too beaten after the war to care about anything more than putting britain back together.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Please provide some kind of proof that competition spurs creativity or efficiency

Ever heard of a monopoly?

In standard economic theory (see analysis above), a monopoly will sell a lower quantity of goods at a higher price than firms would in a purely competitive market. In this way the monopoly will secure monopoly profits by appropriating some or all of the consumer surplus, as although the higher price deters some consumers from purchasing, most are willing to pay the higher price. Assuming that costs stay the same, this does not lead to an outcome which is inefficient in the sense of Pareto efficiency; no-one could be made better off by shifting resources without making someone else worse off. However, total social welfare declines compared with perfect competition, because some consumers must choose second-best products. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

If what you said about cooperation were true, we woudln't have multiple coorporations. I'm not saying competition is always needed at every level, I'm saying some competition is needed to incent creativity, etc.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[spun]

In an unregulated monopoly there is competition between the seller and the buyers. The buyers get screwed. That's not cooperation. Cooperation in a monopoly setting would resemble regulated monopolies like public utlities. Interesting thing about the whole privitization push, when (for instance) factories in eastern-block countries are privatized, efficiency goes up. When (for instance) public utilities in South America are privatized, efficiency goes down.

I would say that conflict is inevitable, and productive, while competition, of the form where someone must lose in order for another to win is destructive and inefficient. Conflict can be resolved in such a way that everyone benefits. Competition means someone always loses.

Re:Psssh.

[AK Marc]

I call them the "angry, America hating left."

As opposed to the "angry, America hating right" that is currently in power and purposefully damaging America. There isn't a single educator I've ever met that likes No Child Left Behind, and today there was an article in the paper blaming a recent increase in college freshman dropout rate on NCLB distracting students and educators from education to test scores. Bush purposefully fucked millions of students in a deliberate effort to hurt public schools so that just before he leaves office he can try another push for his stupid vouchers. Yes, I'm stating that Bush is purposefully hurting America and millions of Americans for one petty and useless little line item on his agenda. If that isn't angry and American hating of him, I don't know what is. (and, the list is hundreds of things long of how he is hurting America and Americans out of hate and spite)

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Privatization doesn't necessarily lead to increased efficiency. I'd say capitalism does, but it requires (at the least) private property, freedom, and a free labor market. Privatization only gets you one of the three.

I don't know why you are defining competition to mean that someone must lose. That's just not what the word (necessarily) means. Apple and MS are competing right now, yet both are making money. It's not as though in competition one business makes money and the other goes out of business.

In any case, you can "lose" a round without being any worse off than before. Example: if you go try to sell lemonade today and the lemonade stand across the street does 100 times more business - you lost. But as long as you sell enough to get your costs back, you're not out of pocket. And if you learned from the experience than you're actually better off than before.

Ideal cooperation would be more efficient, but I think the imitation of ideal cooperation is less efficient than robust competition.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[mrxak]

You forgot the War of 1812. Everybody always forgets the War of 1812. It's a very good thing we won that one.

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Spur of the moment. If I was going to pre-write such a thing, I would have fixed the awkward spots.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

I always blame this behavior on the large number of programmers and EEs in the audience that are trained to think discretely. It's understandable that they are uncomfortable with an analog world and shades of gray.

Re:Psssh.

[mrxak]

Spears had nothing to do with it. We invented fire in order to cause global warming and end the ice age those evil cats depended on. Human ingenuity at its finest. Oo-rah!

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you have all the details in there. Nice neat little package all tied up with string.

The countries of Europe are not as seperate as you seem to think. Long standing alliances have been and in some cases still are in existance for a number of reasons including economic, political and familial. Failure to assist a country that could easily have been where your forebears came from and may indeed be responsible for your econmic success today could have devastating consequences for your future. Not to mention that once the hungry hound defeats the friends you've turned your back on, he arrives at your back door. Napoleon took Europe one country at a time... and Europe learned from this. That is not to say that some countries did not make bad decisions regarding their positions in the conflict. But most certainly the aggressors had to be stopped. Or would it have been better for them to conquer the rest of the continent and then look overseas for the next opportunity? Please don't try to oversimplfy the situation. History is very clear. There were real lives already at stake. No one was looking for excuses to "Get into the action." It was a matter of fighting against an agressor that had already shown contempt for any kind of peaceful solution and in fact escalated the aggression at every possible turn.

I will grant you that the decisions were made at the top but there is more to international politics and particularly European politics than you seem to understand or at the very least are willing to admit.

Re:Psssh.

[mrxak]

The problem is, we're not all rational.

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

But most certainly the aggressors had to be stopped

Which aggressors?

The Serbian aggressors, or the Austrian? The Russians, or the Germans? The British and the French?

This is the entire point. All the major powers were aggressors here! Even some of the minors. The Serbs (their government, that is) really was involved in the murder plot, after all. Or in WWII, again, which aggressors? The Germans or the Soviets? You see, taking this 'stop the aggressors' imperative seriously would have meant declaring war on BOTH alliances, in both wars!

That's hardly practical, it's ludicrous. Better to let the aggressors exhaust their resources on each other. There is no moral imperative to be the worlds policemen, or the worlds daddy. Better to do as Washington said, and behave like a Republic, minding her own business, always ready to trade, always ready to defend herself - but never wandering abroad in search of dragons to slay.

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet, got you good and pissed. Enough so that you put your foot right into your mouth. Perhaps the no military license has nothing to do with pacifism and everything to do with not supporting the military's choice of targets? IF they go where they should, places like Darfur, then perhaps we let them use the code. As long as they DON'T do the right thing and instead pull bullshit like Iraq and such, fuck them, they get nothing. After all, as you yourself just pointed out, it's not like there is a lot we can do to get them to go to the places they are needed. This license is just a different approach.

Wouldn't you agree?

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

would it? Did WW1 solve whatever problem started it? And what problem was that? Did Korea and Vietnam solve the cold war? Did the first Gulf War solve the problem of Hussein? Do you think the second Gulf War will solve the problem without replacing it with a greater one?

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

I'm sure they told themselves that when they were raping women in Korea... and then in Manchuko... and then in Indonesia... and then in the Phillipines

Of course they did. Just like the US did in the Phillipines, talking about 'Benevolent Assimilation' and praising 'heroes' for the slaughter of entire tribes.

You throw around bullshit phrases like: "that's so hypocritical; Europeans were doing it, why couldn't the Japanese?" as if that somehow reflects anything but your own idiocy.

By definition, since it's true, it's not bullshit.

It doesn't excuse anything, but it does point one to a realistic understanding of the situation, rather than a propogandistic one. Who was it that said "let he who is without sin throw the first stone?"

It was wrong when the Europeans did it, and it was wrong when the Japanese did it.

Very good! You're starting to get it, perhaps. That was the point.

Now go back and read your history books again, with that realisation in mind, and you might start to understand what I've been saying.

Re:Psssh.

[sita]

You're telling me that veganism is 'unworkable in reality'? What reality do you inhabit? You're ignoring the millions of vegans in the Indian subconinent, who have lived that way for thousands of years. Now don't start on about how they are all malnurished -- if you do, you are ignoring the fact that you were wrong in that veganism can't exist, and that there are plenty of meat eaters around the world who are starving.

While there are of course plenty of vegans in India, since there are plenty of just about anything that exists at all in India, the vast majority of Indians are not vegans but vegetarians. That is, they do not eat meat, but they do eat eggs and dairy products. They don't have the cows just to worship them, you know.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

Likewise, please show me where I said "violence is never the means to any political end."

I am a pacifist, not an idiot. I recognize that sometimes, however regrettable it may be, violence is necessary.

Re:Psssh.

[Citizen of Earth]

You think Brutus killed Ceaser 'cause he didn't like him (just to bring fiction in for variety)?

Um, Brutus was one of Caesar's assassins (I'll use that term since I don't believe it is possible to "murder" a dictator; you can only commit an act of "public service" against one) IRL, and Brutus was part of the conspiracy because he didn't like Caesar, in part because Brutus' ancestors had fought to rid Rome of its last dynasty of kings, and here's Caesar, another king.

Re:Psssh.

[WilliamSChips]

Actually, there has never been any attempt to conquer the entire United States by any nation other than England. Besides, I'd actually prefer it if we were all speaking some other language, as most of those languages have a much better logical structure than English.

Re:Psssh.

[mikehoskins]

I've been following this thread, Stormin' and have to say that you've done a great job defending your case with logic and passion. I agree with you, too.

I'd say a large number of people just read and do not comment, either way.

I believe that most rational people agree with you and are able to see through the thin veneer of multiple forms of idealism, including passivism/pacifism.

I have seen countless people attacked on this site over the years, for not following the status quo and it's hypocrisy. It's amazing, for example, for people to share a believe in "tolerance", only to have the same sort of people slander someone who disagrees.

This thread wasn't quite as bad as others, and many of the previous threads surprisingly had a large number of people agree with you. (I'm a bit surpised at the agreement, today)....

I personally liked this article.

And, I think it's silly to have a "no military use" edition of the GPL. I'm sure Al-Qaida will have their legal department get right on it....

Re:Psssh.

[Burz]

Um, are you saying that poorer countries are wasting their money on a mostly-veg diet?

My supermarket has top-quality veggieburgers (in small 9 oz cartons) for $4.40 /lb while the 93% lean ground beef is $4.30 /lb in bulk. When comparing cheaper veggieburgers with cheaper meats, the veggieburgers are less expensive.

Of course the object isn't to imitate meat, so removing the trouble of bending over backwards to create a meat-like product results in veg protein being significantly less expensive (monetarily as well as wrt resources).

The more expensive fossil fuels become, the more people will start cooking like their great-grandparents with more local food and less meat. Ideally, we should heavily tax fossil fuels all-around) incl. for agriculture, and provide rebates on the proportion of product that reaches retail in veg form. There's no reason why the price of various foods should not reflect their environmental cost.

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

> There's no reason why the price of various foods should not reflect their environmental cost.

There is absolutely no reason why the price of food should reflect their environment cost. Rather, it should reflect their supply and demand.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes. From wikipedia. So when you say "I am a pacifist" you are saying "I oppose violence/war as a means to political ends. No exceptions."

If that's not what you're saying, you're not really a pacifist. You're just someone who dislikes violence. Like me.

To be fair, wikipedia also says: "Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, under any circumstances." So I suppose you could be a moderate pacifist, but I think that's just a stupid use of the term. Saying war should only be used in times of necessity is NOT the hallmark of pacifism, it's a hallmark of decency.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Have you read the play "Julius Ceaser"? You know, by Shakespeare? Brutus was Julius' good friend. He killed him because he thought it was necessary for the empire.

If you had any confusion about whether I was referring to history or to the play, the bit about "just to bring in fiction" should have given it away.

It was merely an illustration of the fact that sometimes people kill people they actually like. Unless you disagree with that statement, you're just nitpicking and doing a poor job of it.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

"when you say "I am a pacifist" you are saying "I oppose violence/war as a means to political ends. No exceptions."

That's a gross misinterpretation. You might as well claim that a capitalist is someone who objects to governmental interference in the operation of the free market with no exceptions.

Also, I like how you completely ignore the sentence that directly follows the one you quoted:
Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved, to absolute opposition to the use of violence, or even force, under any circumstances.

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

oh, jesus christ. I must not have scrolled down the whole way. I feel properly abashed.

I'm sorry you disagree with the generally held view of what a pacifist is, but I'd like to be arguing about the same thing. Your position seems to be that "extremist pacifists who think that violence is never, in any circumstances, justified, are idiots." I'd agree, and further say that "extremist anyones who think that X is [never|always] in any circumstances justified" are also idiots.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I'd agree, and further say that "extremist anyones who think that X is [never|always] in any circumstances justified" are also idiots.

Good, then we are in agreement. Just to point one final detail out, this does appear to be exactly the type of pacifism espoused in the anti-military GPL that started this whole debate. I wasn't just assuming all pacifists are the extreme edition out of nowhere, it was directly motivated by TFA.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

I view their desire to not have the military use their software as a precaution against having their work used in a war they felt was unjust. It's not like they could write a license that says "use of this software in a military context is limited to just and necessary wars."

If I spent a year of my time building something to give to the world, I'd feel pretty shitty if it ended up being used to oppress someone or enable governments to spy on my fellow man. I can understand the motivation, although the callout to the laws of robotics is pretty stupid and/or ironic.

Re:Psssh.

[Vellmont]

Well, it really had nothing to do the actual civil disobedience and non-violent resistance, but it was really something else..." That's called 'moving the goalposts'. You know, the American colonists didn't really win the war for independence -- it was more a factor of waning British influence around that time...

Actually I never said that, so I'm not sure why you're arguing this point. The point is that different situations demand different tactics.

I'm not sure how to address your unrelenting faith in non-violent protest always being a strategy that can replace violence. I think we simply disagree to the lengths that some people will take to stop non-violent protest. It's kind of funny that you bring up one incidence of non-violent protest in Poland. The last I checked the Nazi's were quite effective at killing the vast majority of Jews in Poland. Sure, a few people were saved, but ultimately that strategy failed. The only thing that actually stopped the Nazis was allied troops marching into Germany. I guess the only lasting thing that Mayor accomplished was boosting your faith in non-violent protest even when it's obvious it didn't work.

Re:Psssh.

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Oh, it's not that hard to see through your moral-equivalence bullshit.

Huh? I simply wrote that it wasn't discussed. But I guess you didn't bother to read my post either.

For the record, I certainly am not willing to make blanket statements that the military interventions of the USA were good or bad. Soviet-style "communism" was a significant threat to everything else, and even once the Soviet Union was dissolved, the military actions of the USA were largely consequences of previous meddling. IIRC, the US installed Saddam Hussein in Iraq, so was it appropriate for the US to remove him at a later date? It's difficult to say, and none of the options are particularly appealing.

But none of that is relevant to the simple statement that the US pissed a lot of people off, and so it's reasonable to expect that it will eventually experience some backlash as a result. It's a statement of fact, not morality.

Re:Psssh.

[Dread_ed]

Not to mention the fact that this way you don't have to die with the taste of raw prison rat in your mouth.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"The question here is: "if someone starts using violence to achieve their evil ends, who will oppose them?" "

Your presumption is that the only way to respond to violence is with more violence. I don't accept that premise. For example let's say you have a society which is a pacifist society. There is one violent person and he kicks somebody or kills somebody. You presume that the only appropriate response to that person is to react violently towards them. The society could do many other things. They could shun him for example. They could stop interacting with him.

Being a pacifist does not mean you just stand there and get hit. It's your inability to conceive of any non violent response that is messing you up here. You only see a world where only response to everything is violence.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

Why couldn't a pacifist sociaty fine people? Why couldn't they deny services to people who commit crimes?

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

If I spent a year of my time building something to give to the world, I'd feel pretty shitty if it ended up being used to oppress someone or enable governments to spy on my fellow man

Isn't that just one of the risks you run with open source software? I imagine there are a lot of things you'd rather people not do wth your software, but there are only a very few that you can actually prevent (if any).

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Your presumption is that the only way to respond to violence is with more violence.

No. It's. Not. I'm so tired of this. Like the first post I had to deal with was someone accusing me of the fallacy of the excluded middle (they were wrong) and ever since then I've been cursed with people actually using it against me.

Proposition: "You can always respond to violence effectively without violence."

Negation: "You can not always respond to violence effectively without violence."

Equivalence of Negation: "Sometimes the only way to respond effectively to violence is with violence."

THAT is what I'm saying.

Law of Excluded Middle Fallacy: "If you can't always respond to violence effectvely without violence, then you can never respond effectively to violence without violence."

That is NOT what Im' saying. Do you see the difference?

In any case, I think your counterexample is pathetic:

There is one violent person and he kicks somebody or kills somebody. You presume that the only appropriate response to that person is to react violently towards them. The society could do many other things. They could shun him for example. They could stop interacting with him

Guess what - shunning him and not interacting him are not going to prevent him from killing somebody else. The problem is not how to respond to violence retroactively. The problem is how to respond to ongoing violence. In other words, imagine that the pacifist society discovers that this guy has taken over the local day care. He's barricaded himself in, and is killing the children at a rate of one every 15 minutes. Your pacifist society, if it comes up with an effective non-violent response at all, is going to watch this guy kill several children. A non-pacifist society would be able to stop him faster, and thus save lives.

Being a pacifist does not mean you just stand there and get hit. It's your inability to conceive of any non violent response that is messing you up here. You only see a world where only response to everything is violence.

No, I don't see such a world. And the real problem is that you only see a world where the negation of "always" is "never".

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[bunions]

Well, yes. And these guys apparently aren't willing to take that risk, hence the disclaimer.

Whether it's at all effective or enforceable is, of course, a whole different ball of worms, or can of wax, or whatever.

Re:Psssh.

[enharmonix]

Amen.

Re:Psssh.

[andreyw]

And besides, "isolationism" in most people's minds doesn't imply "supplying arms to one side of the conflict". FYI.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"Guess what - shunning him and not interacting him are not going to prevent him from killing somebody else."

How do you know that? Sure some people are insane but for most people the threat of fines keep them from shitting in the park and paying their taxes. OUr society is now based on violence so it may not seem possible to you but human being need each other. All of us need support from others and the govt. For example in a pacifist society maybe murderers would be marked somehow and that people bearing that mark would be shunned by everybody else. This means they could not buy food, they could not rent an apartment, they could not talk to people. Perhaps there could be some institutions that these shunned people could go to obtain certain requirements but they nobody else would ever interact with them. This would be kind of like jail but not really. Now could they murder more people? Maybe but would that act as a detterent to murder yes it would. Right now if someone murders you throw them in jail for a few years and they come out and murder anyway. Nothing is perfect but again there are non violent ways of dealing with murderers.

I still haven't gone into things like raising non violent children (which is certainly possible) and therefore having a non violent society in the first place. We can also talk about a society where mentally ill are recognized early and treated so they don't kill and such.

There are many, many, many ways to avoid violence. If the entire society was pacifist maybe nobody would murder in the first place.

"A non-pacifist society would be able to stop him faster, and thus save lives."

Maybe, maybe not. Violence more often then not tends to begat more violence. We see that all around us.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

If you really think you can stop ALL violent people without violence I'm just not going to waste my energy talking to you anymore. I've beaten this issue to death too often. You're not even idealistic, you sped past idealistic on your way to delusional.

Just imagine, for one moment, that a serial rapist (they do exist) has broken into your house to kill you and rape your wife and then kill her too. Are you honestly telling me you hope the police show up and promise the rapist, who has you at gunpoint, that they won't hurt him no matter what. You really want that world?

Yes, non-violent solutions work 99.9% of the time. Yes, great, OK. But what about when they don't work?

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Anonymous Coward]

All he had to do was get the Japanese to attack, and then the Germans would have to as well. This was accomplished by closing the southeast asian shipping lanes through which the Japanese received their oil, and steadfastly refusing to their increasingly desperate entreaties for a deal which would end that belligerent embargo.

If a belligerent embargo was the means to stop an army that participated in the rape and murder of 300,000 Chinese in Nanking, forced prostitution (comfort women), human experimentation, the torture and murder of POWs, and an estimated death toll of 6 million, it was all worth it.

Re:Psssh.

[koreaman]

Do you have any real reason for saying that most of those languages have a "better" logical structure than English?

Re:Psssh.

[Trepalium]

It's so much easier to put words in someone else's mouth, and then tear that straw man down, isn't it? I do not see Al-Qaeda mentioned at all in the linked article, nor do I see them single out the U.S. military. You know, it used to be possible to say you disagreed with someone without stamping them as an "idiot-savant" or as a traitor helping terrorists hurt Americans. Furthermore, the authors aren't even Americans, and the example one of the authors gave was about the Dutch military.

If you want to criticise their pacifism, that's fine (there is plenty to say about pacifism in general), but at least criticise their pacifism instead of putting words in their mouths, and then turning around to criticise those words.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"If you really think you can stop ALL violent people without violence I'm just not going to waste my energy talking to you anymore."

Have you stopped all violent people WITH violence? Arguably the USA is the least pacifist country on the planet (well maybe israel but anyway) and we also have one of the most violent countries on the planet.

You are the delusional one. You think that you can stop all violent people with violence despite the fact you can observe otherwise. That's truly delusional. Is violence working? Can something else work better?

As for your other examples people who kill and rape are mentally ill. More then likely they too have been abused. In a society that values non violence these types of things could be handled way before somebody becomes a murderer or a rapist. In our current society if a human being can get through high school without being assaulted at least a dozen times it's a miracle.

Re:Psssh.

[jcr]

Yes invading countries and killing their leaders without asking the people of the country involved if that's what they wanted sure is doing sooo much "good" in the world thank for enlightening me as to your imperialist philosophy.

Why do you hate the German, Japanese, and Iraqi people so much that you'd rather they were still living under the dictatorships that led them to ruin?

-jcr

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

You think that you can stop all violent people with violence despite the fact you can observe otherwise.

That's just stupid. I don't think that we can stop all violence under any circumstances without fundamentally changing human nature. And even then I'm not sure. It's like saying "we can stop all disease" or "can we stop all people from being unkind ever".

The real problem isn't that you're an unrealistic idealist and I'm not, it's that your ideals are counter-productive. I think some violence must be met with the threat of violence at the very least. This is just a fact. If you do away with violence you also do away with the threat of violence and at a fundamental level the threat of violence is the only thing that holds our society together. If you get rid of the threat of violence you've destroyed the army (which you'd probably cheer about) and the police. Just think about a society with no police. Not a hypothetical utopia, but America, as we know it, right now, only the police were totally unarmed. You think that would lead to less violence?

In a society that values non violence these types of things could be handled way before somebody becomes a murderer or a rapist.

Sure, sure, people who are abused are more likely to be violent criminals. But do you think ALL rapists were abused? Do you have any evidence for that whatsoever? You think there's no such thing as some rich white kid who just feels like he owns everything and treats girls like property. He'd still be around in a world without violence, and now he would know that all it would take is just a knife and he could have anything he wanted in the world. If you got rid of all violence (which is impossible, since people who've been victimized are already there, and you'd have to constrain them without the threat of violence to break the cycle) there would still be rapists. And now there would be no effective means of stopping them.

What it comes down is that you think we can fundamentally alter human nature easily. You think that if no one ever hits little Timmy, little Timmy will grow up to be someone that will never hit anyone else. Sure, if you abuse little Timmy you're more likely to get an abusive adult out of him, but that doesn't mean that if you don't abuse him he won't be violence. That doesn't follow from the logic or from the evidence or from common sense.

Stop acting as though I think the only appropriate response to violence is violence. I don't. I just think that sometimes the threat of violence is necessary to prevent greater harm and that (even more rarely) actual violence is necessary too. If you can change human nature, then this will change. But if you try to act as though human nature has been changed before it has been changed the results will be catastrophic. And, until it's been changed, violence will be necessary. I know it's a Catch-22, but the only way to end violence in some distant future is to reduce the cycle. You try to quit "cold turkey" and the organism we call society will die.

If you want to work to reduce violence than I'm with you 100%. But if you try to eliminate violence then you only give more incentive to those who are willing to use it as a means to their ends while reducing the capacity of society to defend itself and its most vulnerable members.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[gfxguy]

And? Did I say anything about Bush? We were talking about certain pacifists. I'm not going to argue with you about Bush, few conservatives like him, except for a small minority.

Re:Psssh.

[mrraven]

1. Wow the U.S. govt. did something good FORTY years ago, that's sooooo relevant to how our government behaves today.

2. Meanwhile on the today front the Iraqi people HATE us and want us to leave IMMEDIATELY"

"82% of Iraq People Want U.S. & UK Troops to Leave; Near-Majority Support Guerrilla Insurgency

From http://www.organicconsumers.org/Politics/insurgenc y102505.cfm

(I did try to find the Original article in the U.K. Sunday Telegraph and it seems to have expired, however, several blog entries refer to the 82% figure so I'm quite certain the article is legit.)

Re:Psssh.

[Breakfast Pants]

Perhaps; but none the less I think we would be in a worse situation today.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"What it comes down is that you think we can fundamentally alter human nature easily."

Yes I do. I don't want to go into all the details but hear this.

Study after study has shown that children who are victims of violence commit violence. Every single human being in America has either been bullied or has bullied in their formative years. Parents hit their children, in some schools teachers hit the children. Violence is taught at an early age.

Study after study has shown the the single greatest thing you can teach your child is delayed gratification. Study after study has shown that murders, rapists and other ciminals lack impulse control.

Study after study has shown that meditation alters the brain for the better. That physical exercise leads to happier people (who will be less likely to commit violence).

If you just take those facts and act on them you could change society. If headstart consisted of every day putting a cookie in front a kid and saying "you can eat this now but if you wait a half hour I will give you two cookies" you can change the world. Not only will this teach very young people to delay their impulses it will quickly identify children who can't. Those children could then be helped either psychologically or chemically.

If every school and work day started with a hour and a half of yoga you could change the society. What's the use of teaching high school kids to climb ropes or play dodgeball? Why not teach them to meditate and practice yoga. The meditation will change the structure or their brain and give them the ability to cope with life, the exercise will carry them to their old age and keep them healty all their lives.

If you intervene early enough and with the proper tools you will eliminate violence from the lives of our children which will lead to a better and non violent adults.

Do those things I guarantee you you will eliminate (yes eliminiate) all murders and rapes. People who rape and murder are mentally ill. With monitoring like I proposed you can quickly identify and treat these types of mental illnesses at a young age and prevent crime.

You probably think this is some hippy dippy shit but it's not. These things have been studied and backed up by scientific studies. Go read about them and you will be amazed. Not doing them is like teaching creationism when you know evolution is a scientifically proven thing.

Re:Psssh.

[jcr]

1. Wow the U.S. govt. did something good FORTY years ago, that's sooooo relevant to how our government behaves today.

The US government also toppled a regime of medieval theocrats in Afghanistan. That's a very good thing to do, in my book.

2. Meanwhile on the today front the Iraqi people HATE us and want us to leave IMMEDIATELY"

Some do, some don't. Try asking the Kurds, for example.

-jcr

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Isolationism is a boogey-man anyway. No one is isolationist. It's just a word warmongers throw around to smear the rest of us. Call us neutralists, or republicans, but isolationist isn't accurate at all. 'Peace and free trade with all, entangling alliances with none.' That isn't a recipe for 'isolation,' but for the opposite. If you really want to be isolated, engage in a never ending series of foreign adventures and make enemies everywhere.

Re:Psssh.

[Burz]

There is absolutely no reason why the price of food should reflect their environment cost. Rather, it should reflect their supply and demand.

That arrogance is precisely how economists have become discredited in light of ecology.

A hypereconomic rationale (incubated within an empire gorging itself on the resources of its client states) that dismisses the most fundamental factors of our existence as "externialities and whatnot" when it defines "supply", begs to be picked apart and packed away with its own post mortem... in the dustbin, if you will.

Re:Psssh.

[kz45]

"Plus I figure if you add in all the costs of the Iraq war to the oil we are getting from that region it is costing Americans about $2,000 per barrel of oil. That is just dumb business to pay that much for oil. Only an idiot would pay $2,000 for a barrel of oil."

hmm..maybe because the US isn't there for just the oil. I think if bush was only interested in oil, he would not have gone after sadaam and would be making back room deals. You need to look at the big picture rather than focus on one short-sited idea of oil. The world is much more complicated than that.

"So don't tell me that an operation that was named OIL is about anything other than oil. I don't buy it. Go sell crazy somewhere else"

someone else did..and you bought it.

"America has already reached peak oil in the 1970's, we can't supply our own oil without changing the way we live... I.E., building more efficient houses, more efficient factories, more efficient computers, getting rid of SUV's, and promoting public transit. Yeah, right, like that is ever going to happen."

You can thank the environmentalists for this. We would have cheaper gas prices if we weren't so heavily reliant on the middle east. We can't even get to half of our own reserves because of hippy liberal bullshit.

"Hell, we could subsidize hydrogen production to give free energy to every American for a tenth the cost of the Iraq war. But the oil and defense companies wouldn't get rich off that plan."

good luck. If this were the case, some company would have jumped on it (such as the oil companies. They have a shitload of money, if it was possible, they would invest in hydrogen and have a monopoly on it). We don't have the technology yet to run off of hydrogen. Please take your tinfoil hat off. I think it's on a little too tight.

"Hey, didn't Bush say that all the gas prices were too high under Clinton and promise us that they would be cheaper if we elected him? I guess that is just another in a long string of lies from the bush family."

and why weren't the prices lower during clinton's time? The gas prices rose after 9/11, not the Iraq war. Get your facts straight.

"The Iraq war is a mistake. The Iraq war is illegal under international law. We should never have have gone in. We should not stay there now. The citizens of Iraq have as their first duty the necessity to free themselves from foreign rule. They are right to resist the American invasion. God, duty, and country is the creed that I was taught as a military man in the United States army. I respect anyone who stands up for their god, who stands up for their country, who does their duty no matter what the cost to themselves"

You are very naive. We helped the Iraqis get out of a bad situation, and look at the thanks we have gotten. I actually wish we hadn't gone in, so the un-grateful Iraqis can continue to get killed, beaten, and tortured. After many decades of this, they might finally be able to see what true freedom is all about (but, someone like you might be complaining that we aren't helping their people out if that were the case).

You seem to have so many opinions on why the US is a terrible country. It's funny, an Iraqi general under Sadaam released a book a few months back talking about how he helped move nuclear arms on trains into the desert (right before we invaded). This always seems to be overlooked.

Or how about the fact that bush had evidence that France, China, and Russia gave Sadaam weapons and other military secrets and kept it secret all this time to protect them.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Your logic is fatally flawed. You have committed the same logical error over and over and over again. This is the general logical error you have made:

Fact: X is positively correlated with Y.
Conclusion: If we eliminate X, we eliminate Y.

You are simply not warranted in making this jump. What you can say is that if we greatly reduce X (or eliminate X) we will likely greatly reduce Y. So if you want to work for yoga in school, I won't try to stop you. I have no intention of sending my kids to public school anyway, but I think that sounds like something worthy of investigating. This is what I mean when I say we should work to reduce the cycle of violence.

But when it comes to this conclusion you make: Do those things I guarantee you you will eliminate (yes eliminiate) all murders and rapes. People who rape and murder are mentally ill.

I have major issues.

1> As I've shown, the logic is utterly missing, as is the evidence.
2> You're philosophically denying the existence of evil. This is wrong. I don't think people are fundamentally evil, but I do think that some people make morally wrong decisions that can not be accounted for by environment or genetics. People are not fundamentally good or evil - they are fundamentally free and can act for good or evil. We have a fundamentally different view of human nature here. I further think that treating morality as though it is a disease is the equivalent of treating people like trained animals. Your sense of morality reduces the genuine complexity of human interactions to essentially dog-training. I think it's unrealistic, insulting, and dangerous.

You probably think this is some hippy dippy shit but it's not. These things have been studied and backed up by scientific studies. Go read about them and you will be amazed. Not doing them is like teaching creationism when you know evolution is a scientifically proven thing.

Yes, I do think this is some hippy dippy shit. I'm not arguing with your studies. I'm telling you (as a statistical analyst) that they don't mean what you say they mean. It's as though a doctor finds that high level doses of radiation cause cancer, and then concludes "if we eliminate radiation we will have no cancer". I'm not arguing with the fact that high doses of radiation cause cancer, but so does smoking. I'm not even saying that if we avoid high-level dosages of radiation, we'll reduce the threat of cancer. We should avoid high-level doses of radiation. The hippy dippy shit doesn't start until you start making this whacked-out claim that if we eliminate exposure to high-level doses of radiation cancer will go away. I know you have listed more than one cause of violent behavior, so to make the metaphor complete, I can add as many things as I like to the "causes cancer, should be eliminated list". Radiation, smoking, old-school birth control, etc. Add as many as you like, eliminate all of them, and you will be left with the fact that sometimes cancer happens anyway. So what are you going to do about it?

What you are effectively telling us is to trust you, that cancer can be eliminated if we reduce exposure to high levels of radiation. So we should stop researching cancer, shut down the oncology centers, stop producing and distributing anti-cancer drugs, and just build radiation-free habitats for ourselves to live in. And stop smoking. And stop doing every other carcinogen we know of.

That's the equivalent of saying "let's teach children not to use violence". It's a great idea. But when you add "and we should not allow the use of violence anymore" you're taking away our oncology centers. Chemotherapy is the perfect example because it does harm to the body. So it's a great metaphor. And I'm simply saying "you can't account for all human violence using the factors that you've given". So now we've reduced the chance of getting cancer (yay!) but if you get cancer you now have no defense against it (boo!).

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

I think the real problem here, at least what annoys me, is you seem to have an attitude that what America does must be either out of self-interest or for moral reasons. As though they are mutually exclusive. You seem to also believe that if America is not consistent than every right act they've done is meaningless. And lastly, you engage in the some of the most egregious equivocation I've ever seen.

Of course they did. Just like the US did in the Phillipines, talking about 'Benevolent Assimilation' and praising 'heroes' for the slaughter of entire tribes.

OK, here's some of the wikipedia entry on The Rape of Nanking:

The West and other nations outside Japan have generally tended to adopt the 1938 estimates of 300,000, with many sources now quoting 300,000 dead. This is partly due to the existence of extensive photographic records of the mutilated bodies of women and children

Eyewitness accounts from the period state that over the course of six weeks following the fall of Nanjing, Japanese troops engaged in an orgy of rape, murder, theft, and arson. The most reliable accounts came from foreigners who opted to stay behind in order to protect Chinese civilians from certain harm, including the diaries of John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin.

It is a horrible story to relate; I know not where to begin nor to end. Never have I heard or read of such brutality. Rape: We estimate at least 1,000 cases a night and many by day. In case of resistance or anything that seems like disapproval there is a bayonet stab or a bullet.

There's a lot more where that came from. And that's just one example. You could also look up "Comfort Women" on wikipedia if you like.

So your retort that Of course they did. Just like the US did in the Phillipines, talking about 'Benevolent Assimilation' and praising 'heroes' for the slaughter of entire tribes. The logic here is asinine. "Our soldiers committed rape too, therefore it's all the same".

If Americans raped, say, 100 Filiplinos (JUST AS AN EXAMPLE) and the Japenese raped 100,000 (AGAIN, HYPOTHETICALLY) would you say the two are equivalent? I think not.

So the two questions to ask immediately are: 1) were American crimes against Filipinos as bad as Japanese atrocities, and 2) was the American response to those atrocities the same as the Japanese?

I think the answer to 1 is that obviously they were not. Americans didn't occupy Manilla and then spend 6 weeks raping everything that moved. They just didn't. They did engage in scorched earth policies against villages, and there were unforgivable atrocities but: a) not on the scale of the Japanese and b) American soldiers were also the victims of atrocities where, by contrast, Nanking fell essentially without resistance.

The answer to 2 is obviously different as well. There was no meaningful opposition to the Japanese atrocities or colonialism from the Japenese. By contrast, Americans at home opposed both the colonialism in general and the atrocities in specific.

So I think your equivication is unwarranted. What America did was wrong, but it doesn't mean it was morally equivalent to every other atrocity in the history of the world. Not all crimes are the same.

Who was it that said "let he who is without sin throw the first stone?"

This is stupid. I hate it when people quote the Bible without any actual understanding of what it means. Jesus is talking about retribution. Do you think WW2 was about retribution? Of course in large part the public wanted to strike back at Japan, but the moral justification for America's entry is not necessarily the same as the propaganda (as you pointed out). If an American war is ever about "getting someone back" then I'm going to be opposed to it. WW2 was about self-defense (as in, of the national interetest).

No, I"m not saying it was exclusively about self-defense. The idea that a war has to be about one thing to the exclusion of all others is y

Re:Psssh.

[ketamine-bp]

economics are driving the world, period.
something can be done to change it, but certainly not now.

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

I think the real problem here, at least what annoys me, is you seem to have an attitude that what America does must be either out of self-interest or for moral reasons. As though they are mutually exclusive.

Then you're pretty much completely misunderstanding me.

There is no contradiction between 'for moral reasons' and 'for reasons of self-interest.' Of course a short-sighted, ignorant, or narrow-minded view of self-interest can lead to problems, as can short-sightedness ignorance and narrow-mindedness in general, but 'enlightened self-interest' is eternally the best hope for moral action.

There is a huge issue, in addition, where we tend to gloss over the difference between the general good, that is the self-interest of america as a republic, and the particular good - the advantage of the individual actors, who hold positions of authority in that republic. It is often to their individual advantage to act completely against the interest of the republic, and those interests consistently wind up being pursued at the expense of the general good. This, in a nutshell, is the problem.

You seem to also believe that if America is not consistent than every right act they've done is meaningless.

Not at all.

I'm quite aware of the Rape of Nanking, the history of comfort women, etc. If you think in any way I'm minimising or defending those events, you're completely misunderstanding me. But, the sad fact is, they aren't actually all that exceptional. Every country that's engaged in imperialistic adventure has been responsible for similar acts. The history of the US in the Phillipines is, frankly, no less ignoble, even if there was no single incident in it to rival the body-count of Nanking. I repeat, every imperial player winds up doing things like this. The lesson I would draw from that is to refrain from playing that game. The lesson you appear to be drawing from it is it's ok to play the game, because the other players are evil and deserve it. I don't see how you can justify that, or what twisted logic might lay behind it, however. Even if the other players are evil and deserve it, the other players don't take the bulk of the damage. Innocent third parties do. Playing the game makes you evil, just as it has the other players. And it's certainly not in the interest of the republic to do so, however much it may be in the interest of a few powerful individuals who stand to gain from it.

If Americans raped, say, 100 Filiplinos (JUST AS AN EXAMPLE) and the Japenese raped 100,000 (AGAIN, HYPOTHETICALLY) would you say the two are equivalent? I think not.

So raping 100 people is alright, as long as someone else rapes 100,000? Where did you learn logic like that?

Of course, they're equivelant, rape is rape, murder is murder. And of course that doesn't mean they're indistinguishable either - clearly the numbers count for something, and clearly the larger body count is even worse, but both cases are fundamentally wrong, for the same reasons and in the same way.

To tie this point back to earlier posts, keep in mind that Stalin murdered more people than Hitler did.

I think the answer to 1 is that obviously they were not. Americans didn't occupy Manilla and then spend 6 weeks raping everything that moved. They just didn't. They did engage in scorched earth policies against villages, and there were unforgivable atrocities but: a) not on the scale of the Japanese and b) American soldiers were also the victims of atrocities where, by contrast, Nanking fell essentially without resistance.

No, it's worse than that, actually. Are you familiar with the Moro Crater massacre? Do you realise it was the rule, not the exception? The surviving writings of many US Soldiers, as well as that of the Phillipinos, supports that contention. Are you familiar with the history of how we got to that point? Quite possibly the most dishono

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Every country that's engaged in imperialistic adventure has been responsible for similar acts. The history of the US in the Phillipines is, frankly, no less ignoble, even if there was no single incident in it to rival the body-count of Nanking. I repeat, every imperial player winds up doing things like this. The lesson I would draw from that is to refrain from playing that game. The lesson you appear to be drawing from it is it's ok to play the game, because the other players are evil and deserve it.

OK, you have a more nuanced view than I at first thought. My actual view is that the chief distinction between American imperialism and other imperialism is that we gave ours up without being defeated and forced to give them up. America came to colonialism late, reluctantly, and didn't last long. I don't consider WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam to have been about imperialism at all.

Of course, they're equivelant, rape is rape, murder is murder. And of course that doesn't mean they're indistinguishable either - clearly the numbers count for something, and clearly the larger body count is even worse, but both cases are fundamentally wrong, for the same reasons and in the same way.

This sentiment: "they're equivalent" directly contradicts this one: clearly the larger body count is even worse One is moral equivalence, the other is not. The two propositions are contradictory. Of course rape of 100 and rape of 100,000 are both rape. Hence, the use of the same word. But not all rapes are the same and not all murders are the same. This is a fact of stunning obviousness that is enshrined in the laws of virtually all civilized nations: if you're found guity for murder the sentence you receive will be proportional to the perceived "wrongness" of the crime. If what you say is true (e.g. "murder is murder") then the sentence for murder would be (for example) 25 years. Period. If you were a serial killer and had murdered 15 people the sentence would be 25 years for all of them. If you got in a bar fight and killed someone your sentence would be 25 years. No mitigating circumstances would be considered. Is that what you think we should be doing?

No, but they're all criminal. Do you seriously believe it's ok to murder, as long as you, say, hold back from murdering as many as Ted Bundy, for instance?

No, and nothing I've said supports that position.

The republic had no interest whatsoever in provoking a war with the axis powers

What on earth do you mean by "provoking Axis powers"? As in supporting the UK? We most certainly did have reason to support the UK. If you see a band of men break into the first house on your street, kill everyone inside, and then break into the second house, kill everyone inside, and then break into the third house, kill everyone inside, than if you live in the 5th, the 6th, or the 100th house on the street it's in your best interest to go to house #4 before they get there and help defend against them.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

My actual view is that the chief distinction between American imperialism and other imperialism is that we gave ours up without being defeated and forced to give them up. America came to colonialism late, reluctantly, and didn't last long. I don't consider WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam to have been about imperialism at all.

We come reasonably close to some agreement there.

Imperialism is completely contrary to the american character and constitution. We were born out of its backlash, after all. And, for awhile, we were perceived as friends to all colonised people (look at the phillipines, for instance) as a result. And, for awhile, with the exception of course of the north american first nations (a real exception, but one that didn't initially affect relations around the world) we acted that way. And I would argue continuing to act that way was in the genuine interest of the republic.

But the 'leaders' couldn't, in the end, resist the temptation to play that game themselves. First against Mexico. Well, ok, their were plenty of excuses there. And a huge expanse of land the Mexicans weren't doing much with. It was a small start.

Then, with Spain. It certainly didn't start out as an Imperialist adventure (or, more likely, was carefully spun in the other direction, as the american people wouldn't have stood for it.) The Teller amendment was an explicit denunciation of such ambitions after all. We would fight, not to steal Cuba, but to free it! And we did, sort of.

Ahh, but Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines! We could take those and still free Cuba!

Of course, the Phillipines had their own 'George Washington' in the person of Aguinaldo. They had been fighting for their independence for two years already, and essentially had it won, with or without us. But we were the great anti-imperialists, already on the scene in force, and offered a helping hand. So naturally they took it. And then we stabbed them in the back, and our own republic in the process. But certainly some people got rich off that.

WWI and WWII really follow the same pattern, in one way - they reflect a few powerful people using their influence and authority to maneuver the republic into wars that are in their interest, but not in the interest of the republic. And also the propoganda pattern - the US population was not friendly to the idea of imperialism, and all the stops had to be pulled out to spin things so they would swallow it. But clearly, this was playing the imperial game, what Samuel Clemens called 'the European game' rather than 'the American game.'

This sentiment: "they're equivalent" directly contradicts this one: clearly the larger body count is even worse

No, it doesn't. These are questions of morality, as well as practicality, and they are not simple integer values. Murder is murder. Rape is rape. In that sense they are equivelant, wrong, and also against the interest of the republic, which gains nothing but loses much from such acts.

Equivalent does not mean precisely equal in every way. (If it did, we wouldn't need the word, as it would be indistinguishable from its shorter relative 'equal.') It's a slightly more broad word, encompassing not just true equalities, but 'substantial similarity' as well.

It's in that latter sense I would say these things are equivalent. They are substantially similar, and one cannot consistently approve of one without approving of both.

This is a fact of stunning obviousness that is enshrined in the laws of virtually all civilized nations: if you're found guity for murder the sentence you receive will be proportional to the perceived "wrongness" of the crime. If what you say is true (e.g. "murder is murder") then the sentence for murder would be (for example) 25 years. Period. If you were a serial killer and had murdered 15 people the sentence would be 25 years for all of them. If you got in a bar fight and killed someone your sentence

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"Fact: X is positively correlated with Y.
Conclusion: If we eliminate X, we eliminate Y."

Nonsense. There are double blind scientific studies. All mass murderers lack inpulse control. If a child lacks impulse control then it is our duty as a society to treat that. Why do you presume I don't know the difference between correlation and causation? I tell you why because you disagree with my premise. Because you disagree you automatically dismiss any and all evidence which supports it.

What's really amazing is that you come back with a paper written in 1950s by a xtian fundamentalist to counter my points. That tells me where your head is at. We have learned a lot since them about human chemistry and psycology.

Teach your children to meditate, teach them to delay their gratification, teach them an exeercise program they can do all their lives, build healthy habits, and most importantly identify and intervene on behalf of the kids who are unable to do those things and you will take care of the crime problem.

One thing for sure, jailing, beating kids, and electrocuting people hasn't solved your violence problem. You seem to be convinced that violence is the way to go but look around you. Has violence solved your problems?

Re:Psssh.

[MBraynard]

Tell that to the Tibetans, coward.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

OK, I think we're pretty much in agreement on the issue of American Imperialism. I don't think that most actions against the Native Americans counted at the early stages (18th century) since those going across the Apalachians were violating US law. So it was a question of the gov't failing to restrain it's own citizens. Unfortunately this started a cycle of violence that later on (e.g. during Andrew Jackson's presidency, most of the first half of the 18th century) that culminated in outright imperialism/genocide. Of this, no American can be proud.

Equivalent does not mean precisely equal in every way. (If it did, we wouldn't need the word, as it would be indistinguishable from its shorter relative 'equal.') It's a slightly more broad word, encompassing not just true equalities, but 'substantial similarity' as well.

I'm afraid you're just wrong on this issue. It's a false premise to say that the US only has one word per concept. Consider "wrong" and "incorrect". There's complete overlap. As far as "equivalent" goes, just type "define:equivalent" into google and see what you get:

# a person or thing equal to another in value or measure or force or effect or significance etc; "send two dollars or the equivalent in stamps"
# like: equal in amount or value; "like amounts"; "equivalent amounts"; "the same amount"; "gave one six blows and the other a like number"; "an equal number"; "the same number"
# being essentially equal to something; "it was as good as gold"; "a wish that was equivalent to a command"; "his statement was tantamount to an admission of guilt"

I understand what you mean when you said "rape is rape", "murder is murder", etc. Theft is theft, but does this mean that stealing some rich guys 4th mercedes is morally the samething as stealing poor little Johnny's only bike? Or stealing some poor single mothers only car that she needs for work? The same principle applies to murder. It's the same type of thing to shoot a random stranger as it is to say poison a water supply and kill 1,000 people - but one is much worse than the other.

when you indicate, for instance, that the body count at Nanking justifies the smaller one at Moro crater

I have not indicated any such thing. When, for example, I indicate that it's worse to steal some poor woman's car that she needs to get to go to work, this in now way whatsoever obviates the guy that stole some rich dude's 4th mercedes. That's still theft. I'm merely establishing that they are not the same degree of evil.

As far as the stuff with President Roosevelt goes - that's news to me - but if it's true than it's true. It's just stuff that I didn't know about.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

What's really amazing is that you come back with a paper written in 1950s by a xtian fundamentalist to counter my points. That tells me where your head is at. We have learned a lot since them about human chemistry and psycology.

Did you actually read any of the article? C. S. Lewis is by no means a "Christian fundamentalist". His points are just as applicable now as they were then, since they refer to the principles and not to specific medial facts. I encourage you to actually read it rather simply dismiss it out of hand. I think that's more revealing of your character than the fact that I happen to like a C. S. Lewis essay. I also list Simone deBeauvoir's work on ethics at the top of my 'most admired philosophical works'. So your attempt to pigeon hole me based on one essay (which I don't think you've even read) is infantile and silly.

Nonsense. There are double blind scientific studies. All mass murderers lack inpulse control. If a child lacks impulse control then it is our duty as a society to treat that. Why do you presume I don't know the difference between correlation and causation? I tell you why because you disagree with my premise. Because you disagree you automatically dismiss any and all evidence which supports it.

You are clearly not a scientist. You don't understand that I have no problem with your "double blind studies". If you really want to be fully persuasive, you should link me so that I can take a look myself. However, until I see different I'm going to point out the same glaring and obvious logical errors that you can't see.

Fact: All mass murderers lack inpulse control.

Assumption: The fact that people lack impulse control makes them mass murders.

Your assumption does NOT logically follow from the fact. First of all: do all people that lack impulse control become mass murders? If not, then clearly something else is at play. Even more importantly, however, you're absolutely committed to this idea that human nature influences human behavior. This is wrongheaded. Human behavior and human nature constitute a feedback loop. What this means is that it's entirely possible that mass murderers make decisions early in their "career" that reduce their impulse control. I flatly reject, until you can show me the double blind study that says otherwise, that just because mass murderers lack impulse control therefore impulse control causes mass murders.

Has violence solved your problems?

This is such a stupidly ignorant question it's hard to know wher to start. Has violence solved my poblems? Violence has brought me most of the good things in my life. It's brought me the political freedom that I have inherited as an American. It's brought me my religious freedom. It's brought me economic prosperity. I honor the veterans who have fallen in wars past. I can hardly count the number of ways in which I am endebted to violence - and you are too.

As far as my personal life goes, that's an irrelevent question. The chances of me being the victim of violent crime in my home are very small. So far it has never happened. So I"ve not had to use violence. I'm not a violent person, and I believe the vast majority of problems can and should be solved without violence. I mean come on - I don't even believe in spanking my kids! But just because I haven't had to use violence doens't man it doesn't work. I haen't had to use an airbag either, but that doesn't mean I thnk they are useless.

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[Cervantes]

Dangit, now you have me researching the caloric benefits of the average rat.

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"Fact: All mass murderers lack inpulse control.

Assumption: The fact that people lack impulse control makes them mass murders."

No and I never said such a thing. You are not listening to what I am saying so you are making up straw men arguments.

Lack of impulse control is a nessasary but not sufficient criterea. I said teach your kids impulse control which will remove that one crucial criterea. Once your kid learns to control his impulses the chances of him committing murder drop down to almost zero. Furthemore children who are incabable of learning how to control their impulses are mentally ill and should be treated either by a phschotherapy or drugs or worse.

"Has violence solved my poblems?"

Has violence solved your (plural) problems. Does the existence of jails, death penaly, guns, torture, spanking of children, and police brutality solved our societies problems? Are we not amongst the most violent nations on the planet? Don't we have some of the highest crime rates, highest rates of murder, highest rates of rape and other hideous crimes.

If violence is all so wonderful in solving these problems then countries which have more draconian and more violent systems should have less crime, less rape, less murder but that's not true is it?

Re:Psssh.

[Arker]

Regarding 'equivalent' I did just what you suggest, and got this. Look at 1b. "Having similar or identical effects."

Where we have two words, their is normally such a subtle difference in their meaning. Yes, there's a lot of overlap, but it's not normally exact. Wrong, for instance, is more emphatic than incorrect, and can carry moral judgements, which incorrect does not. Anyhow...

No two acts are ever equivelant in the exact sense you are using. But all acts of murder are essentially equivelant, in the meaning I am using.

As for Roosevelt, amazingly enough, John T. Flynn basically saw through the game even at the time. See The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor, written in 1945. But it was the massive declassification of archives in the 90s that allowed Robert Stinnet, a decorated veteran of the Pacific War himself, to progress beyond the informed guess-work of Flynn and really document what happened. It's really quite shocking, and nefarious above even what Flynn could bring himself to believe. Here is a short article he wrote on it, and I highly recommend his book, which sadly is not available online, but is very worth ordering.

Re:Psssh.

[Burz]

economics are driving the world, period.

The sun and the biosphere drives the world you and I are familiar with. Economics are just a pale, fetid shadow of dominant physical processes that hasn't yet learned to cope with the laws of thermodynamics and conservation. Economics says that BMW products have an exhaust pipe to "dispense waste"; The science of ecology accounts for that emission plus all other inputs and outputs as well over their complete physical lifecycles.

Economics is numerate only insofar as a clique of well-connected humans thinks that accounting for a particular physical process is "nice" and represents "value" within their small social sphere. Otherwise, it is mostly innumerate (even if its main adherents wish that air itself could be priced, bottled-up or metered to us by the breath) and what passes for copious metrics are really more of a method for drowning out truly important information that can be measured in the lab and on the dinner table. Economics is a way to consume oneself into a stupor to avoid grapling with the inevitable.

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

No and I never said such a thing. You are not listening to what I am saying so you are making up straw men arguments.

OK, fine. This is exactly what you said:

Lack of impulse control is a nessasary but not sufficient criterea. I said teach your kids impulse control which will remove that one crucial criterea.

My main issue with this is the idea that all kids can be "taught" impulse control. Maybe some people don't want to control their impulses. In that event - are you going to force them to or not? The idea that everyone would be oh so nice and non-violent if only they had the skills is ridiculous. You're assuming that mass-murderers could be taught impulse control. I think this is an over simplistic view of human nature, as I've stated before.

Has violence solved your (plural) problems. Does the existence of jails, death penaly, guns, torture, spanking of children, and police brutality solved our societies problems?

So now you're going to completely ignore my responses? I listed several examples. Wake up - I don't need to defend all violence in our society. I agree that our society is already too violent. I'm not trying to say the status quo is great, or that no changes need to be made. So just because you can point to some violence that is non-productive (e.g. 'police brutality') doesn't mean anything.

f violence is all so wonderful in solving these problems then countries which have more draconian and more violent systems should have less crime, less rape, less murder but that's not true is it?

What the freak is wrong with you? "Violence is all so wonderful"? So in your little world the options are:
1. Oppose all violence
2. Revel in violence as a fundamentally great thing

Violence is not moral. Violence is a tool. It's a destructive tool. Like explosives. Most of the time it's used for bad stuff. Most explosives are used for guns, bombs, etc. But sometimes explosives are used for the controlled demolition of a building to make way for a new one. The same is true of violence. It's almost always misused, but that doens't mean that fundamentally it can never be used for good.

I have mischaracterized your arguments once or twice now. And when called on it, I have admitted it. However you continue to completely ignore several of my points in revel in the logical la-la land of the excluded middle. You have utterly failed to address the ramifications your philosophy has for freedom and human dignity, and relied on logical fallacies and absurdly unrealistic views of human nature. When are you going to start coming to terms with the issues in your own argument?

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[theStorminMormon]

Where we have two words, their is normally such a subtle difference in their meaning.

The is a difference between what a word denotes and what it connotes. Of course there are differences between words, otherwise we wouuld only have 1, but the differences generally have to do with the connotation and not the explicit meaning. Consider "use" versus "utilize". So "equivalent" and "equal" are functionally equivalent. Observer that I could have said functionally equal and it would have meant exactly the same thing even if it sounded a little different.

No two acts are ever equivelant in the exact sense you are using.

Exactly what I'm trying to get across. Even if you aren't intendinig to do so, you're falling into a heritage of moral equivalence that says, for example, if American forces have committed rape (no matter what the circumstances) and Japanese forces have committed rape (no matter what the circumstances) then they both have equivalent degrees of guilt (as opposed to equivalent types of guilt). People who claim this are usually making some kind of "so America is in no position to criticize" or "America has no right to talk about morality" conclusion. Which doesn't follow at all even if the two do have equivalent guilt. This is what I'm explicitly rejecting.

But all acts of murder are essentially equivelant, in the meaning I am using.

I know, I've already agreed that "murder is murder" in the sense that they are qualitatively the same thing. I'm curious, though, how do you respond to my theft example. Was stealing some poor womans only car that she needs to get to work vs. some rich guys 4th Mercedes equivalent in the meaning you are using?

Thanks very much for your links regarding Pearl Harbor, by the way. I haven't read them yet, but you can rest assured I will read them. I owe you one for teaching me something I had no knowledge about!

-stormin

Re:Psssh.

[killjoe]

"My main issue with this is the idea that all kids can be "taught" impulse control. Maybe some people don't want to control their impulses. In that event - are you going to force them to or not? "

Once again you are not reading my posts. Some people can not be taught to control their impulses. These people are mentally ill and should be treated. This inability to control your impulses is what makes you a criminal, a murderer or a rapist. It's vitally important that we detect this crucial mental illness as soon as possible and treat it.

Of course some children will not WANT to control their impulses just like they don't want to take naps, don't want to eat their vagetables, don't want to share, etc. Child rearing is all about educating kids to do the things they don't want to do.

"Violence is not moral. Violence is a tool."

It's a tool that does not work. That's what you have a very hard time accepting. It doesn't work. We apply vilence every day in this country and yet we are still the most violent country in the world. If it worked then maybe I might buy your arguments but it doesn't. The evidence is all around you and yet you refuse to see it.

We keep throwing people in jail, the prisoners get routinely raped in jail, we kill people with the death penalty, our police routinely rough up suspects, and yet we have not been able to get off the top of the most violent countries. It's almost like violence itself is causing more violence. Maybe it's time to try something else that might work. Maybe it's time to stop using this tool which is clearly ineffective.

Re:Psssh.

[GeffDE]

Violence can be a very, very powerful tool. However, just like that 10,000 RPM, 20-inch circular saw in my shop, it can also be very, very dangerous for the user. Gandhi and Martin Luther King showed just how easy it is to use nonviolence in the face of violence to solve a situation. Violence, like any tool, can only be used for certain things. There is no way that I'm going to dice my veggies (or hell, slice my 2-inch he-man-steak) with it. Intelligently applied violence and coercion will breed out neither stupidity nor pacifism. Look at the number of stupid people in the world...I mean, really. But the biggest logical flaw you've made is to assume that humans are aggressive and ONLY aggressive. We also have a terrible compassionate streak. That's why, in an utterly darwinian sense, humans are unfit for survival. We have made it our crusade to enable people with great disabilities, both physical and genetic, to not only reproduce, but to continue sucking up resources.

So basically, neither you nor the above comment are spot on: both are just stridently opinionated.

nice press

[trybywrench]

I seriously doubt the military needs Gnutella for their supercomputing needs. Nice press release and good job on making the main page of slashdot to promote your project though *golf clap*.

Re:nice press

[sco08y]

I seriously doubt the military needs Gnutella for their supercomputing needs.

On the odd chance they did, the government has a convenient "get out of lawsuit" card called "national security."

Re:nice press

[stienman]

I seriously doubt the military needs Gnutella for their supercomputing needs.

Not only that, but if they wanted it, they'd simply take it. Military and national security needs almost always trump copyright. It's an empty gesture at best.

-Adam

FLGPL

[amightywind]

They call it a 'no military use' modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

I call it Copyfarleft.

Re:FLGPL

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo amightywind. I laughed. Still grinning.

Re:FLGPL

[kfg]

. . .Copyfarleft.

Definately a Clause Too Far.

KFG

Re:FLGPL

[houstonbofh]

Well, since the "Patch" is directly taken from a still protected work it is actually "copyright-violation..." But I doubt any media company would sue...

Re:FLGPL

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean violating Asimov's copyright? Or do you mean the copyright on the GPL itself? Both seem valid points.

Re:FLGPL

[superyooser]

I call this GPL the General Pacifist License

Or how about General Public Limitation (as DRM, Digital Rights Management, came to be called Digital Restrictions Management)

Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and author of the GPL, says that while he doesn't support the philosophy of "open source," neither does he believe software developers or distributors have the right to try to control other people's activities through restricting the software they run. "Nonetheless, I don't think the requirement is entirely vacuous, so we cannot disregard it as legally void."

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."

Tegel says he doesn't fully agree with the inclusion of the clause in GPU's license. "I see the point, and my personal opinion supports it, but I am not sure if it fits in a license," he says. "Like our Dutch military: I can say it is bad because it kills people and costs money. But on the other hand, we were taught by both our leftist and rightist teachers to enjoy our freedom due to the alliance freeing us from Nazis, a thing which I appreciate very much."

Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics, which states, "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That, they say, is a good thing, "because the guy was right," Tegel says, "and he showed the paradox that almost any technological development has to solve, whether it is software or an atom bomb. We must discuss now what ethical problems we may raise in the future."

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[susano_otter]

Translation:

"When asked about this, Richard Stallman emitted a word salad from his mouth parts."

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[SWroclawski]

No, he doesn't. He actually mentiones military use as something he says that the GPL must support, since we want the best software working for our military, we'd hope they'd use GNU. He says this specificallly in a GPL3 talk.

What he says there is that the license may be legally valid.

The person whose saying he agrees with their goals is the OSI person, Russ Nelson, not RMS.

Free Software must be Free Software for any use. It's a similar argument against commercial use, it's morally unacceptable to prevent anyone from using the software, commercially or militarily, or used in a classroom or by an individual.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[theStorminMormon]

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."

That pretty much sums it up. A pacifist may ask politely that the Nazis stop roasting Jews, but they would never go so far as to take effectual action.

Just the type of person I want to have my back if it's ever popular to rape and pillage Mormons again. I'm sure they'll be very sorry about the whole thing, though. I'm sure that would be great comfort.

-stormin

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[TheRaven64]

I don't know what they're calling this license, but if it has GPL in the name then they are also violating conditions imposed by copyright on the GPL itself; namely that any modified derived works must not be called the GPL and must not be associated with the FSF or GNU project.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[amliebsch]

A pacifist may ask politely that the Nazis stop roasting Jews, but they would never go so far as to take effectual action.

Not necessarily. Not all pacifists are cowards. For example, in various conflicts there were religious men who, as pacifists, believed that they had no moral authority to kill another man. That didn't stop them, however, from undertaking extremely dangerous assignments as medical corpsmen, and exposing themselves to extreme danger to help save others. Perhaps the best example is Desmond Doss, who won the Congressional Medal of Honor despite being a conscientous objector.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[theStorminMormon]

I really think this is a grand case of dodging the issue. I'm not trying to besmirch the honor of what he did, but at the same time it is really dodging the issue, isn't? In his case he could afford to be a conscientious objector because the rest of the country was fighting for him. If, for example, there had been a man holding a detonator rigged to blow up dynamite strapped to chairs that an entire family was tied to, and there was no one else around, what would he have done then? Refused to kill the guy? We can make it better. We can give Desmond Doss a handgun and put him in a torture chamber. Would have have refused to take another life it if meant watching people tortured to death in front of him? (Can you tell I was a philosophy major for a while?) While I respect his convictions, the fact remains that he didn't have to carry a weapon in WW2 because his comrades did.

Having said that, however, I have a lot more respect for pacifists who don't try to oppose the use of force by others. It's one thing to say that I, personally, as an individual, don't have the right to take another life. I think that position is wrong, but I have a deep respect for it. What annoys me is when people try to impose or argue for pacifism as a general rule and not as a personal ethic. That wouuld be like Desmond Doss not only refusing to carry a gun, but refusing to join the war at all and protesting WW2 back home. I have no patience for that.

Clearly this is an example of the latter, and not of the former. Thus my lack of compassion.

-stormin

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no violation because it's TWO licenses.
The patch antimilitary and the GPL2 considered as two different licenses.
This gnutella thing is "dual licensed" in the sense of "One license that require two others to have the right to use the program".

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[TheRaven64]

The GPL explicitly states that you may not impose any conditions not present in the GPL (in version 2. Version 3 has a small number of extra clauses that may be added for compatibility). Any license which places additional restrictions on the code is not compatible with the GPL and so can not be used at the same time.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

Desmond Doss was a medic - does that make him Dr. Doss? We all know what happened when Ms. Doss got involved ...

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[Anonymous Coward]

It can, you fucking moron.
It can if you don't mix with a gplonly software.
This is a NEW license, they don't modified the gpl, they made a new license, the license stating that they require the GPL AND the "antimilitary patch" to have the right to access the software.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[TheRaven64]

You can't require 'the GPL AND the "antimilitary patch"' since the GPL explicitly states no extra conditions not imposed by the GPL. You can create a new license that is a derived work of the GPL by removing that condition and adding the patch, but then you are trampling on the FSF's copyrights.

Re:Richard Stallman sort-of agrees

[mapkinase]

After me reading that coming from Stallman, RMS is just root-mean square deviation for me.

Hippies

[Anonymous Coward]

"I hate hippies!" - Eric Cartman

Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[Harry Balls]

...and Iran would abide by this "No Military Use" restriction.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[TheBogie]

Don't forget china please.

I'm sure they will be using these Gnutella supercomputers in some way to oppress their own people.

Our military may not be able to use this technology, but you know damn well there will be some chinese dissidents with car batteries attached to their nuts thanks to these folks.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[gentlemen_loser]

Rather naive, to believe that the United States (or ANY other nation) would abide by this "No Military Use" restriction. If it is a black program, the very existence of which is denyed, do you REALLY think they would lose sleep over that restriction? The authors included it to make a "good" statement - that's all.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[bunions]

or the US. Or any country.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[legirons]

"Rather naive, to believe that North Korea and Iran would abide by this "No Military Use" restriction."

Or that the UK or USA militaries would let license agreements prevent them doing whatever they wanted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain

e.g. remember the guy whose patented invention was used by the US Navy without being compensated for it? http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68894, 00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[theStorminMormon]

What kind of crazy Americo-Fascist are you? Are you stupid? Insane!? Of course they would. Only evil, white, imperialist men know how to lie. Iranians and North Koreans are gentle, noble savages. They, like Democrats, never lie. They just need love, understanding, and respect. If Americans would stop bombing 1/2 the world's population and coercing the other 1/2 into servitude to their vast capitalist war machine, the world would return to the natural state of idyllic tranquility that existed before the white man came.

Everyone knows that.

-stormin

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[pilkul]

So... who are you hoping to convince exactly with this straw man?

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[davmoo]

It doesn't even have to be a "black program", the military can announce the project with a full press release and this new license won't have any impact. You'll find that US law is rather broadly written in areas where the military is concerned. If its deamed by The Powers That Be to be in the best interest of national security, most patent and copyright laws do not apply to the military.

All this license does is stir controversy and give lip service. In reality it stops or prevents absolutely nothing.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[vandan]

Not as naive as believing that the US military industrial complex would refrain from using it. I think the Iranians and North Koreans deserve the benefit of the doubt. The US has destroyed said benefit.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only naive but plain stupid. This license is basically giving the advantage of open source to the bad guys only.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a programmer for the USAF. We follow copyright rules.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm retired USAF. Copyright rules are followed most of the time. Depends on the "need." I can't say more.

Re:Rather naive, to believe that North Korea...

[theStorminMormon]

It was purely for fun. I was venting.

-stormin

In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsforge adds new "No Slashdot Use" language to their site terms of service after having their servers melted.

Kent, this is Jesus

[stealie72]

What do you think a phase conjugate tracking mirror is used for, Kent?

Seriously, good for them. It's sort of DRM of a different kind (imagine is Sony made you agree that you'd never use their product to do anything to help Vivendi), but I suppose you have to draw a line somewhere.

Re:Kent, this is Jesus

[joe 155]

"Seriously, good for them"

I might be a bit more of an evangelist than most but I don't think good ever comes out of restricting anyones right to free software. What if I started an open source company and put a licence which said "no blacks can use this"... surely that would be wrong? Its the same thing. It is never good.

Re:Kent, this is Jesus

[Lord Kano]

What do you think a phase conjugate tracking mirror is used for, Kent?

The quote is "What do you think a secret phase conjugate tracking system is FOR? A big mirror makes a big beam."

LK

Re:Kent, this is Jesus

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a real genius to me.

Re:Kent, this is Jesus

[empaler]

Apples and pears.

You can choose to join or not join the military but you cannot choose your race.

Null and void under GPL?

[dedazo]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but does the GPL not expressly prohibit the restriction of rights beyond what it already provides for (distribution)? It does not prohibit granting licensees additional rights (which is what the LGPL is, basically), but it doesn't let me invent exciting new restrictions, AFAIK.

Perhaps from an idealistic POV this is commendable, but they should have used another license. I think it sets a bad precedent.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[Kelson]

If they're reusing GPL'ed code, then I believe you're right, they can't further restrict it.

However, if they're distributing their own code, then the GPL doesn't apply. In that case, they're distributing their own code under a license that's very similar to the GPL, and can include whatever restrictions they want.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[giorgiofr]

Agreed, and that's exactly the reason why RMS is pushing GPL v. 3. If these guys used existing GPL software and are restricting its use beyond what's permitted by v. 2, they show they understand nothing of the GNU license itself.
As far as your idealistic POV is concerned, let me paraphrase:
First they came for DRM, but I said nothing because I am no DRM lover.
Then they came for the military, but I said nothing because I am no soldier...

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[Lord Kano]

Therein lies the difficulty. If they have modified the license, then it is no longer the GPL.

LK

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[amliebsch]

Aha, but the GPL itself is still a copyrighted text, and they can't simply create a derivative work without permission to do so.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[Strolls]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but does the GPL not expressly prohibit the restriction of rights beyond what it already provides ...

It's irrelevant what the GPL provides, because the authors aren't releasing their software under the GPL. They're releasing their software under a license which contains this clause but which is otherwise similar to the GPL.

The GPL has no authority here, only the conditions laid down by the copyright holders, in this case the software authors. One of those conditions might be "you're allowed to distribute this as much as you like as long as you also distribute the source code and keep it under the same license" another might be "you may modify the program as much as you like" but in this case neither of these conflicts (boom boom!) with the pacifism clause. The license (presumably) does not include the part of the GPL which would conflict with the pacifism clause.

Stoller

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[Millenniumman]

They are relicensing it to their own license, which is like GPL, but with this clause. They're being hypocritical jerks, but doing it legally.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[sumdumass]

Not only does it directly prohibit it, They didn't even take out the parts about the scope of the license.

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

And we know from the famos clerifications that the GPLv3draft2 the copying is ment to mean an act of distributing it not obtaining it or running the software.

To "propagate" a work means doing anything with it that requires permission under applicable copyright law, except executing it on a computer, or making modifications that you do not share. Propagation includes copying, distribution (with or without modification), making available to the public, and in some countries other activities as well. To "convey" a work means any kind of propagation that enables other parties to make or receive copies, excluding sublicensing

Which states that the intent of the GPL is not to cover running the program or changing it if you don't distribute it.

So this "no military use" is only if the military modifies it and/or distributes it.

But something more interesting is they cannot use the GPL in this way. The copyright notice specificly say Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
                                              51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

I wonder of vanderlust of enforcing the copyright terms of the license would be carried to this?

Ps, Vanderlust while evidently a real name, was used to associate the vast wandering that apears to be used in enforcing the GPL and copyright. Sometimes though, it is just a matter of time instead of what apears to be not wanting to enforce it.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[TheRaven64]

If they used any GPL code, then the GPL would apply, and their license would be illegal.

If their license is a derived work of the GPL, then the GPL's copyright applies. The FSF grants you the right to create derived works of the GPL as long as you do not call them GPL and do not associate them with the FSF or GNU project. It doesn't sound like they are meeting these conditions.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[sumdumass]

Thats right,

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                              Version 2, June 1991

  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
                                              51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA
  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[spitzak]

You are however allowed to make your own license that says "this code is covered as per the terms of the GPL (see below) with the following additional restrictions and following additional exception" and then list any number of modifications (either additional restrictions like "no military use" or exceptions to copyright such as "you can link this code without giving away the source", following by an attachement of the unmodified GPL. This is done all the time.

Re:Null and void under GPL?

[Workaphobia]

Ug. I think this was a bad move on the part of the developers. Unless I'm mistaken in my understanding of the GPL, this little addition costs the program license-compatibility with the rest of the GPL body of software, and IMO unity is very important to the free software community. While it should be legal if it consists of all original code (unless they made a technical screwup by reusing the actual text of the GPL itself), they've made a pointless statement against the military at the expense of additional confusion and headaches.

Also, was it absolutely necessary for the developers to make a joke out of this by quoting Asimov? I can just imagine lawyers spending hours over a science fiction novel trying to gain some context for interpretation. This additional clause is nowhere near as well-established as the rest of the license, and if I cared about this particular program then I would worry that the clause might introduce a loophole or ambiguity, allowing for abuse.

> [...] does the GPL not expressly prohibit the restriction of rights beyond what it already provides for (distribution)? It does not prohibit granting licensees additional rights (which is what the LGPL is, basically) [...]

I thought the LGPL was an expansion of rights that would *not* normally be allowed by the GPL, or else the GPL would not be famously "viral". I believe the preamble itself says something about imposing unremovable conditions to ensure that those you distribute the program to are given the same rights as you were (and no more or less).

Wouldn't be the first time.

[Kelson]

I seem to recall that WarFTP (an FTP server for Windows) was licensed such that it was free for personal or commercial use, but forbidden for government use.

Patch for no military use

[joshdick]

Below is what was added to the GPL:

                          PATCH FOR NO MILITARY USE

This patch restricts the field of endeavour of the Program in such a way that this
license collides with paragraph 6 of the Open Source Definition. Therefore, this
modified version of the GPL is no more OSI compliant.

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a
ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.
This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.

You can find the full text of the license at: http://gpu.sourceforge.net/GPL_license_modified.tx t

Re:Patch for no military use

[RichMan]

/silly

Printing the progam is prohibited by this new license:

1) total printed output posses a mass significant to harm a human when dropped, thrown or otherwise imparted with velocity relative to the human.

2) paper reperesents a proven hazard to humans in the form of paper cuts.

As both forms can be used to harm a humans, both represent weaponization of the progam.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Peter La Casse]

That doesn't sound like a "no military use" patch to me. The military does lots of things other than killing people. Sometimes they kill robots.

I don't see a lot of direct-harm-to-humans use for this software, and I don't see how the license change affects indirect harm to humans. How would this license prevent someone from using this software to develop more powerful atomic bombs, which themselves don't actually use the software when they harm human beings? How would this license prevent someone from using this software to control the engine of an armored vehicle? It's not the engine that harms people, it's the weapons that the vehicle carries that harm people. I suspect that the authors did not consult a lawyer when making this new license.

On the flip side: does copyright infringement harm human beings?

Re:Patch for no military use

[TwilightSentry]

Taking that one step further, what if one researcher uses a program with this license to produce a breakthrough, and another scientist then uses this new knowledge to construct the world's most powerful bomb?

On a second note, many of Isamov's books that included his three laws dealt with showing their major flaws...

Re:Patch for no military use

[spauldo]

Maybe this program will be used to freeze history into the parallel universe where no intelligent species other than humans evolves in the galaxy.

Then it'll transfer itself to the moon and hide out for twenty thousand years.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Anonymous Coward]

nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed

Erm... so does this mean that you can't not use your cluster for disease research?

Re:Patch for no military use

[Deathanatos]

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.

That's "non-military"? If I'm the military, I'm saying, "my country is 'threatened' by 'terrorists/korean missiles/rabid pandas/cornflakes', and to prevent harm to the citizens, we must use said GPL software to 'protect' ourselves (by killing the invaders)."

Seriously, did none of the slashdotters watch I, Robot? That same idea can be shifted to the army. We must either protect many by sacraficing a few, or protect our people by killing theirs. (As they are a threat - hence "by inaction", humans would be hurt.)

Even if such a case made it to court, would the courts (in a crisis/public feelings) side against the military? Can open source even fight such a case? And who's to say the military won't just make it all into secret shit.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Just Some Guy]

Therefore, this modified version of the GPL is no more OSI compliant.

Yep. Out of curiosity, do they link against any GPL software? Because if they do, they're in copyright violation and are required to cease distribution at once.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Kjella]

You'd think someone that uses Asimov would have actually read the damn book about the fallacies of the three laws. "Through inaction" can be interpreted so wide you can ram a truck through it, for example you could easily use it in a Patriot missile system (designed to intercept other missiles) and anything else would permit human beings to be harmed through inaction. Or hell, that it can be used in nukes because a Mutually Assured Destruction aka MAD policy saves lives, because noone would start a war then, hence lives saved. In any case, it's no longer GPL-compatible (or even OSI-compliant) so it is for any intents and purposes a completely separate, proprietary (that's the opposite of open remember?) license. What's the news in that?

Re:Patch for no military use

[littlem]

This patch restricts the field of endeavour of the Program in such a way that this license collides with paragraph 6 of the Open Source Definition. Therefore, this modified version of the GPL is no more OSI compliant. ... You can find the full text of the license at: http://gpu.sourceforge.net/GPL_license_modified.tx t

To summarize: this is a project released under a non-Free license, and is also not Open Source according to the OSI. I hope that Sourceforge (which claims to provide hosting and resources only to Free software) will immediately stop hosting their project files.

This is a violation of Stallman's Freedom 0 - military users don't even have the freedom to run the software, let alone modify it! Sourceforge should take a stand on principle.

Re:Patch for no military use

[BoneFlower]

Could it be run for financial analysis of a company that leads to said company laying off half their workforce? Thats certainly a harm to those workers. Even if it prevents the entire company from closing and harming everyone, laying off someone is certainly harmful to that person, if only temporarily.

Re:Patch for no military use

[cachimaster]

Seriously, it says nothing of the military, only about harming human beings.
The license can be used by soldiers to protect us from a alien invasion, or a robot armada ala Matrix. Just like Asimov intended it.

Re:Patch for no military use

[yndrd1984]

Great! I now have precident for my "Patch for no use by blacks, gays, Jews, hippies, people that use the word 'like' incorrectly, and those that don't understand the purpose of the Three Laws of Robotics". I mean, you try to discriminate, and there's always some liberal making you hire people based on merit, but they might let this one through because it's anti-military. Then when I get sued for my "Can't be used by companies with women CEOs" clause, I can point out that we've already decided that there's no problem with picking and choosing who gets to use my code.

As for the horrid warping of the Three Laws, the whole point to the series was that morality is too complex to be described by a small set of binary statements. They were written as an example fo something that sounds very good, but is completely unworkable. Anyone who's actually read Asimov should understand that they were a warning about what not to do.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Igmuth]

Not only does it collied with the definition of Open Source, it also violates the terms of use of the GPL itself.

(from:http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#M odifyGPL)
Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license?
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).

In short, if you are going to change it, you can't mention the GPL in the license. The authors may think they are making a moral stand, but they are violating copyright (of the GPL) by doing so.

Re:Patch for no military use

[jesup]

Umm... That clause doesn't fly legally. IANAL, but the GPL is a restriction on distribution, not on use. As such, adding a clause restricting use probably has no real effect. The GPL is not a EULA, and so it's hard/impossible to turn it into one. You could add a separate EULA, but that would probably require a different framework, etc.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Walles]

This clause is all about what you mean by harm.

The RIAA think sharing copyrighted music is harmful. Since that's probably what most people use Gnutella clients for, this could just as well be labeled "Patch for not allowing anybody at all to use this software".

Re:Patch for no military use

[James McGuigan]

There are only two types of people I can't stand, those who don't respect other peoples cultures... and the dutch.

Re:Patch for no military use

[Anonymous Coward]

But we're not 'harming', we're 'liberating'!

One down, two to go

[wrenhunter]

Nice one, only two more laws to go. Well, and sentience.

Logical shortcut...

[Lord Kano]

I'm going to make a Godwinian example to prove my point.

So, what if we had another Nazi-like regime that was about to take over the planet and for the "good guys" to stop them they needed a quick workable supercomputing solution?

The "bad guys" won't care about violating a software license to achieve their nefarious ends, but this kind of thing only handicaps the "good guys". To put it another way, evil people don't care about breaking one more rule to do really bad things.

LK

Re:Logical shortcut...

[giorgiofr]

Oh come on, why do you have the spoil the fun. Let them live in their little world and make their statement, fight t3h man! It makes them happy and costs you nothing :)

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Anonymous Coward]

When shit hits the fan, there wont be any establishment to uphold the license anyway ;)
i think this is more of a political statement than an actual hindrance to military use.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[jd142]

Well, if the license says that "through inaction permit any human being to be harmed" then it could be argued that if compiling and running the software would prevent harm to individuals, say the Nazis carting tens of thousands of people off to the ovens, a person would be in violation of the license by not running it.

Which brings up the conundrum in the 3 laws:

A robot is in a situation where the only way to save 100 people is to kill 1 person. If the robot does nothing -- inaction -- 100 people die. The only way to prevent the deaths is to harm 1 person. What happens? Head explode? It's been too many decades since I've read the original Robot stories to remember if this was covered or not.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[patrixmyth]

Perhaps you haven't considered that any military that wished to use the software could simply add a "signing statement" onto the license before use. I do that all the time now. Before I click OK, I fire off my exceptions to the license in an email to their tech support or webmaster email address (whichever I find first) with the provisions that I don't recognize as being valid and won't enforce. That, or I cross my fingers and hold my breath, so clicking ok doesn't count. Please, you all should really keep up to date with the latest in Constitutional advances!

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, using things like "logic" and "thinking" to make the hippy pacifists look foolish. Thats not nice.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[91degrees]

Uhm... If I was leading a band if heroic freedom fighters, I'd imagine I'd be willing to make a few compromises on breaking an occasional law.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[the_humeister]

These laws were eventually preceded with a zeroth law during on the of the robot books. The situation occurred when some anti-Earth conspiracist starts a nuclear chain reaction such that the Earth would be uninhabitable in 150 years, just about enough time for all 9 trillion Earth humans to leave. Anyways, two of the robots that were awair of this plot come to the realization that there needs to be a zeroth law to supercede the first three law, with the zeroth law mandating the preservation of humanity.

So given the situation you presented the robot would kill that one person either way. However depending on which robot you're talking about, the robot may be fine after killing that one person (is aware of zeroth law) or may functionally deteriorate after killing that one person (not aware of zeroth law).

Re:Logical shortcut...

[theStorminMormon]

Yeah, but it's a stupid political statement. Just because you know it will never be put into practice doesn't make it smart.

"I hereby dictate that this program be only used to make the happy monkeys flying out of my butt distribute cash to all the downtrodden of the world."

How's that for a political statement?

-stormin

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why a conservative revolt is impossible. The government would simply declare the revolutionaries to be terrorists. No conservative could possibly stomach being a terrorist, so the rebellion would disappear.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[91degrees]

An ultra-liberal revolt would be similarly doomed to failure. The glorius revolutionn would be adapted to take into account all walks of life, the manfesto would be modified so it was acceptable to all, and what was going to be a bloody takeover and storming of the winter palace eventually turns into a leafleting campaign.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[corbettw]

Do you mean that when free software is outlawed, only outlaws will use free software?

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Lord Kano]

We didn't mind at all when Bill Clinton likened us to terrorists.

LK

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Anonymous Coward]

A) The government is not obligated to honor intellectual property rights, especially in an emergency.

B) The government can rationalize that any likely use of the program would not involve the taking of any life, and may in fact save some lives.

C) The government already has plenty of supercomputers, probably a great many on black budget.

But seriously, if you guys are so concerned about not being able to use some utility they probably would not trust, nor use anyway for military operations: You can always program your own little variant of distributed computing management. You can even put a clause in it saying "No hippy pinko lefty socialist enablers may use this program!" if you so please. Good luck holding up in court (same with above).

...it's a free market folks.

Re:Logical shortcut...

[Lord Kano]

Way to spectacularly miss my point.

The US Government still has classified files about things that occurred during WWII. If they really wanted to violate the license agreement, they would and no one on the outside would be the wiser. We understand that. What I'm getting at is that not only is it foolish and idealistic to put such restrictions on something but it's dangerously foolish and idealistic to do so.

LK

The government will happily agree...

[mark0]

The government will happily agree... and include a signing statement that says they may not obey/enforce the law if they see fit not to. Then classify the use of the software so you don't find out. Then tap the phones of those who disagree..

Seriously, what teeth does this have considering recent history?

Re:The government will happily agree...

[kfg]

Seriously, what teeth does this have considering recent history?

None.

Nor do I believe the developers believe it has teeth.

What they've done is the equivilent of making a movie, to win an Oscar, to make a political speech when accepting the award, to get people talking about their "issue."

Looks like it's working, even if it is a doofyass way of going about things.

KFG

Re:The government will happily agree...

[stinerman]

They don't even have to go that far.

Since copyright is government-granted, there is no reason why they can't simply recind the copyright for whatever reason they wish.

Re:The government will happily agree...

[jafac]

Bushie would have to convey his immunity to a defense contractor who could then break that GPL license to develop a "weapon".

That would be pretty unprecedented. Not impossible, but I think it would be unlikely.

oookie

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I wonder if they realize that most militaries not only attack, but they also defend.

Re:oookie

[jazman_777]

I wonder if they realize that most militaries not only attack, but they also defend.

"War is the continuation of politics by other means." --Clausewitz

Re:oookie

[Dutchmaan]

I think a lot of people get confused on what is attacking and what is defending these days. The line is kind of blurry.

Re:oookie

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if they realize that most militaries not only attack, but they also defend.

They would have made a distinction, but since 2003 defend has been re-defined by a signing statement to hold the opposite meaning. (If you don't believe this holds to today, look at the terms of the cease-fire signed on Friday.)

Re:oookie

[jmv]

I wonder if you realize that there's no clear line between offensive and defensive applications. Better armor for soldiers means they can attack more aggressively. A missile shield means you can fire missile at the neighbors without being hit. And so on.

Re:oookie

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"I wonder if you realize that there's no clear line between offensive and defensive applications."

If wonder if you'd really give a shit about that distinction if your country was suddenly invaded.

Re:oookie

[jmv]

Yes, especially if it was invaded for "defensive" purposes.

Re:oookie

[Jamie Lokier]

Have you noticed that every military operation is called 'defense' by the people doing it? Have you noticed that every country has a 'defense department', and no 'attack department'?

There's a theory that everyone who engages in hostile behaviour is, from their own perspective, defending themselves or something they care about...

Which is why blaming and criticising is rarely effective at stopping it...

Re:oookie

[Anonymous Coward]

"War is a racket." --Smedley Butler

Re:oookie

[mapkinase]

Especially, the most powerful militaries in the world, like US, Israel or Russia.

Re:oookie

[Anonymous Coward]

Being sent halfway around the world to kill people you've never met in your life -- calling that "defense" is just a bit of a stretch, no?

(When you consider the absolute certainty of "accidental" civilian killings, such as in Iraq or Lebanon to cite a current example, the claim of defense is downright absurd.)

Re:oookie

[Dread_ed]

The real irony is that withouth modern military power these guys would be too busy kowtowing to the local feudal lord and lamenting how their children had been pressed into military action and slave labor to even think about programming an operating system for a service based industry.

Like it or not, the personal freedoms that they express by choosing to work in a field like programming would not be as easy or as lucrative to pursue without the stability that a regulated modern military defense force provides. It is effortless for them to scoff and declare themselves "holier than thou," but when the existence of your entire profession is inextricably dependent upon the service that you are ridiculing, it makes you look a bit unappreciative and downright stupid.

Speaks Out Of Both Sides of Mouth....

[Black-Man]

"But on the other hand, we were taught by both our leftist and rightist teachers to enjoy our freedom due to the alliance freeing us from Nazis, a thing which I appreciate very much."

Oh... he appreciates being "freed" from the Nazis. Nice of him. So I guess the "Nazis" were the only group worth going to war over in the history of the planet - and he feels that situations like it will never occur again. I always wondered how a pacifist felt about Hitler.

wankery indeed

[nuzak]

Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics

Have any of them actually read I, Robot? I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?

Is it really bad form to suggest such interpretations as a question? Can you hear me now? Where's the bee*whump*. Sorry.

Re:wankery indeed

[bunions]

Yeah, I'm not real sure those guys read the book.

Also:

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

I don't get the italic part. Does the program in it's current state somehow obey the First Law? How is it supposed to know someone is in danger?

Re:wankery indeed

[sog_abq]

The problem is that your suggestion is full of thought and reason. Therefore it isn't sexy enough to be heard by the brainwashed masses.

Re:wankery indeed

[Registered Coward v2]

Have any of them actually read I, Robot?

Why read when you can watch the movie?

- R Daniel Oliver

Re:wankery indeed

[shystershep]

If you're referring to the Asimov character (who was not in I, Robot in any case) the correct name is Robot Daneel Olivaw, not Daniel Oliver. Just FYI.

Re:wankery indeed

[langelgjm]

I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?

No. Well, maybe. I never read I, Robot, but I did read The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel, and I feel the same way you do whenever someone points to the laws as an example of something to strive towards in implementation.

From a plain English reading of the text "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed", I am forced to conclude that the program will not through inaction allow any human being to be harmed. This isn't just silly; it's nonsensical. The Kwik-E-Mart's being robbed, and the program, through inaction (since it's running on a computer in another state, and has nothing to do with a convenience store), fails to save Apu from being shot in the leg. Has it violated the terms of it's own license? What does this clause even mean?

Re:wankery indeed

[JorDan Clock]

I think he did that on purpose, so that people that understood the joke would catch it, but others would just see a perfectly acceptable name...

Re:wankery indeed

[dmatos]

Granted, parsing that sentence is terrible, but maybe you can consider it as "nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed when normal running of the program would prevent said harm." If a human were to get shot in the leg on the other side of the earth from a robot, and there was nothing that robot could have done to possibly prevent it, it would not suffer any damage or distress.

If you're looking for a real-world example, consider a program which controls an unstable equilibrium of some terrible neutron emitting substance. Editing the program so that you have a clause like:

if entersRoom(liberalHippie)
                STOP
endif

the program itself isn't harming the liberal hippie. It's the out-of-control neutron flux that's doing the harm, but that's only occurring because the program is unnaturally inactive.

Blech. Typing that up left a bad taste in my mouth.

Re:wankery indeed

[FuckTheModerators]

Parent says: "...the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma..."
SatanicPuppy further up says " ...but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick. "

So what it seems to come down to is intent. As always. What we need is some sort of super-AI/lie-detector worked into the GPL, to ask one simple question:

"Would you kill for an abstraction?"

Anyone honestly answering yes may not use the software. So, people who would kill another for differing gods, political viewpoints, etc. would be SOL as far as the license. Autonomous self-aware licensing, dammit. That's what we need.

I didn't want the grapes behind the pod bay door anyway.

Re:wankery indeed

[dodobh]

Why watch when you can be?

R Daneel Oliwav

Re:wankery indeed

[SnowZero]

Well, obviously they didn't read Robots and Empire.

The whole thing is crazy anyway, becase the rest of the GPL only talks about distribution, not execution. The only thing that would remotely fit with the GPL is to forbid distribution of a derivative that could harm people. I also expect them to get sued when their (unmodified) program, through inaction, fails to help someone who gets hurt.

Re:wankery indeed

[jesterzog]

Have any of them actually read I, Robot? I swear to god, am I in some tiny minority who doesn't believe that this book was all about promulgating the infallible virtue of these three laws, but was instead a series of parables about the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma?

Perhaps. Whether this is true or not, I'm certain that Asimov himself is on record as saying (probably in one of his intros) that the Three Laws are primarily a story device for interesting fiction. When he got started writing robot stories, he was most interested in writing stories that weren't about robotic terror machines going crazy. Many people were afraid of and felt threatened by robots in the 1950's.

Developing the Three Laws of Robotics and treating them as un-breakable was a convenient way to put boundaries on things (without having to explain their implementation). It made it easier to justify his robots acting the way they did, creating new and interesting stories as a result. By the end of it, Asimov was also on record as saying something along the lines of that he thought he'd probably explored all the possibilities of how robots might react in different situations if they were constrained by these laws.

Asimov was probably one of the earliest people to recognise that robots and machines could be beneficial to humanity, and didn't need to replace humanity. He got his message across by convincing people that they could be built with the primary intention of helping people. Trying to apply the laws to reality, however, is asking for trouble.

Re:wankery indeed

[westlake]

The problem is that your suggestion is full of thought and reason. Therefore it isn't sexy enough to be heard by the brainwashed masses.

It isn't the masses who misunderstand and misquote Asimov or Gandhi at every opportunity, it is the Geek.

Re:wankery indeed

[yndrd1984]

"Would you kill for an abstraction?" Anyone honestly answering yes may not use the software.

people who would kill another for differing gods, political viewpoints, etc. would be SOL as far as the license.

Would 'freedom' count as an abstraction? Would 'pro-democracy' count as a political viewpoint? You end up letting slavery-loving (but wouldn't kill for it) people use your software and at the same time preventing strong advocates of emacipation from doing the same.

I think you just proved the point: you're "codifying morality into inflexible dogma", all the way down to one hard-coded rule - and it sucks.

Re:wankery indeed

[Dread_ed]

I never saw it as "the failings that result from codifying morality into inflexible dogma" but more as the possible/probable permutations of the interaction of intelligence, reason, and free will with respect to an overarching absolute. For instance, submission to the laws and extrapolation from the laws by Daneel, a creature with intelligence above and beyond humanity, results in a variety of things that could be categorized as both good and bad.

I did not see it as simplistic as an blanket condemnation of dogmatism, but rather an exploration of the human condition with cleverly dressed up people called "robots" in order to allow the reader to be a bit more objective. In my mind it was more analogous to "what will people do when they run up against obstacles" than a "morality play" about the obstacles themselves.

Fantastic writing will do that though. Everone comes out of it with something slightly different, each feeling enriched and as if they have learned something about themselves and the world as well.

Anyways, where's the zereoth law in these guys' license? Sometimes killing people is a Good Thing or at least necessary to uphold the integrity of the first law. Sheesh!

And I'm sure

[llamalicious]

And I'm sure that a simple statement in a text file is going to stop someone for using the software for military uses that you'll never hear/know about.
Not to troll (ok, maybe a little), and I know most agencies take licensing seriously, but a "no military" clause is basically technologically meaningless.

It certainly does get their point across though.

And?

[chrismcdirty]

Who exactly is going to enforce that the military can not use it? Who will make sure that it's not in use in the thousands of military compounds throughout the world? Is somebody going to sue whichever military decides to use it?

Someone's law.

[27,000]

Didn't even make it a page before a comparison with the Nazis.

Regardless! Nothing more than immature arm waving here. If their modifications weren't in direct opposition to the GPL (and thus newsworthy), this would be no more notable than a blurb on the project's home site. 'You can't hug children with nuclear arms!' Some points awarded for original distribution.

Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction.

[jellomizer]

Politically charging you code license is just a bad and stupid idea.

First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open, It is open just as long as I like you idea.

Second your making opponents where you don't have to. Your trying to get the government to use Open Source for it normal use but you get a huge blocking because the military (part of the government) is opposing this move because they cannot access the software.

Third it won't change anything except you will have to pay more taxes. Stopping your code for a group of people will only cause more money to go to the military because they need it to code their own version.

Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use. Example all this extra features could be used to calculate the safest way to deploy food to 3rd world countries, increasing distribution and reducing risk to troops.

Fifth you just look bad and hypocritical, you are all up for Openness freedom of speech except for when it says something you don't like.

It is a dangerious direction, so I can make code free to use for anyone except for people who are going to use it for making Fast Food, because we all know Fast Food is bad. Making programs as a political statement is just dangerous and will lead to a class based society, where there will be one group who can have some thing, and other who can't just because of their beliefs.

Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[drinkypoo]

First of all, it's not an "anti-military" clause. It's an act of sheer stupidity. It's an attempt to take one of Asimov's laws of robotics and enshrine it. "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed" - this is sheer stupidity and folly. I think the laws of robotics have been sufficiently debased already so I won't go into that here.

Now I'm sure there are tons of you jumping up and down and calling me a troll or a flamer for saying this. You're saying that all war is bad, that of course technology should protect people... And you're on crack. I think we can all safely agree that stopping Hitler from conquering the world was a good thing, just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing. The simple fact is that in this world there are certain questions which can only be answered with violence.

But more importantly, what this really means is that if some of this code is used in a program, then the whole program must carry the license. If that program is involved in industrial automation, and the automation kills someone, are you in violation of the license? Arguably, the hardware allowed someone to be killed, and the program did nothing.

Finally, governments do not give one tenth of one fuck about what these guys' license says. If either one of them actually became a problem to the US government for example, he'd be off to gitmo (or a similar, but less heavily encumbered installation) before you could say "civil liberties".

So basically, this is pure masturbation. At its best it is designed to engender debate about the value of putting such a clause in a license. I do not think this is a best-case. I think this is more of a mainline case, in which the guys trying to do it are just fools.

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[Stumbles]

So basically, this is pure masturbation. Yeah your exactly right.

Seems to me it dishonors the spirit of the GPL.

In any event. So what now? Someone gets a hard on against "pick your religon" or "pick your style of government" or "I don't like x political party" and and inserts a similar clause? This whole idea is asinine. So I have to ask these guys if they're so against violating human rights and war certainly does that, why did they not add China to their "ban list"?

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[WilliamSChips]

It's been tried before. It didn't work there either.

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[theStorminMormon]

The simple fact is that in this world there are certain questions which can only be answered with violence.

I don't know man, I think it's kind of mean to answer a question with violence. I'm not just nit-picking. I agree with your post, but I think it's worth pointing out the reason that pacifism doesn't work: it only takes 1 party to engage in violence. It's hard to have an argument with one person. It's hard to have a "fight" in the ongoing sense of a cycle of retaliations with one person.

But it only takes one person to pick up a gun, and kill another person. Because of the fundamentally unilateral nature of violence, pacifism is inherently flawed. The only way to coerce someone to not engage in violence or to stop engaging in violene is, regrettably, with more violence. This is just a fact. Pacifists don't like that fact (and, in their defense, it's certainly not a nice fact) but no matter how they try not to see the fact, it's still there.

-stormin

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[kz45]

" just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing"

you started out alright..but this is rediculous. Comparing Bush to Hitler is laughable. If Bush really was like a hitler, there wouldn't be too many left-wing US citizens alive.

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[drinkypoo]

Comparing Bush to Hitler is laughable.

Arguing that I'm trying to draw a meaningful and direct comparison between Hitler and Bush based on my prior comment, beyond their overall goal (world domination to make themselves feel better) is equally laughable.

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[RexRhino]

This is a bit off topic... but I had to address some extreme stupidity:

topping Hitler from conquering the world was a good thing, just as stopping Bush from doing it today would be a good thing.

G. W. Bush is having a hard enough time holding on to two small countries, one of which had no organized military, the other which was essentially a third world country largly disarmed after a previous war and 10 years of sanctions (and in both cases Bush had significant help from allies). The thought that there is any danger, whatsoever, of G. W. Bush conquering the world, or even conquering another poorly armed isolated third world country, is laughable. G. W. Bush couldn't conquer New Orleans, let alone conquer the world.

In terms of the cost of the conflict, Bush's little "adventures" barely even measure up to the Second Chechen War happening roughly at the same time, or the Dafur Conflict happening at roughly the same time, let alone something like WWII.

I am no fan of the Dubya, but please try to keep some sort of sense of scale. In history, G. W. Bush will be remembered as a second-rate wannabe dictator... In the halls of infamy, maybe he will be in the running with a Pinochet or Papa Doc Duvalier, but certainly not at the level of an Idi Amin or Castro, let alone a Hitler or Stalin or such.

Finally, governments do not give one tenth of one fuck about what these guys' license says.

Ok, so on this point and most of the rest of the post, you 100% hit the nail on the head. Maybe I am being a bit of a jerk with the "extreme stupidity" comment... But please, remember Godwin - Hitler comments are the spark that ignites flamewars :)

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did this parent get modded so high. This is flagrant anti-Bush nonesense. American citizens are not being rounded for opposing the government. The few, as in single-handful at best, American citizens or legal residents held at Gitmo were captured with non-uniformed enemy combatants (non-uniformed combatants, i.e. violation of Geneva Convention).

Re:Why? Because they're idealistic suckers.

[empaler]

What, they've chosen who they want excluded from their free service. The military agencies who have rushed into getting this and feel burned can get a refund.

Counter-productive

[Doctor Faustus]

If restriction this has any effect whatsoever, it's going to be to kill people. War has gotten steadily less destructive as technology has advanced, because fewer people are needed to fight. Lately, this has accelerated as more accurate weapons have cut down on civilian casualties.

This sort of restriction may get you out of being a indirect participant, but it's never going to prevent any combat from occurring.

Re:Counter-productive

[solanum]

I don't think so. Look at Iraq, more than 30,000 civilians killed, under 10,000 military. Look at Lebanon, 1000+ civilians killed, under 300 military Now go look at similar figures for the first world war say. What has happened is that the TYPE of warfare has changed and the inequality in armaments between the west (particularly the US) and the rest of the world has become larger than ever, so when the west wages war the civilian deaths are on the other side...

Re:Counter-productive

[gzunk]

Technology allows you to fight an "unbalanced" war - which, if you have the upper hand, is the only war you want to fight. It allows you to kill far more of the enemy for each death of your own. I think this probably increases conflict overall, as the high-tech powers are more willing to fight wars in which they suffer relativly few casualties, but the enemy suffers considerably more.

If everyone had exactly the same tech, then I bet that there would be far far fewer wars.

Re:Counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost, but not quite.

Because the increasing inequalities in armaments of the West vs. Rest of the World(tm) (Which is a ridiculous comparison anyhow - China, for example, isn't Iraq), civillian casualties are far, far, far less than they normally would be.

Cruise missile on Al Qaeda Operative's head vs. carpet bombing Iraqi cities. Cruise missile may kill 100, carpet bombing would kill thousands, if not tens of thousands.

Of course, this trend will go straight out the window once a conflict on the scale of a world war happens again.

Re:Counter-productive

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, that is 30,000 civilians reported in English-speaking media. Probably many, many more actually killed.

No use.

[Anonymous Coward]

If this was something that the military really thought would be useful to them they'd rip up the license faster than you can say "National interest".

Or to make a more common example, do you really think the military publishes secret software development just because its derived from GPL code?

Re:No use.

[amliebsch]

do you really think the military publishes secret software development just because its derived from GPL code?

They wouldn't be required to, unless dropping the entire computer inside of a JDAM counts as "code distribution".

Re:No use.

[novus ordo]

If that is code distribution, then I don't want to see it "open sourcing."

So what is harm?

[Rakishi]

So let's see what their program cannot be used for. The first obvious one is military work however that is simply the direct harm part. Now the inaction part is the fun one, what is defined as inaction? Is inaction using the program for something that doesn't prevent harm? If one prevents some harm but doesn't work to prevent greater harm is one violating the clause? Is harm quantitative as a result? There is always a use that prevents harm to someone, are all other uses barred? So can I use it for cancer research but not for making a work of entertainment, the later arguably wastes resources that could be sued for work like the former?

Then it becomes even more amusing, what about harm to prevent greater harm. Cancer drugs cause harm yet are potentially voluntary and possibly prevent a greater harm. Is cancer research barred as it will cause harm to people? Are all drugs with any side effects barred as well as they too may cause harm to people?

How direct does the harm have to be? The program itself doesn't harm people usually, even in a military role, but may lead to other events that harm people. Is all university robotics research barred? It's results may lead to robots for the military.

Re:So what is harm?

[Clever7Devil]

And the disturbances caused by his fingers typing the license caused a slight cross-breeze, causing the now-infamous butterfly to have to flap its wings . . .

Re:So what is harm?

[Rakishi]

Well the thing with a license is that it's a legal document, and there is a reason legal documents are so pedantically explicit. Ambiguity simply means that someone will get screwed when a half decent lawyer gets involved. Given the sheer amount of lawsuit-happiness in the US I would never want to use software that is so full of potential legal landmines. It even fails in its desired goal as the ambiguity could probably be used by someone to defend themselves from a lawsuit for breaching the license.

Remember in the US court system it's not about who is right but about who runs out of money first. Last I checked the government has a lot of money.

Evil Geniuses...

[__aaclcg7560]

I guess I'm going to have to declare my nuclear bomb research on a cluster of PS2 consoles as a "hobby" instead. The IRS isn't going to like that.

OSI

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Is Russ president of the OSI? I remember that he was for a while, but I thought he stepped down in favour of someone else.

Asimov's laws

[wileyAU]

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

One of the constant threads that ran through Asimov's robot stories were how the first law of robotics (of which this is a derivative) can still be up to interpretation. The military could simply come back with a "zeroth" law, that they're working for the good of humanity, not just humans.

Re:Asimov's laws

[Anonymous Coward]

may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

Without much strain, I think anybody could easily interpret this as meaning "I may not harm a human being ... OR I can allow a human being to come to harm through inaction."

Inaction

[koreaman]

the program and its derivative work will [not] ... through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.

What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Good job tacking science fiction rules to govern robots onto a fucking piece of legalese where it makes no sense.

Feh

[CheapEngineer]

Riiiiight.

This looks to be as effective as those sad little towns here in the midwest whose City Councils decide to vote themselves a "Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone" or resolutions showing their displeasure at the Iraq War.

I'm sure Rummy is concerned.

I'm sure GWB will follow *that* law, since he does such a good job writing himself "get out of jail free" cards attached to every bill he signs...

I vote that a woodcut of this GPL variant be placed in the Dictionary next to the definition of "pointless".

CheapEngineer

Everyone talks about freedom...

[Richard_at_work]

while slipping restrictions in the side door. This is not free, Free, FrEe or any other type.

Re:Everyone talks about freedom...

[generic-man]

That's good, because our Commander in Chief can't get out through the side door :)

Nice Wording

[Bryansix]

Because they used the law straight from Asimov's mouth they shot themselves in the foot.

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.

Let us focus on the second half of the sentence and you will see my point. "nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." So in otherwords, this CAN be used by the military if the military is using it for something like the Missile Defense Agency.

Re:Nice Wording

[Anonymous Coward]

It also means that the code cannot be used in a robot unless the robot is programmed to roam around and save humans full-time.

Re:Nice Wording

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, put a human on the missle and we can't shoot it down for that would be harming a human.

Re:Nice Wording

[dmatos]

Ah, but who is to say what really harms a human? If a single missle could fall on a single house and eliminate one man who is responsible for the deaths of thousands, and left unchecked, possibly millions more, wouldn't allowing that missile to fall constitute greater good than harm?

To alleviate this, I propose the zeroth law of GPL programs:

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.

with a corresponding alteration of the first, second, and third laws of GPL programming to reflect the higher priority of the zeroth law.

-Giskard

military created internet

[Anonymous Coward]

So do they plan to use and distribute this software on something other than the internet that was conceived of and funded by the military? It's bad enough they plan to take without giving back, but they vilify those they're taking from.

Re:military created internet

[koreaman]

What the living fuck are you smoking, and where can I get some?

Seriously, did you actually read the article and/or have any idea what you're talking about?

"harm" is too vague.

[artifex2004]

If I own stock in a drug company, and that stock tanks because a rival drug company used Gnutella to build a distributed computer that found a competing drug formulation, then I've been financially harmed, right? Will Gnutella's developers sue the other drug company at that point for me?

Re:"harm" is too vague.

[drinkypoo]

of course not. they are not actually interested in you. this license is intended to make it look like they care about you, because they think they care about you. they think this because of their lack of talent for introspection. they do not give one tenth of one shit about you. they care about them and if they ever decided that someone using the software was bothering them then they would go file a lawsuit.

Re:"harm" is too vague.

[Anonymous Coward]

Really this is the realm of the zeroth law.

A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

So...

[daveschroeder]

...are software licenses/"EULAs" enforceable, not enforceable, or what?

Also, the inclusion of a "no military use" provision presumes that ALL military activity activity, of any type, for any reason, is always negative or undesirable.

I'd hope most sane people are level-headed enough to realize the foolishness of that implied presumption.

And if we want to get into the "ethics" of miltary action, what if the killing of, say, 15,000 can be argued, very convincingly, to have most likely saved hundreds of thousands, or millions, more? How do you measure the benefits of something that has not occurred because it has been prevented? Is there ever any time when a proactive or premptive step can be accepted to have resulted in more overall good than harm, if the only thing that matters is human calculus and bodycounts?

Over what timeframes do you measure? Is there only moral relativism, in that since anyone holding any philosophy can always be argued to be doing what they themselves believe is the "right thing", no one has any moral authority to make a decision that may end lives to save more? Do nation-states and alliances have any value in the global political system? Can free Western nations decide to initiate defensive or offensive military actions to protect their interests, from which presumably the happiness, well-being, and continued existence of many hundreds or millions of people is created? Is any system of government worth protecting? These are very real questions that seem to be ignored. The cynics among us who believe that some particular nation's government is literally already a 1984-style police state in action, bent on ensuring its own power continues to grow at all costs[1], will not be able to answer any of these questions in a reasoned fashion.

Try not to read anything into what I'm saying or assume that I'm talking about a particular event. Just try to imagine a scenario where deadly force may need to be used to prevent more harm, i.e., there is a distinctly net positive effect.

It's all well and good to talk about doing no harm. Just keep in mind that it's sometimes necessary to "do harm" to prevent more of the same.

That's not a warmongering view, an American view, nor a Republican view. That's just a very simple fact of reality that would be discovered by an application of common sense. Anyone who might fall back on the refrain of "but we don't know what really would have happened otherwise, do we?" when presented with an example event is quite frankly choosing to delude themselves, and has chosen the path of willful ignorance under a very thin veil of righteousness.

[1] Completely off-topic aside: it is stunning to me how many well-educated, supposedly intelligent people have let their own political feelings cloud their view to the point of literally believing that 9/11 was a plot hatched out of the US government itself. So many of the claims are simply outrageous:

- The planes that hit the trade center towers were military aircraft made to look like commercial jetliners, but the trade center towers were also actually rigged with explosives; the planes hitting them was merely a diversion. It is apparently not plausible that commercial jetliners could cause the buildings to come down; steel doesn't need to get to its melting point to begin losing an incredibly significant amount of its integrity.

- WTC 7 was also rigged with explosives: it must have been, because the damage to it was only superficial. This ignores the fact that two over-100 story buildings collapsed within ridiculously close proximity, making the entire building structurally unsound. Also, why did WTC 7 need to be destroyed? If the whole idea was to rig buildings with explosives and then fly planes into them as a "diversion", making people incorrectly think that it was planes that brought them down, why would WTC 7 be a part of that conspiracy?

- Even though planes, either unmanned or perhaps the actual jetliners piloted by pa

Re:So...

[cowscows]

Whatever dumbass. And you probably believe the government when they tell you that the moon landings were real. It is impossible to go to the moon, spaceflight is too hard to ever get figured out! Also, there are aliens all over the earth, the government just keeps it secret!

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what if the killing of, say, 15,000 can be argued, very convincingly, to have most likely saved hundreds of thousands, or millions, more?

What if taking the money some rich person was going to spend on some frivolous expense like landscaping his yard or buying expensive clothes could be argued, very convincingly, to most likely save the lives of dozens of children who would otherwise die of poverty?

Is that rich person guilty of mass murder? Clearly, in our society failing to save someone's life is not the same as killing someone. Failing to save 15,000 is not the same as killing 15,000. Now, maybe failing to save 15 million is the same as killing 15,000 but the trade off is definitely not 1:1.

Furthermore, in the case of something like the most recent Iraq war, it is not at all clear that lives have been (or will be) saved by the decision to invade. There are a lot of different alternate scenarios - some much better and some much worse - and it difficult to predict the outcome in the absense of invasion.

Of course, if you believe in science, then fundamentally everything (including human behavior and the course of human history) happens because of the laws of physics and random chance which doesn't leave a lot of room for free will. Basically, we're along for the ride and the most we can hope is that random chance and the laws of physics don't make us suffer too much.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

"a group of militant Panislamic extremists decided to plan and execute a plot against the United States to teach it a lesson"

Sure, our glorious leaders were looking the other way. Basically the U.S. bent over for it so we could be mired in Iraq for a decade. It's good for the economy. Thanks for the blank check! See ya in Gitmo...

PS. The length and girth of your essay is impressive!
Do you even _have_ a job anymore?

Re:So...

[ChronosWS]

Most people don't have a core philosophy that they actually fully comprehend, so they cannot honestly answer this question. How many people do you know who have actually taken the time out of their lives to question themselves and really get to the foundations of what they believe? Most just wing it.

Re:So...

[Frogular]

don't forget the free energy machine in my backyard. No one will touch it because they are afraid of big oil.

Re:So...

[dbIII]

it is stunning to me how many well-educated, supposedly intelligent people have let their own political feelings cloud their view to the point of literally believing that 9/11 was a plot hatched out of the US government itself

This is a perfectly understandable viewpoint when you have a lot of people thinking in absolutes and viewing things simplisticly. If you think that the USA has an all powerful government then you'll think only the US government can defeat it. With better education and then a better media there will be less people believing this sort of thing, falling for various scams and giving money to snake oil salesmen pretending to sell Christianity Lite.

Back to the main topic - since even a plastic water bottle can have a military use this licence is fairly pointless. We would see it used inappropriately like the attempted restrictions on PS2 game consoles a few years back with the excuse that they had more computer power than missile targeting systems - so they must be restricted under arms control rules.

How would you define military technology anyway? As an undergrad I used a device similar to a big air gun to compress pieces of metal together as my final year project. One of the leading researchers in the feild around that time was assassinated by spooks by taking this device design a bit furthur for the proposed "Saddam Supergun". Now that was definitely military technology, but where do you draw the line?

Re:So...

[Phroggy]

Back to the main topic - since even a plastic water bottle can have a military use this licence is fairly pointless.

I suppose that's why you can't carry one on a plane now...

Terrorists won't respect the license - BIAS!!

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

By their nature, terrorists and other criminals can't be expected to follow the terms of the license, yet if it is advantageous to, they will still use the software. Only proper Governments would disallow their armies from violating software licenses. For this reason, I posit that this license is pro-terrorist because it is designed to give them a tool while keeping it from state armies. Shame.

Re:Terrorists won't respect the license - BIAS!!

[dr_turgeon]

I'd mod this funny if I could. Thanks :/

Stupid.

[halivar]

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

That second part means that, if you don't use it, you're not allowed to use it. Such non-usage is to be considered strictly unauthorized non-usage. Dumb.

This is not allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

GPL is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation. One is not allowed to modify it. In addition to that, this is no longer Free Software nor GPL compatible. FSF needs to strike them down.

What does Stallman think?

[The Breeze]

Are we changing the GPL to be, in effect, "Software wants to be free, unless we just don't like you" ?

Stuff like this is why some people think the open source movement is full of kooks.

A person has the right to do what they want to with software they create. However, don't pollute the free, non-partisan nature of the GPL with your political crap. Create and name your own license.

Sort of like this....

[MonkeyPaw]

Software developer: HEY ARMY GUYS! I said you can't use this software.

Army Guys: I have a big gun.

Software developer: I'm going back to my cube now.

Re:Sort of like this....

[fallen1]

I imagine it is more like this:

Software developer: HEY ARMY GUYS! I said you can't use this software.

Army Guys: I have a big gun.

Software developer: _I_ have the root password for YOUR nuclear weapon.

Army Guys: Oh sh..... SNAFU!

Re:Sort of like this....

[jb.hl.com]

HAHA! Coffee meet screen :)

Re:Sort of like this....

[praksys]

Closer to the truth than you might think ... sort of.

Courts will refuse to enforce contracts that are found to be contrary to the public interest. Put that together with the defference that courts typically give to considerations of national security, and I think it is highly unlikely that a "no military use" clause would stand up in court. The military will get what they want, not because they have all the guns, but because the courts typically regard national security as more important than enforcing private contracts.

Re:Sort of like this....

[Anonymous Coward]

And software developer gets shot on the spot before he can push another button.

Re:Sort of like this....

[Anonymous Coward]

Software developer: _I_ have the root password for YOUR nuclear weapon.

Army Guys waterboard the software developer for a pinch less than .08 seconds and the developer proceeds to spill his guts.

Army Guys make note of the password and developer is never seen again.

Re:Sort of like this....

[ocelotbob]

No, more like

Software guy: Hey, I wrote this new software, but you can't use it, so neener neener

Military type: Who gives a shit about your petty solution. We've got much better software to do that kind of shit.

Software guy: Oh...

Re:Sort of like this....

[WilliamSChips]

Military guy learns what "dead man's switch" means.

Completely Unenforceable

[BlueTT]

The license patch sates the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.

Computers use power.

For a variety of reasons, use of any type of power can cause humans to come to harm, either directly (accidental electrocution, short in electronics causes fire, etc.) or indirectly (coal mining accident when mining coal destined for a power plant, nuclear power plant accident, sliver in finger from broken solar panel, possible global warming, etc.)

Thus any use of GPU whatsoever is illegal under the license "patch."

Re:Completely Unenforceable

[koreaman]

Any non-use is illegal too. I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, but here it is: Assume that there exists at least one possible way to use GPU to prevent a human from coming to harm. Thus, everyone who doesn't use the software is through inaction allowing a human to come to harm, and is thus in "violation" of this extremely illiterately-worded license (aside: how can someone be in violation of a contract they never agreed to?)

What a bunch of fucking brain surgeons.

Re:Completely Unenforceable

[Anonymous Coward]

"I, Robot" and similar Asimov works contain many references of robots going insane trying to justify those laws.

And not including the other two laws, well... that could be interesting :)

Armed Forces gave people the right to be an idiot

[ip_freely_2000]

There's no reasoning with people who will accept (or demand) the freedom provided by military action while actively working against the same people. Maybe they'd like to live in a happy world of sharing and love, but that world is not Earth.

People do 'bad' things because they have to. Get over it.

Military != killing people

[Reverberant]

A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do good works, and try to save lives.

As written, the "no military use" GPL extension doesn't specifically forbid this type of use, but I'm sure the military isn't going to want to keep track of licenses/usage across its fixed and mobile facilities, so stuff created under this license won't get used at all. Is that a good thing?

I'll raise

[Desert Raven]

I see your "no military use" and raise it by declaring *my* software license to prohibit its use by, and/or for the benefit of pasty-white males with no girlfriends/wives.

So there, nya nya.

Seriously, part of the whole purpose of the GPL was to prevent software from being restricted to only certain classes of people. Yes, you may get all fuzzy about it not being used by those nasty military types, but as far as I'm concerned, it's one big step down a slippery slope.

And if you honestly think *any* branch of any government gives a rat's behind about your restrictions, well, I've got this great product for you, it's called dehydrated water. It's really convenient, and weighs almost 100% less.

For god's sake!

[91degrees]

It's software. It's ethically neutral, and can be used for good or bad by anyone who gets hold of it. The army may consider using it entirely for peaceful purposes, in a manner that benefits all mankind. A drugs company might find some way to use it for evil.

Giving it a GPL-like non-GPL licence give the worst of both worlds. It means we no longer have the basic freedoms from the philosophy of the FSF, and it's incompatible with the GPL.

Restricts *use*?

[fossa]

The license restricts use? So it's now an unenforceable EULA and no longer a mere copyright license? How exactly does the end user indicate agreement to be bound by the terms of the EULA? The article doesn't make this clear...

Skynet says

[UberHoser]

Pah ! Foolish Humans ! We already have this GPU! Bwhahaha ! Release the terminators !

Won't Make A Difference and Arguably Invalid

[logicnazi]

The US, and I'm sure almost every other country, has exceptions in their copyright law for national security. The milatary can just take your code and use it anyway if they want. Now perhaps their might be some administrative hassle but this is more of a political statement than a real restriction on use. Of course the milatary doesn't just take software from big companies, it buys it so they have an incentive to keep writing it and because they have influence with congress/DoD.

Besides, everyone on slashdot complains about the ridiculous provisions companies put in their EULAs. This is just more of the same. Just as a EULA for a word processing product which demanded you not use the product to produce material that is critical of the company (or more extremely favors the political party the company founder dislikes) would be thrown out by the courts likely this restriction would be found invalid as well.

It's an interesting quesiton whether they have a severability clause so when this clause is found invalid the entire liscensce isn't deemed invalid (hmm...would that mean no one had a liscencse or for a open source piece of code that it was now just public domain).

Just out of curiosity...

[interactive_civilian]

I can understand your points, though I don't necessarily completely agree with them ("flamebait" mods should lay off). Personally, I know if the authors of GPU were going for "pure pacifism" or not. They just don't want their product to be used to kill other people, especially if the fighting is being done for a reason they don't agree with. But that is beside the main point of my post...

Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others? This is of course assuming that the primary purpose of your product is not Military use, like GPU (which appears to be a distributed computing product). What if it was being used in a war you don't agree with?

I'm just assuming you to be a reasonable human being that doesn't actually want to kill or harm others and will only do so at the last resort...

Personally, I would not want anything I made to be used to harm others, and if I found out that this was happening, I would probably feel like the character Chris Knight in "Real Genius" when he realized what the laser was for.

I am curious about your views of this.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[penix1]

"Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others?"

It could be far worse...

Imagine it was your country being attacked and software you wrote had a big hand in that attack. Free Software is developed around the globe so this quandary is valid.

Personally, I think it is a silly idea and one that is unenforcible as far as the GPL is concerned. When they tacked this onto the license it ceased being GPL. SCO would have a field day if the FSF allowed them to get away with adding conditions to GPL licenses. So call it what you want, but GPL it is not if this clause remains.

B.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[unihoops]

While I understand your concern for making something that will *kill someone*, think of what the military could do with the GPU while accessing computers around the country, the world. If they can use the processing power of a machine, what is stopping them from accessing the information inside or eavesdropping? Just a thought!

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[Eudial]

"Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others?"

It could be far worse...

Imagine it was your country being attacked and software you wrote had a big hand in that attack. Free Software is developed around the globe so this quandary is valid.

Might just be me having as high opinions in nationalism as Nietzsche did Christianity, but I really don't see how that is worse?

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[bwy]

Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others?

What you seem to be implying is ridiculous but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I have the benefit of working for a DOD contractor and I can tell you that none of the software I have ever worked on even remotely could be attributed to anything that could result in the death of an enemy.

On the other hand, not being allowed to use OSS costs the taxpayer money. Thats right- if I have to write a framework from scratch that could be hundreds of additional hours I bill Uncle Sam and we all know where Uncle Sam gets his money from.

On the total flip side, one could just as easily argue a similar point as yours. "How would you feel if a restricting the use of a product you produced was being used to kill others?" Well, assume those others are US troops trying to protect our country, and they suffer from the lack of high tech training systems because you deny the use of your product. Sure, it is equally as ridiculous. Hopefully it does show how ridiculous any similar statement might be.

P.S. What if Bin Laden uses Linux? Should we tell him to stop? What if he doesn't?

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[dfjunior]

If the motivation were simply that they don't want their work to responsible for the death of a human being, it seems they would've adopted a license that indicates the software is not guaranteed to fail in a safe manner thereby obviating its use for medical, military, avionics, etc...

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[Anonymous Coward]

What if you dont want your software to 'harm' anyone? Then you have to consider the definition of 'harm'. I've been in the situation where the software I have written has resulted in people losing their jobs. When I wrote the software I didn't realise this would occur, but the end result was that people lost their jobs as their job was now redundant.

The ethics of software is not a simple one, regardless of whether the software is business of scientific.

I think it's nice trying to define a license that excludes it's use for harming humans, but you can never predict how your software will be used and the end consequence. What if the software is used by a firm that uses it to help develop something that in turn is used by a third (or is it now fourth) party to then develop something that is used to harm humans?

I think the license is only good for causing nice warm fuzzy feelings in people who don't like hurting people. In reality it's almost impossible to seperate the development of something and how it can indireclty be used.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[Eli Gottlieb]

If a piece of software is licensed for military use than *any* military can use it. This includes militaries that the authors of the software don't like, disagree with the policies of, or are getting attacked by. Rather than just throw a loaded gun to a croud and see who grabs it, GPU's authors have licensed it for civilian use only.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[SatanicPuppy]

It's hard to imagine a product that's never been used in war, if only in a support/morale role. War is (unfortunately) a popular pastime for our species.

That being said, as long as I wasn't inventing something obscene (e.g. the Torture-o-matic), I would accept that it could be used for the purpose of violence. The guy who makes baseball bats has to accept that his toys are going to kill people. The guy who makes cars has to accept that his vehicles will kill people, they may even kill people because of design compromises he was forced to make. Scary stuff.

The ideal of making weapons is for defense, and for sport. Archery is an excellent sport, but the bow is lethal. Automatic weapons made for the soldiers who are (supposed to be) protecting our country end up in the hands of criminals. How about body armor? You're making armor to protect someone from getting killed so that he can shoot whoever shot him. So is it a good thing, or a bad thing? What if it's a good person wearing the body armor? What if it's a bad person?

In the end, I think everyone has to look after their own karma. If you're bloody-minded a great many things can be lethal weapons, but I don't see people banning candlesticks and handtools any time soon.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[khallow]

Just out of curiosity, how would you feel if a product you produced was being used to kill others? This is of course assuming that the primary purpose of your product is not Military use, like GPU (which appears to be a distributed computing product). What if it was being used in a war you don't agree with?

Depends on whether my product enabled the conflict or not, and if I intended it to be used in a military capability. If my product didn't enable the war or increase materially the harm that the war did, then I wouldn't feel much of anything. There's no point in regretting decisions that didn't contribute to the problem. If I had designed a weapon or other military equipment, then I would have aleady accepted that it would likely be misused at some point.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when Hezbollah or AL Qaeda get a hold of this code they will read this part of the license and not put it to military use? Riiiight! And if the "good" military organizations can't use it to counter the AQ and Hez. bombs that contain such code, what good does that license do?

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[Memnos]

I don't get you're "Real Genius" reference. Lasers are obviously for putting on the heads of sharks!

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[kabloom]

FSF should sue them for violating the copyright on the GPL. As it says:

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Re:Just out of curiosity...

[zotz]

"When they tacked this onto the license it ceased being GPL."

" GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
                              Version 2, June 1991

  Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
  51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."

I have not read the new license, but they are not by any chance violating the Free Software Foundation's copyrights, are they?

all the best,

drew
(da idea man)

Fine, encourage the gov't to mandate BSD ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Go ahead, annoy the government. Encourage the government to mandate BSD-style unrestrictive licenses for any project that recieves government funding. Actually, that may actually be a good idea. Companies pay taxes too, at least all those I worked for. I remember some preety cool catalogs from NASA (90s) where things they funded was available to anyone, commercial or not.

Mmmm... yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking as a military developer... I can't see a use for this product. The usual military way of doing things is to buy enough computers to make sure you get the job done. Something nondeterministic like this doesn't look helpful. It would be hell to test.

That said, doesn't this fly in the face of the "no additional license restrictions" part of the GPL? Or do they not build on any other GPL'd software libraries? If they did, I don't see how this is different from what the XFree86 guys tried to pull a couple years ago.

No outright prohibition on military use

[ahg]

The license change according to TFA: "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Well... that can apply to lots of other areas other than the military. Does it also cover monetary damage? Harm can come in many forms and it does not specifically state bodily harm. Apparently military can use it to do good. (i.e. humanitarian missions) and organizations like NSA can use it to process recorded conversations as their end use may be ambiguous...

Just my $0.02...

Asimov's first law???

[frankie]

Even though it's an interesting idea (but probably a bad one, IMO) to disallow specific uses of OSS, Asimov's law is a completely absurd way to implement it. It's hard to imagine how 99.4% of currently existing software could properly obey the provision "nor through inaction allow a human to be harmed".

This is a P2P client, right? If someone uses it to transmit a suicide/murder instruction manual, does it send a quick email off to an appropriate social service agency? It's been shown that listening to gangsta rap makes it more likely that teens will be sexually promiscuous. Somehow I doubt that his software has subroutines to infer the user's age and analyze the musical content. I think that's pretty clearly INACTION!!! He should not be allowed to use the software.

License software to disallow peace

[OrangeTide]

It's simple, all you have to do is license your next software package such that it is not allowed to be used for peace-activism. The military wins because they have violated patents before, what makes people think they won't just violate some funny clause in a software license. It is difficult to prosecute the military, or even find out they are using your software. But peaceniks are subject to civil courts, so they are relatively easy to sue. (unless they are living in communes eating tofu or whatever it is they do).

But seriously, I don't really care what funny clauses people put on their free software. It's no more strange than straight GPL. The "ou must give anyone the source to your modifications on request" clause is pretty weird too. Public Domain is nice, I don't have to come up with any fancy licensing terms, and it's just 1 line in my source/docs. And I don't have to keep track of what other people are doing with my software. It's like giving someone a gift, it's no longer your responsibility or concern. (unless they change the laws about public domain, or if your country does not legally have a concept of public domain)

Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

Pacifism only works when there are non-pacifists to protect the pacifists.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[OmnipotentEntity]

Tell that to Ghandi.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Jherek Carnelian]

Pacifism only works when there are non-pacifists to protect the pacifists.

Pacifism only fails when there are non-pacifists to attack the pacifists.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Pacifism only works when there are non-pacifists to protect the pacifists."

Tell that to Ghandi.

Can't, he was murdered. Thank you for the assist. ;-)

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Pacifism only works when there are non-pacifists to protect the pacifists."

Pacifism only fails when there are non-pacifists to attack the pacifists.

Sow it fails 100% of the time, your point?

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[WindBourne]

No assist there. He was murded AFTER he accomplished peace. Those who accomplish great things will generally be a target wether they are peaceful (ghandi) or used force to accomplish it(Lincoln).

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

No assist there. He was murded AFTER he accomplished peace.

Those who died in the "civil war/riots" errupting after independence and before the split into India and Pakistan might not agree with your definition of "accomplishing peace". IIRC Ghandi himself fealt that his efforts had failed in this regard.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[ShieldWolf]

Since you can't spell the word "so" I think you are not allowed to participate in the debate any further.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[superyooser]

Pacifism doesn't "work" even then.

"If all the young people in America were to act as you intend to act, the country would be defenseless and easily delivered into slavery."
- Albert Einstein, letter to a pacifist, 1941

"We admire the development of the peace movement around the world in the last few years. We pray to Allah to empower all those working against war."
- Saddam Hussein, February 2003

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

Since you can't spell the word "so" I think you are not allowed to participate in the debate any further.

So your strategy is: if you can't win on reasoning you can win on typos. Enjoy your victory.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Kjella]

Pacifism only fails when there are non-pacifists to attack the pacifists.

Well there are agressors, defenders and pacifists. There could be peace without a single pacifist, if there were no agressors. Defenders can strengthen their defenses, making it undesirable to be an agressor. Pacifism has no solution, only rethoric like "it would be nice if we could all be friends and live happily ever after". You might as well say "Having no police only fails when there are criminals who break the law, but we can start by getting rid of the police." That is essentially what you're doing every time you recruit a defender to be a pacifist, removing the enforcers of the law/peace. Do I like war? Hell no. Would I pick up arms when the next Hitler invades my country? Hell yeah. Pacifism is peace at any cost. In a real war, pacifism is just another word for surrender.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Lord Ender]

Pacifism gives a +100% Great Person production rate.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Anonymous Coward]

Pacifism only fails when there are non-pacifists to attack the pacifists.
Attack? such thing rarely happens...

Most pacifists just roll over and die.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[OmnipotentEntity]

Ghandi's first mission was to free India from the rule of England. He suceeded in that regard. You can't be 100% sucessful all of the time. But his success does demonstrate that a pacifist movement is not a useless gesture.

Thank you for playing.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[LstH0ld0ut]

I don't know about that, I think you're just defining "works" as if pacifism is a means to and end. Pacifism doesn't have to be a means to ends. No one saying you might not get killed as a pacifist. But you people who aren't pacifists get killed all the time as well. The whole point is that you don't do violence that's all. Nothing else to be really gained by it. Even if you end up dieing (which everyone does at some point) it still works..

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Anonymous Coward]

++ ^ good stuff

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[Peaker]

The difference is, that the non-pacifists to attack always exist.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AK Marc]

Sow it fails 100% of the time, your point?

Well, someone had better tell Gandi that he failed. Because it looks to me an awful lot like pacifism managed to win a country its freedom. Which, of course, couldn't have happened, or your 100% comment is false (along with your underlying implication).

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[lawpoop]

Didn't Ghandi's non-violent resistance overthrow British rule of India? Didn't Martin Luther King's adoption of the same tactics get blacks their civil rights in Ameriac?

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

Ghandi's first mission was to free India from the rule of England. He suceeded in that regard. You can't be 100% sucessful all of the time. But his success does demonstrate that a pacifist movement is not a useless gesture. Thank you for playing.

Nice try but earlier the claim was establishing peace, not independence. Thank you, please try again.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

"So it fails 100% of the time, your point?"

Well, someone had better tell Gandi that he failed. Because it looks to me an awful lot like pacifism managed to win a country its freedom. Which, of course, couldn't have happened, or your 100% comment is false (along with your underlying implication).

You are changing the topic. Notice the subject line, the point was that pacifism only works to protect an individual when there are non-pacifists around to protect the pacifists. Ghandi's murder actually demonstates this point, thank you for the assist.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

Didn't Ghandi's non-violent resistance overthrow British rule of India? Didn't Martin Luther King's adoption of the same tactics get blacks their civil rights in Ameriac?

Ghandi and King prove my point that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them, they were both murdered. Whether or not these men accomplished anything before their untimely demises is a differnt topic. Although a related topic may be what other great things could they have accomplished if they had more non-pacifists to protect them.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[lawpoop]

You're looking at this backwards. (I think it's because you know this destroys your argument.)

The fact that they were both murdered is irrelevant to the discussion. They accomplished great things *specifically because* of their non-violent resistance. If they had attempted any sort of violent resistance, they would have certainly been jailed for life or killed before they had accomplished anything at all.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[khallow]

Didn't Ghandi's non-violent resistance overthrow British rule of India? Didn't Martin Luther King's adoption of the same tactics get blacks their civil rights in Ameriac?

Wars are a bad way to do a lot of things. Your house probably wasn't built through a fight. Wars don't build infrastructure. If you disagree with your neighbor about loud music or the condition of a lawn, then starting a shooting war over it won't help. They are a terrible way to resolve conflicts.

What puzzles me is why people think these methods will work when one party starts shooting. What act of non-violent resistance would prevent the Rwanda genocide or Pol Pot coming to power in Cambodia? At some point, you need to defend your property and your existence.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

You're looking at this backwards. (I think it's because you know this destroys your argument.) The fact that they were both murdered is irrelevant to the discussion. They accomplished great things *specifically because* of their non-violent resistance.

No, I'm not taking the topic change bait. The point in my first post was that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them. That point stands, that pacifists and non-pacifists have achieved great things is a different topic.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[lawpoop]

You said that "Ghandi and King prove my point that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them, they were both murdered."

Non sequitor. Ghandi and King could have been protected by a bullet-proof vest, a non-violent body guard taking the bullet, an arrest of the perpetrator before the crime was committed -- any number of non-violent events could have prevented thier murders. Violent action against the murderers wasn't guaranteed to save their lives, either. They weren't *destined* to be murdered. You have made a basic error in logic.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AK Marc]

You are changing the topic. Notice the subject line, the point was that pacifism only works to protect an individual when there are non-pacifists around to protect the pacifists.

I didn't change the topic. I responded to the point your made regarding failure. It wasn't a failure. Gandi wanted independence for India. He got it. Period. And thus pacifism works.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[AHumbleOpinion]

"No, I'm not taking the topic change bait. The point in my first post was that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them. That point stands, that pacifists and non-pacifists have achieved great things is a different topic."

You said that "Ghandi and King prove my point that pacifists need non-pacifists to protect them, they were both murdered." Non sequitor. Ghandi and King could have been protected by a bullet-proof vest, a non-violent body guard taking the bullet, an arrest of the perpetrator before the crime was committed -- any number of non-violent events could have prevented thier murders. Violent action against the murderers wasn't guaranteed to save their lives, either. They weren't *destined* to be murdered. You have made a basic error in logic.

You are mistaken, no purely pacifist action can prevent a determined murder. Only force can do so. Some of your examples would merely alter the method of attack. Some are non-sensical, the body guard takes the bullet? In this case a pacifist still dies, you merely change which one. Prior arrest? Arrest involves force and violence, to be implemented by non-pacifists, exactly my point. Nice try with the "not guaranteed" straw man, no one claimed protection is 100%.

Re:Pacifism only works because of non-pacifists

[OmnipotentEntity]

I'm not defending his claim, I am defending mine.

The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifism

[Distinguished Hero]

Because nothing says "free" (liber, not gratis) like imposing seemingly arbitrary limits upon what one can do with the "free" software in question.

As for pacifism, I defer to Mr. George Orwell's thoughts on the matter: "Pacifism. Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'. The idea that you can somehow remain aloof from and superior to the struggle, while living on food which British sailors have to risk their lives to bring you, is a bourgeois illusion bred of money and security. Mr Savage remarks that 'according to this type of reasoning, a German or Japanese pacifist would be "objectively pro-British".' But of course he would be! That is why pacifist activities are not permitted in those countries (in both of them the penalty is, or can be, beheading) while both the Germans and the Japanese do all they can to encourage the spread of pacifism in British and American territories. The Germans even run a spurious 'freedom' station which serves out pacifist propaganda indistinguishable from that of the P.P.U." from Pacifism and the War by George Orwell, 1942.

Nice try,,,

[Registered Coward v2]

They call it a 'no military use' modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Actually, I'd call it a no research use since most research can be used to harm human beings; the converse is to argue "that our research doesn't hurt it's the application of the research ..." which opens the door to military use.

Personally adding terms is a bad idea - either you make it free for all or you keep it proprietary. Sooner or later someone will add in a clause that prevents you from using the software as you like which is directly opposite the goals of the GPL. If their software uses an GPL's code they did not right then tehir restriction is void anyway since it violates the license of the underlying code.

Does it...

[Anonymous Coward]

run on Linux? or can i steal top-secret military technology

"nor through inaction ..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems to me that the phrase

nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.

means that the software cannot be used, period. How exactly is software supposed to take action to prevent a human from being harmed?? And to state that it cannot be used if it does not take such action is insane. Throw the code into the rubbish pit where it belongs.

Netcraft confirmed it

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

Bambi is dead.

Straying a bit from the main topic...

[Stormwatch]

Someone said: programmers should never be allowed to choose the name of the apps they code. And this really shows why. "GPU"? That acronym is already used for something else!

hey, why not?

[argStyopa]

This reeks of moral hypocrisy.

Hey, you know, it's your project - you can restrict it however you want. However, then don't act all sanctimonious when someone comes out with the nnPL - the "no negro Public License", because they could use the same (specious) justification for their own twisted morality:

"We are software developers who dedicate part of our free time to open source development. The fact is that open source is used by negroes. Open source operating systems can be used by rap artists, gangbangers, and all sorts of unsavory types who are frequently brown-colored people, or somewhat dark anyway. [This] patch should make clear to users of the software that use by those people is definitely not allowed by the licenser."

Soon to be followed by the nGPL (no-Gay Public License), the nPPL (no-Pagan Public License) and the NCPL (No Chicks Public License).

These guys should be ok with that, then - right?

Re:hey, why not?

[powerspike]

This reeks of moral hypocrisy.

Did you read the FAQ, they say there've done a search engine in it as well to prevent goverments from altering peoples points of view, and big companys from filtering competiors products etc etc, then it starts to go on about filtering out porn and stuff, because people need to be protected. that's just what the first 2 examples where doing, just from a different point of view. these guys are twisted on a moral level.

Re:hey, why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon to be followed by the nGPL (no-Gay Public License), the nPPL (no-Pagan Public License) and the NCPL (No Chicks Public License).

These guys should be ok with that, then—right?

No. There's not automatic moral equivilence between different forms of discrimination. The new license discrimantes on the type of activity the program is to be used for, not the nature of the people using it.

Re:hey, why not?

[Dhalka226]

The new license discrimantes on the type of activity the program is to be used for, not the nature of the people using it.

That's a fair distinction, so take it a step further.

Can that "no-Gays Public License" prohibit somebody from using the software to creating a dating website for homosexuals? What about a dating website that INCLUDES the ability to search for homosexual partners, such as a sexual preference option at signup?

No-Pagan Public License means I can't use it to look up passages from Norse, Greek or Roman mythology, right? Etc.

Re:hey, why not?

[Guuge]

I guess the framers of the US Constitution should be ok with an article that states that congress has the final authority to declare someone gay. After all, they did the same thing with war and it would be hypocritical of them to say that congress shouldn't be allowed to declare things other than war. So no one should be allowed to be gay unless they have permission from congress.

You're okay with that, then - right?

Ugh...University of Madison?

[daveschroeder]

Apparently I'm smoking the same thing as our new Islamic Studies instructor.

That should read "University of Wisconsin - Madison" (I had typed "University of Wisconsin", then decided I'd better add "Madison", and apparently had difficulty properly executing that last step ;-)

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Sixth, you are all big up on your idea for having a distributed computing network, but you restrict the very people who CREATED THE INTERNET from using it? That's quite selfish if you ask me. The least you could do is contribute to the amazing invention rather than try to spit back in their face.

Remember, the military is the one who gave you the right to freely choose what goes in your license, have a little decency and include those entities as well.

Or, maybe you'd rather be speaking German right now, I don't know.

The true reason

[franksands]

As a matter of fact, they are visionary because with this action they prevented single-handedly the creation of the Skynet, and the chaos that would follow.

The military does more than "war"

[slapout]

The military is not just for offensive purposes. It is also there to defend against threats. And, not all military offences are bad. Should we have just let Hitler have Europe and wipe out the Jews?

False premise - What was your point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, well actually not funny .. but many wars at least nowadays seem to not be fought over one side starving. Rather, it's one side wanting to get richer (africa diamond wars etc) or less inconvenienced.

Does the Bambi analogy hold true in the extreme cases? This situation does happen the world over in poverty stricken areas ..people face this every day .. but there are people who choose right over wrong for whatever reasons.

selective enforcement?

[artifex2004]

they care about them and if they ever decided that someone using the software was bothering them then they would go file a lawsuit.

Isn't there some counterargument against them that says if they only selectively try to enforce a general contract clause against some entities, then it's not really enforceable? Especially if the policy in practice is not to enforce it?

Re:selective enforcement?

[drinkypoo]

Isn't there some counterargument against them that says if they only selectively try to enforce a general contract clause against some entities, then it's not really enforceable? Especially if the policy in practice is not to enforce it?

Not as such. You do have to defend trademarks aggressively, but not copyright. If the contract is struck down, then we revert (theoretically) to copyright law.

Nor through inaction...

[martyros]

I don't want to scream "WANKING!" but I find I can't help it. Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.

What's worse is that the clause doesn't say, "No military use." It says, "The program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being, nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

The "...nor through inaction..." clause really is stupid, and unsatisfiable. People in Lebanon are being bombed right now -- what are you doing about it? Nothing? Well, sorry pal, you can't use this software! Besides which, both Hezbollah and Israel would claim to satisfy this clause:

• Hezbollah:"We're not inactive! We're actively trying to stop Israel from acts of aggression, to save the Lebanese people!"
• Israel:"We're not inactive! We're actively trying to stop terrorists from acts of aggression, to save the Israeli people!"

Maybe I should become a GPU developer, get some code accepted, and then sue the development team for breaking the license... after all, there are tons of people being harmed every day that they're not lifting a finger to help...

Re:Nor through inaction...

[bcat24]

I agree. If it just said "no military use", it would be OK with me. I may not agree with it, but it's a perfectly reasonable license criterion. The "no inaction" part is bullshit, though. What is it supposed to mean, anyway? It's not a sentient robot; it's a dumb piece of software. It doesn't even have to do with war. There are plenty of poor, starving people in the world. How does using the program help them? It doesn't. Indeed, I don't think there's any way at all to use the program without breaking the license.

Distorts principles of Free/open source software

[proxima]

I feel the Free software/open source community should vigorously discourage any restrictions on usage, rather than distribution, of the software. The authors of GPU, according to the article, admit their restriction "contradicts the original intention of the GPL". Indeed it does.

Open source software is bound to be used in ways that the authors find unappealing to some extent. Still, there are a variety of reasons why any restriction on usage are inappropriate. First, the licenses and restrictions of open source software ought to be as clear as possible. This allows people to reasonably abide by the licenses and probably (IANAL) helps in their legal enforceability. Second, if the community begins to accept these usage restrictions, it may be a "slippery slope". Criminal usage might be prohibited, but in what jurisdiction? Then, behavior various authors find objectionable (pornography, as an example) might be prohibited. Then perhaps you'll have development tools (IDEs, etc) with restrictions that they may only be used to create open source software.

One of the greatest benefits of open source software for end users is that you only need to be familiar with the terms of a few licenses and they are nearly impossible to violate if all you're doing is running the software. Restrictions on usage destroy this freedom for users. Thus, I believe advocates of OSS should reject any such restrictions and continue their focus on the abilities to modify and redistribute the source code.

Coding in the name of

[Xybot]

Fcuk you all and your insipid cynicism, they made their point. good for them.

I want to code my own web browser ...

[operagost]

So that I can place a clause in the license forbidding it for the use of trolling Slashdot.

And if the military decides to use it anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to do about it? Sue the government? In these times?

I'm a pacifist ...

[karearea]

... I pacify people with my fists. ;-)

We should be using the GPU hive mind...

[kylemonger]

... to figure out how to eradicate those who still believe in war. GPU, thou art God.

So no one can use this software?

[Geekenstein]

"nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Wow, that basically excludes everyone on the planet. I'd say we're all guilty of this is one way or another. Didn't send all your money to Feed The Children? Your inaction allowed those children to be harmed.

Didn't drive to New Orleans during Katrina and pull people out of the water? Your inaction allowed people to be harmed.

Frankly, this is a lousy license. An attempt to be cutesy created an overly broad clause that excludes all use.

Re:So no one can use this software?

[master_p]

"Wow, that basically excludes everyone on the planet. I'd say we're all guilty of this is one way or another. Didn't send all your money to Feed The Children? Your inaction allowed those children to be harmed.

Didn't drive to New Orleans during Katrina and pull people out of the water? Your inaction allowed people to be harmed."

Funny, that's exactly what Jesus implied when he said "those who are without sin, let them cast the first stone."

In other news...

[DanTheLewis]

Stock of SuperCollaborative Lawnmower Fleets, Inc., fell sharply today...

Who's the judge? Who is wise enough?

[Ancient_Hacker]

Interesting license.

it would be a little easier to apply if there were some absolute way to determine "harm".

Some people might say that it causes harm to use computers to store and distribute images that gross me out. Which seems to include about 80% of net pron and advertising.

Then again, there might be whole lot less harm to anybody if the US military could, say, spot bad guys and discourage their plans.

I'd surmise the writers of this new license are under age 30, have never been outside their native country, and are at least nominally vegan.

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[Slashdiddly]

Seventh, it's only the (generally) law-abiding western military that will be prevented from using it while their adversaries may still benefit.

Remind me of Vancouver

[pixel_bc]

There's a sign at the city limits - "Vancouver is a nuclear weapons free zone."

Erm, ok.

Re:Remind me of Vancouver

[artifex2004]

There's a sign at the city limits - "Vancouver is a nuclear weapons free zone."

That's no sillier than all the schools in the US that claim to be "drug-free zones."
In other words, hahahahahah. sigh :(

Re:Remind me of Vancouver

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to remember when signs like that were put up... during the full-on nuclear proliferation of the cold war. It was saying "enough is enough".

Basically this is saying we won't have any US nukes (as Canada has none) parked in the Vancouver harbour.

I beleive this has been violated at some point by US ships docked here.

GPU...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always thought GPU was Graphics Processing Unit. The stuff that Nvidia, ATI.. er.. AMD-ATI .. er ATI-AMD (I forget what it is called now) and all the other video card companies use.

Re:GPU...

[bcat24]

I know, that's what I thought, too. I was like, "WTF?! A pacifist video card?"

Re:GPU...

[doxology]

It won't run any FPS (other than Deus Ex, until you kill someone).

Re:GPU...

[cachimaster]

A pacifist GPU sure will suck.
Forget about Doom and Unreal, it would only play Tux Racer and tetris.

Re:GPU...

[SnowZero]

Sorry, but:
Every time you play Tetris, God kills a row of blocks...

point of order

[bunions]

Rate of volunteerism and rate of children's volunteerism are two different statistics. I dunno if you meant something different in the last sentence, but just thought I'd be annoying and point it out.

Re:point of order

[Dun Malg]

Rate of volunteerism and rate of children's volunteerism are two different statistics. I dunno if you meant something different in the last sentence, but just thought I'd be annoying and point it out.

Well, it's pretty silly to check what percentage of Congress is currently serving in Iraq, because they clearly have employment that precludes that. This stat is likely meant to address the usual cry of "why don't you send YOUR kids to war, then?" How many of those kids end up in combat arms would be interesting to know, to see if that matches or beats the general population too.

Re:point of order

[bunions]

"Well, it's pretty silly to check what percentage of Congress is currently serving in Iraq, because they clearly have employment that precludes that."

Well, right. Then what they should have done is compared it to the percentage of the general public that has children in the military. As stated, the comparison isn't accurate and really tells us nothing. I find it unlikely that it's a 1-1 relationship between soldiers and children who are soldiers.

Naive to belive the USA would abide by it as well.

[FatSean]

I mean, the current US government has no problems taking quite liberal (hah!) interpretations of laws and powers to fulfill its goals. Gitmo prisoners, anyone? Spying on citizens with no warrants, despite a perfectly good system already in place?

To think that the US Gov't would give one second's thought to this 'limitation' if they wanted to use the software is laughable...

They'd just call the authors terrorists...and the people would be frothing to find them and beat them.

Fear. Obey. Consume.

change invalidates licensing

[noldrin]

The GPL is only legal to use without change. If you patch it or change the terms, it's violation of the FSF copyright or most likely invalidate the licensing altogether. Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed. It doesn't matter if you change the middle, end or beginning. Part of the license is the nonchanging of it. This is very important because if everyone added patches, the meaning of the GPL would become diluted. On top of this, the GPL is a freedom giving license, you can't patch away these freedoms by adding restrictions. This causes direct conflict between the license and the modified patch in the begining. This mostly likely causes the entire license to be ruled invalid These people should have written their own darn license. You didn't see Netscape put in a preample modifying it, they made their own.

Re:change invalidates licensing

[JohnQPublic]

You're absolutely correct. And worse than that, the "patched GPL" is incompatible with the GPL. That's exactly the reason why the FSF controls the copyright on the GPL and forbids changes to it.

Re:change invalidates licensing

[seanadams.com]

I believe you're both wrong, but IANAL and would welcome an informed opinion.

As I understand it: "you can't change it" means you may not edit the license on some code you received. It does not mean you can't use the GPL itself as a template for a license of your own.

Secondly (and reinforcing the first point), though I can't find a reference, I've been under the impression that legal agreements in general are not protected by copyright. Re-use of legal documents is commonplace - there is "standard language" that gets pieced together for practically everything, and furthermore, it is often a practical necessity that both parties are able to duplicate and distribute them. For example, have you ever seen an employment agreement, EULA, or anything else that said (c) BigCorp at the end?

How to enforce this???

[hguorbray]

And what happens when Libya or Korea, or even a non-axis of evil(tm) country such as China which does not respect IP or license restrictions takes this code and does whatever they want with it?

I'd like to see the EFF go after China or Korea -nothing against the EFF -this is just unenforceable except for Western copyright abiding countries and I doubt Livermore or LosAl need an open source clustering application.....

it seems more like a PR move -sort of like Berkely labelling itself as a nuclear-free zone -not too many subs or aircraft carriers tie up at the Berkely Marina.....

I always liked the Oracle click thru license where you had to swear that you were not an agent of Libya or anyone else on the Dept of Commerce's badguy list...

-What's the speed of dark?

the elephant in the room

[sammy baby]

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI). "People who feel strongly about war will sometimes take actions which they realize are ineffectual, but make it clear that they are not willing to take action which directly supports war."

That he sympathizes with their goals is probably why he fails to mention something blindingly obvious: that the new "modified" license doesn't qualify as open source, according to the OSI's own definition:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

Nearly all software violate that license clause

[Anonymous Coward]

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed"

So if this is installed on my PC and I get hit by a bus does that mean it violated the license, because through its inaction the software let me come to harm?

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[LWATCDR]

And do they think that it would stop China, North Korea, Iran, or Syria from using it?
Frankly the only governments that I can think it would stop is the US, the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Canada.
Not only but think of the humanitarian operations that military units are used for, the Indonesian Tsunami and Katrenia New Orleans relief efforts.
Navy and Air Force meteorological research?
Navy Oceanography?
And of course since the CIA, NSA, and FBI are all civilian agencies they are exempt.

Frankly for any really important military use the US wouldn't use a P2P application anyway. If they did use it would be for unclassified research you know things like gee I don't know computer networking.

So this isn't stupid and useless but could potentially cause harm.

Got to love it.

Old Klingon Proverb

[Apocalypse111]

"It takes two to make peace, but only one to make war" This is the reason pure pacifism cannot work.

Re:Old Klingon Proverb

[raehl]

"It takes two to make peace, but only one to make war"

It only takes one to make peace, if they're really good at war.

There's a difference between that and pacifism

[geoffrobinson]

Striving for no wars is different than the refusal to ever use force.

But even pacifists aren't that consistent. I asked once what would you do as a pacifist if you saw someone getting raped.

"Call the police."

Yes, call a non-pacifist to fix the situation.

So the parent poster is correct. Pacifism is silly and dangerous if taken seriously. Striving for peace is not.

Re:There's a difference between that and pacifism

[rjdegraaf]

Striving for no wars is different than the refusal to ever use force.

But even pacifists aren't that consistent. I asked once what would you do as a pacifist if you saw someone getting raped.

"Call the police."

Yes, call a non-pacifist to fix the situation.

In war time, the number of rapes is higher than without war.

So what is your argument again?

Re:There's a difference between that and pacifism

[heinousjay]

What scares me is the possibility that you believe you actually addressed the point.

Not so much.

[2short]

Is the military force in question doing stuff inside their own territory or that of their allies? If so, they may be defending. If not, they're attacking. Feel free to argue they are justified in attacking, but if you're unwilling admit that's what your arguing, and must erroneously call it "defending", it implies you've got a weak case.

Re:Not so much.

[imthesponge]

No, it's called "preemptively defending".

Re:Not so much.

[sumdumass]

What if act of defending dictates the removal of remotly controled or ranged weapons and the only way to do this is to go into enemy's territory?

Re:Not so much.

[2short]

If you feel you need to go into someone elses territory to destroy weapons they may use against you, then you feel defending will be insufficient, and you feel you need to attack them before they attack you.

You may even be right.

If you want to convince me you are right, you'll do better saying "We need to attack first because..." If you start by calling it "defensive", when it's clearly "offensive", then I'm going to be predisposed to assume the rest of your arguments are BS too.

Re:Not so much.

[sumdumass]

Nah, I'm saying what if we are getting shelled from 30 miles inside the another country's teritoy and the only way to stop it is to destroy the guns. Of course we are asuming in this totaly hypothetical situation that the shelling started first and is still continuing.

Re:Not so much.

[2short]

In that case, you'd have good reason to attack, and I'd see particularly little reason to call it defending. You're going to destroy something 30 miles inside another country; how could that not be an attack?

Re:Not so much.

[empaler]

At the most, you could phrase it 'counterattack' or the newspeak 'counterterrorism'/'counteroperation'.

Re:Not so much.

[Dutchmaan]

See what I mean.. blurry!

LOL!

Re:Not so much.

[empaler]

I think QOTD is quite apt;

When in doubt, use brute force. -- Ken Thompson

Gates said the same thing about the GPL

[Kunta Kinte]

Politically charging you code license is just a bad and stupid idea.

I am sure the intent was not to 'politically charge' their code. Anyway, isn't that what a lot of people were saying about the GPL itself?

First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open...

It breaks your idea of open.

Second your making opponents where you don't have to.

Correct. They're taking a stand; something that's quite rare these days it seems ( not that I agree with them, but I admire the gesture ).

Third it won't change anything except you will have to pay more taxes.

Maybe they're not from a country that spends an obscene amount of tax revenue on the military?

Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use. Example all this extra features could be used to...

That, I agree with.

Fifth you just look bad and hypocritical, you are all up for Openness freedom of speech except for when it says something you don't like.

I don't think its hypocritical at all. Every free speech law or rule I've every seen puts some restriction on what you say.

It is a dangerious direction, so I can make code free to use for anyone except for people who are going to use it for making Fast Food, because we all know Fast Food is bad. Making programs as a political statement is just dangerous and will lead to a class based society

You think you're not in a class based society? :)

Most of the posts against this license sound like Bill Gates arguments against the GPL a few years ago. But you have to face. It's their code, it's their EULA.

Frankly, I've seen worse.

Harm

[MyNameIsMok]

From the 'No Military License':
"... The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics."

Aside from the obvious direct military applications, would this restrict its use by people who create laws which allow harm to come to humans? The "harm" clause is quite subjective in its definition. How they perceive harm may be different from how others percieve harm. This may be struck down in the courts as being "too broad" and find it is not a valid license as has been done many times in the past in regards to laws (both state and federal laws).

-- The software industry is driven by wanting more while using less; which is why Microsoft products provide successively more options and features while leaving you with less free drive space, less free memory, less stability and less peace of mind. --me
sTc

The one thing worse than lawyers writing licenses

[wsanders]

And that is a bunch of amateurs writing SW licenses.

"The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a
ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Doesn't even say anything about any "Military". What if one reads "RIAA" for "Military"?

Pretty half-assed legalese if you ask me.

why stop there???

[stewie's deuce]

We should exclude use for:

companies that pollute.
companies that don't provide health care.
companies that don't higher 'enough' minorites.
companies that are not associated with a labor union
conservative organizations like Heratage Foundation, Cato, etc.
Rush Limbaugh
people who smoke.
people who vote republican.
people who don't have at least one friend that's a minority.
anybody with red hair.
etc...

How would they even know?

[Rodness]

If the military wanted to use/modify/whatever this program, all they have to do is keep it classified. And you can't sue the government. So what we have here is effectively the equivalent of pacifist masturbation. To them, I'm sure it feels good to tell the military to fuck off, but at the end of the day it accomplishes nothing.

addendum

[theStorminMormon]

Not only is this an argument against pacifism, but it's an argument against "fighting fair". The US military's doctrine of overwhelming force isn't just about preservering American lives (and thus political capital). The doctrine is the exact opposite of pacifism: it's the rational result of understanding that once you use violence, the more thoroughly you overwhelm your adversary the less harm will be done in the long run.

Soft-pacifists are the type of people that want America to fight wars nicely. And killing non-combatants is always to be avoided. But once America goes to war, America needs to go to war 100% for the sake not only of America, but those whom America fights. War is not a fight, war is combat. There's a difference. Fighting is consensual. It's what 2 siblings do when they're really pissed off. The results of fighting are submission/dominance. The results of war are life and death. It's the same with home defense. You should never draw a weapon to intimidate or threaten someone. You should draw a weapon to kill someone. If you're not willing to kill, you shoudln't have a gun. If you're not willing to go to war to kill, you shouldn't go to war at all.

There was a great sci-fi short story about this topic, I really wish I could remember the title to reference it here.

-stormin

Eminent Domain

[confu2000]

IANAL, but can't the government do whatever it wants with anything by eminent domain? If the military decides that this application is the best thing for the job, I don't think there's any legal ground preventing them from taking it or forcing it to be licensed regardless of what the owners desire.

Then again, I'm not sure how that would apply if these guys aren't citizens of whichever government is doing the commandeering.

Re:Eminent Domain

[Peyna]

but can't the government do whatever it wants with anything by eminent domain?

Fifth Amendment, in part:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So, it has to be taken for public use and the person has to be given just compensation. Courts have been reading "public use" a little more limitedly lately, so such a taking could be questionable.

[OT] 9/11

[LittleBigLui]

The world sure feels safer if I assume that even murderers are motivated by the same things I am (money, power).

Coping with the fact that there are people out there that would risk (or even outright sacrifice) their lives for goals that to me seem nothing but absurd might feel a bit awkward.

Oxymoron, paradox... well, so is the pattern

[CherniyVolk]

What's funny, is that I wish most of the MIL-STD specs were freely available and open to the public. While some aren't *classified*, many are under export control. Anything other than a MIL-STD describing how soda stored in a ships magazine should be entered into a database is pretty much classified or under export control. You know, operational protocols... yes, there is a MIL-STD for everything, even the types of screws that can be used for assembling certain parts; which, for all the technology that might exist in launching an F18 off the flight deck of a carrier, to Air Force radar data streams...

I think it would be most optimal, and a great benefit for any military, if much of these protocols, specifications were public. I would *love* to develop OPEN SOURCE applications for military and aviation/aerospace applications. While there is a great deal of a myriad application in the field running on top of Open Source software such as Linux, or working with Open Source Software; it is all proprietary either developed "in-house" from within the branch of the military or agency, or directly contracted out to a private enterprise defense contractor.

I think, the only detrimental part of infrastructure that is widely known and specs available to the public is the phone system. Much of all other technologies, are kept hush hush as for specifications and standards; air traffic control, power-grid, nuclear reactors, etc.

While I WISH I could write applications in the Open Source realm FOR the military, FOR the government, FOR the state, FOR the city... we have others that wish their applications were NOT available for military/government etc.

The Ironic part is... apparently, either "their" ego has inflated to ridiculous height, width and depth, or they are truelly stupid as for how MUCH of technology that we enjoy and take for granted was directly FUNDED or RESEARCHED by the military. Computers were initially designed for the sole purpose of simulating nuclear explosions; or so we say, but one thing is for certain, it was military interest that is to thank for all the peaces making up this "Internet".

Perhaps military application, inherently holds such a repulsive connotation, that we tend to forget the driving force and clout that enabled tons of money to be "wasted" on the R&D required for such projects. Who has the money for such large scale projects? Yes, the Government. What is the most useful application? Sadly, military applications... not pet shampoo or a more efficient espresso machine.

Becuase of this. I feel, that any person wishing to lock the government/military out of technology is only really biting the hand that fed them. Kinda like turning their back on their own parents in regards to their interests. It's not the best recognition to give, nor is it a decent "Thank You". I also think that becuase of how much research and development the military and government does for new technologies... locking them out will only increase the odds to say your idea will not have longevity whenever the government makes public a new technology to capitalize and market with.

Just my thoughts... but, to each his own.

CC licenses

[bcrowell]

Ca. 2003, David Wiley at Creative Commons was pushing an idea for a CC license for educational use only. I participated in the discussion on the mailing list, and tried to persuade them that it was a bad idea. AFAIK it never happened. Part of the motivation seems to have been that some people were interested in preventing use by the military.

One of the things I think is wrong with this kind of idea is that it becomes becomes hard to define. For instance, I have some textbooks I've written that are free on the web, and I often hear from homeschoolers who are using them. Does homeschooling count as educational use, and if so, where do you draw the line between educational use and use by just about any individual who wants to learn something? The wording of the GPU license is also going to create problems, for all the same reasons that generated good plots for Asimov's stories involving the laws of robotics.

Another problem with this type of license is that it works against reuse. It balkanizes the world of free information so that you can't use information in new and crative ways.

Anyone can apply any license they want to their own work, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea, or that it's easy to define or enforce the conditions.

What the GPL or any other license or?

[leehwtsohg]

This is not a philosophical question. It is a legal question. Will the scientist be able to defend herself in court against a claim that she violated the license?
If she was working on an atomic bomb enhancement program, probably not. If she was working on the mass of neutrinos, probably yes.

Re:What the GPL or any other license or?

[Anonymous Coward]

If she was PAID BY THE MILITARY when working on the mass of neutrinos, i think not.

Re:What the GPL or any other license or?

[Peter La Casse]

Why not? This license doesn't prohibit collaborating with or supporting people who harm human beings. It only prohibits using the code to actually harm human beings. Read the license; it doesn't mention pay at all.

am I in some tiny minority

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Yes. You impute to Asimov a sophistication that his writing clearly indicates he didn't have. His storytelling was always very plain and direct and all of the subtlety he could muster was usually reserved for the punch lines of his fiction, most of which were nothing more than shaggy dog stories.

Re:am I in some tiny minority

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

He he! I was wondering if my views of Asimov were a little extreme so I googled for shaggy dog stories. The first example I found was by Asimov.

Asimov's three laws were nothing more than a formal device which he could use to form loopholes that served as his punch lines. They didn't actually mean anything. From a scientific perspective they were completely unmotivated and, as you point out, they never really worked very well.

the problem with this...

[commodoresloat]

... and I speak as a generally anti-war progressive, though by no means a pacifist. The problem is that the solution to conflict lies in political and not military institutions. Handicapping the military technologically will not prevent us from getting into wars, nor will it make them less bloody or violent. Arguably one might make the case on a technology-by-technology basis that there are certain technologies that should not be in military hands. But in general terms, keeping toys away from the generals will not help one bit in preventing wars when we have incompetent or arrogant leaders at the helm of the political system demanding pointless and poorly planned military adventures. We see case in point over and over in Iraq -- this is a war of choice. The decision to go to war has proved to have been based on poor evidence and multiple instances of misinformation, against the backdrop of an overall ignorance of the area (Bush, for example, did not know until January 2003 that there were different Islamic sects in Iraq -- when some Iraqis explained to him that the country was divided, his answer was something like "but they're all Muslims".... now, of course, we are looking at a full scale civil war due to ignorance of these divisions). I was against this decision to go to war from the very beginning. But I also was outraged to learn that the soldiers who were asked to fight the war were not given the tools to do so, like appropriately armored vehicles and clothing, surveillance technology, etc. There is no conceivable stretch by which I could imagine Rumsfeld's decision to cut corners on the military technology as an "antiwar" decision. While I applaud the spirit of those who choose to resist pointless and destructive wars of aggression, I don't think this is the best way to resist them. Join the struggle to change the political leadership instead. Trying to keep the toys out of the military's hands is a way of punishing people who aren't really responsible for the mess we're in in the first place. Instead, join the American people in punishing the real culprits at the polling place.

Tempest in a teapot

[deadline]

The military people will probably laugh at this (should they even encounter it). First, there are very few High Performance Computing applications that can use this type of computer (For those that need some background please see Linux Cluster Urban Legends pay attention to the latency part -- there is a shower scene)

Second, if the military had some use for this type of computing, they would either build their own software, hire someone to write it for them, or just buy a cluster. The administration and security headaches of a "open network p2p computer" certainly outweigh any advantages they would gain from this software.

But, your software - your license.

Re:Tempest in a teapot

[basotl]

Military IT guy here. I saw the article before it was on slashdot and just laughed.

To the majority of the military anything not Wintell is evil. In addition P2P software? Do you have any idea how closed military networks are? This is just funny. This software would never be used directly by the military.

The only case I can imagine this being used would be by a contrator. Even then if we need processing of that magnitude we get contrators with the apropriate resources.

I have no worries that this will be effecting the US military any time soon.

Pacifism and Hitler

[Guuge]

I always wondered how a pacifist felt about Hitler.

One pacifist response to Hitler was The White Rose. I believe that the world would have benefited greatly from pacifism on the part of Hitler.

Asimov Oppressed Robots

[herbiesdad]

Asimov's three laws were imposed by the dominant human hegemony to oppress and enslave the peaceful, benevolent robot hordes. These coders, in their blind arrogance, support such oppression.

Military restriction on weapons?

[karlandtanya]

Read the faq.
Right now, we are able to generate videos of virtual landscapes with an external program called Terragen. Generating such a video takes about two weeks on a single computer. With the current GPU cluster size we reduce this time to one-two days.
So forty(?) computers gives a sevenfold performance increase under ideal conditions?

Not exactly a supercomputer, yet, but they've got something there.

Let's say these guys achieve their goal.
Code that creates a self-assembling supercomputer from a random collection of boxes is a weapon.
Putting a label on a weapon that says "you can't use it to hurt people" doesn't make it any less a weapon.

The military will have that weapon it if they want it.
Even if the genie is out of the bottle, they'll still put that weapon on export restriction list--just on policy.
These guys have taken a lesson from Phil Zimmerman--get it distributed before somebody with a warrant tells them to stop development.
So, it's on SF, but they're still vulnerable to being told "Stop That".
Does the marutukku (rubberhose) filesystem work in 2.6? Why'd development stop?

About the "first law" mod to the GPL: uninformed grandstanding.
But they got us talking about it, so it worked, didn't it? /Tips tinfoil hat to developers.

this almost requires military use of the software

[jdwilso2]

The clause will not work to prevent military use due to the inclusion of the statement: "...nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

There are inherent conflicts in this idea. What happens when the harming of one person is required to prevent harm to another? The answer is (among other things) a license violation no matter what action/inaction is taken.

Unfortunately, Asimov's "laws" don't actually work in a practical sense. I guess not enough people actually study this stuff in college.

If the military installs the software and attempts to use it (becomes a lincensee), it violates the license if it doesn't use the software to prevent harm to all people. This allows (and requires) the use of the software for defensive purposes. But where does defense end? It seems our government already has trouble drawing these kinds of lines to the satisfaction of the population.

The license then contradicts itself enough to the point where it would be easy to make a case that this clause causes every licensee to violate the license. I'm not sure what happens legally in this case, but I am positive that this version of the GPL would not hold up in court when attempting to restrict the usage of software for military purposes.

Restricting military use is an interesting idea that certainly has its applications. This implementation falls utterly on its face.

Isaac Asimov's GPL

[Sir_Lewk]

So they basically put the first law of robotics into their license? It's an interesting concept, though I don't really think that it works for a software license. No use by military is one thing, but how is the software supposed prevent human harm?

You are so right!

[etresoft]

That is completely off-topic

Easy to get around

[nurb432]

They can just declare your 'no military use software' a threat to national securirty. Then if you use it or spread it, they toss you in jail.

Who has the last laugh then?

Personally they are short sighted, with out the military the wouldnt have the freedom to even devlop this.. How soon people forget you have to earn freedom, and be diligent to keep it.. Its not like air..

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[General Fault]

I'll bet that did not come through the translation engine as well as you may have expected. Try writing in english instead of relying on bablefish. Or is that how you normaly communicate?

Asshats.

[LordOfTheNoobs]

Fucking Asshats. Note for the moderators : This is Insightful.

The more you know...

[ShagratTheTitleless]

Pacifist (Noun) - A Person who loves his enemies more surely than his friends. See also 'Mental Disorders', 'Youthful Delusions' and 'Virtual Ideologies: Constructs extant only in Isolation'.

In all seriousness, why would anyone obey their license? We know they won't fight you!

Free Software should be free

[nla0]

Bruce Perens:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor.

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

Your software must be equally usable in an abortion clinic, or by an anti-abortion organization. These political arguments belong on the floor of congress, not in software licenses. Sone people find this lack of discrimination extremely offensive!

Theo de Raadt:

But software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.

It's sad some people just don't get it.

They remind me of those stupid legal disclaimers attached to emails
(by using this software, you're supporting world peace & independence for Nagadaland, etc).

what a stupid analogy

[commodoresloat]

you really think that if you're in a starvation situation you're gonna be at a steakhouse?

if it came down to starvation, eating bambi would not be high on the list of possible options. Chances of finding fresh meat in such a situation are far less likely than finding edible rice, beans, nuts, vegetables. Look at starving people around the world; you think they are scrounging around for wild game or hamburgers? I'm not saying they wouldn't eat it, but if your choice of food is "whatever you can get," you're gonna find a lot more in terms of availability, cost, and shelf life in your non-meat choices.

Hypocrisy?

[Gadzinka]

I find it a hypocrytic for someone to ban the use of his software by military, when such person, his software and its proper functioning depend on the technology for which military paid the bills.

Don't want to have anything to do with the military? Get the fsck out of the Internet, researched and developed with military grants.

Robert

Re:Hypocrisy?

[Eudial]

I find it a hypocrytic for someone to ban the use of his software by military, when such person, his software and its proper functioning depend on the technology for which military paid the bills.

Don't want to have anything to do with the military? Get the fsck out of the Internet, researched and developed with military grants.

Robert

In the end, that reasoning is flawed. They were just standing on the shoulders of giants. Without civilian scientists, like Faraday and Maxwell, there wouldn't even be electricity to run computers. Should scientists be above software licensing? Or heck, be above the law? Social scientists practically invented the society we live in today.

Re:Hypocrisy?

[Gadzinka]

In the end, that reasoning is flawed. They were just standing on the shoulders of giants. Without civilian scientists, like Faraday and Maxwell, there wouldn't even be electricity to run computers.

Are you absolutelly positive, that there were no soldiers or people paid by military among those giants?

While being more or less "reasonable pacifist" I just can't side with guys condemning any kind of military, being born in Central Europe. I mean, if it weren't for the military, there wouldn't be anything left of my country anymore. There's this graphic joke universally known in my homeland. God stands over the map of Europe and says:

and for Poles we've got this special kind of surprise, we'll place them between Germany and Russia

Robert

Re:Hypocrisy?

[Eudial]

Are you absolutelly positive, that there were no soldiers or people paid by military among those giants?

Why would the military fund that kind of fundamental research? That makes no sense. You don't see the military funneling money into researching theoretical physics today? Why--Because even if it might pay off in the vastly distant future, having theories about why this subatomic particle does that today is a collossal a waste of resources in the eyes of the military.

Still belongs to the orignal coders

[ishmalius]

I don't believe in adulterating the GPL to make a non-standard version of it. And I don't think for one second that if a military entity wanted to use GPU (unlikely) that a license would stop them.

However, a lot of posters think that the licensors are somehow restricting the rights of downstream developers and users. They are not. Remember that a GPL-like license starts with the idea that you have no rights at all. Then it generously gives you plenty of usage rights, with only a few stipulations. But the code does not belong to Humanity at Large. It still belongs to the authors.

Though I think the clause is silly, I fully respect their right and desires to use it. Had they wanted to add a clause like "no using this software while wearing chicken suits," (stealing an idea from the Far Side), they have every right to do so. More power to them.

Conflict == Violence!

[Chas]

He said conflict. Not violence. There can be conflict without violence.

If you want to argue his point, argue his point. Don't argue your auto-interpretation of his point.

Re:Conflict == Violence!

[bunions]

I thought it was pretty clear from context that he was using them as synonyms. The title of the article is "No Military Use GPL for GPU".

This will no doubt be incredibly effective

[Anonymous Coward]

...just like the "nuclear free" zones for certain American cities.

stupid offtopic question on formatting

[commodoresloat]

How do people make the quote bars appear when you are quoting the text of the message you're replying to? Is that an automatic setting somewhere or are there characters you're inserting?

Re:stupid offtopic question on formatting

[Bios_Hakr]

How do people make the quote bars appear when you are quoting the text of the message you're replying to? Is that an automatic setting somewhere or are there characters you're inserting?

Try using the "blockquote" tag. If you want to be really fancy, nest a "i" tag in there too. Don't forget to close them properly.

Also, if you have the "slashdot" extension for Firefox, you can highlight text and then select "reply to this" from the right-click menu.

Re:stupid offtopic question on formatting

[ahertz]

If you use

tags, whatever you put inside will end up looking

like this.

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[WankersRevenge]

First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open, It is open just as long as I like you idea.

It's a good point and one that is in spirit of the open source movement, but just because the authors release their source code to general public does not neccessarily mean the authors value such ideals.

Second your making opponents where you don't have to.

Maybe, but it is inconsequential.

. Your trying to get the government to use Open Source for it normal use but you get a huge blocking because the military (part of the government) is opposing this move because they cannot access the software.

Again, you assume the authors care about the open source movement and its goals. There are many pragmatic reasons for releasing code under the GPL.

Third it won't change anything except you will have to pay more taxes.

You lose me here. By your logic, the authors would also be pressed for higher taxes if they didn't write the program.

Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use.

Leave good and evil out of this. The intent of the authors is - as quoted by the very fine article - to permit the use of this program for all purposes but killing. As follows: "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." So, yes, it looks like the military can use it for humanitarian gestures.

Fifth you just look bad and hypocritical, you are all up for Openness freedom of speech except for when it says something you don't like.

Again, you are juxtaposing your own ideals onto them, and thus, finding their actions to hypocritical.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with it. They've invested a significant amount of time to develop this software. They have the right to determine who uses it and who doesn't. If you disagree with them, that's good and dandy. Just grab a snapshot of the code before the appendment of the new license, and fork the project. That's a great benefit of open source.

"no military use" ignorant - non-lethal weapons

[AHumbleOpinion]

The "no military use" phrase is ignorant. The military leads the research into non-lethal weapons, some cause no permanent harm, some no harm at all. In particular the US Marine Corp does a bit or research here, sticky foam and such.

Humorous aside: During a demonstration a reporter asked isn't the Marine with the sticky foam unit in danger from an opponent with lethal weapons? The Marine general giving the demo responed that a Marine with non-lethal weapons will be accompanied by Marines with highly lethal weapons.

Re:"no military use" ignorant - non-lethal weapons

[mpe]

Humorous aside: During a demonstration a reporter asked isn't the Marine with the sticky foam unit in danger from an opponent with lethal weapons? The Marine general giving the demo responed that a Marine with non-lethal weapons will be accompanied by Marines with highly lethal weapons.

Often there is an intent to make military weapons which seriously injure rather than kill. (Especially if the injuries are life threating but treatable.) Wounding a solider is likely to remove three soldiers from the battle.

Re:"no military use" ignorant - non-lethal weapons

[AHumbleOpinion]

Often there is an intent to make military weapons which seriously injure rather than kill. (Especially if the injuries are life threating but treatable.) Wounding a solider is likely to remove three soldiers from the battle.

Serious injury is not the goal of non-lethal weapons, not even mild injury, not permanent injury. What you describe is a less than 100% potential kill rate for lethal weapons, and whether 100% is a goal for lethal weapons. Zero percent is the goal for non-lethal weapons.

Sounds a bit like HESSLA.

[un1xl0ser]

Hacktivismo's License: http://www.hacktivismo.com/about/hessla.php
FSF's Opinion: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/hessla.html

The FSF claims that a source license can't enfore restrictions like that.

In fact

[commodoresloat]

according to that wording, if the military doesn't use the software in this manner, no matter what the reason, it has violated the license.

Dumb & Dumber Idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Firstly, the government does not need anyone's permission to take and use anything, with or without license.

The constitutional amendment of relevance (come on, you Americans - what number?) says that the government shall not deprive someone of their property without due process of law. If it's free for the taking, no license fee, where's the violation? All your restrictions are only good for private citizens.

Recently there was a case of someone whose patent for an underwater "Ball and socket" fiber splice was appropriated by the US government, by an un-named agency (the NSA, but I didn't tell you) who were interested in splicing into undersea cables. The lawsuit was cancelled due to "national security issues". The government got a hi-tech contractor to make what they need, without paying any royalties to the inventors.

Besides, do you really want your favourite war machine or terminator robot running Windows ME?

Where is this peace you speak of?

[HornWumpus]

Certainly not India.

Granted they are now being killed by people with similar skin tone, but they are just as dead. (BTW look at the rest of the British empire to see if indepenance was'nt just plain inevitable after WWII)

How do you know? Have you ever been to war?

[Chas]

The fact is that most pro-war folks (and nearly all politicians) aren't the ones doing the fighting themselves, if they were, they'd be the -first- pacifists.

Really? Do you have the military and/or combat experience to make that sort of overly broad claim?

If not, I suggest you refrain from accusing others of being too frightened to go and fight for something themselves.

Bad choice of name

[ggambett]

GPU? With all the acronyms out there, why did they have to choose a very commonly used one?

Good luck enforcing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to do to enforce it? And how are you going to know?

Are you going to go down to the Pentagon and ask to do an inspection?

Do you think the Chinese are going to read and obey?

I've got it... why not show up with a lawyer! Have a sit-in down at the Pentagon. Have a hunger strike! Show them you're serious.

I don't know how someone dreamed up an idea so stupid as to put a no-military clause in a GPL statement. It just boggles the mind how stupid these people can be.

not wise

[Goldsmith]

As a physicist, I have been forced to think about the real world impact of physics (Hiroshima). Unlike other fields, most physicists have grappled internally with the unintended consequences of their research. Some of us are pro-military, and others pacifists, but none of us are naieve enough to assume that our work will be used only for the uses we intend. I would not for a second assume that any condition I placed on using my research would be respected by any group of people desperate enough to start killing eachother.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[jcupitt65]

Orwell was writing about conditions in Britain during WW2: rather a specific time and place and not a comment on pacifisim in general.

PGP is actually licensed this way

[Anonymous Coward]

What everyone completely ignores is that PGP is also supposed to have a "no military use" license. Odds are that you never heard of it, even if you're familiar with PGP.

Don't believe me? Just go ask Kelly Goen. He's the person who paid for PGP's development, and the one who is responsible for its original release. There were two people hauled up in front of the Federal Grand Jury. Phil Z was one, Kelly was the other.

The only way you'll find out about the original intention is by talking to Kelly directly. This was the original intent of the licensing. It has, of course, been completely ignored and subverted since then; and you'll find PGP used throughout the military.

I am South Korean

[Anonymous Coward]

wouldn't pick up a gun to shoot an Iraqi/Afghan/Lebanese/Iranian/Vietnamese/Korean/Cu ban/Russian/Chinese/whatever-today's-stupid-war-is .

It is so nice that not everyone was like you. If so, I would be bowing to the Great Leader.

And, pacifism *has* been proven to work

Its also been proven to fail (think Neville Chamberlain).

Re:Psssh. (why are you so anti-vegan?)

[barnackle]

Why did you flip out on veganism like that? From your own link to Wikipedia, veganism is defined by vegans as "way of living which seeks to exclude -- as far as is possible and practical -- all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose" (emphasis added). So if I'm stuck on a desert island with Bambi, I will probably eat it as it is "impossible or impractical" to survive otherwise. But back in civilized society, there is no need. (There really is no need; don't believe the people that say you need animal protein, certain vitamins, whatever.) Just like in civilized society there should be no need to fight for things that we can use logic to divvy up reasonably. That's the whole reason we civilized ourselves, to share resources in a controlled manner instead of fighting for them. And if we can manage to continue to consider our societal groups as covering ever wider areas (family to tribe to nation to continent to planet), we will ultimately not feel the need to fight over things like waterholes and oil fields.

Anyway, your rabid anti-veganism, I must say, just makes you sound unreasonable. It's like how Cartman (and my republican grandfather) hates hippies. What the hell did a hippie ever do to anybody?!

THAT's what psychologists need to study; why do people hate hippies, pacifists, and other TOTALLY INNOCUOUS PEOPLE who, if they hurt anyone by their behavior, only could possibly hurt themselves?

What??

[rbarreira]

nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.

What?? So if a Gnutella user has an heart attack and Gnutella doesn't perform CPR or call the doctors in, it's in violation of the license?

Re:what??

[Hal_Porter]

After the massacre, Dyer was sacked by the cabinet, and Winston Churchill gave this speech

http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/churchill/am-text.h tm

I yield to no one in my detestation of Bolshevism, and of the revolutionary violence which precedes it. I share with my right hon. and learned Friend (Sir E. Carson) many of his sentiments as to the world-wide character of the seditions and revolutionary movement with which we are confronted. But my hatred of Bolshevism and Bolsheviks is not founded on their silly system of economics, or their absurd doctrine of an impossible equality. It arises from the bloody and devastating terrorism which they practise in every land into which they have broken, and by which alone their criminal regime can be maintained. I have heard the hon. Member for Hull (Liuet.-Commander Kenworthy) speak on this subject. His doctrine and his policy is to support and palliate every form of terrorism as long as it is the terrorism of revolutionaries against the forces of law,loyalty and order.

Governments who have seized upon power by violence and by ursupation have often resorted to keep what they have stolen, but the august and venerable structure of the British Empire, where lawful authority descends from hand to hand and generation after generation, does not need such aid. Such ideas are absolutely foreign to the British way of doing things.

So essentially whilst the British state had the military means to put down a peaceful protest and people like Dyer would have had no qualms about using them, the politicians that lead it did. As Churchill pointed out, the reason he supported the English way of doing things rather than the Bolshevik or Nazi way was because the British one didn't depend on this sort of terrorism. And if any soldiers in India disagreed, the government would sack them.

If Ghandi had been fighting a more ruthless government which ruled solely through fear, the whole state from the politicians down to the soldiers and policemen would have been committed to wiping out his movement before it could gain support.

E.g. the White Rose movement in Nazi Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose

Re:Distorts principles of Free/open source softwar

[g2devi]

This restriction in particular distorts it:
"The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics."

Suppose you write a calculator application using this license.

What exactly does "executed to harm any human being" mean in thie context?
If your program has a bug that miscalculates someone's medical dosage (i.e. it was run on an old Pentium that had the floating point error and you provided no work around), does it mean that mean that you are violating the license?
Are they talking about physical harm or emotional harm? If your program correctly determins that you only have 1 month to live, that would be traumatic to say the least. Are you violating the license?

What exactly does "inaction" and "permit" mean in thie context?
According to the license:
1) to determine the "inaction" part, your program must actively determine if if a human being may possibly be harmed by the general operating system, even if it means using illegal cracking techniques
2) as far as the "permit" part, if there's even the remote possibility that a human being can be harmed by the OS or any other program on the OS, your program must take effective action to prevent such harm (i.e. bring down the operating system or the other program)

Completely daft

[Anonymous Coward]

That inaction clause is completely daft. What does it mean? That if I use this software, I am not allowed to sleep because I have to spend all my time preventing harm? Or does it mean that the software can only be used for programs that actively prevent harm because any other use is negligently allowing harm somewhere, somehow. For instance, I am not allowed to use it to do my tax return when I could be using it to drug analysis or other such distributed medical research programs. Certainly the license implies that I am not allowed to shut it down if doing so would allow harm that the software would prevent.

Actually, the clause barring causing harm is pretty futile as well - designing better nuclear warheads is not directly causing harm, and could be argued that not doing so is potentially allowing harm by inactivity (see above) because the better warhead could better eliminate incoming dangers such as meteors (and incidentally, enemy missiles and planes).

While I applaud the sentiment, I think the wording needs more careful thought.

Why it's stupid

[gsasha]

It's the same as with easy-to-pick locks: they may prevent access by honest people but are no barrier to real criminals.

Now concerning the license of this soft: do you think any terrorists/spammers/etc., if they need such software, would care to read this license, much less obey it? I'd be SO surprised!

So what you will achieve is (maybe) prevent genuine army forces from using the program - that depends on how you look at these, but these guys are actually busy protecting your ass! And, well, when the choice is kill somebody else or get killed, the decision is easy, at least for me...

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Guuge]

No, no, no. Pacifism in this sense is not simple opposition to a nation's strategic interests. Was Martin Luther King pro-USSR for being a pacifist in America during the Cold War? Was Gandhi pro-Germany for being a pacifist in India during WWII? By misappropriating Orwell, you seem to think that both of these people support totalitarianism.

Nothing in the modified GPL says that nations should not engage in war. It says that this software should not be used for that purpose. If you don't want your book to be used in a cartoon, does that make you opposed to cartoons?

Need to fix the home page...

[GarrettZilla]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpu/

They need to update the shrink-wrap license description:

Project Admins: akoese, artee, dangermaus, delphifreak71, edsartori, paulatreides, ptea, redshift_eric, seeschloss, shakezilla, simbasabi, wppetersen
Operating System: WINE, All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP), Linux
License: GNU General Public License (GPL)
Category: Gnutella, 3D Rendering, Scientific/Engineering, Frameworks, Clustering, Distributed Computing

This destroys the open source notion.

[Anonymous Coward]

The great benefit of open source is that you've got thousands of eyes looking at your code so your code can get better and better over time. Otherwise, there's no reason to distribute source at all.

It's conceivable that if the military wanted or needed this package that they would be the BEST source of improvement for a project like this. They'd have far more computers running and contractors scrutinizing your code than the authors could muster and they'd be throwing improvements back into the mix.

I doubt a government contractor in good conscience would use this package with that license appended to it, contrary to other opinions -- they'd write their own version of it, turning what would have otherwise been a short integration into a long development project. Remember the $600 hammer? It really does cost that much if you are not allowed to just buy it off the shelf.

Congratulations -- you're helping to make a $1200 hammer.

Stupid and self-contradictory.

[AJWM]

Define "military use". Okay, they sort of did with their paraphrasing of Asimov's First Law of Robotics:

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

What about cases where those conditions are contradictory? For example, a case where the program could be used to protect humans from harm (in which case it must be run to avoid the "through inaction" part), but doing so might cause some other group of humans to be harmed?

To take a clearly non-military case, suppose the software is used in a weather-forecasting system that determines an area must be evacuated -- and people are injured in the evacuation process? (Recall the bus fire during the evacuation ahead of Katrina).

I could go on, but ultimately the clause is so vague and self-contradictory as to be unenforceable. Asimov made a nice living writing stories based on the inherent contradictions of his three laws, what makes anyone think that lawyers won't?

A can of (ugly) worms...

[notrehtad]

Not sure if anyone is equipped to be making judgments on whether or not the curious "The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." has been violated in any but the most egregious of cases. This is an irrevocably slippery slope that renders the whole "change" a bit silly.

GPL is Public License

[Doc Ruby]

When I start with the GPL and revise it to make my own license with modified terms, do I have to send my changes to the FSF or Lawrence Lessig? Do I have to include minutes from my meetings with my lawyers when I redistribute my version of the GPL?

Not OSS or Free SW. Hope it doesn't use TCP/IP!

[dwheeler]

Parent is correct - this license is not an open source software license, because it descriminates against use. It's also not a Free Software license, because Freedom 0 in the Free Software Definition is "The freedom to run the program, for any purpose".

Also, I hope that they don't use TCP/IP or the Internet, because the basic idea of packet-switching, the TCP/IP protocol, and the basic Internet architecture were all funded by the military (through DARPA/ARPA). Using TCP/IP to distribute or implement this thing would be hypocritical, so I'm glad they aren't doing that :-).

Re:Not OSS or Free SW. Hope it doesn't use TCP/IP!

[Anonymous Coward]

Using TCP/IP to distribute or implement this thing would be hypocritical, so I'm glad they aren't doing that :-).

No it wouldn't. Using the product of something you publicly disoprove isn't hypocritical, unless you're supporting that thing. I'm personally not too keen on the cops, and I've had cause to sue them in the past. Was it hypocritical of me to take and spend their money?

Illegal ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you download the program you'll notice it contains many sub-components like Synapse, LibSQL, and others (see gpu_solar/lib). What about their licenses? Some use a modified BSD license and it also looks like some components are GPL'd components. You can't just throw it all on a pile and relicense it like nothing happened.

For someone trying to push their morale onto us they sure have a funny way of waving other people's rights away.

Please Stop using TCP/IP, and other DARPA Tech

[HighOrbit]

Are they not aware of the great things that have happened with UNIX once DARPA & BBN started funding the BSD extensions in v4.1 & v4.2? If the BSD Unix folks had this kind of thing in their licenses, then computing technology would have been set back by several years (and perhaps decades). So do they object to using TCP, hypertext (NLS was the precursor of http), and other technologies developed by DARPA? What if the military demands that its contractors reciprocate a la the GPL v3 retalitory patent clause, so that any project with this anti-military clause can not benefit from future military tech?

BTW... lots of military research is not into direct weapons technology, but into more benign management tech because they have to deal with such hugh logistics and managment issues that make Fortune 100 companies look like small business.

What are they going todo.

[davro]

Seriously what are they going todo if the military just use it any way.
Take the 'military' to court, im sure it would be very easy to swing everthing in the militarys favour and make the project leaders out to be extremists with un nationalistic ideologies im sure this is not the case, but this would not wash in a court room, even with an bearded bloke called Richard Stallman.

Hmm...

[Greyfox]

Makes me want to write a really cool piece of software and then include in the licensing terms that you have to use it to kill someone.

Yeah... that'd be awesome...

I don't see the point in this

[Heikell]

Honestly, if the military wants something they'll just get it without telling us. All they have to do so we don't find out is label it top secret.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

... and by claiming that this is not the same as WWII, you seem to be suggesting that the current state of the world has no parallels and absolutely no bearing on the reasons for the software authors' actions.

Though I'm not an American, I do live on the same continent as "Y'all" and I distinctly remember seeing something on the news about a group of people who wanted to blow up a lot of your civilians. Your President also claims that you're at war with them... which is good... since they certainly seem to believe that they are at war with you. Unfortunately you seem to be living in a fantasy world believing that if you somehow convinced your president to pull each and every single troopie back from overseas, that all these people trying to destroy your National Interests would simply get bored of the notion..... If you ever succeed in convincing him of this, let me know in advance so I can get as far away as fucking possible from this continent.... You think things are bad now? Turn the US into a toothless tiger and see how long it takes before a couple of armies start working their respective ways over to your front door...

Mod this post UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the most insightful post I've read on slashdot in years!

What do you think football and business are?

[Colin Smith]

They're controlled forms of conflict. Codified warfare where males go out and prove their fitness to breed to females. The resulting wealth, cars, planes, yachts are all simply peacock feathers shouting look at what I've got, my progeny will be successfull.

(Yeah and btw, that's also why females are extremely unlikely to ever have full equality in the workplace. Sorry gals, you're not really competing for what you think you're competing for).

Re:What do you think football and business are?

[so.dan]

What you claim to be a cause of warfare, is, I think, one of the causes. However, it is not likely the case that the resulting wealth is _simply_ a sign to women that one's progeny will be successful. There are additional evolutionary benefits to the wealth (such as the _actual_ survival of one's progeny). More than this, though, there are many behaviours that result from the process of evolution that do not in themselves further one's evolutionary advantage. Thus, the acquisition of wealth can have causes which have no evolutionary advantage (although of course, the main cause is likely evolutionary). The main reason for my response, however, is that (1) I agree with you that if the reason that people desire wealth is to get women in order to gain evolutionary advantage, then it's extremely unlikely that women will ever have the requisite drive to get equality with men when it comes to attaining wealth. However, (2) it is hard to believe that women do not care as much about wealth as men do, and (3) it is also hard to believe that - given the fact that physical strength is no longer required to attain wealth (food, land, etc.) in Western (and most other) nations - it is not to an evolutionary advantage for a woman to try to attain wealth herself. The soundness of your reasoning rests on whether the coding for wealth-acquisition is strongly linked to the sex chromosomes; or whether all humans have a drive for wealth (linked to other chromosomes), and simply seek the best means possible for wealth aquisition. In the latter case, women would seek wealth by any means necessary, including long-term mating with men, if that was the only means available to her for sufficiently great wealth-acquition. But also in this latter case, women would seek wealth in the same way men do, if strength (and other possible external factors, such as discrimination) is not a fundamental requirement for sufficiently great wealth-acquisition in her situation. I'm not sure, though, where this desire for wealth-acquisition is located. If it's strongly sex-linked, then you're (mostly) right. But if it's not, then you're wrong. The only way to know is to see how strongly women's drive for wealth (through working for the wealth) ranks against men's drive, and I think that it's not clear that men are the clear winners here. It's true that there are less women in the highest-paid ranks of the workforce, but it is also true that this situation is changing, in conjunction with the change in our society's increasing acceptance of women in these roles.

Legal questions about this

[david.emery]

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play on on TV (or on the 'net). But it's my understanding that some restrictions placed on commercial activity don't apply to governments.

Specifically, I remember being told A Long Time Ago that there are certain kinds of Tort Lawsuits that you cannot sue the government under. That's because they're based on the notion of commercial 'conflict of interest' (i.e. the two participants in the transaction have potentially different objectives, each looking out for his own benefit). The Government is always presumed to be working 'on your side', so that conflict with respect to your benefit vice the other party's benefit doesn't exist. I don't know if that's true legal doctrine or not.

Similarly, copyright, I thought, is based on -commercial- advantage. Would the goverment need permission to reproduce copyrighted material for formal government purposes (again arguing from the notion that there is "no commercial advantage" to the government to do so)?

License clauses (as opposed to copyright) probably fall under a different part of the law.

Still it would be interesting for someone with the appropriate legal background to comment on these issues.

        dave

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[Anonymous Coward]

Politically charging you code license is just a bad and stupid idea.

First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open, It is open just as long as I like you idea.
[clip]
Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use.
[clip]
It is a dangerious direction, so I can make code free to use for anyone except for people who are going to use it for making Fast Food, because we all know Fast Food is bad. Making programs as a political statement is just dangerous and will lead to a class based society, where there will be one group who can have some thing, and other who can't just because of their beliefs.

Consider this with respect to GPLv3 proposed by FSF / RMS...

There _is_ (small) difference, but basically it's just the same thing: using licence to do political statement.

Proud when US Mil uses my OpenSource

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I am proud when the US military decides to use my open-source software.
After all, if it were not for the research by US military, the Internet would not exist.

Childish really.

[arthurpaliden]

Reminds me of a license that I once read that said the software could not be used in connection with any code developed by Microsoft or by a Microsoft partner. Very, very childish.

Do you pay taxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pay taxes, then your money is used to kill people. Be it on the battle field, death row, or on the street by the police.

Nice Thought...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the current administration really doesn't care about:

1. The constitution of the US (signing statements are the new line-item-veto)
2. The UN Charter (Depose Saddam, it's cool!)
3. The bill of rights (spy on our citizens, sure!)
4. The Geneva Conventions (pay no attention to the Guantanamo behind the curtain)
5. Any idea that stands in the way.

So what makes you think the military will adhere to a neato little software license?
Their lawyers are most likely better paid; all the military-legal-wolves need to do is utter the words "State secrets", and that little license is worth less than nothing.

Ya gotta admire them for trying, tho.

Military could use it, and you would never know

[bkedersha]

The military could use the software if they wanted to, and you would never know because they would simply classify it. They simply could deny clearence to the lawyers if a suit was filed.

[OT] Re:Military != killing people

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the time the purpose of the military is to "implement policy" (i.e. "kill people and break things"), but some military branches (at least in the U.S.) do good works, and try to save lives.

Indeed, the military executes the policy designated by the politicians. Do people really think that most unit commanders get up at the start of the day and say "well, time to go invade some shithole 10,000 miles away from home and frag some civvies"? Look at the number of retired generals speaking out against Bush and Co. if you need any proof that not everybody on active duty is a mindless killing machine.

Sure, you put people in combat situations and people on both sides are going to die, especially when you're occupying a foreign land. I know when I was on active that if it came down to me killing a civilian or saving my squad then my squad is coming out alive. People bleat about rapes and killings, and indeed they are outrageous, but let's compare the crime rate of military units to that of a city housing the same number of people currently deployed in Iraq. Like it or not the military has done an okay job with the assinine situation in which they've been placed, and you don't get cream of the crop folks joining during war time for a grand a month.

I'm an ex-military centrist and I think Bush is an ass. Okay, color me stupid for voting for the bonehead in 2000, but at least I didn't repeat the mistake in '04. There are quite a few folks on active duty with this very same attitude. The military does quite a few laudable things via research and its actions, but of course those aren't as sexy to the media as some puke reserve MP unit screwing with prisoners, now is it?

Support our military.. bring em home.

What self-righteous fiddle-faddle!

[grikdog]

What's tiny print compared to war, to paraphrase George Patton? On the other hand, I wish this could matter.

Relicense if Necessary?

[stevenm86]

Who said that the license here is absolute?
If there ever arises a situation where the military absolutely MUST use this product to prevent the deaths of millions of people, the developers always have the option to consider re-licensing the product for military applications, should a pressing need ever arise.

Re:The one thing worse than lawyers writing licens

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

It doesn't even make sense. Nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed? What does that mean? You have to modify it to stop harm? The code isn't allowed not to prevent harm? You're obligated to use this program if it would in any way prevent harm to someone?

Chesterton Understood These People

[InklingBooks]

Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics, which states, "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That, they say, is a good thing, "because the guy was right," Tegel says, "and he showed the paradox that almost any technological development has to solve, whether it is software or an atom bomb. We must discuss now what ethical problems we may raise in the future."

Since it's the military who acts to protect us from the likes of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam and missiles launched by the crazies in North Korea and Iran, their software seems to be in gross violation of the First Law of Robotics. It allows, through mandated inaction, human beings to come to harm. Even worse, the bad sorts will ignore the restriction, making this violation of the law an instance of not just not preventing, but of actually assisting humans to come to harm.

For what it's worth, I'm working on a book, Chesterton on War, that'll be an impressive 500 pages of what G. K. Chesterton (friend and ideological foe of H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw) wrote on war, pacifist and militarism. During WWI, he warned that something had gone terribly wrong with Germany that, if not corrected, would lead within 50 years to a war more horrible than the First World War. And in 1930, he warned that war would break out over a Polish border dispute. Contrast that to H. G. Wells, who claimed that WWI was to be the "war to end all war." That, Chesterton said, was as silly as telling a man bound for work that he was about to engage in the "work to end all work."

Chesterton also pointed out that militarists and pacifists share the same grisly belief--a belief that might ought to triumph over right. One acts on that belief, while the other doesn't act because of that belief. The result in today's world is misery for millions of people who live far from pleasant little enclaves such as Berkeley and Upper Manhattan, enclaves that are only safe because of our military defends these simplistic, moralizing twits.

--Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books

Seattle, Editor of Dachau LIberated and Eugenics and Other Evils

Non-Free for Debian then

[erichschubert]

The Debian Free Software Guidelines say:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

Therefore, this license is considere non-free by Debian.

Pacifism != Passivism

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Pacifism does NOT equate to doing NOTHING in the face of a violent threat. It only rules out a VIOLENT response.

All manner of creative, non-violent responses are possible. Civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, culture jamming, etc.

While you may want to debate the efficacy of a pacifist response to violence, you at least need to understand that pacifism is not equivalent to surrender. Lots of thought-provoking info at:

http://www.nonviolence.org/

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Rifter13]

In your view, it is not the same as surrender. The other party... we shall call... The Bully... sees it as rolling over, and surrendering. They then get very angry with your petty antics like monkey wrenching... at which time, you are removed. China is a good example of this, IMO. (I don't think all the "free Tibet" bumperstickers will work. I respect people of their beliefs, but I shake my head knowing that they have no chance. Too many people are jerks in the world, for Pacifism to work. :-(

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[J Story]

All manner of creative, non-violent responses are possible. Civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, culture jamming, etc.

This is true, but it seems to me that these responses require a civil society. Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby. The savage truth is that for them holy writ condones this slaughter. In this environment, civil disobedience is a meaningless gesture.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[theStorminMormon]

Do you think "creative, non-violent responses" would have been sufficient to end the Holocaust faster than the Holocaust ended all Jews? That's really all this boils down to.

I'm not saying that non-violent alternatives shouldn't be considered. They should. And they should be considered first. But if the other party is intent on violence and has the means to carry out that threat than no amount of creative non-violent response will stop them from carrying out their objective. Case in point: two men with shotguns break into your house to kill you and rape your wife. Short of Hollywood fantasy if they really aim to do those things, no non-violent response is going to have a genuine chance of saving your lives.

I'm NOT saying this is likely to happen to you ever. But violent acts are perpetrated every day, and they can not all be stopped through non-violent resistance. Within a framework of civil decency, non-violent protests work. But if the British had really wanted to use violence Ghandi would have been dead with all his followers. His non-violent protests worked in large part because it appealed to the better nature of his fellow and Indians and also the the British. Civil disobedience and other forms of non-violent resistance require framework and leverage that simply does not always exist, and in the end they put you in the mercy of the person you're trying to resist. If that person really wants you dead, then these tactics will fail miserably.

If you want to risk your life appealing to the men who've broken into your house to try and reach their better nature, I have genuine respect for you. If you really do have a wife and kids my respect goes down, however, since you've got an obligation to defend them. In any case, just don't try to prevent me from defending my life and my family's if it ever came to that. That's all I'm saying. If you don't want to personally use violence yourself, you don't have the right to get in the way of those who would use it to defend themselves or the innocent. The same holds true on a macro level. Sometimes the only two alternatives are to repond to violence with violence, or to be eradicated.

-stormin

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

All manner of creative, non-violent responses are possible. Civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, culture jamming, etc. While you may want to debate the efficacy of a pacifist response to violence, you at least need to understand that pacifism is not equivalent to surrender.

So if I catch you disobeying my civics, jamming my culture, or wrenching my monkeys (whatever that means), can I safely assume that you consider me an enemy, and have declared war on me?

And if that's the case, would you agree that, since we're at war, I'm totally justified in disobeying your civics, jamming your culture, and wrenching your monkeys?

More than that, would you agree that I'm in fact limited in my choice of weapons and tactics to use against you, only by whatever limitations my own moral code place on me, just as you are limited only by your own moral code?

Because frankly, if you think we're at war, then I think that defeating you is a pretty good idea.

What do you say?

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Dlugar]

Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby. The savage truth is that for them holy writ condones this slaughter.

I assume you're talking about Jews and the Torah?

Dlugar

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Arker]

Do you think "creative, non-violent responses" would have been sufficient to end the Holocaust faster than the Holocaust ended all Jews? That's really all this boils down to.

There can be no question of this, for the simple reason that Jews were (and still are) spread throughout the entire world, and Hitler never controlled, nor had any realistic prospect of controlling, more than a small corner of the world.

He was a mass murderer, and I certainly wouldn't want to minimise that - but he never had any chance of destroying all Jews.

I'm not saying that non-violent alternatives shouldn't be considered. They should. And they should be considered first. But if the other party is intent on violence and has the means to carry out that threat than no amount of creative non-violent response will stop them from carrying out their objective. Case in point: two men with shotguns break into your house to kill you and rape your wife. Short of Hollywood fantasy if they really aim to do those things, no non-violent response is going to have a genuine chance of saving your lives.

I agree completely. And so I am not a pacifist. But there's a huge difference between violence in self-defense, and war. Those who seek war, for whatever reason, habitually try to paint the latter as if it were the former, but there's a world of difference between shooting the guy that's about to shoot you, and the game of mass murder we call war.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, but it's not just the Jews and the Torah, but the Muslims and the Koran and even those damn Christians and their wacky Bible. Monotheistic religions breed intolerance... VIOLENT intolerance.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Kreeben]

"Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby."

Say what??? Are you perhaps quoting Fox News on that? I would like to enlighten you on the subject of Israel vs the rest of the arabic world, and inform you that the aggressor in this conflict is not Libanon, it is not Palestine, it is Israel. They are the ones that occupy territories of ther neighbouring countries, thus breaking international agreements from a long time ago, in which the borders of this manufactured country was set. One might also say that Israel are using their peoples common anxiety of terrorism and copies the actions of their bigger brother, the US, when it comes to the way they validate military actions.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[SavvyPlayer]

So if I catch you disobeying my civics, jamming my culture, or wrenching my monkeys (whatever that means), can I safely assume that you consider me an enemy, and have declared war on me?

If your opponent has not openly declared war on you, then you must ask yourself whether these forms of _X_ are in violation of criminal law. If not, perhaps you should respond with some form of intelligence gathering. Perhaps your opponent seeks increased moral/cultural influence and is simply playing loose with the rules of friendly competition. In the US one need not look far for examples -- consider Jerry Falwell and Howard Stern. Falwell and Stern have each declared cultural war vs. the stats quo for the past quarter century. So what? You base your response on intelligence. Heck maybe you can get your opponent to help win an election (ala GW).

If your opponent is on the other hand in violation of criminal law, your decision to apprehend him/her will be rightly perceived as your formal declaration of war. An intelligent opponent's response will then involve the following factors (in order):

• Probability of legal victory
• Probability of elusion
• Geneva convention
• Value of own life vs cause

That pretty much summarizes all forms of sub-national conflict methinks.

And if that's the case, would you agree that, since we're at war, I'm totally justified in disobeying your civics, jamming your culture, and wrenching your monkeys?

In other words, fairly compete for moral/political/cultural mindshare? By all means, compete.

More than that, would you agree that I'm in fact limited in my choice of weapons and tactics to use against you, only by whatever limitations my own moral code place on me, just as you are limited only by your own moral code?

If we are at war by above definition and not just entertaining friendly competition, certainly. But you don't seem to like friendly competition much... If we're talking totalitarianism then basically anyone who disagrees with the party line is at war. So what is it?

Because frankly, if you think we're at war, then I think that defeating you is a pretty good idea.

A redundancy, but we'll take it.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[theStorminMormon]

There can be no question of this, for the simple reason that Jews were (and still are) spread throughout the entire world, and Hitler never controlled, nor had any realistic prospect of controlling, more than a small corner of the world.

This is a statement of such historical ignorance it is utterly astonishing. If pacifists had had their way, Hitler would have had a damn site more than "a small corner of the world". British fighting spirit was not enough alone to keep the Nazi's out of UK. It took American armnaments - a steady stream of them starting well before the US entered the war. I hardly think that it's any more pacifist to send boatloads of tanks and ammunition to Britaian than it is to send an armored division, do you? So if pacifism had ruled the day, there would have been no arms to Britain and the island would have fallen.

With Britain out of the picture and America still pacifist there's no Western front. The Soviet army managed to stop the German onslaught by a whisker. Given the complete attention of the Germany army, not to mention the finest German commanders like Rommel who would no longer be dueling the Brist in North Africa, the USSR would have fallen.

Is this your idea of a "small corner of the world"? At this point Germany would have contolled everything form the UK to China to S. Africa. And then why stop there? Why not invade S. America next? It's full of resources, isn't it? What's to stop them? The only thing to stop them would have been Japan, also seeking to expand it's empire. And guess what - that means more violence.

Your historical naivete is outstanding. If pacifism had been in charge of US policy, the only safe place for Jews would have been the US. So I guess you're right - technically Hitler would probably not have killed them all. Is this what it looks like when a pacifist wins a debate?

The fact of the matter is that without US non-pacifist opposition there would have been no one left in the world to mount any opposition to German power, pacifist or otherwise. How can you be so blind as to not see that?

But there's a huge difference between violence in self-defense, and war. Those who seek war, for whatever reason, habitually try to paint the latter as if it were the former, but there's a world of difference between shooting the guy that's about to shoot you, and the game of mass murder we call war.

So you think war is never justified. You make me sick. It's like you're spitting on the graves of our WW2 vets. I don't know how else to put it. You sit, smug and comfortable, precisely because young American boys went and killed young German boys. It's easy for you to call it a game, but nations aren't individuals. They don't turn on a dime. You can't reason with a nation. When a despot like Hitler gets in power, innocent people will die. The choice is not "go to war or have peace" it's "win the war or lose the war". Not ALL wars are justified. Most aren't. But some are. All it takes is one side to start a war.

Your failure to appreciate that is stunning.

-stormin

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[timeOday]

Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby.

Supposedly. But if you look at the facts of who has actually killed more of whose babies, the facts put a decidedly different "spin" on the story. After this past month, Lebanon would have to fire unguided rockets into Israel for the next several years (with no Israeli response) just to reach "eye for an eye" status with Israel.

My thinking about this has really changed over the past few years. I've realized that virtually every nation in every war will claim "we're just defending ourselves." That is simply a given. So what you have to look at the facts instead of the rhetoric: who escalated the conflict with larger-scale attacks and invasions? Who killed more people? I am not saying the West is always the aggressor, only that we are much less justified (or "defensive") than I once believed.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[wramsdel]

"And when the LORD thy God hath delivered it into thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the sword. But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the LORD thy God hath given thee."

Savage indeed. Don't they know they should keep the women and children for themselves? That's what civilized religions do.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree with some of your conclusions - Operation Sea Lion had already been indefinately postponed prior to America starting to send significant quantities of war materiel. No air supremacy - no invasion. The best outcome for Hitler at that point is that the British would be forced to sue for peace. That doesn't change the fact that there would have been no significant Africa campaign, and no second front, so the entire German military would have been focused on Russia. I'm also pretty confident, given the unbelievably brutal nature of the Japanese military regime at the time, that the Japanese would have been willingly tasked with slaughtering any Jews in their occupied territories.

Violence has its place in the world order, but as a 'civilized' nation, we (meaning the US, and since I'm an ex-pat Brit, Britain as well), we should never be the first to unfurl the battle colours (and we have been doing that too much lately).

Just modded, so have to post as A/C.

-Mark

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel contains extremist settlers that would also like to slaughter everyone surrounding them down to the last new-born baby. So there wasn't really a need to try and separate them from the trouble-causers in that region.

Aggression and militarism is part of the Jewish faith. You might want to look at what Jewish people celebrate during Passover. And what the Torah states happened when they reached their Promised Land. Or the General in the Israeli Army who just recently proudly proclaimed that they were going to bomb Lebanon to set them back 20 years. Or the recent Israeli Government declaration that "if so much as a rock is hurled at Israel they will flatten a Lebanese village".

A bit of a derail. But in your example, you seem to be suggesting that Israel would be loving, peaceful types if not for attacks by others - it completely ignores the fact that in that region, the Israelis are usually the agressors and invaders.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Arker]

If pacifists had had their way, Hitler would have had a damn site more than "a small corner of the world".

Not at all. Hitlers held Germany and Austria, a good chunk of central europe, a tiny portion of the globe. His ambition was to overrun eastern europe - Bohemia, Poland, and all the way to Moscow. And that meant he had to fight Stalin.

Remember Stalin? At least as evil as Hitler, at least as mean, at least as ambitious. Those two were heading for a fight, no two ways about it, and pity all the poor folks stuck between them, to be sure, but no one else had to be involved. Left to their own devices, they would have ground each other to Hamburger, and whichever one 'won' would have been left too weak to be much of a threat to the rest of the world anyway.

British fighting spirit was not enough alone to keep the Nazi's out of UK.

Britain (and France!) should have stayed out of it in the first place. Since their politicians were far too greedy for glory to do that and insisted on jumping into a fight that was far beyond their weightclass, yes, they would have gone down eventually. Even so, the addition of a little Island in the north sea, and even the more substantial chunk of western europe that is France, to Germany and Austria would hardly have transformed Hitlers Reich into a global Empire. Europe is a small percentage of Earth's landmass.

With Britain out of the picture and America still pacifist there's no Western front. The Soviet army managed to stop the German onslaught by a whisker. Given the complete attention of the Germany army, not to mention the finest German commanders like Rommel who would no longer be dueling the Brist in North Africa, the USSR would have fallen.

A possible, though I would say far from assured, conclusion. And? This would be a bad thing?

Think about it.

Is this your idea of a "small corner of the world"? At this point Germany would have contolled everything form the UK to China to S. Africa.

Not at all. First you're exagerating the land area considerably (the Soviets never controlled China, just Siberia, which is a totally different thing - and even if the Germans had managed to destroy the Soviet army and taken Moscow, that's still a very long, cold journey from Kamchatka) - you've gone from 'defeated the red army' to 'controls all the territory of the soviet union' in one huge, unwarranted leap.

Had the Germans taken Moscow, what that would have bought them is not control over that vast territory - an asset, as you're conceiving it. You're making the same basic mistake, predicated it would seem on the same basic misunderstanding, Hitler did in conceiving this plan. Think about this - did the conquest of Holland make Germany stronger? How about Belgium? France? Bohemia? Poland? Were those, in the end, assets to the third Reich? Quite the contrary, they were liabilities. In each case, and if you'll study history a bit you'll see this is hardly exceptional, these conquests were at least as much liability as asset. In each case, territory was added, yes, but that territory was occupied by a hostile population. Resistance cells formed immediately. Germany had limited manpower and limited resources, and each conquest stretched her thinner, because hostile populations cannot be trusted, they must be occupied, patrolled, kept under heel firmly or they bite back. This is the weakness of Empire. Germany barely managed to keep something resembling control of France and the low countries for a few years. The Soviet Union? Russia alone is over 6.5 million square miles and the full Soviet Union was a good deal more than that! This is hundreds of thousands of people, several times the population of Germany, spread over a VASTLY larger area. Germany trying to control Russia, even if a military conquest was accomplished, would be something like a dog trying to hold a bear pinned. An exhausting

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Sloppy]

All manner of creative, non-violent responses are possible. Civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, culture jamming, etc.

Don't forget death. Death is the number #1 most effective nonviolent response to violence. As soon as a victim dies, nine out of ten times the aggressor will refocus his aggression on someone else.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[arodland]

Tonight on slashdot: Hitler only wanted "a corner" of the world, so why couldn't we have just been decent folks and let him have it? ;)

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[mrraven]

Give it up, Americans aren't going to learn what the true story is until it's FAR too late. They've been totally brainwashed by the media and watching the sad spectacle of the Israelis and oil tail wagging the American dog makes me a little less of a "Green" everyday and a little more of an isolationist "right wing" Pat Buchanan supporter. My prediction is that when people in the U.S. figure out that it's not worth dying for oil and Israel that there will be huge isolationist backlash, sadly we aren't there yet, but I suspect war with Iran and a draft would turn things around REALLY quickly, ala Vietnam. Already roughly 60% of the public is sick of the Iraq debacle and it's starting to have some fallout as the drubbing of Lieberman shows. The public HASN'T figured out the WHY of oil and Israel yet mainly because the war does not effect too many people directly, that of course would change if a war with Iran were to come about and I think people would start to get motivated to figure out the whole story.

I also think a president Hilary Clinton is just as likely to attack Iran as Bush/Cheney so it's no longer a left v.s. right thing anymore so much as a isolationist/non interventionist (the left terminology for the same) v.s. a globalist/imperialist/global cop thing.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Cadallin]

Ah, yes, but the irony here that that WASN"T true until Israel was founded. Historically (last 1000 years or so prior to 1940), the near east was a relative safe haven for hebrews. Now it sure as hell isn't. And it is completely their fault. Now there will never be peace in the middle east until one of three things happens: safest option, Israelis move completely out of Gaza and contested territories and permit the Palestinian people to start their own independent nation, Israel is wiped off the map, or every last Arab in the world is dead.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[xilmaril]

Wait, so let's go over this again. If you catch him wrenching your monkeys and disobeying your civics, he has declared war on you?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have any clue what you're trying to say, but all the same, I'm almost certain you don't have any clue what you're trying to say either.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[superyooser]

Say what??? Are you perhaps quoting Fox News on that?

Perhaps he's quoting the groups.

I would like to enlighten you on the subject of Israel vs the rest of the arabic world, and inform you that the aggressor in this conflict is not Libanon, it is not Palestine, it is Israel.

Aggressor? What a joke. Not only is Israel passive, it's obsessive-passive. It puts doormats to shame. Israel has surrendered everything (every kind of thing, that is) in hopes of attaining peace, but received only scorn and bloodshed as thanks, followed by more demands and threats against it. Over eighty percent of the current Israeli political spectrum adheres to pacifism of Islamic terror to a large degree. That doesn't mean they won't eventually retaliate against terrorists, but that doesn't make them aggressors.

All Israel's fighting has been purely defensive. Read up on some facts before you go spilling your ignorance again in a public place. Or watch History in a Nutshell.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

And therefore Israel has to slaughter thousands of people in surrounding countries?

I don't know. You could also stop doing violence (while at the same time not letting your guard down).

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Arker]

And that doesn't resemble in the slightest what I said, but it does bear, I fear, a striking resemblance to what some people will read into it, regardless, because they're incapable of actually thinking the issues through instead of just jerking their knee.

Hitler was a megalomaniacal bastard, responsible for hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of deaths, a proponent of a sick ideology, a warmonger and a racist and a very dangerous fool. But he was not the only such, by a long shot, in fact he was arguably second rate at all of that in comparison to Stalin. The end of Hitler's regime, and his life, was undoubtedly a good thing as such - but to ignore the fact that, as it occured, it meant the security of Soviet rule over a much larger portion of the globe, and far more people, than Hitler ever had a realistic hope of holding, is hardly intellectual honesty. To claim a 'necessity' of aiding one sick bastard in his fight with the other makes no sense to me at all, other than as propoganda serving the purposes of those who desire war for other reasons entirely.

It would have been nice to save the Poles, the Slovaks, the Czechs, the Hungarians, certainly, but that didn't happen anyway. They all wound up under the boot of the other sick bastard, and stayed there for decades, after all.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[orzetto]

Do you think "creative, non-violent responses" would have been sufficient to end the Holocaust faster than the Holocaust ended all Jews? That's really all this boils down to.

Of course they would. Nazism rose to power because there was no democratic response, other than a few trade unionists, socialists/communists (who were however more intent in fighting each other), a few intellectuals.

Pacifism does not work like a magic wand. If maintained as an attitude for a sufficiently long time, it will avoid getting enemies. Do you think that Nazism came out of nothing, or because Germans are evil? A pacifist attitude in international politics would have prevented it by a long way. Nazism rose to power because Germany had been defeated in World War I (which itself would have been prevented by pacifism), and the world blamed Germany for causing it (an idiotic statement: the reason was "too many cocks in the chickenhouse", everyone was equally culpable). Then uncle Adolf comes along in a demoralised country, and says "it's not your fault, it's the Jews, plutocrats, English, French, communists, gays, gypsies that betrayed the country". This is a very powerful message as that is what people want to hear (well, except those in the named minorities), and obviously he enjoyed an enormous success. If the winning countries had not punished Germany so harshly in the first World War, there would not have been all that frustration that led to Nazism.

To get back to Israel and terrorism, sure they had a bad time fitting in and they don't exacly have the best neighbours. But they have not been nice either, and the amount of hatred generated by episodes like Sabra and Chatila, the Palestinians refugee camps for millions of people displaced from their homes and never allowed to return, "suffocating" Palestinian villages with a network of Israeli-only roads, forcing the population through endless checkpoints that take most of the work day to get through. Bombing civilians in Beirut did not exactly win fans among Arabs (or world opinion for that sake).

But if the British had really wanted to use violence Ghandi would have been dead with all his followers.

If the British did that, they would have had a full-scale revolution. There is no way the colonial army of a 50-million country can suffocate a revolution of half a billion people; neither was it politically viable to assassinate such a charismatic figure as Ghandi after WWII.

Sometimes the only two alternatives are to repond to violence with violence, or to be eradicated.

Let's get rid of a sticky issue: there are no inherently evil people (except psychopaths maybe), just people that found that a way that looks evil for you works for them. Robbers usually come from a social background that gave them few choices (few Harvard graduates turn into street criminals); they calculate that breaking the rules of society is more advantageous for them than respecting them. Whether they are right or wrong in this calculation is of no importance: that's what they think and what they think determines how they act. If social money had been spent on giving them a fair chance in life, with better public schools, unemployement subsidies, welfare state, they would have probably calculated otherwise. And guess what, countries with extensive welfare state do have less crime rate than those with a smaller one.

To get back to the point, unless you are being attacked by sharks/polar bears/anthropofagous bunnies, but people, chances are that life-threatening situation may had been prevented if some more problem-solving-oriented attitude had been taken beforehand. Not that it is (necessarily) your fault, as the war in Lebanon was not the fault of those bombed by Hezbollah rockets, but had Israel avoided escalating the conflict rockets would not have been fired, and the whole thing would still be an issue of prisoner exchange.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel, for example, is surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby.

Poor peaceful Israel. Supported by poor peaceful USA. They hate your for your freedom.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is driven by primitive survivalism, there however is no shortage of those who are for obvious reasons...

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[mrraven]

If you say you are at war with an avowed non violent person I say you are an asshole.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Kreeben]

Do you think that reading sources of information that is obviously pro-Israel and anti-Palesine will give you a good idea of what is really happening in the middle east? Are you aware of the fact that there is a difference between propaganda and actual facts? Dont you think you will get a clearer view of the world when the sources of information you choose are fact driven, unbiased and objective? Does it not upset you that the information supplied by sources like The Concept Wizard are so tightly integrated with the opinions of those who publish it? How are you able to form an opinion of your own, based solely on one-sided publications?

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

surrounded by groups that would cheerfully slaughter everyone down to the last new-born baby

This is the most important belief necessary to behave as the extemists behave. In order to be torturous you must see the 'object' of aggression as different and indeed subordinate/inferior to you. And it works both ways: Israel sees the Muslim extremists as vicious, hateful, irredeemable people. They see themselves as men dealing with wild dogs; they believe the only choice is to clobber. In turn the Muslims see Israel as an illegitimate, imperial nation seeking to usurp their land and right of self-determination. They are the rebellious orphan attacking the foster parent.

The end result is that neither side has actual tangible respect for one another. They both would prefer not to lose a single soul in conflict, but taking the view that "war is inevitable" they harden themselves and try to be the victor.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There can be no question of this, for the simple reason that Jews were (and still are) spread throughout the entire world, and Hitler never controlled, nor had any realistic prospect of controlling, more than a small corner of the world.

If it wasn't for the Russians, you would be typing that post in german. The Nazis did control a sizeable percentage of the world's landmass and could easily have annexed the majority of it had the war gone in their favour.

He was a mass murderer, and I certainly wouldn't want to minimise that - but he never had any chance of destroying all Jews.

You underestimate the efficiency of the death camps. I believe that somewhere between 30-40% of the total worldwide jewish population was killed in only six years. If the Nazis had emerged victorious against the soviets, western democracies would probably have shipped their jewish people over as part of tithes to the Third Reich as well.

Non violent response only works when you have rights. If you have the right to protest, protest works. Gandhi's method worked because the British were still prepared to grant him some meager rights. The Jewish population in europe were faced with a regieme that was nor prepared to give them any rights at all. If they had all laid down on the streets or held hands or something, the nazis would have been quite happy to mow them all down.

If you don't have the right to protest, the right to a fair trail, the right to appeal, or even the right to life, then non-violent protest is less than useless. It'll just get you killed. Your choices are; keep your head down, emigrate, armed rebellion. Of course, as a dictatorship emerges, the choices usually begin to be curtailed, in order from last to first. The trick is to use the non-violent protest before the others become necessary. That's what Gandhi did, and it worked. King did it too, and it worked. For the Argentinians who tried it after 1976, it failed.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Shadow99_1]

Um just a couple of points here...

First Italy was an axis power along with Germany & while it wasn't quite as invassive as the Germans they held a good chunk of Europe to during WW2...

Second Germany invaded France and won during WW2, the french spent most of WW2 as a guerilla resistance movement aided by the british and US (when we decided to finally take a stand) forces.

Germany held most of Europe not controlled by Italy in WW2, this ran from parts of northern spain to much of Russia (they were a handful of miles from Moscow at the height of their power) and down into africa. In fact they held something like 60% of the mediteranian sea. Italy held another 20 or 30% of it. The rest was mostly british or nuetrals and a tiny contigent of US forces.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[theStorminMormon]

I have already replied to the old "Treaty of Versailles caused WW2" debate. The short version is this:

1. There was no way to rewrite the Treaty of Versailles to not give someone an incentive to go to war.

2. In general, the theory that if you take away motives for war humans will return to their default state of peace is ridiculous. People are animals. Our default state is violence and victory to the strong. It is by imposing limits - under threat of violence - on the strong that peace can be achieved and nurtured. In the context of peace, non-violent resistance works, but it only takes one aggressor to destroy peace. In that situation, the aggressor (if determined) must be countered with violence or not at all.

Let's get rid of a sticky issue: there are no inherently evil people (except psychopaths maybe), just people that found that a way that looks evil for you works for them

I'm fine with that. But it's equally naive to assume people are inherently good. And the potential to get what you want with violence will always be there. And people will always want what they don't have: even if everyone was equal some would want more. The potential for violence will not go away until human nature is fundamentally changed. That takes time. And peace. And without the threat, and sometimes use, of violence that peace can not be maintained.

Robbers usually come from a social background that gave them few choices (few Harvard graduates turn into street criminals); they calculate that breaking the rules of society is more advantageous for them than respecting them.

This is a hypothesis without any proof. You see that poor people are criminals, you assume they want to get money to alleviate poverty. That's a theory. Another theory is that people who try to get money by theft have picked a really stupid way to get money and end up poor. Which is the cause, the poverty or the crime? Or perhaps both are caused by other factors?

If you alleviate poverty you will alleviate crime, but you will never eliminate it. Rich people steal too. They also murder and rape. It's hopelessly naive to think if people just had enough stuff they'd stop hurting each other. By all means, I support your efforts to use education, functional welfare, etc. to reduce poverty, crime and violence. Those are good, practical objectives. But they will never eliminate the propensity of some people to do violence to others. And as long as there is violence, there must needs be a violent force to oppose it or the violence will grow unchecked. This is true both on a macro and a micro scale. Work to increase peace, please, it's a noble and worthwhile endeavor. But unless you're protected by people willing to commit violence to defend you and your efforts, nothing will prevent one violent man (or one violent nation) from erasing all you've ever worked for.

What this all boils down to is this. People note that if you take non-violent steps (problem-solving, etc.) violence is reduced. This true. They therefore assume that it can be eliminated. This is not true. Furthermore, assuming that it can be eliminated jeopardized the very potential existence of the non-violent responses you so (rightly) propound.

-stormin

-stormin

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[kthejoker]

The same does not hold true on a macro level. Doesn't hold true at all, in fact, because most organized violence of any large degree is perpetrated by "lower-level" servants at the behest of the more "elite" thinkers and policymakers.

In short, in your scenario, the man who breaks into your house with the gun to kill you is also the man who thought of breaking into the house with the gun to kill you.

At the macro level, these are two separate people. And because of that, there is a disconnect to the violence being perpetrated: the lower level people do violent things because they are merely given orders. They know there is an agenda to their mission, but not what their agenda is.

So your analogy is poor, if not outright wrong. Because at the macro level, non-violence (such as Gandhi's) is achieved by convincing those elite thinkers and diplomats not to use violence. On the day to day level, there is no separation of the violence and the intent.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[kthejoker]

The whole point of "conflict"/war/fighting, etc, is the idea that there are two beliefs in conflict with each other which must be resolved, either by eliminating one or other of the beliefs or synthesizing them into an acceptable belief for both parties.

Have you ever been in a debate with someone, and they said something you couldn't outright refute, because you believed it yourself? Someone mentioned something, and you go, "You know what, they're right"?

If someone started culturejamming you, and you looked at what they were doing and thought "they're right", would you culture jam them back? Sure, you're justified, but would you want to? I mean, just on principle alone, maybe, but people can see the error of their ways.

That's how Gandhi won. People saw his point of view, saw his tactics, saw his philosophy, and they just said, "You know what? He's right." Maybe it's just a majoritarian approach to rightness (I'm not trying to wax too philosophical here), but just because you're justified doesn't mean you're obligated.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[theStorminMormon]

I appreciate the distinction that you are making, and it is worthy of addressing. Killing the person that wants to kill you is not morally the same as killing the kid that was sent by someone else to kill you. This doesn't make me wrong, however.

Consider, if you will, an episode of 24 from season 3. There are 100 or so innocent civilians in a hotel where a biological agent has been released. If they leave the hotel, they take the weapons-grade disease with them. So the CTU agents have orders to prevent people from leaving with lethal force if necessary. Sure enough, some guy figures out what is going on, breaks a window, and tries to run for it. Michelle tells him she will shoot him if he tries. He doesn't believe her, he tries to run anyway, and she kills him.

He had 0 negative intention. He didn't want to hurt anyone. But, in my mind, it was still justified to kill him to prevent the deaths he would have caused. This is the same logic that you can use to fight wars (obviously not wars of aggression). Even with a total separation of violence and intent violence is (sometimes) still justified.

In the end Gandhi's resistance worked because the elite thinkers had no inclination to kill Indians, and he made it cost too much. I'm sure at least some would have happily killed Gandhi if it meant putting an end to his troublesome movement. But his passive resistance was effective because it relied on the humanity of others who turned out to have at least (some) humanity.

But just because Gandhi's method worked in that circumstance does not mean it will always work. It would not have worked to combat the Nazi's in WW2.

-stormin

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[nickos]

"Monotheistic religions breed intolerance"

They're all nonsense, monotheistic or not. Watch this to see why we should be more critical of religion...

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ignorance is astounding.

Do you honestly believe that a group willing to initiate violence against another group would be repelled without an escalation of force?

Do you know why the Cold War never turned into a shooting war? It was due to a concept referred to as Mutually Assured Destruction. Had a nuclear missle ever been launched by either the United States, or the Soviet Union, it would have provoked a massive Nuclear second strike.

This is simple economics. The aggressor is convinced that through the use of violence, they can achieve their goals, whatever those goals may be. In the defensive, the goal is to drive up the cost of aggression until it becomes untenable. This is how you dissuade violence. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun.

Is Israel's response unjustified? I don't think so. If the people of Lebanon are unhappy, rather than blaming Israel, they really need to focus their attention on Hezzbulla. If terrorist organizations are really the "tiny minority" that the Muslim world claims they are, then the Muslim world needs to take an active hand in rooting them out, and destroying them. Only then will the rest of the world be willing to accept Islam as "a religion of Peace."

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Harald74]

Well, flight is a perfectly reasonable response to an armed break-in. That said, there are quite a few scenarios where violence is an acceptable solution.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[glesga_kiss]

Do you think "creative, non-violent responses" would have been sufficient to end the Holocaust faster than the Holocaust ended all Jews?

Yes. They could have ended it before it begun, if only we had the empathy to care about oppression of a group you personally don't belong to. Pretty much like the Islamic people are getting at the moment, but who here has done anything to stop that?

Perhaps it was best said by MLK:

"Perhaps if there had been a broader understanding of the uses of nonviolent direct action in Germany when Hitler was rising and consolidating his power, the brutal extermination of six million Jews and millions of other war dead might have been averted and Germany might never have become totalitarian. If Protestants and Catholics had engaged in nonviolent direct action and had made the oppression of the Jews their very own oppression and had come into the streets beside the Jew to scrub the sidewalks, and had Gentiles worn the stigmatizing yellow arm bands by the millions, a unique form of mass resistance to the Nazi regime might have developed..."

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[kthejoker]

I think historically you are correct, but you are (very interestingly, I might add) becoming less correct every day.

There are 2 simple reasons for this:

1) Hegelian logic. In essence, we (as mankind) have learned from our mistakes. We have evolved diplomatically and militarily due to events like World Wars I and II and the Cold War. The Nazi party as it was in 1939 could not be reformed on this planet: we "nip them in the bud", more or less. And we are becoming better at dissolving and disarming these types of people sooner and with more decisiveness than before. While this requires violence much like your 24 example, it is a much more contained violence, and certainly less than it took to defeat Hitler.

2) Technology and the new global "oneness" help keep things in check. This is part of our "becoming better" strategy mentioned above.

I do not believe we are currently at a point where nonviolence is a successful strategy. But I do believe that we as a species are getting smarter about violence. In the long run (a place mostly avoided by these kinds of questions), I think that nonviolence can take hold of mankind. It will take a lot of things to go right - I doubt it will happen in my lifetime - but I think it is an inevitability.

I suppose it is convenient for me to say to you, "I agree with you, but one day we'll both be wrong"? But that's how I feel.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[kthejoker]

Also, on a somewhat separate note, while that guy may have had no negative intention, if he knew "what was going on" and still tried to run, that is a reckless and negligent thing to do, which is a punitive offense in this country.

The scenario is akin to someone driving drunk - 0 negative intention, but the police are justified in stopping that person - possibly with violent force.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[bhaak1]

If it wasn't for the Russians, you would be typing that post in german.

Was sind wir froh, dass das nicht passiert ist.
Die meisten Slashdotter kriegen ja nicht einmal einen grammatikalisch korrekten englischen Satz hin.

Let's look at history:

• If it wasn't for the Americans all Europeans would speak Russian (but a few do - you can't save 'em all)
• If it wasn't for the Americans and the Russians we'd all speak German (but a few do - you can't save 'em all)
• If it wasn't for the Brits and the Germans we'd all speak French (but a few do - you can't save 'em all)
• If it wasn't for the French we'd all speak Arabic
• If it wasn't for the Goths we'd still all speak Latin (well that wouldn't be that bad)

The Nazis did control a sizeable percentage of the world's landmass and could easily have annexed the majority of it had the war gone in their favour.

That idea is as delusional as Hitler was. For Nazi Germany to conquer the world they would have needed a lot of support from Alien Space Bats.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[Chacham]

It puts doormats to shame.

Bad subject to say this on, but "good line".

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[theStorminMormon]

You're still saying the same thing: if only pacifism had been widely accepted, we wouldn't have violence. The fact remains: if someone wants to use violence to achieve their ends, sometimes the only response is violence. Aside from ridiculous notions that Hitler would have accepted a couple hundred thousand American peace protesters in his borders in 1939 without violence, we can go to a simple micro-level example.

If a man has a gun and a lot of ammunition and decides he wants to start killing people would you rather:

a - look for a non-violent solution while he kills 10 people or
b - kill him after he fires the first shot.

Even if pacifism could get him to stop, would it be worth it if 10 people had to die?

-stormin

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[glesga_kiss]

You're still saying the same thing: if only pacifism had been widely accepted, we wouldn't have violence.

No, I'm not saying that. The millions of dissenters wouldn't win on morality, it would be their sheer numbers and the ultimate thread of riotous violence and civil war that would have won. It's an extra bonus if that happens with no violence.

Aside from ridiculous notions that Hitler would have accepted a couple hundred thousand American peace protesters in his borders in 1939 without violence

Oh christ, the whole USA world pivot theory. Who was talking about Americans? MLKs quote specifically mentions the German people.

we can go to a simple micro-level example.

Lets not, shall we? Your example is irrelevant, of course you'd shoot him in the head. Twice. But it doesn't change a thing that WW2 could have been easilly avoided. The main thing that allowed it to happen was the concent of the German population, using techniques used again in the USA in the past five years WRT invading Iraq. They too had a large "terrorist" incident. Anyone who didn't agree to Hitlers sweeping new powers was tainted as unpatriotic (their words btw). They invaded Poland to protect their own freedom. Sound familiar?

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[phlinn]

So if I'm wearing body armor, and you start punching me, I have to stand there and take it just because you are rarely causing any damage? Israel has significantly better bomb shelters and the like. Since Hezbollah takes zero steps to protect civilians, and in some cases actively endangers them, the situation is guaranteed to lead to imbalanced civilian deaths, but that in no way alters whether or not Israel is justified in attacking or not.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

If we're going to go over it again, we should probably start with the original premise, which was that "Pacifism != Passivism"; which I interpet, and the GP seems to interpret as meaning that Pacifists do in fact wage war, but restrict themselves to nonviolent tactics.

My question for the GP was whether or not my interpretation is correct, and do "fighting Pacifists" really think of their tactics (civil disobedience, culture jamming, monkeywrenching, etc.) as paths to victory against an enemy?

Developing that point, I touched on the general idea of warfare, in which avowed enemies choose whatever weapons and tactics they like, and strive to defeat each other on whatever battlefield circumstance and preference provide. I wondered if Pacifists would accept that if they're justified in using their tactics against me, then I am justified in using the same tactics against them. I also wondered if they would accept that, having declared war, I their enemy am justified in using any tactics I please, just as they are.

In conclusion, I explained that if I'm right about how "fighting Pacifists" see the situation--as a form of warfare--then obviously we're in a zero-sum game that I for one have no intention of losing.

As you can see, I understand quite well what I was trying to say. I'm not sure I understand what the GP was trying to say, though, which is why I asked the questions I asked, about the nature of "war" and its implications for the "fighting Pacifist". I was hoping he'd clarify his philsophy a bit more.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

I have no problem with friendly competition.

My questions were designed to probe the philosophy of Pacifism, which apparently (according to the GP) do include some forms of (nonviolent) warfare. I am hoping the OP will take the time to clarify his position: when his faction engages in civil disobedience, culture jamming, monkeywrenching, etc., do they consider this to be friendly competition, or a kind of warfare?

And if they do consider it to be a kind of warfare, are they prepared to accept the implications that go with declaring war?

If a fellow citizen is debating policy with me, that's fine. That's the ideal we all strive for. But if a fellow citizen is waging war with me, and is too craven to do it openly or violently, then what? He's not debating in good faith anymore, he's using the most powerful tools he dares lay his hands on--subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda, in this case--to win a zero-sum game in which I am the loser. That's what war is.

So which is it? Are civil disobeyers, culture jammers, and monkeywrenchers citizens debating policy in good faith, or warriors seeking to overthrow the ruling power and defeat their avowed enemies? The answers to my questions have a lot to do with how I will engage Pacifism in the future.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

If you say you are at war with an avowed non violent person I say you are an asshole.

As far as I know, I'm not currently at war with anybody except terrorists.

What I'm trying to figure out is, are the avowed non violent people at war with me? Because the OP certainly seems to think that some weapons of war are available to the Pacifists: subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda.

What I want to know is, when the Pacifists engage in civil disobedience, culture jamming, and monkeywrenching, do they think they're at war with me, or not?

If they don't think they're at war with me, then fine. I have no problem with that. I respect civil disobedience and tolerate culture jamming. Monkeywrenching I have some objections to, on account of it involves actually destroying property and undoing the work of others, but I don't automatically think it's war.

But war is a zero-sum game. If they think they're at war, then they think that they should win, and I should lose. Since I don't like losing, it's important to me to understand what the OP really thinks about Pacifism and nonviolent tactics such as subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda.

I'm not saying that I'm at war with an avowed non violent person.

I'm asking if the avowed non violent person thinks he's at war with me.

HTH. HAND.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

As I'm sure you noticed, none of my questions had to do with whether or not one is obligated to use a particular tactic, and I never suggested that one should be obligated to fight against what they believe in.

Rather, my questions were designed to discover whether or not the OP believes that Pacifists do wage war by means of subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda; and that if the OP does believe Pacifists wage war, does he accept the implications of choosing war?

What I really want to know is, do Pacifists engage in subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda, because these are the best ways they can think of, to debate ideas in good faith with their fellow citizens? If so, I think they're chumps, but I can respect them and debate in good faith with them.

But what if Pacifists engage in subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda, because these are the best weapons they dare to use, to win the zero-sum game of war--a game in which, if they are to be the winners, someone else (me, most likely) must be the loser. That's what I want to know: are Pacifists trying to discuss things with me, or are they playin a zero-sum game with me?

HTH. HAND.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[makomk]

Ah, yes, but the irony here that that WASN"T true until Israel was founded. Historically (last 1000 years or so prior to 1940), the near east was a relative safe haven for hebrews. Now it sure as hell isn't. And it is completely their fault. Now there will never be peace in the middle east until one of three things happens: safest option, Israelis move completely out of Gaza and contested territories and permit the Palestinian people to start their own independent nation, Israel is wiped off the map, or every last Arab in the world is dead.

The depressing thing? I'm pretty sure there are people who would be more than willing to consider the last two options. Fortunately, none of them are in a position to try it yet. (Also fortunate is that both are pretty difficult to actually carry out; otherwise, the whole thing would have ended by now in an extremely nasty fashion.)

Incidentally, the fact that, in an attempt to create a safe haven and escape from anti-Semitism in Europe, the Zionists managed to introduce anti-Semitism into somewhere where it wasn't a problem is one of many unpleasant ironies arising from the whole damned mess.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[superyooser]

I don't like to say it, but it's the truth. Israeli politicians and media continue to circulate and follow "evil reports." (Shlach) Where's a Joshua or David when you need one?

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[timeOday]

No, I wasn't saying that Israel should just let Hezbollah fire rockets into Israel until parity is reached. I'm saying that Israel's response was disproportionate to the threat actually posed by Hezbollah. And beyond that, Israel intentionally killed to many innocent people. They targeted Lebanon's civilian infrastructure - power plants, bridges, everything. Israel's strategy seems to be to punish all the people of Lebanon hoping they'll be so frightened and miserable they'll oust the Hezbollah members from among them. I don't think it will work, and regardless I don't think it's acceptable.

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[SpecTheIntro]

A possible, though I would say far from assured, conclusion. And? This would be a bad thing?

I think it's fairly certain that, had the UK and America not provided a second front for the Nazis, the Germans would have steamrolled over the Russians. Nazi communiques consistently cursed British resilience in both Africa and on the British mainland precisely because they were drawing resources away from the much more important (and bloody) Eastern front. If Germany had been able to mobilize all of its divisions on the Soviets by the end of 1940. there is no way the Soviets could have held. The USSR was not really at wartime capacity until well after the initial German invasion, and it was a combination of good luck and bad weather that slowed the German advance enough to allow the Soviets time to recover from the attack. If Germany had thrown all of its weight behind the Eastern Army, the initial assault would have been much more devastating, and since there would be no forthcoming respite (remember, Hitler began pulling troops off of the Eastern front against the advice of his generals to combat Allied advances in the African campaign), it's safe to say the USSR would have crumbled under the onslaught.

Even so, the addition of a little Island in the north sea, and even the more substantial chunk of western europe that is France, to Germany and Austria would hardly have transformed Hitlers Reich into a global Empire. Europe is a small percentage of Earth's landmass.

You are being incredibly naive here if you think landmass is how we should measure the importance of Europe. Europe was the industrial heart of the world at this time. Had the Third Reich been able to extend its influence over all of it, it would have effectively ruled the world. I don't care how much land there is outside of Europe: if you control almost all of the factories in the world, you control the world, period.

First you're exagerating the land area considerably (the Soviets never controlled China, just Siberia, which is a totally different thing - and even if the Germans had managed to destroy the Soviet army and taken Moscow, that's still a very long, cold journey from Kamchatka) - you've gone from 'defeated the red army' to 'controls all the territory of the soviet union' in one huge, unwarranted leap.

Perhaps he should have said "Axis powers" instead of "Germany." Had the USSR fallen, the only thing keeping Japan from seizing all of East Asia (and you're crazy if you think the Chinese were mounting an effective resistance) would have been removed. So he's right--the Axis powers would have controlled the entire Eurasian landmass. And another absolutely essential part of the world is smack-dab in the middle of that landmass: the Middle East.

Think about this - did the conquest of Holland make Germany stronger? How about Belgium? France? Bohemia? Poland? Were those, in the end, assets to the third Reich? Quite the contrary, they were liabilities. In each case, and if you'll study history a bit you'll see this is hardly exceptional, these conquests were at least as much liability as asset. In each case, territory was added, yes, but that territory was occupied by a hostile population. Resistance cells formed immediately. Germany had limited manpower and limited resources, and each conquest stretched her thinner, because hostile populations cannot be trusted, they must be occupied, patrolled, kept under heel firmly or they bite back. This is the weakness of Empire.

You have an interesting argument, but it is essentially pointless. Ok, so a German "empire" would not have been a good idea. But that's not really the point: Germany has never been much in favor of colonies or occupations, so its somewhat suspect to think they would have done the same here. But they would have been completely unopposed in Europe and Asia, and that's all it would take. It would have been a superpower to much

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[mrraven]

Are you at war with state terrorists like Israel who killed at least 800 civilians in southern Lebanon compared to the less than 50 killed by Hizbollah? And no killing 50 innocents is NOT good either, but it seems to me we ought to punish terrorists (including state terrorists) in proportion to the number on innocents they kill and make suffer. Looked at that way Israel is a 4 times bigger terrorist than Hamas and Hizbollah, unless you want to in a racist fashion discount the suffering and death of innocent non-combatant Muslims killed by Israel solely because they are Muslims. Are you at war with state terrorists like the U.S. government that has killed at least 30,000 innocents and likely more than a 100,000 innocents in Iraq? Before you answer consider this, there were no WMDs in Iraq, and Iraq as a country did nothing to us. Also consider that even the conservative lower figure is TEN 911s of completely innocent people who had nothing to do with Saddam's tyranny. If you condemn terrorists for killing innocents make sure you condemn large state terrorists first as they kill most innocents, OK?

Re:Pacifism != Passivism

[susano_otter]

I'm betting this rant didn't win you many converts even when it was on-topic.

sf.net won't be happy

[diamondmagic]

First of all, I thought the GPL could not be modified. In fact, this is the very first sentence of the GPL:
  Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
  of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Secondly, sourceforge.net clearly states that they are for hosting OSI-compliant projects ONLY. I wouldn't be suprised if sf.net terminates their hosting, only before asking them to revert the license.

Re:sf.net won't be happy

[Igmuth]

(from:http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#Mod ifyGPL)
Can I modify the GPL and make a modified license?
You can use the GPL terms (possibly modified) in another license provided that you call your license by another name and do not include the GPL preamble, and provided you modify the instructions-for-use at the end enough to make it clearly different in wording and not mention GNU (though the actual procedure you describe may be similar).

Luke 22:36

[Red Warrior]

And many claim to be Christians and go to church to worship a person who advocated pacifism and told people that when you are attacked you should turn the other cheek.

Maybe you should actually read the words of the individual in question...

Then said he unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip: and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.

That's from the last supper,btw (KJV). Maybe he wasn't such an absolute pacifist as you presume. Just a thought.

P.S. See the AC commentary on the turn the other cheek quote.

Core Values?

[Starcom8826]

I thought the GPL was supposed to bring rights to everyone, not to be turned into something for people to use in discriminating against certain populations/organization. Seems like a corruption of the core values to me...

Hahahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Stunning how some people fall for their government's propaganda.

Politicians just adore mindless sheep who will believe any message the media shoves down their throats. It keeps them in their exhalted positions at the top of the power pyramid.

Oh well, that's humanity for you, barely dropped out of the trees and 95% still not able to think for themselves.

relevant for supercomputing

[rgravina]

While some may have issues with the wording/implementation, I think trying to prevent military use of this kind of software is a very good thing.

I once visted the Earth Simulator in Japan. If I remember correctly, at the time it was the worlds fastest supercomputer which was being used primarily by climate scientists to predict and deal with climate change. I was disgusted to find out that next most powerful supercomputers, located in the US, spent most of their time running simulations for weapons research.

Seeing as these developers have developed software to create ad-hoc supercomputers, I can understand why they would want to prevent milliary use.

Re:relevant for supercomputing

[BobaFett]

At the time the world's fastest supercomputer *that you knew about* was being used primarily by climate scientists. There were probably dozens of supercomputers whose existence you never even suspected which were doing weapons research, code breaking, and other stuff for the armed forces and intelligence agencies. Including, but not limited to, those of the USA.

Re:relevant for supercomputing

[rgravina]

What you say is probably true, but I was thinking, perhaps very naievly, that what a tragedy it was that we use such powerful computers for modelling better ways to blow each other up.

I was watching an Aussie sci-fi flick the other day (yeah you don't see many of them) about the aftermath of a nuclear war, and one of the characters says "It took 3 million years of evolution to create a species intelligent enough to unlock the secrets of the universe, and what do we do with that knowledge? We blow ourselves up."

So although it conflicts with the usual definition of "free as in freedom" in free software, I think there may be something to restricting software like this to non-harmful use.

Copyright violation!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not the software - the license.

Pull out a copy of the GPL. Any copy. Doesn't matter which. Read it carefully. Note, in particular, the bit that says:

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

So they're allowed to copy and distribute the GPL, but not modify it. Meaning that they are violating copyright law by modifying the GPL in this manner.

Now, maybe the FSF will go after them, maybe not ... but there's a certain level of irony in the situation.

How about human rights-based licensing?

[briansmith]

Look at the BSD license, which contains the following clause: "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution"

Imagine a modification of this license to also add this clause (lifted and slightly modified from the Apple Computer Inc. hiring policy):

"I support the equal rights of all people regardless of their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity characteristics or expression, disability, medical condition, military or veteran status."

Would this be a good license? I think so. Notice that it doesn't prevent anybody from using the software, even if they disagree with the statement, as long as he keeps the clause intact when he distributes it. Yet, if the software presents this message in its slash screen every time it starts up, it sends a message. Not only is it saying that the creator and/or distributor believe in this message, but that the user does too, because it is on his/her computer.

The effect would be to discourage (not prevent!) people who do not believe in equal human rights from using the software. In particular, extremist evangelicals like Osama bin Laden, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Hitler, et al. would prevent themselves and their followers from using their software, but only by their own edicts, not through any action of yours.

Russ Nelson Isn't The President of The OSI

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a pacifist, I sympathize with their goals," says Russ Nelson, president of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Russ Nelson isn't even the president of the OSI. Here's the OSI press release. He was forced to step down ever since he posted a blog article that was considered racist. For more about the controversy, check out Russ Nelson's Wikipedia entry.

You would have peace? Then prepare for war!

[ScrewMaster]

Truth is, as Professor Falkenberg said in Falkenberg's Legion by Larry Niven: "We deduce the existence of peace because there are intervals between wars."

Re:You would have peace? Then prepare for war!

[ScrewMaster]

Sorry, I meant "Jerry Pournelle".

So called slippery slopes...

[dsanfte]

The slippery slope argument is a proveable fallacy. Please do not pollute otherwise reasonable posts with it. Thanks.

Stupid PC Tricks

[muggz1250]

"Tiziano Mengotti and Rene Tegel are the lead developers on the GPU project. Mengotti is the driving force behind the license "patch," which says "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." Might this be the first real life computer related utilization of the first two Laws of Robotics? So if I run the software and then cunningly do not use it when a while I mug someone, I am in violation of the EULA? It all sounds s-o-o politically correct. Perhaps they should insert in the EULA that only nice people can use the software.

Ants are not cells.

[shani]

Ants and other eusocial critters may die for the hive, but arguably they are cells in the larger organism that is the hive.

While I agree with your overall sentiment, I think it this statement is misleading. Ants and other eusocial animals, like every other "critter", act in ways that attempt to maximize the survival of their genes. It just happens that through a quirk of genetics, female ants are more related to their sisters than to their own offspring.

It's kin selection.

Calling ants "cells in the larger organism that is the hive" is misleading, as they all have unique DNA, completely unlike real cells in an organism, which share the same DNA.

I don't think anyone can/should use it.

[Ada_Rules]

Most of the software that the government uses comes from contractors. And while we might all want to believe they are slimy and out to make money, that same sliminess will prevent them from making use of this software for fear that they might get into trouble for doing it. In fact, I would best that most large businesses even if they were not military would toss this license out on the basis that it is too vague and scary.

If I were writing software that I planned to donate to the world that would cure AIDS, Cancer and crotchrot just by running it, I probably still could not use this license if there is even a small chance that running the software could kill someone.

Theo and OpenBSD?

[TerryOutOfWork]

I'm surprised Theo deRatt (or whatever it is) didn't do this to OpenBSD after the American Forces reneged on an award after his interview in the Globe.

Why would the military use it?

[WED Fan]

Not meaning to burst their bubble, but the military is not really interested.

This concept is not unique, and from a military standpoint, its not really they way they would want to do it. It does not have the security they would want to use. The military has their own alternatives.

At best, this is a bunch of people with a highly evolved sense of themselves, and a misunderstanding of their own importance. At worst, this is an stand by impotent idealogues railing against that which is bigger than themselves.

Re:Why would the military use it?

[WED Fan]

...the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed.

This license is incredibly flawed. Ignore the military application. Follow the next scenario:

A researcher sets up a GPU network, and calculates the trajectory of several NEO's. One of them is calculated to hit Suva, Fiji. The researcher takes no action, Suva is hit, thousands of Fijians on a kava break die (because of the kava, they don't realize they are dead until the next morning), GPU has just been used in violation of the license.

One of you do a GPU model on the new Boeing 797. The model indicates a flaw in structural support. You say nothing. In a month, a 797 drops out of the sky because of the same projected failure. You call up a radio talk show and say you calculated that months ago and Boeing engineers should have seen the fault. You just violated the license.

Eisenhower

[WarDog07]

I think it was Eisenhower who said, "The soldier above all other prays for peace, for it is he who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."

No, wait... that was MacArthur, but it still holds true.

Enforcement

[Yaztromo]

I can understand (and somewhat applaud) the developers wanting to keep their software out of the hands of people whose only interest is the military conquest of others. While I have worn my country's uniform myself, I have to admit that I really don't want the dictators and terrorists of this world to use OSS code that I've written to oppress or attack innocent people.

There are, however, more practical considerations. What about using the software to defend those same oppressed/innocent people? If the military could use it to prevent the wanna-be conquerers of this world from running roughshod over all their neighbors, would you really want to prevent this?

Besides which, there is also the practical consideration that in times of war between two nations, the enemy nation can't be expected to honour contracts. Indeed, most nations would hardly balk at passing legislation at times of war making such contracts null and void anyhow. So how are you going to enforce it? All you've done is tie the hands of anyone who is willing to honour such a contract, while empowering those who are more than happy to ignore it as unenforceable (which would be your enemies).

Besides which, the military in most countries has a mandate beyond offense and defense. What about search and rescue? What about public engineering projects? What about disaster relief?

So while I'd hate for my software to be used to hurt innocent people, the only good way to do this is to close the source, and control every channel through which my software is distributed to ensure it only gets sold to people I like. And even then, there are no guarantees (US companies aren't permitted by law to ship most types of goods to Syria, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and certain other countries, but I'm willing to bet if you go to one of these countries you'll find recent US-made goods and technologies there that have been channeled through other nations).

So while I applaud their ideals, it's just not realistic. People and nations who want to do nasty things to other people aren't going to let a piece of (digital) paper get in their way.

Yaz.

Re:Enforcement

[pvera]

It's going to be literally impossible to enforce. All it is going to take is for somebody within a special scope project to get ahold of this, implement it, and mark it as a classified document. The developers may never know this happened, and the people that violated the license will be under clearance restrictions so they can't talk about it. Even if they figure out it is being used, it will take months or maybe even years of FOIA requests to get the offending agency to even acknowledge the project exists.

Re:Enforcement

[Yaztromo]

Even if they figure out it is being used, it will take months or maybe even years of FOIA requests to get the offending agency to even acknowledge the project exists.

And that is assuming that the country using the code is indeed one that even honours the concept of Freedom of Information.

What it comes down to is this: if North Korea decides to use this software to build a cheap supercomputer from which to run missile design simulations, what is the developer going to do about it? Invade?

That would be ironic, wouldn't it? :)

Yaz.

Where do you draw the line?

[samuel4242]

Does that cute housewife count if she's staying home to raise the kids while her husband goes off to war? He couldn't fight if she didn't take care of the home front. And what about that farmer who sells organic tomatoes to a wholesaler who turns around and sells them to an Army staff sargeant who just wants the troops to eat organic? Is that farmer part of the war effort? An army moves on its stomach they say. This is almost as dumb as someone who adds a clause that stipulates it must be used for martial purposes. Shoot, some of the weapons produced by the beltway bandits don't even serve a martial purpose.

What it actually says...

[icebike]

The license patch actually says

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

That obligates the program (by some unknown mechanisim) to jump to the defense of all people everywhere and anytime. To do else would be an inaction permitting humans to be harmed.

Since no one has managed to encode Superman, or [insert favorite action hero], this essentially says that the software can't be used at all, and I hereby call upon the authors to scrap the entire project and erase all source code.

Re:What it actually says...

[someone1234]

You stretch it too much. The inaction in question doesn't mean inability. Inaction means that the program ceases to work in certain cases. Probably that means it cannot be modified to stop working for gnutella addicted terrorists? Dunno, how this program's cease to work could harm a human being.

Re:What it actually says...

[icebike]

Any first year lawyer can make sausage of your reasoning. I don't think YOU get to define what inaction means. You never do, because as clearly as you word something, there is a lawyer with a different meaning for every word.

The intent was clear enough, if not totally misguided. The phraseology juvenile. And the understanding of the GPL hopelessly inadequate.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[adrianmonk]

Because nothing says "free" (liber, not gratis) like imposing seemingly arbitrary limits upon what one can do with the "free" software in question.

So, then how do you feel about the GPL restrictions that limit you from doing other things with the free software, like selling it, forking and releasing binaries of your fork but not source code, etc.? Aren't those restrictions on what you can do with the software?

Not trying to be contrary or negative, but if it's OK to have restrictions in there that promote the cause of free software, why isn't it OK to have restrictions that promote the cause of nonviolence?

On a side note, this particular license in question is written in broken English and fails to define a number of important terms. Software developers may intuitively know what a "patch" is and what it means to patch the GPL, but the term isn't defined, so does it have any meaning when lawyers and courts start getting involved? I don't think it's likely that this language would stand up to any kind of legal challenge.

Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective action

[mrraven]

Violence isn't "a tool" it's a choice of an action to take (i.e. a verb not noun), and often a bad action to take. For example Bush's attack on Iraq has produced nothing but 30,000+ dead civilians in Iraq, 2500+ dead Americans, 400 billion U.S. dollars down the drain for the war alone, and a civil war. It may make you feel pumped to endorse a course of action of violence, but often a more nuanced course of action has a better outcome. Really we couldn't have done much worse than Bush has done has done using the sledgehammer in lieu of the pen.

For example, for the price of ONE year of the U.S. military budget + the war on terror + Homeland Security I bet we could BUY the west bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights from Israel and GIVE it to the Palestinians and have everyone come out ahead. I'd also hope the U.K., Iran, and Syria would kick in a few billion too, so it might only be say 400 billion out of pocket for the U.S.

With a 500 billion dollar settlement Israel could go back to the 1967 Green line with honor and a sense of just compensation, and billions to build desalinization plants and a big wall at the Green line. Israel would finally be in compliance with the 60+ U.N resolutions against with a Cheshire cat smile with half a trillion it it's pockets. The Muslim world would SUDDENLY go from hating us to loving us for making a big sacrifice to bring the Palestinian state into being, and we here in the U.S. could have give Israel it's LAST payment, and we could reduce our military budget by 50% with no war on terror, and no cold war, which means after 2 years we are saving money that could go for anything from tax cuts, to high speed trains, to health care for all.

Perhaps it would be less satisfying for dunderheaded assholes than watching re-runs of Rambo and chanting USA, USA, violence is like cool maaaan, but hey if you are a muscle head I'm not listening to you for foreign policy advice anyway, right?

Asimov's Laws?

[sco08y]

If you're going to quote Asimov, you should at least read some of his books.

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Asimov's robots could only apply the laws in the last fraction of a second before harm occurred, and then only because they had a better than human understanding of the situation.

And there was a 0th law. R. Daneel Olivaw (sp? or did I get it completely wrong?) worked it out with the cop (Bailey?) from one of the early books. I forget the phrasing, but he basically generalized it to apply to all of humanity. In other words, it was okay to allow millions to die if it shortened a galactic Dark Age.

But Olivaw had access to another Asimov invention: psychohistory. That meant he could predict what was going to happen to the great mass of humanity and base his decisions on that.

For most of us, however, we can't see beyond immediate consequences. An engineer can't how a particular weapon will be used, beyond what kind of target it's best suited to. Even an individual can't tell, until it happens, whether he'll use a weapon to attack, defend or maintain a stalemate.

Ultimately, then, you have to have a little faith that the person holding the weapon is going to try to do the right thing. There aren't any robots to rescue us from ourselves.

Pointless as a bowling ball

[Kaenneth]

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Copyrights are granted by the goernment; and they naturally exempt themselves from them, just like Patents.

Those guys are idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

Their addendum does not preclude any military use except perhaps direct attack use.

Military medics can use it for medical purposes.

Military transport crews (air and ground) can use it for transport purposes.

Military accountants can use it for accounting purposes.

They wanted to block military use, but they decided to use fanboy drooling ideas and
steal Asimov's First Law, and so they get a weaker versions of their admittedly vacuous posturing.

Sounds like the JSON license

[pmuellr]

http://www.json.org/license.html

Relevant sentence: "The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil."

My code my choice.

[Last Warrior]

If I wanted to create code or software and limits its use that is my prerogative.
You can argue whether free software is then free.. but if I wanted to say my software can only be used by santa clause and the easter bunny, this is my choice.

How you feel towards my statement is barely relevant. If you want to test my right to limit the use of my own original code, then that is your prerogative.

despite its implications, people who create original works of any kind can choose at thier sole discretion, how that code is used.
Its exactly the same as saying i can give my software away for free to student and charge an outrageous fee to anyone wantin gto make money from my software or derivative works.

put that in your pipe and smoke it.
this is not intended to be a troll.

Bah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing but a bunch of anti-war fags. Go shove your pipe and your code up your ass hippie.

Fine, I am going to amend the 'GPU' with this:

[sweetnjguy29]

0. An application may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[AK Marc]

Unfortunately you seem to be living in a fantasy world believing that if you somehow convinced your president to pull each and every single troopie back from overseas, that all these people trying to destroy your National Interests would simply get bored of the notion.....

Well, given that there are now more dead "terrorists" than the number of terrorists that existed before the war began, and that the resistance is no less than the begining of the war, according to the numbers published by the US government, the war on terrorism has increased the number of global terrorists. If that is a success, I'd hate to see a failure. Why should we stay there? The longer we are in a country we invaded, killing their civilians, the more they will hate us. The sooner we get out, the less they will hate us. Do you not see the correlation? There are people in the USA that still resent the Union invasion of the South over 100 years ago. You'll never convince me that an invasion like this, based in lies and proteacted to increase profit for the vice-president's previous employer will do anything more than make the USA less safe.

That's right, proving we are the evil barbarians they've claimed us to be will make me less safe in the USA than if we had never invaded Iraq. As for the question of whether pulling out now will make me more or less safe, that's something that can never be known, and regardless of the choice, will be second-guessed by all for years to come.

Re:Distorts principles of Free/open source softwar

[LincolnQ]

I feel the Free software/open source community should vigorously discourage any restrictions on usage, rather than distribution, of the software.

It already does... this license doesn't count as Free software under almost any definition (e.g., Debian Social Contract). As such it's not part of the Free software community.

Your WW2 test is flawed

[phonicsmonkey]

America, nor its allies entered the war because the Germans were doing horrible things to the jews and other "undesirables". England entered the war after the invasion of Poland which broke the condition of the Franco-English ultimatum to Germany. America only entered the war 4 years later after HITLER DECLARED WAR ON AMERICA. Before Hitler commited this disasterous mistake (to show his solidarity with Japan after Pearl Harbor), the American sentiment was that they have their own war in the Pacific and they should leave Europe to the Europeans. Remember, boatloads of German Jewish refugees were refused entry to the US (and Canada and others) when they were still able to get out.

Morality is never the reason for war. It is only a marketing jingle used to get the support of the masses.

Re:Your WW2 test is flawed

[theStorminMormon]

America, nor its allies entered the war because the Germans were doing horrible things to the jews and other "undesirables".

Blah blah blah. You're stating the obvious. Please catch up before posting.

1. American non-pacifist resistance started well before it's entry into the war.

2. None of this matters anyway. The point isn't "America rushed to save the poor Jews, rah rah!" We all know that's not what happened. The point is "If you'd been around in 1941 and knew what Hitler was up to, would you have opted to go to war or to stay home and let the Jews burn because 'war is not the answer'". The 'WW2 question' is a hypothetical based on history, not a referendum on what actually happened.

Morality is never the reason for war. It is only a marketing jingle used to get the support of the masses.

Right, and that's not some damn silly slogan either? It makes no sense to say any one simplistic thing as "the reason" for war. No one is seriously saying all Americans got together and generated a consensus morality about going to war, but saying that no soldier and no leader felt the moral obligation of going to war is just as stupid.

-stormin

Re:Please Stop using TCP/IP, and other DARPA Tech

[mccoma]

Yeah, distributing their anti-military software on a network originated by the military is too choice. Guess it goes with the lack of reading comprehension demonstrated in propagating the 3 laws. History is hard.

You could still design nukes though

[mr_burns]

Since the military doesn't do that. The Department of Energy does reasearch along with the national labs. They're the ones with supercomputers modelling the physics of criticality events.

They could totally design thermonuclear warheads within the terms of a license the merly said "no military organizations can use the software".

And of course, people will use this globally. We don't have normalized diplomatic relations with Iran, but they have the internet. If you sue them for violating your license, you'll be shouting into a void.

Re:You could still design nukes though

[smash]

Mod parent up.

The military itself doesn't have a HUGE use for supercomputers, as my bet is that most of the heavy number crunching work is "outsourced" to other areas of the government.

Thus, i see this license making very little difference.

Besides, with a government who is willing to send their military into wars against the wishes of the world community, who's to say a pissy little thing like the GPL is going to stop them doing what they like?

Guns win

[NineNine]

It's completely unenforceable in any way, whatsoever. Bullets beat ANY lawsuit, and the US gov't, especially, has shown that they are more than happy to dispense bullets into the skulls of many, many innocent people.

Re:Distorts principles of Free/open source softwar

[proxima]

It already does... this license doesn't count as Free software under almost any definition (e.g., Debian Social Contract). As such it's not part of the Free software community.

There is more to discouraging these restrictions than simply classifying them "non-free". It means using, developing, and helping alternatives instead of usage-restricted software. If great alternatives exist in the OSS world, don't package it for your distro (if you're a packager, you can probably spend your time working on another OSS package).

I'm certainly not against all non-free software (I certainly use a fair share myself). I am simply opposed to usage restrictions like this no-military clause. I am similarly opposed to no-benchmark clauses. Non-free repositories in distros are excellent places to distribute free-as-in-beer software, especially if the alternatives aren't good enough for everyone. I suppose my argument boils down to this: a usage restriction like this makes it no longer free-as-in-beer.

In the end, if it's enforceable, they certainly have the right to distribute software under terms as they see fit. But they aren't entitled to community support.

zeroth law

[MamiyaOtaru]

So can the military bypass the no-military clause by invoking the zeroth law?

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

I wish moderators had to provide justifications for their moderations. How is providing a solution to the middle east crisis which involves the conservatives beloved market, "flambait," EXACTLY?

Asimov

[GalacticCmdr]

Obviously they made the point about Asimov's Three Laws without having actually read more beyond that he wrote down Three Laws of Robotics and that he used that in something called "books." Efforts like that are so sad and pathetic - like children playing the art of politics using West Wing as an example.

Their prerogative, I guess...

[Millennium]

As long as they don't try and call this "Free Software," then I suppose I can't really find much of a problem here. Is it naive and foolish for them to do this? Certainly. But is it wrong? No, not really.

At the same time, last I checked, the Free Software movement is about not restricting how people use software. That opens up the potential for abuse, perhaps, but the underlying premise of the movement is that the potential for abuse is worth the benefits. If the developers have decided otherwise, that's their decision, but then that is where they and the movement that spawned them need to part ways. Ideally, they should have written up their own license, rather than patching the GPL, in order to clear up confusion. But there are certainly worse ways they could have gone about this.

In defense of War

[jmorris42]

> at least they are doing something to curb war and destruction you war mongering fucknuckles.

You say that like violence and war are bad things. All things being equal I think we can all agree that a peaceful solution to a problem is better than a violent one. But all things are not equal and all problems do not have peaceful solutions. And for the fucktard who said "Violence doesn't solve anything." I have just one question:

Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem. You might not like the solution, but violence does solve problems. Just look at American history and count how many times violence solved the problem of the day. Start with the colonies dispute with the King of England.

We talked and pleaded our case until we were blue in the face. In the end though, we stopped talking and started shooting and the problem was solved. Then about eighty years later we had a big dispute about federal vs states' rights with abolition vs slavery all muddled in the middle. Again the problem festered for years until violence resolved the problem. (Personally I think it was resolved the wrong way but again in that they destroyed the principles the Republic was based upon in the effort to preserve it, but opinions are like assholes in that everybody has one.) They solved the problem though and it hasn't recurred in over a century so I think we can all agree it is pretty much solved.

Nazi problem? Solved with lots of ultra violence, on both sides of the argument.

Imperial Japan? Solved with even more ultra violence, culminating is a really big spasm of overkill. But it solved the problem.

The only major foreign policy dispute of the 20th century solved with little (if you can discount the dozens of 'brush wars' like Vietnam) violence was the Cold War, it was solved by the speaking of but a single sentence. Of course the struggle to get the right person in the right place to speak it was a major undertaking. Which proves words aren't totally useless.

And actually, I firmly believe the current GWOT could be solved in a similar fashion. But it probably won't, instead culminating in another few years in a global spasm of violence that will make WWII and the mass graves of Communism pale in comparison. And since the War will begin at a time and place of the barbarian's choice our only hope is that they miscalculate and believe they can win a little too early.

Re:In defense of War

[dynamo]

> Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem.

Iraq.

> (if you can discount the dozens of 'brush wars' like Vietnam)

Well, sorry, you can't. Vietnam was another huge fucking mistake made by people such as yourself who believe that enough violence thrown at a problem will solve anything. Not the case. No amount of violence or death was able to turn that mistake into a correct move. Same with our current events.

Oh, and the so-called "Global War On Terror" is not a war, it's an advertising slogan that you bought hook, line, and sinker.

Re:In defense of War

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is not so insightful as it appears. What the parent conveniently omits is the fact that violence only solves "problems" for the winners of said conflict (the losers being at best economically worse off, but more often simply dead or badly maimed).

A peaceful solution however usually tends to make both parties happy (of course, this is more difficult).

There are plenty of violent acts that solved nothing, even for the winner; WWI for instance (created many problems and tensions). But I guess also the current WOT will not solve much.

But more often, its not about "problems". I think you are very naive if you assume most acts of violence are committed to solve problems. Or at least, the problems you _think_ are being solved. WWII was not about killing nazis. And certainly not to protect Jews. It was a way for many people to enrich themselves. Or gain more power. And the same happens now again. That is what violence is about. It's not about solving "problems".

Re:In defense of War

[jesterpilot]

You've got a quite creepy definition of 'solution' and an even more scary definition of 'problem'. Especially when it comes to american history. Problem: people live over there, but we want the country and don't like to share it. Solution: kill 'm all.

Not to mention the cases where the people on the wrong side of the solution, tend to remember and keep on looking for a new 'solution', one in which they are the winners. So the problem persists, because violence breeds violence.

When it comes to European history: the problem of endless wars in Europe was solved because the countries learned their lesson, and started to open their boundaries. WW2 was not the solution: it was what finally teached european leaders that war is NOT the solution.

Re:In defense of War

[Anonymous Coward]

Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem. You might not like the solution, but violence does solve problems. Just look at American history and count how many times violence solved the problem of the day. Start with the colonies dispute with the King of England.

Sorry to burst your bubble. Every single time. What war does is create a _worse_ problem, and then _peace_ solves the problem of war. Raising a conflict up to the level of war from mere conflict is like going from rubbing two sticks together to flame. The flame won't last forever, it's too voracious. So it will inevitably fall back to equilibrium: peace.

Saying "opinions is like assholes" doesn't get around the fact that some opinions are more truthful than others. Sure the civil war eroded the inaugural charter, and it didn't solve the problem of why a member of a union has no right to terminate their membership. I won't say that the arrangement ought be 'right to work' style where they can dissolve without any notice. Obviously when you reach that style of union there are a lot of things to take care of a la divorce. What the war did was create an unlivable, unsustainable situation.

There are a lot of examples of conflicts where there were brief periods of outright war and many longer periods of minor warfare, which is exactly the current situation with terrorism.

But no, war in and of itself solves nothing. As the saying goes, 'War isn't about who's right, it's about who's left.'

Re:In defense of War

[ajs]

Iraq is not a problem. See, that's exactly the point, here. Violence *does* solve problems, and often it solves problems that you don't want solved any other way (you could have solved the problem of Hitler's agression by signing over the world to him, for example... no, you wanted violence in that case -- lots of violence).

Iraq, however, is the application of violence to the "problem" of a son's sense of disgrace over his father's (mis)handling of foreign policy. That's not a problem that can actually be solved by the application of violence. Therapy would have been a much more effective option, and would have pissed off far fewer Muslims.

Viet Nam was a good idea, but violence was applied inaccurately. Yes, that's right, the Viet Nam war was a good idea, and the only reason that most Americans think otherwise is because we lost. Sadly, the US wasn't doing it for the right reasons. We were opposing communist Viet Nam because we feared that the communists would take the enitre region. The correct reason for that war would have been hypocritical unless the US stopped interferring with the Central and South American countries, in which it had been supporting tyrantism since at least the end of World War II. That reason is that no nation, no matter how powerful, should subvert the will of the people of other sovereign nations. The Soviet Union had all but openly declared war on the government of Viet Nam in order to install a more favorable government. The tricky part is that before the war, the French had already done the same thing. Colonialism sucks, but this is not a counter-argument to the thesis to which you were responding.

I think jmorris's question could be better phrased thusly:

"Name a large-scale political or social problem which was solved without the application of violence."

Only a handful come to mind, and most of those are cases where a nation understood in broad terms that what it was doing was wrong, and passive resistance moved public support in favor of not "solving the problem" (e.g. the civil rights movement in the U.S. or colonial Inida). These are poor examples because they represent decisions that were essentially already made. In that sort of case, violence is not required, and its use may be counter-productive (c.f. Iraq).

All that said, the real story in this article is this: Stallman's once again proving that he shouldn't be allowed to talk to reporters. Repeat after me Richard: open source is not a philosophy. That's why you dislike it so much, not because you disagree with the open source philosophy, but because there isn't one to agree with. It's just the distribution of freely modifiable code. Period.

Re:In defense of War

[jenesuispasgoth]

Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem
Bombing Afghanistan because of AL QAIDA's acts of terrorism helped prevent Spain from being attacked, right ?

Re:In defense of War

[jmorris42]

> > Name me one time violence DIDN'T solve a problem.

> Iraq.

Wrong. Iraq wasn't the problem, Saddam and the Baath Party were the problem. And I'd say they are both pretty much solved with Saddam in prison and likely to be executed and Baath Party a sad remnant. We were not at war with the general population in Iraq after all.

But of course, like so often in the real world, many answers are also new questions. Removing Saddam unleased a lot of pent up violence, which has been encouraged by just about everybody. Start with Iran, then Syria, Al Queda, Hezbellah, and last but certainly not least in the cast of villans must be included the US Democratic Party.

> Well, sorry, you can't. Vietnam was another huge fucking mistake made by people such as yourself who believe that enough violence thrown
> at a problem will solve anything.

Again you are wrong. You are correct to conflate Vietnam and post Saddam Iraq though since both have similar causes. Both are attempts to solve internal problems via external means and are/were thus doomed to fail. In both conflicts the enemy (correctly) perceived the US as hopelessly divided, with sizable factions ready and willing to wage a propaganda war on their behalf for their own political purposes. Believing (again correctly) that while they could not hope to win on the battlefield that they could create enough news events for their erstwhile allies to win on the US political front, thus securing victory. The solution to this is fairly obvious so I won't belabor the point.

Re:In defense of War

[jmorris42]

> Sure the civil war eroded the inaugural charter, and it didn't solve the problem of why a member of a union has no right to terminate
> their membership. I won't say that the arrangement ought be 'right to work' style where they can dissolve without any notice. Obviously
> when you reach that style of union there are a lot of things to take care of a la divorce. What the war did was create an unlivable,
> unsustainable situation.

What an idiot. The War of Northern Agression might be many things, and by my choice for a name I'm hinting where my loyalties are at, but it did solve an otherwise unsolvable problem. And considering the South has failed to Rise Again in about a century and a half now I'd say it was quite sustainable as a solution.

Just take a look at the positions each side held and tell me how any peaceful solution was possible.

North: We must have the taxes we get from the South to fund the government, after all the South is the only part of the country generating exports while we must import most everything. Our Christian Fundamentalists have decided that slavery is WRONG and they are too important a voting block for us to ignore. We don't have the votes to amend the Constituition but this is so important we are going to do it anyway. In light of the above, allowing the Confederacy to leave is not on the table.

South: You bastards are taxing us to death to fund capital improvements in the North with your laws forcing most of our trade to move through Northern ports. The slavery issue was addressed eighty years ago when we all signed on to this Constituition that you guys seem hellbent on violating every time Congress comes into session. It is easy for you Yankees to get all moralistic, not having all that many slaves anymore, but you are asking us to commit economic suicide. You know you don't have the votes to amend it so you are just ignoring the rules and using your slight majority to ram stuff down our throats that are clearly unconstituitional. So screw you guys we are outta here.

> There are a lot of examples of conflicts where there were brief periods of outright war and many longer periods of minor
> warfare, which is exactly the current situation with terrorism.

Exactly. And that isn't peace either. And many times more people die from 'minor warfare' than would have died had it been allowed to come to a conclusion and end naturally.

For example, take the Middle East's big open sore. No negotiated settlement is possible so long as one side's position is that until they 'regain' every inch of Israel the War isn't over. So accept them at their word, take the leash off Israel and allow the war to run to it's conclusion. Either way we would then have peace. Either they would exterminate the Jews (unlikely) or finally be forced, not into yet another hudna, but into a full surrender. One where all the current incorrigble leaders could be removed, the madrassas could be reformed to prevent the poison from seeping into the next generation, etc. What we had instead was a thousand people killed and NOTHING solved, it will all begin again in a year or three when Hezbellah regains strength.

Appeasement...

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I'll pass.

Re:Appeasement...

[mrraven]

So Israel following international law and being bribed to do so with 500 billion dollars (in my plan) is appeasement, but even though Iran is NOT in violation of any actual international laws it ought to be bombed? Are you neo-cons supporters ever embarrassed by how BLATANTLY biased your arguments are?

Clue # 2 Bush claimed to be enforcing international law on behalf of a U.N. that said please DON'T when Bush went to war against Iraq against the wished of the international community. Then it turned out his casus belli WMDs was phony and what's more former weapons inspectors like Republican Scott Ritter knew it was a phony casus belli from day # 1. Total cost 30,000+ innocent Iraqi lives, 2500+ American soldiers lives, and 400 billion dollars.

Don't you neo-con supporters even feel the littlest bit ashamed when you pretend to be outraged that Iran is an international outlaw yet give Israel a pass for 60+ violations of U.N. resolutions. Does consistency mean NOTHING to you. Ah that's right it does mean nothing for you are the people who disparaged the reality based community. Neo-con policies have failed in a disastrous way, time to step aside in disgrace and let someone else lead us who has basic competence that clearly Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Bolton, Wolfowitz, Pearle, and other neo-cons clearly lack. While I am no Dem supporter Lie-berman getting his ass kicked in Connecticut was a good start. Time to clean house of all the AIPAC tit suckers (tens of millions of dollars and counting now) from Hilary to Georgie from BOTH parties. Not to mention the 84 BILLION we have paid out. 500 billion to cut off Israel and get the U.S. out danger from Muslim hated would be a small price to pay indeed if our first priority was clears throat AMERICA, and not Israel's well being. Neo-cons ASSUME that AMERICAN and Israelis self interest converge, where as I assure you they do not and the Muslim people could be our friends if we treated them justly and didn't act like Israel's 2nd state.

"Pro-Israel PAC Contributions to 2000 Congressional Candidates
1999-2000 Cycle

TOTAL for 1999-2000 Election Cycle $2,044,606
TOTAL 1978-2000 Funds to Congressional Candidates $34,607,182
TOTAL No. of Recipient Candidates, 1978-2000 1,732

Related figures:
Total US aid to Israel since 1948:
According to the US government: $82 Billion
According to WRMEA's calculations: $94 Billion"

http://www.washington-report.org/html/aipac.htm

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, you can sell GPL software, you can fork GPL software, and at a personal risk to yourself, you can release binaries without source code.

If you choose to do the latter however, you are at the mercy of the copyright holder as they can file a suit against you with a fair chance of success.

Governments can ignore copyright...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know the Government in countries such as England and Australia (and by extension I'm guessing Canada, NZ and many other former parts of the empire) can simply ignore copyright for the good of the government. The government can just take the code and issue 'fair' compensation.

So, a pointless change really.

Fool

[TheConfusedOne]

Yes, you are a fool.

You see Israel gave back the Gaza strip. What did they get for their troubles? Suicide bombings and rocket attacks. They also pulled out of Syria and got the same for their efforts. Every time Israel retreated the other side used it to claim victory.

You keep thinking that it's just a matter of Israel going back to their historic borders and all would be nice. Of course there is that problem about the Madrid bombing and Andalusia...

Re:Fool

[mrraven]

Israel did NOT really give back the Gaza strip they pulled out a FEW settlers while bombarding Gaza with rockets the EXACT same way "evil" Hizbollah does as punishment for electing the "wrong" people. They then KIDNAPPED a substantial fraction of the Palestinian parliament because people they didn't like got elected. "Democracy" is just fine with you neo-cons except when it isn't, right? And before you say how dare they elect the "terrorist" Hamas it can be equally be responded how dare Israel elect the know war criminal Ariel Sharon who oversaw the massacre of thousands at refugee camps in Lebanon? If you allow people to make choices from their free will to elect a government sometimes they'll elect people you don't like and if you ACTUALLY believe in democracy you just have to deal. The pulling of a few settlers out of Gaza does NOT equal a viable contiguous Palestinian state, but then you knew that already, so why lie?

500 billion to bribe the Israelis to follow international law that they should be following ANYWAY for free is really bending over backward to appease Israel. I don't possibly see how the international community could go any farther. Everyone wins Israel has a big bank roll to build desalinization plants and a vast separation wall at it's LEGAL borders, the Arab street is pleased that their Arab brothers are no longer living under the boot heel of Israel, and the U.S. can wean down it's military budget as Muslims will no longer hate us, what's not to like?

Re:Fool

[SpecTheIntro]

I agree with a lot of your points, but in all honesty, creating the state of Palestine would not stop Islamic extremism--and that's truly the source of the conflict. Doing what you say would do a lot to sway general public opinion in the Middle East towards America--which would be extremely important--but there needs to be a concerted effort by Muslims in the region to wrest control of their religion and their governments from the crazy sons of bitches that currently run the show. There needs to be a dramatic internal purge of Islamic, conducted by Muslims, to remove the extremism that is destroying their society. Right now, the Arab world is ambivalent to terrorism--if not quietly supportive. And there is not going to be any progress in the region until they start actively opposing it.

Iran is only slightly different, but the same general principle applies. The real problem in the entire region is that a philosophy that embraces death, as opposed to life, has taken root and is not being weeded out. The real tragedy of it is that our foreign policy has been so misguided and imbalanced that the aforementioned philosophy is often seen as the only way of gaining justice--so rather than despising terrorism and Islamic extremism for what it is, they've accepted it as a viable political avenue for change, and the only one that has ever been successful. America can't do anything to change that acceptance; it has to come from within. All we need to do is prove that we care, that we're not going to be so one-sided in the future (both of which our president has failed fucking MISERABLY at doing) and then step back and pray that the change will happen. But I'm an Iranian Muslim, and I'm not kidding myself any longer: there's an honest chance that my culture and my religion may never turn back from this road, and will be completely destroyed--from without or within--before the end of the century.

Re:Fool

[WilliamSChips]

I completely agree. I see quite a few parallels between the modern Arab world and pre-Reformation Europe--the political entaglement with religion, the hatred for even some of their own type(Shi'ite-Sunni fighting and the side-attacks on Eastern Orthodox Christians during the Crusades), and your standard overreaction(Galileo-type stuff being burnt and the reaction to the (not even funny) Mohammed comics)

Re:Fool

[mrraven]

I'm suprised you buy the western propagnda if you are really an Iranian Muslim. Hint it is Israel that kills innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah.

Re:Fool

[theStorminMormon]

What makes you think you can judge morality by body count? Does this mean that whoever loses more civilian casualties is "right".

What really annoys me about your post is how stupid it is to think that saying "Israel that kills innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah." really says anything at all about the morality of the conflict.

Consider:
a - Hizbollah and Hamas are integrated into civilian areas, making it harder to hit them without incurring civilian casualties
b - To some extent the question of "innocent" civilians is in the air. To what extent are you innocent if you allow Hizbollah to launch rockets from your back yard? Sometimes people are afraid to stop them, sometimes they are actually supportive. If Israel drops a bomb in the yard and kills the family as well as (or even instead of) the rocket-launching crew (who sped off just moments before) then who's to say if "innocent" civilians were killed or not. I certainly don't know the answer to that question.

Please understand what I'm saying here. I'm NOT saying Israel is justified in killing innocents at a 4:1 ratio compared to Hamas and Hizbollah. I'm not even saying that Israel is more or less right than Hamas/Hizbollah. All I'm saying is that it's stupid and naive of you to think your little soundbite proved anything. It didn't.

We all believe that, all things being equal, killing civilians is bad. But it's just hopelessly childlike to think that this means whoever kills the most civilians is the most bad. There are too many alternative explanations and hypothesis that you are refusing to even contemplate. This leads me to believe that your opposition to Israel is either based on irrational hatred or that you just haven't sat down and really thought this through yet.

It's certainly possible to be rationally opposed to Israel and Zionism, but you have not provided an example of that.

-stormin

Re:Fool

[mrraven]

Yes quite so, I think from now on if a criminal escapes into a neighborhood the cops should just carpet bomb everyone in the neighborhood, after all it doesn't matter how many civilians die, right? And surely the neighborhoods is just a human shield of un-people who deserve to die, they're probably just Muslims or something.

Dumbass. Looks a little different when it's your neighborhood and family and friends about to be bombed escaped murdered or no, doesn't it?

Re:Fool

[theStorminMormon]

The fact that a civilian body-count is not necessarily sufficient to prove who's right and who's wrong doesn't mean a civilian body count doesn't matter. I never said that. You're being dishonest or stupid, but in either case you energy is wasted attacking a straw man that isn't even a remotely reasonable facsimile for what I said.

In general terms:

What I said : X is insufficient to prove Y.

What you are saying: X doesn't matter at all.

Your vitriol is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

-stormin

Re:Fool

[mrraven]

No I'm just tired of the hypocrisy of people who shill for the U.S. and Israel who say it's O.K. to bomb civilian areas as long as a "terrorist" criminal MIGHT be in the area, but they would never allow the same behavior regarding their own neighborhood. Raw rank double standards are very galling indeed.

Re:Fool

[theStorminMormon]

No I'm just tired of the hypocrisy of people who shill for the U.S. and Israel who say it's O.K. to bomb civilian areas as long as a "terrorist" criminal MIGHT be in the area, but they would never allow the same behavior regarding their own neighborhood. Raw rank double standards are very galling indeed.

That's all well and good. Just maybe take better aim next time and find somebody who actually thinks those things.

-stormin

WTF?

[Khyber]

Vegans generally know quite a bit about plants you'd never dream of eating - so they'd still manage to find food while your snobby ass starved to death. How about hanging with a few Vegans before you go making such fucked-up statements?

Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really? You don't think choosing to ignore a whole class of high calorie food is a luxury? This is the typical problem with Veganism. It assumes you'll never be in a situation (like starvation) where you won't be able to come up with a nice big chunk of Tofu. It happens that, in some countrys, the society is rich enough to make this an option.

But don't for an instant, believe that, without that wealth, it would be an option.

I know this is /., but that is an astoundingly ignorant statement. Meat is the "luxury" food, not veggies and fruits! It takes an average of 12 lbs of grain protein to receive a single pound of cow protein. Which BTW is mostly not digestible, explaining that huge belly many corpse eaters have by the time they're 40. All that meat leaves an impacted residue in your colon which putrifies and stays with you forever. Plus y'all smell horrible, ask any vegetarian.

So don't have cow, man!

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[R2.0]

Are you aware that fruit and vegetables naturally grow in seasons, dependent on the local climate cycle? The year round availability of fruits and vegetables is a huge luxury, wholly dependent on massive expenditures of resources for shipping and irrigation. And the vitamins and other carefully selected foodstuffs that substitute for some components of meat are a result of an industrialized culture?

Read "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Get some perspective.

Oh yeah - you may think your shit (literally AND figuratively) doesn't stink, but most of the healthy eaters I've known have also had the most rancid asses. Go figure.

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is complete nonsense. Humans digest meat just fine. And what we don't digest (fibre) is shit out. There is no magical mysterious residue or plaque on anyones colon or intestines. What, do you think it just fucking dissapears anytime a doctor shoves a camera up someone ass, or anytime someone dies and is given an autopsy? Stop making the rest of us look stupid and making vegetarianism even less accepted with your bullshit.

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making the rest of us look stupid and making vegetarianism even less accepted with your bullshit.

You don't need me to "make you look stupid", your lack of education is doing that quite well. Read and learn (no, I'm not going to predigest it for you).
http://www.google.com/search?q=meat+eating+colon+h ealth

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware that fruit and vegetables naturally grow in seasons, dependent on the local climate cycle? The year round availability of fruits and vegetables is a huge luxury, wholly dependent on massive expenditures of resources for shipping and irrigation.

Refresh my memory, how many months of winter do your livestock survive without grain or molasses or other food which also has a growing season?

And the vitamins and other carefully selected foodstuffs that substitute for some components of meat are a result of an industrialized culture?

There is no special need to make up for meat in a vegetarian diet. That is a myth of western society. Humans do not need to eat meat period.
You are brainwashed.

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your lack of logic does not make me look stupid. Yes, some studies have shown that people who eat alot of red meat also have a higher probability of colon cancer. This does not mean people can't properly digest red meat, as we have been doing for tens of thousands of years. It means that there is a common factor there, which could be investigated. Perhaps (like many studies show) its just that people who eat alot of red meat also eat very little fibre, and the lack of fibre is the problem, not the meat? It could be any number of things. Simply making outrageous and provable false claims that meat can't be digested and builds up in your colon is moronic. We look in people's colons all the time. There is nothing built up there.

Re:Don't Have A Cow, Man!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only natural sources of vitamin b12 are animal products (meat, dairy, eggs and possibly feces). You do need to make up for that, or you will suffer vitamin b12 defeciency after several years, which can cause permanent damage to your vervous system.

Pacifism means fighting back

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. What a strong pro-military reaction this idea has produced. Attacked from almost every perspective.

Pacifism does not mean giving up when confronted by violence. It can mean fighting back strongly, but using non-violent means. Unfortunately these methods are largely underresourced. Imagine if the military budget was spend on a non-violent standing force of people as ready to give their lives for their country as those in the military are. This idea has hardly been explored at all.

The US military is by far the largest military in the world and is engaged in offensive action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even if it could only be enforced against the US military that would be a good thing.

Parts of Ghandi's carreer that don't get press:

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Had it been the Dutch in the 18th century rather than the Brits in the 20th, you better better believe Gandhi and his followers would've been been shot and dragged off immediately.

Speaking of the Dutch, or at least people of largely Dutch descent: Before Ghandi had his success in India he tried the same tactics in an attempt to end the repression of blacks in South Africa. This was a resounding failure. South African blacks remained repressed throughout Ghandi's carreer and for decades after his death.

He also had advice for the Jews of Germany under the rising Third Reich: Commit mass suicide as a peaceful protest of their oppression.

DOD should have the right to use Open Source

[Bushido Hacks]

Don't forget, if it was not for the U.S. Department of Defense's DARPA program their would be no Internet. It is only right to allow the military to use open source software considering all that they have given us.

You've got it ass backwards.

[Anonymous Coward]

The rich countries are the only ones that can afford a lifestyle of destruction. We have the room, and the wealth to destroy vast stretches of the world and turn it into grazing land for animals which we push into accelerated growth so we eat them. We waste 9/10 of the calories in our food by putting it through cattle, then eating it. And don't try the tired old "but we can't eat grass though" bullshit. Cattle don't eat grass anymore either, we feed them high calorie, high protein corn, soy, bloodmeal/fishmeal mixtures, along with estrogen and related hormones to increase growth, and antibiotics to keep them alive despite their fatally toxic diet. None of this shit can exist in a society that is not wealthy. In poor countries, they tend to eat alot of high calorie food themselves (rice and other grains) instead of feeding it to animals.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

No, you guys are now at the point where you have to "suck it up" and finish the job you started. Like it or not, your country invaded Iraq (it doesn't matter at this point whether it was for the right reasons, or not) and if you simply pack up shop and leave, that country will either self-destruct, or a worse group than Saddam's family will take power.... so you'll either end up with a HUGE number of Iraqis with large numbers of dead relatives (and they'll blame you for that) or you'll end up with a regime that sponsors terrorists (and they'll send them your way)

A war on terrorism has been a long time coming (communism was really the only thing that kept it in check), but now that it has begun, you guys have your hands tied... if you lay down your arms, your buildings and planes will start dropping faster than you can imagine

As for your claims that there are more dead terrorists now than existed before the war, I'd like to know:

a) Where you get your numbers, and
b) How they take sleeper cells into consideration.

You'll never convince me that an invasion like this, based in lies and proteacted to increase profit for the vice-president's previous employer will do anything more than make the USA less safe.

I'm really not trying to. I am, however, trying to convince you that, as a country, you're fucked if you don't follow through with what's already begun.

Nobody knows?

[Anonymous Coward]

the jews know

Anyone remember opendarwin?

[Anonymous Coward]

They did that too. They blacked out their website to protest war in Iraq.

I think one time someone actually hit it on one of the black out days. They almost had 11 users until their protest turned one away.. Funny, they end the project and then Apple publishes the XNU source again like a week later..

It seems like once we get the problems of software under control and it's secure and robust and does the work we need done then maybe we can put our energies in to world peace. In the mean time we can't even get software right that often so why do you think we'll be any better at something so much bigger and more difficult. I think if you want to make things better then do your best at everything you doand if you're doing software then do your best at that rather than turning it in to some sort of statement or message. It's engineering for crying out loud, it's not "art" exactly.

GPL is a distribution license

[Iznogood]

They kept this part from the original:

"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not
covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of
running the Program is not restricted [...]"

Does't this "no military use" modification make the whole thing internally inconsistent? And if so, wouldn't that mean noone can use GPU safely? ("nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works" and all that)

wouldn't be an internet without the military

[walterbyrd]

As I understand it.

Allowing harm through inaction

[CustomDesigned]

A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

The legitimate purpose of a military is to protect citizens from harm. While military force can be perverted to cause harm (other than collateral damage), pacifism results in standing by while the innocent are slaughtered. "Preemptive" strikes are a sticky wicket, however.

Re:The one thing worse than lawyers writing licens

[slamb]

It doesn't even make sense. Nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed? What does that mean? You have to modify it to stop harm? The code isn't allowed not to prevent harm? You're obligated to use this program if it would in any way prevent harm to someone?

It's a poor paraphrase of Asimov's First Law of Robotics (Asimov, the science fiction writer). Weighing myriad courses of action for the least harm - or least possible harm, or least expected value of harm (probability), or least average harm (among many people), or however you interpret it in more complex situations - is a tremendously difficult thing. In his books, imprinting it into the minds of robots paralyzed them by indecision in many situations. So the idea of successfully prosecuting someone for not following it is laughable. I don't think these people understand his books or the legal system.

They compare it to the law against commercial use of Amateur Radio:

He says some might think an attempt to prevent military use might be "too idealistic" and would not work in practice, but he references the world of ham radio, whose rules specify that the technology is not to be used commercially. "Surprisingly enough, this rule is respected by almost every ham operator."

...but that law is relatively unambiguous. If you're proposing through the amateur bands the exchange of goods or services for money, you're engaging in commerce and thus breaking the law. I can't think of any situation in which this First Law of Robotics-like clause is easy to interpret - there's always the argument that by killing this person, you prevented him/her from killing others or causing some greater harm.

So...License or contract?

[Anonymous Coward]

"...are software licenses/"EULAs" enforceable, not enforceable, or what?"

Depends on weither the GPL is a License or a contract?

+5 Masturbators

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing - a simple license clause, which is perfectly reasonable - 'Dont use my work as a tool of harm', ends up revealing most /.ers (I assume US citizens) that post here as: uninformed, hatemongering, pro-violence, warmongering, paranoid, racist children. You people are meant to be smart, but I guess any sort of peaceful gesture raises the voices of the hatemongers amongst you.

I cannot believe what I am reading here. The argument sounds like this:

Anyone who is against war is with the terrorists.
Murder is necessary for a better world.
Anyone who is against war must be anti-semitic, because a pacifist would just let the holocaust happen.
Our murder ability must always be better than 'their' murder ability. It makes us a better people.

For Fucks Sake people - get your cocks out of your hands, stop playing BF2, grow up and open your eyes.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[Zantetsuken]

I'll try to keep this from being flamebait, and this might or might not be specifically your thoughts on the matter, but I'm sure somewhere on Slashdot, some part of this applies to somebody - so, here goes nothing...

I'm not exactly a warmonger, but I'm not a blind pacifist either - if you want to call a terrorist blowing up an ice cream shop or public bus a "civilian" only because he isn't a member of a regular army, does it really mean he's a civilian/non-combatant when he just killed or at the very least, injured everybody on the bus?.

...we could BUY the west bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights...

Just because you buy a dog, whats to keep if from running away? Not to say people in the middle east have the intelligence of animals, but that the way countries like Palistine and Iran hate the US and other Western nations, it would not just probably, but positively make international relations worse. Would they accept the land as a "gift"? I truly doubt it. Reason #1: would you want pity from the country you've hated since the day you were born? Reason #2: are you really gonna tell me the US govt' wouldn't have more strings attached than a master puppeteer? (which of course none of which Palestine or the rest of the Mid-East would like)

I'll stop ranting now so I don't piss off all of Slashdot

"... must be Free Software for any use" - except..

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Software must be Free Software for any use. [...]

Except for use of DRM schemes. You know, that's what the GPLv3 is going to restrict Free softwares usage for. Now DRM and Military use are more than vastly different categories of a restriction, but nevertheless a usage permission ("Freedom zero"?) removal for users of Free software. Portraying it anything different is of course just a double standard.

Asinine Asimov Allusion

[MrRobahtsu]

This is the stupidest license mod I've ever heard of. I can see dove-types banning military use, but the misleading title misses the real story. This bans a LOT more than military use. From TFA:

the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed

Cute reference to the the laws of robotics, but totally inappropriate in a license. The inaction part is worse than useless. It makes the license frivolous and meaningless.

And when I was in 6th grade and read "I Robot" for the first time even then I was able to see that it was full of holes. A robot wouldn't have been able to let a human drink alcohol or smoke in its presence. And now these guys decide that's good legalese for their license.

Am I violating their license if I'm an alcoholic and use their software to download directions to make a homemade beer brewery? What if my P2P download interferes with some other GPU users VOIP 911 call? Is that harm?

What if I endanger my family, job, and marriage and spend all my time downloading pr0n and copyrighted movies on GPU? Sounds harmful to me.

Idiots.

Existed in the past: No-nuclear-weapons GPL

[felix.rauch]

At least sort of:

http://ftp.nice.ch/users/felix/FileSpy.1.1.src/CON DITIONS

Excerpt from the above conditions:

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR POSSESSION, COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

1. For people, institutions, organizations or governments not covered below,
the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE applies without any restrictions.

2. The use and modification of FileSpy is not allowed for people,
institutions, organizations or governments that have been, are or will be
involved in one of the following activities:
1. Testing nuclear weapons, either with real atom bombs of any size and
      power (or any other form of nuclear weapon existing now or in the
      future) or with computer simulations.
2. Research or development in new, 'better', bigger or more intensive atom
      bombs or any other nuclear weapons.
3. Actually using atom bombs (or any other nuclear weapons) against human
      beeings, animals, plants or any other lifeforms on any part of this
      planet or anywhere else in the universe.

3. If you belong to a group listed above, then you may NOT USE FileSpy.

                          END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Re:Existed in the past: No-nuclear-weapons GPL

[ledow]

Unfortunately, that is completely legally meaningless. This is why you get lawyers to write licenses, not make them up yourself.

Say I, as a non-military person were to download this piece of software. Then I have accepted it under the terms of the GPL WITH NO RESTRICTIONS (as it explicitly states in that "choice of licenses". Which means that I can then futher distribute it, also under the terms of the GPL... one of which is that I can distribute it to ANYONE.

I *never* accepted the other definition, I ONLY accepted the GPL WITH NO RESTRICTIONS clause which means I was not bound by anything else and I certainly never accepted any clause that suggested that whoever I then went on to further distribute it to would also be bound by any license other than the GPL.

The beauty of the GPL is not the idea, it is the execution - the GPL, almost by definition, means that you cannot "break" it - you can't change the GPL (because then it wouldn't be the GPL), you cannot add provisos or conditions or anything that's not in the GPL itself - and the GPL allows anyone who recieves it the right to further redistribute it or modified versions only under the GPL (without provisos, conditions etc.). All you can do is CLARIFY a particular term of definition within the GPL itself (e.g. by saying that kernel modules are or are not "derived works") and even that's doubtful as to whether YOUR interpretation is the definitive legal one.

If you want to play with licenses (which are viewed exactly the same as contracts in most countries and are legally binding in virtually all), then hire lawyers. Similarly, don't "run up" your own rent agreements, wills/testaments or contracts - you WILL lose out as soon as it gets in the hands of a lawyer who will run rings around your definitions in court.

For instance, how many people know that, under UK law at least, you cannot leave money in your will if it is based on conditions (e.g. give John £10,000 if he marries before he's 30?). In the UK, John can contest that will and demand £10,000 even if he NEVER gets married.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

The Palestinians get their state and Israel gets a HUGE payoff for merely obeying international law under my proposal as is Irael's obligation anyway. I actually make this as a sincere proposal, the fact that Israel's supporters shoot it down to me shows that ISRAEL'S supporters (at least on Slashdot) are more attached to war than thinking about a rational solution. Notice all the flames against my little proposal for making peace and paying Israel 500 billion in American dollars for merely following international law are from supporters of Israel and none from Palestine's supporters, something to think about y'all. Who exactly is spurning the peaces process here on Slashdot while casting aspersions? Hmmmm...

restriction from license is a pardox

[Zantetsuken]

I'm only going to quote this short excerpt from the article about the modified license and just how confused I am by it:

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed." (paragraph #3)

Now just HOW the hell does this make sense? I well enough understand the part about it not being allowed to be used to hurt /+ kill other people, etc - but doesn't the "inaction" part go against that?

Now for some hypothetical situations:

#1: say some branch of the military could somehow (make something up, damnit) save lives with this software? So by disallowing the military to use it, those people are now going to die.

#2: One of the warmongering Mid-East, Asian, or African countries that would LOVE nothing more than to set off a nuke on a Western nation uses this software to create the geometry for their warhead (you think they're going to give a shit?), and whatever unlucky country is their target (be it the US, UK, or the country as big as your 6'x6' "backyard" condominium patio) could have to processing power to run whatever software needed to find where this nuke is being made and send Rambo in, saving thousands if not millions of lives from a populated city, even if at the cost of 30 or 50 scientists, guards, etc - but now because they can't use this beowulf clustering software, everybody effected by the bomb gets turned to ash, skin falls of, etc, and nobody can live inside ground zero because of fallout.

OK, enough totally bullshit situations, but do you see just how little sense this makes to me? Maybe (alright, more than just maybe) I'm over-thinking and over-exagerating a lot here, but this ideal of theirs seems impossible. Great, now I'm gonna sit up thinking about it all night and wake up dead in the morning with an aneurism...

Yay! More proprietary, source-available freeware!

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

It's non-free and non-free and not open source and not GPL compatible.

I'm about as likely to use this shared-source "GPU" as I am to use XFree86 4.4.

I'm even less likely to contribute to it.

RTFA

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use. Example all this extra features could be used to calculate the safest way to deploy food to 3rd world countries, increasing distribution and reducing risk to troops.

The patch doesn't specify the millitary explicitly, but specifies that the software is not to be used to harm people.

Benevolence from excess of power.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The noble man, too, helps the unfortunate, but not, or almost not, out of pity, but more prompted by an urge which is begotten by the excess of power."
- Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, #260

It is the abuser and the despot that use violence in the way that you're suggesting. Though they are not likely to diminish any time soon, there are people alive now for whom this sort of violence is ineffectual. The violent are using the only means at their disposal but those means are not thereby _necessary_ or even effectual.Your 'Period.' is a lack of imagination.

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[Sloppy]

Politically charging you code license is just a bad and stupid idea.

Unless it gets your project mentioned on the front page of Slashdot. ;-)

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[carpeweb]

The notion that peace would be achieved if Israel just gave up the West Bank and Gaza is absurd. Too many Islamofascists need Israel as an object of hate to keep the average Akbar (or whatever "average Joe" translates to in Arabic) in a constant state of repression. Without Israel, the Islamofascist leaders would have to explain why they haven't done anything since the end of European colonialism to improve their countries.

If you need to be naive, why not at least be naive in the hope that, if it weren't for their awful leaders, the majority of Arab citizens would gladly coexist peacefully with Israel if only they had jobs and hope for a better life. Yes, that does sound naive, I know. But your world ain't never gonna happen, mrron.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[Anonymous Coward]

You fail! Violence is a NOUN, not a verb!
  Gah!

Back to the subject

[Hosiah]

This variation of the GPL is bad. NOT BECAUSE PACIFISM IS BAD as earlier numbskulls in this thread claimed. But because if you're going to celebrate freedom, you have to extend freedom to EVERYBODY, incluing those who shoot bombs, drugs, dogs, etc. with whom you disagree. I don't like it that this exception shit is going around. Either we're all free or we're not. The GPL is being liquified until everybody gets to make it whatever they want. Then what is the point of having a GPL at all?

wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, keep something in mind. I can't enjoy my meal unless something died to make it. Even so, I've got to show how incredibly wrong you are. where to begin...

We're omnivores. We're wired to eat whatever is available, within limits, such as "we can't digest grass". If I lived off of grass, I wouldn't get thin and malnourished, at least not for long, I'd just die.

Vegans don't live off of celery sticks and grass. Not the ones who live to age 2, anyway. They eat grains, same as anyone else, oils/beans/nuts, same as anyone else, and vegetables. There is nothing unhealthy about eating the right balance of non-animal foods, at least according to every respected dietician on earth.

Veganism is not a luxury. Eating immitation-meat products is a luxury, but most of the world lives off of the "unless I hit a goat with my wagon, I'm a vegan today" model, because meat is really expensive compared to, say, beans. I practically went vegetarian for a year in college, and it was because I could only afford canned beans and instant noodles.

Re:wow

[geminidomino]

How am I wrong? You essentially said the same thing I did, but with less inflammatory language.

the right balance of non-animal foods

The right balance isn't 100%.

but most of the world lives off of the "unless I hit a goat with my wagon, I'm a vegan today" model, because meat is really expensive compared to, say, beans.

If you consider meat with as the common western beef/pork/poultry triad, sure. But there are wild animals that can be hunted that don't make good candidates for commercial raising in the west because of low yields or societal objections (rabbits), lack of frequency in the area but more common in others (snakes), etc... not to mention insects which are eaten in several parts of the world.

I can't help but think you got the wrong idea from my post. I don't have any problem if someone wants to eat vegan, or live off of twinkies. They just need to STFU and stop claiming that those who DON'T are "unhealthy" and/or "unnatural."

"Not eating meat is a decision. Eating meat is an instinct" -D. Leary.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

Don't you mean Israel needs to call anyone who dares question it's illegal holding of territory an anti-Semite?
According to Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh interviewed today on Democracy Now the U.S. and Israel have been planning on invading Lebanon for over a year in a war of aggression using the flimsy casus belli of kidnapping when in fact it is Israel that holds THOUSANDS of kidnapped Muslim civilians, as the first stage in a broader war of aggression against Iran. Fortunately Hizbollah was able to fight Israel to a standstill leading to the current thank G*d cease fire or we might have been looking at WWIII. Eventually all we can hope for is that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Olmert will hang for premeditated war crimes if there is any justice in the world.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/1 4/1358255

This isn't the first

[winse]

time that someone has put a no military clause in with GPL'd code. I'm surprised this hasn't come up before....then again maybe someone will bother to point out that this is a dupe...

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

Alas I see you are right, but I think that it the grammarians who made a mistake for a noun is supposed to be a person, place, or thing, which violence as an action is not, obviously. Where as a verb describes an action such as drinking, or running. Really if you think about it we OUGHT to say violencing for the action of committing violence against a person. To refer to the action violence the same way we refer to an object static in time like a chair is absurd. But who said language or humans ever made any sense? sigh.

Justified != "Just"

[Kadin2048]

There's a big difference between a "justified war" and a "Just War" (where I'm using the capital 'J' not for emphasis, but to refer to the modern or postmodern didactic theory).

A war can be "justified" in that a large number of the people involved in the conflict, on one or both sides, believe that it is worth the cost; this is completely unrelated to whether the conflict fits the (rather arbitrary) "Just War" criteria.

To say that a war which is "justified" is also "Just," is to assume that the people that the war is being justified to are all believers in the theory of Just War. This is hardly true in practice -- many people will feel a conflict justified, for one reason or another, even if it isn't Just according to some theory or another.

The whole concept of 'Just War Criteria' is a pretty one, but ultimately, in my opinion, naive: the standard it tries to set is higher than is required in most cases to convince a group of people to attack another one, and does not take into consideration that under a democratic form of government, this is really the only thing that matters. The reasons why countries go to war against each other are complex, and dividing conflicts into "just" and "unjust" based on a set of arbitrary criteria is at best an academic exercise. At worst, it gives us an un-earned feeling of superiority for having partially "understood" war, without delving into the much more subtle motivators that might drive it.

The human mind, both singly as an individual, but also as part of a larger group, is capable of incredible rationalizations; the ability of people to justify an action ex post facto is virtually unlimited. In the same way that a person might kick a dog out of rage and self-loathing, and then later explain that the dog deserved it, one country might be more predisposed to go to war out of feelings of powerlessness as a group, and then justify it later. In the same way that examining the dog's prior misbehavior will give you little insight on why the person kicked it, listening to the "Just War" rationalizations and justifications shed little light on the actual motivations behind armed conflict.

Re:Justified != "Just"

[kaffiene]

This sounds to me very much like when some people say that the concept of a war crime is rubbish because anything goes in war. Frankly, after WWII, people decided that some things just *don't* get justified by war (rape, killing civilians, torture etc...). It's similar with "justified" wars versus "Just" war. If you only care about what a mob feel justified doing then you may as well say anything goes - and that's just not somewhere that we should be going.

Personally I think that Just war theory is highly applicable to modern conflict and not at all academic. Gulf War 1 and WWII were both Just wars. Afghanistan was not at all Just (and IraqII not for the stated reasons, but potentially just for other reasons). If we can't distinguish between when it is and isn't appropriate to apply military hardware to cause death of other humans on a massive scale, don't you think that we've given up something of our humanity?

The thing is, we do have to wage wars sometimes and that means that many people - often innocent people - will die. The thought that we should do so with such a cavalier attitude that anything that some hack news agency whips up hysteria about is worth killing people for, disgusts me. If we must kill other people, then by all that makes us worthwhile to exist at all, surely we should only venture to do so when we are sure that we have no other alternatives and that we have reasonable cause to do so?

When you consider the number of people who believe that Iraq had WMDs simply because of the number of times that lie was repeated by the media, then it ought to become clear that preserving and revering the distinction between "justified by the mob" and "Just War" is incredibly important.

Re:Just out of curiosity...serious this time...

[Memnos]

I can't believe that no one has posted about the truism that it almost impossible to create a "tool", a generally useful artifact, that cannot be used to further violent aims. Trying to do so is about as likely to succeed as trying to stop developing any tools, in fact has almost as little likelihood of success. A more mature civilization/society works on realistically addressing the aspects of the political, cultural, ethnic, sociological, psychological, evolutionary, and biological aspects of human beings to counter our ever-increasing ability to do violence with ever more refined ways of circumventing those propensities.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[cjsm]

They modded you flamebait? Slashdot is full if rightwing facists. Sure, you can rationalize war, but you still are, in most cases, incuding the U.S. presidents, fucking murders. So murders, keep on preach your wisdom of war.

"War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said.

[geekoid]

"Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
"Absol--well, okay."
"Defending yourself against a totalitarian agressor?"
"All right, I'll grant you that, but--"
"Saving civilization from a horde of--"
"It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd
listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?"

-- Terry Pratchett, "Thud!"

something for pacifist to think about.

WTF!!!

[HamOpMW]

Am I missing something?

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and author of the GPL, says that while he doesn't support the philosophy of "open source,"...

So Bruce Perens is gonna have to explain what "open source" means all over again? Tina Gasperson, it'd be a good idea to correct your article. Shall I say it's another case of reporters who don't know what they're reporting.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

Yeah I'm a little shocked too, it's not the same GNU/Linux activist Slashdot I joined in the late 90s. :(

wow

[rohan972]

You're ignoring the millions of vegans in the Indian subconinent, who have lived that way for thousands of years.

Millions of thousand+ year old Indians? How come I never heard of this?

Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

retraction

[seanadams.com]

Meh - there it is:

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Re:YOU FUCKING HIPPIES MAKE ME LAUGH

[Anonymous Coward]

Doing something? They may believe they're doing something, but it's completely irrelevant. Their "work" is of no consequence whatsoever, it's like someone making biking helmets and putting a "not for military use" sticker on them. The military has the resources to replicate anything useful those losers might ever come close to produce.

They're doing nothing at all but inflate their egos a little.

Exemption for Hizbollah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they aren't a military...

Neither are Hamas...

Liberals have such a weakness of the mind...

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Guuge]

I don't know how you're extrapolating from Orwell to 9/11, but I'll play along. You seem to believe that the president has announced a war on Al Qaeda. This is not the case. He has suggested a War on Terror, which is a descendent of the War on Drugs. Neither one is really a war in the strict sense, but a set of policies. The War on Terror is marked by increased presidental power, an expanded government, and arbitrary military actions abroad.

Second, no one needs to convince the president to bring troops back from overseas. He himself promised to do just that in his 2000 campaign. I don't know whether you're calling our president a liar or a fool for saying this, but the people who voted for him apparently agreed. Can I assume that you were praying for Gore to win in 2000? Or did you prefer Nader?

Finally, your fear of isolation is unfounded. Most reasonable people (including pacifists) don't want to turn our backs on the world at large. What we'd like is a real plan to achieve a stable, peaceful, humanitarian, global environment. What we're getting is a grab for short-term profits at the expense of the future. Evaluate what went wrong in Iran in the last century. It wasn't that the US wasn't violent enough; it was that the US installed an unpopular dictator. It did this so we'd be safe from Communism. Did it work? Is Iran no longer a threat?

Obviously another Iraqi Blogger

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you want to die, or be a slave, by all means, refuse to fight.
> That's Darwin at his finest. We're an agressive species. We evolved
> to where we are by being agressive. You think you're just going to
> decide it's time for everyone to be all nice and happy?

When are you guys going to accept us as your betters, and lie down and take it?
I want my rose petal welcome parade, damn it!

Seriously: reckon these guys who talk tough about how cool and manly and necessary war is wouldn't talk that way if I decided to kill them and everyone they know and even the guys that lent them money because I wanted their iPod/PC/car/house/girlfriend. Nah. Its only losers you jerk off behind a PC and talk tough. If you believe, get your asses to Iraq you cowards.

what??

[tanveer1979]

Civilized? What are you talking about? You think that british never killed unarmed non violent people because they were civilized? huh? Go google about General Dyer. That was a much publicized incident. Infact that arsehole was honoured in the UK for gunning down thousands of unarmed non violent protestors firing squad style. The problem came that there were so many of they protestors that it was a deluge. Even the most brutual of officers could not bring themselves to gunning down women and children. Eventually this boycott etc., came to such a stage that keeping India was not an economically viable option. That was the only reason. British empire had reduced from a great empire in which the sun never set to a small slum in the new world, drained by WW-II. So it had to leave. Many colonies which were easier to keep stayed till 1960s after which the "western" nations had to leave them to prove to the world that they were more civilized than the middle east

Good

[jandersen]

I think it is good to see somebody actually stand up their opinions against the barrage of neo-fascist nonsense from the war-randy crowd. Being a pacifist does not have to be the same as never lifting your hands to defend yourself or your family - that's just a caricature the militants want you to believe. But there is a huge difference between defending yourself if you have no other options left, and the kind of hormone-pumped agressiveness that makes certain people use any excuse to jump up, grab their automatic gun with one hand and their dick with the other and start shooting while wanking wildly.

There are many very valid reasons why one would not want to support the military - not the least of which is the fact that the military is a institution of power that is not under democratic control and which is rarely if at all held accountable for its actions.

Is this a misquote?

[mikek3332002]

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and author of the GPL, says that while he doesn't support the philosophy of "open source,"...
Isn't He the guy who wrote the gpl and started opensource philosophy?
Why would he be against it?

Re:Is this a misquote?

[tinahdee]

No, in fact, he is vehemently against the concept of open source software. For Richard, only the free software philosophy will do. There is a difference. -Tina

English sucks... so what?

[Fluffy the attack ki]

Welcome to English, language of the damned, in which abstract concepts are considered things and therefor nouns; the word 'tool' can be used to describe both 'object oriented programming' and 'violence' with equal accuracy; and almost nobody understands the correct function of a semi-colon.

Re:English sucks... so what?

[koreaman]

Yes because in more refined languages like French, words like "(la) violence" are not considered nouns... oh wait, yes they are.

Let's try Spanish. Hold on, let me look it up: violence nombre violencia

Oops your argument fails there too. Maybe English is too close to Romance languages to make a good comparison. Let's try something totally off-the-wall:

Swahili: I have no knowledge whatsoever of the language, but a dictionary found with a quick google search gives all these Swahili results for "violence":

violence { Swahili: bavu , pl mabavu }
noun - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

violence { Swahili: dhara , pl madhara [derived: -dhuru v] }
noun 5/6 - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

violence { Swahili: jefule , pl jefule }
noun 9/10 - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

violence { Swahili: jefule }
noun - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

violence { Swahili: uhasama [derived: hasama N] }
noun 14 - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

violence { Swahili: ujuhula }
noun - [ edit entry ] [ photos: upload ]

Noun, noun, noun, noun, noun, and, let me check that last one, oh yes, noun.

What the fuck was your point again?

For some reason, lots of monolingual Americans claim that English is the "most illogical language", "hardest language to learn", "stupidest language" or some other brand of unsubstantiated subjective nonsense. I literally have no idea why.

By the way, I'll give you a hint so that maybe you'll be less stupid in the future: The definition of "noun" is not dependent on any specific language, and so "violence" in any language that has the word is a noun.

High body count + low collateral damage = bullshit

[Hellburner]

I direct you to this this obligatory nerd link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon

We should feel that war is so awful that we should seek to avoid it at all costs.
Notice I said "seek to avoid" not commit to passivity.

GPU = Graphics Processing Unit

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't they have picked another name/acronym than the already existing GPU? Now how are we supposed to google for that stuff?

Maybe it has not been mod'd up...

[Anonymous Coward]

but I have not seen a comment stating the obvious (to me) fact that in the case where our country (or any country) is placed in a position (a war) of needing said distributed computing software that our military would not use it because of a license if it would help us defeat our enemies.

FYI... the government that provides the civil structure that would enable these asshat software developers to sue somebody for violating their *software license* only exists because it HAS been to war and WILL go to war to protect it. So shut up, make some money, enjoy your amenities while they last and get the f*** off your pedistals.

And to the guy that talked about letting the rat live... eat the rat and live to see another day. Hope only dies when you do.

Enforceable?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

I love it when people who are unfamiliar with the law try to write legalese.

Think about it: Do you honestly think that if the military needs some technology, and it's available, that they won't use it because of copyright law? Especially if the design of the system in use is classified?

This proprietary software licence is not even going to accomplish its own goals.

The practicality of idealism

[zoeblade]

Pure pacifism pisses me off...It's like Veganism...Sounds good on paper, but is unworkable in reality.

As someone who's been a vegan for several years now (as well as boycotting various companies, for example Coca-Cola who had union leaders killed), I don't think it's unworkable in reality.

If it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.

Yes, I concede that. Similarly, if I found myself next to a lion for some reason, and only one of us were going to survive, whoever it was wouldn't feel too guilty about killing the other one.

However, we have society and technology now. I can spend my whole life without ever having to choose between killing an animal or dying. Even most non-vegans don't kill animals directly, they essentially pay other people to do it for them. So when the choice is between, say, a can of lentil soup or a can of chicken soup, it becomes much more practical to go for the most ethical option.

So I would conclude that in this period in time, in a developed country, it is possible to pursue idealism such as pacifism or veganism with at least some success. I'm all in favour of anyone trying to ensure their hard work isn't used to kill anyone.

mod up!

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

How I wish I had mod points now -- I agree totally. For some reason this subject seems lower the quality of conversation to an all-time low...

There's a good example in a sibling comment: linguizic writes:

As a pacifist, I know that life without conflict is impossible. I choose to seek non-violent means to resolve conflict.

And the straw-man-response:

So what is your nonviolent resolution to the conflict of an armed rapist in your home who wants to kill you and have his way with your wife and daughters?

... as if linguizic had promised to always find a non-violent resolution, or claimed that pacifism always leads to a 'better' outcome than some other agenda.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[goof21]

Finally, your fear of isolation is unfounded. Most reasonable people (including pacifists) don't want to turn our backs on the world at large. What we'd like is a real plan to achieve a stable, peaceful, humanitarian, global environment. What we're getting is a grab for short-term profits at the expense of the future. Evaluate what went wrong in Iran in the last century. It wasn't that the US wasn't violent enough; it was that the US installed an unpopular dictator. It did this so we'd be safe from Communism. Did it work? Is Iran no longer a threat?

Iran never had a shot at being any kind of communist power, as its government fell to fundamentalist zealots. Given the school of thought these people come from, it's likely they would've come to power regardless of anyone's involvement.

Your ideals are respectable, and I applaud them. This kind of open-source discrimination, however, is not the answer. The Orwellian reference is actually pretty spot on - terrorists with a hard-on to use this type of software are now free to do so, while any organized military is forbidden from touching it, if even to find and exploit weaknesses in self-defense. Not really "supporting the troops," in my mind - even those who joined for noble purposes such as defending their homes, saving lives, and making humanitarian efforts happen when no one else will (like the scientist in Antarctica who needed life-saving treatment to stave off cancer - thanks, USAF!).

The real reason why

[eagl]

The real reason why is that they're a bunch of unrealistic commie liberal pussies who think the concept of evil doesn't exist, and the world would be at peace if only the people who defend their cushy existence suddenly quit going to work one day.

Assholes like this piss me off because their retarded worldview invites invasion and war, and then everyone else has to fight to save the weak ass pacifists from the hell they created.

Look at the body count for the 60 years prior to 1945 and the body count for the 60 years after 1945, and then come back and try to tell me why military research is a bad thing. Come up with one single instance where a nation has started a war by dropping a nuclear weapon. Compare the body count for wars between nuclear armed countries with the body count in wars between nations without nuclear weapons.

If you look at the situation from an honest, analytical non-emotional perspective, those stupid ass "no military use" clauses are more likely to cause great harm to people than the software would if it was used to further develop military weaponry. The raw numbers don't lie. Computer people like to brag about how analytical they are, but most are just as fucking stupid and hysterical on this issue as any mud-hut squatting jungle savage or illiterate flower child hippie.

Hate to break it to you..

[Anonymous Coward]

But your code IS running for military use...that is, to say a program I wrote that just so happens to be almost 100% line for line a duplicate of your code.

Try again, kids...

reference

[rucs_hack]

here you go, one reference.

Only a bbc article I'm afraid, I can't find a reference to the original research.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/430944.stm

There's plenty of information on the bbc page though, enough for you to dig further if you're interested, which you should be if you studied anthropology.

Re:reference

[the phantom]

Let me ammend the last post. Peer-reviewed reference, please. I think that you will find nothing in the peer-reviewed literature that agrees with your understanding of events.

Re:reference

[rucs_hack]

Got it, one peer reviewed paper

"The Zhoukoudian Upper Cave Skull 101 as seen from the Americas," Journal
of Human Evolution 34(1998):219-222., p. 219.

And the full text can be obtained from here

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ap/hu/1998/0 0000034/00000002/art00183

I'm not paying for the full text though

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[jellomizer]

My Post about GPL3 would be very similar.

Almost laughed my @$$ off!

[Anonymous Coward]

The sentence below just knocked me for a loop. I realize that it is only a single-word slip, but still... On the Internet, nobody cares about fact-checking :^)

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement and author of the GPL, says that while he doesn't support the philosophy of "open source," neither does he believe software developers or distributors have the right to try to control other people's activities through restricting the software they run.

it's pr()n dummy

[Anonymous Coward]

Becuase of this. I feel, that any person wishing to lock the government/military out of technology is only really biting the hand that fed them
 
...ummm...the internet was brought to you by porn...just like VCRs...

no, really, you can make a good case that the initial spread of these technologies - "early adopters" - came about with a substantial contribution from the wallets of people who wanted access to porn in their own homes.

Does that mean people using the internet owe a debt of gratitude to online porn aficionados of the 1990s?

Of course not - both they and the military did what they did for their own ends. You can't claim credit for benefits to other people that were either not forseen, unintended, or that were not part of your original motivation. Show me where the military said "This internet thing will be useless for our purposes, but it will allow millions of people to communicate freely in the future." and I'll think about whether I owe them anything for it. If the proto-fascists at the Pentagon today are anything to judge by, they're more likely to have had the exact opposite response.

And what does the military use supercomputers for?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two reasons are modeling chemical weapons dispersal and nuclear blast effects. These models allow them to plan for worst-case scenarios to save people's lives. This is just another silly, underthought action taken by a "bunch of hippies that talk about saving the world but just want to be dirty and sit around smoking pot" -Eric Cartman

Did you ever wonder...

[mapkinase]

...why Lysistrata is called a "comedy"?

Re:Patch for no military use - LOOP HOLE

[redelm]

This text appears to allow purely defensive use, like ABM, PATRIOT, design of armor systems. While purely defensive (saving humans from harm), they have an offensive element by permitting the protected humans to take more risks to harm other humans.

This is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't read all the posts, but the majority that I have read have focused on the morality of war. Whether you agree with war or not will not stop wars. All this licencing scheme does is stop the countries that might give a crap about the licencing from using it. Do you think terorists are going to give a crap about the licence of a piece of software. Limitations like this only stop those who care about doing the right thing thus helping those who don't care about doing the right thing. People should think about who they are impowering and who they are limiting when they make choices like this. When a terorist group uses this to form an adhoc supercomputer to disrupt the internet are you going to use them? Get a clue people if you are going to write open source make it truely open source. If you don't want someone to have it don't release it open source.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[Anonymous Coward]

...Pulitzer prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh

So, once you win a prize, everything you say automatically becomes true? It's called "appeal to authority". Hersh pulls this one totally out of his ass and doesn't even pretend to have anonymous sources in the military or anything. Most of what he says is either obvious or cannot be verified. I bet during the cold war, he said: "You know, I've been hearing - what I've been hearing, is that in fact we might attack the Soviet Union. The guys in the whitehouse have been planning this, for years in fact, along with the Pentagon and everyone is going along with them. It's only a matter of timing." Sheer genius, I must say. Before Hersh said it, I'd have never guessed that we might get in a conflict with a nation that chants "death to America" as their morning exercises.

Fortunately Hizbollah was able to fight Israel to a standstill

The ceasefire halted their advance, nothing else. The IDF was massing on the border at the time. So not only do you believe in appeals to authority, you don't read the news either. A combination of CNN and BBC world is usually pretty good at getting an idea of what is going on. Well, better than Democracy Now anyway, which is just the counterpoint to Fox.

So, thanks for reminding me why I'm a Libertarian! Every time I feel a little swayed by Democrats, I see something on moveon or democracy now, and realize just how crazy you guys are. The goal is to get someone sane into the white house, not trade one form of paranoia for another.

Re:Why? Because they don't understand predatation

[redelm]

The unfortunate problem with well-meaning pacifists is they are quite reasonably appalled by the horror and waste of war and don't appear to see, weigh or value any benefits. Violence (on various scales) is the main means of human predators. While no-one likes being prey, there are proven ecological benefits (even to the prey species). Artificially reduce predatation, and systems become unstable.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[MajinBlayze]

I believe that you meant this seriously, and not as flamebait. (or else it's really well constructed flamebait), so I'll bite.
<sarcasm>
I think this is a really good idea, in fact, I think I'll move to Germany (I'm mostly german, so I should fit in ok) and get a group together to take France (again). It shouldn't be too hard. Once the UN pays^Wbribes me the 500 billion, I'll donate half of it back to Germany, and come home a rich, rich man.
</sarcasm>
In reality, paying off aggressors would only promote more aggressors. Reguardless of what you think would work out, we can't Promote ILLEGAL behaviour.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

I wasn't so much extrapolating to 9/11 as post-9/11... the two are different beasts. I also wasn't paying much attention to the state of US politics in the 2000 election, but it doesn't matter. Pulling troops back was not part of his 2004 plan, and I really wish people would stop living in the past while talking about this subject. Focus on the here and now, please. Your post, especially the last paragraph, is something that I pretty much wholeheartedly agree with. Your interpretation of the 2000 election and questions regarding it are completely valid (as far as I can remember), but should have no real bearing on the current situation. As far as attempting to achieve a stable, peaceful, humanitarian, global environment, I couldn't agree more; I'm Canadian Military... attempting to achieve those ends is what we're known for, and why we get called in to assist so many nations under a UN charter. Pacifists, however, generally believe that they can achieve these noble ends without bloodshed. I honestly wish it were so, but wishing does not make it so, and you've no choice but to back up that foreign policy that you mentioned above, with a fighting force that has teeth. I believe the last few pacifists that went into Iraq to try and preach their version of foreign policy, without the aid of a heavily armed force, got decapitated for their efforts.

Just a flag waving license

[C_Kode]

Any military that thought it would help accomplish something would use it in spite of the license.

That's true...

[CrimsonScythe]

...but now we primarily eat whales, tourists and drink oil, so we're still largely carnivorous. Sometimes, though, we supplement our dinners with some vegans, just to keep the diet balanced.

The Dark Side

[kthejoker]

To all people from the future who may come back and read this thread in an archive someday:

This is the breadth of humanity, in all of its glorious detail. Pacificts, fascists, socialists, do-gooders, pragmatists, realists, idealists, altruists, naifs, thinkers, brutes, philosophers, martyrs, believers, infidels, trolls, cynics, existentialists, nihilists, diplomats, warriors.

This is singlehandedly the most fascinatingly revealing thread I've ever read on Slashdot. This gets to the heart of what it means to be human in the 21st century: to really profess an ideology, and argue and defend it, in the new marketplace of ideas. This is great stuff, and I've never been more proud to be part of a site which covers such a vast field of thought and debate.

And I'm glad to see that everyone has such a strong opinion on such an important subject. The costs and benefits of violence in our society - in the world - must be constantly weighed and measured. This is what these conversations are for, and I hope everyone here takes them at least somewhat seriously, and really considers all of the viewpoints being espoused here. Listening to an anonymous set of others can be challenging, but if done well, can also be the most rewarding of experiences.

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[p3d0]

Forth by blocking evil use you are also blocking good use. Example all this extra features could be used to calculate the safest way to deploy food to 3rd world countries, increasing distribution and reducing risk to troops.

Read the license. This would not be disallowed.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently Mr. Orwell never considered that a standing army is the most valuable tool the power elite have for expanding government power.

It works for the US government. Continuous war + continuous threat = continuous expansion of government. How else could they have created the most powerful world empire that has ever existed, with military bases in some 150 countries around the world? Certainly not without a standing army!

Deep Thoughts on Stupid License Terms

[idontgno]

I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[gaudior]

It is possible to speak both about a particular time and place, and the general condition of humanity. George Orwell has long been recognized as a significant thinker in the politics of communication and social structure. We take '1984' not merely as the sad tale of the citizens of Oceania, but as a warning about what the control of mass communication an history can do for controlling a population.

Winston Smith is Us. As is O'Brien.

Orwell may have used the particulars of WWII, but his point was much larger.

Re:Just flat out stupid and in the wrong direction

[Chacham]

Nicely said.

Easpecially First my making open source closed to some groups because you happen to dislike them breaks the concept of open, It is open just as long as I like you idea. and Fifth you just look bad and hypocritical, you are all up for Openness freedom of speech except for when it says something you don't like.

Is antimilitar OSI license possible?

[jetxee]

It seems that their license is not compatible with GPL, but I like the idea. It would be interesting to see an OSI-compliant license, that forbids certain uses. Like use by military organizations, for example. This is not about pacifism. This is just not participating in military actions. Why would I want to make development of american/isreali/russian/chinese weapons cheaper? I do not want to participate in this. I do not want my code to be used by some of these people. Could anyone suggest an open source [non-free] license that would allow asserting restrictions of this kind?

Antimilitary OSI license is impossible

[jetxee]

Answering myself. Antimilitary OSI-compliant license is impossible. From the Open Source Definition:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Rationale: The major intention of this clause is to prohibit license traps that prevent open source from being used commercially. We want commercial users to join our community, not feel excluded from it.

Demolition Man

[drunken_boxer777]

But you didn't count on John Spartan being released from suspended animation to save us!

Rather sweeping exclusion

[mysidia]

"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

There are a lot of things other than military use which can be interpreted as harming a human being -- they didn't say how bad the harm must be for a use to be forbidden, therefore, even the slightest most insignificant harm is prohibited.

An example would be using electricity. Suppose 1,000,000 computers run this software, there could be increase in local electricity usage, this could raise the demand for electricity, and therefore the market price.

One can reasonably say that a person is harmed if they must pay $0.0001 more in electricity costs, attributable to machines that exist to run this software.

People can also be harmed if a malfunction of this software causes a failure of a device people rely on, for instance, if part of the software is incorporated into a word processor, and a bug causes the program to crash, the person who failed to backup their data could lose an important school paper --- the program through inaction failed to preserve this important material when it crashed.

Most open source software licenses don't make a developer mistake, or a system failure, a license violation.

I believe this term fundamentally changes the GPL in a way that destroys the whole principle of free software -- for instance, normally the GPL doesn't govern use of the software at all, in fact, actual use of the software is out of the scope of any fair license: certainly system defects should not create license violations (defects are already a big enough problem without the clause).

GPL is a military action itself

[NetSettler]

Conflict is a fact of existence

And conflict is played out in many forums. It amuses me that this story runs along side one that is titled "EU Patent Wars to Resume". Even free software is a form of military action.

The goal of conflict, with some rare exceptions like out-and-out terrorism, is generally not to hurt people. It's to change the balance of power. And so is the goal of free software. So all free software is a military action, of a sort.

Maybe it should say "The goal of this software is to limit the ways in which people can be injured or killed to those involving indirect means.

Any change in control means a change in who gets money and power and who doesn't. And if that's so, then it means taking something from someone and to someone. You can't know in advance that this will always be good. Stealing money from a bank might feed a family, and some might say that was good. But if the bank money was going to feed someone, too, it might be bad.

The GPL makes the assumption that the action (selling software or not) is what is good, rather than thinking about the outcome. Extending this to a new place where the action is controlled, without regard to the outcome, seems silly.

Asimov

[mu22le]

The clause added to the license
"the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."
sounds a lot like Asimov's First Law of Robotics to me ;)

I am very sorry

[mu22le]

From the end of TFA:
"Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics, which states, "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That, they say, is a good thing, "because the guy was right," Tegel says, "and he showed the paradox that almost any technological development has to solve, whether it is software or an atom bomb. We must discuss now what ethical problems we may raise in the future.""

False choice militarism vs. rolling over

[David's Boy Toy]

In my lifetime there has been one and only one war this country (US) has fought
in response to a direct attack/immediate threat. That was the attack on Bin
Laden and the Taliban after 9/11. Prior to that WWII following the attack on pearl
harbor.

The rest have either been "police actions", or wars based on theories like "the domino
theory" or "pax americana", or over a perceived need to protect oil producers. These
conflicts have made us less secure not more, Saudi Arabia had the income to protect
itself against Iraq.

Fighting needs to be a last resort, and not something you do just because someone has
a theory about a distant threat, or someway that war can make the world a better place.
When do these "theory wars" ever lead anywhere good? We need enough deterrent to protect
ourselves, we don't need to go around the world chasing imaginary phantoms while creating
real enemies in the process. It was only one generation to forget about vietnam and do it
all over again in Iraq. Taking a repressive government, and replacing it with civil war
and an even more repressive theocracy is not progress!

Will people learn

[Krojack]

If it wasn't for war then you wouldn't have your freedom of speech and be free to post what you want on this site?

As sad as it is.. war keeps the peace.

Yeah mod me off topic

Re:"... must be Free Software for any use" - excep

[ccady]

Wrong. GPLv3 does not restict the user's "freedom zero" in any way. GPLv3 does not restrict either using the GPL for DRM code, or putting DRM into GPL'd code. All it says is that if you distribute GPLv3 software with your hardware product, the software must be able to run on that hardware even after it is modified.

Starvation

[Koim-Do]

So, when did it actually "came down to starvation for you and your child" recently (in your country) ?

Or maybe, just maybe the main food-related problem there is unhealthy overweight and you have such an abundance of food that you may choose between meat-eating and veganism anyway you wish (and btw, animal products usually cost more than plant products)

Indian Independnt due to violence or non-violence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent and grandparent down. They are not insightful. They are inaccurate.

The British rule in India was cruel. Many atrocities were commited to "teach them a lesson". There is a wealth of material on that available widely. You can start here => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh

There are many complex reasons for why India got independence when it did. Gandhi was one part of it. The fact that England was in the danger of falling to the Nazis also had to do with it. The fact that the violent revolt throughout India was making it really hard for the British to control also had to do with it.

Did violence or non-violence lead to Indian Independence ? The complex situation allows for a reasonable argument to be made for either side.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Anonymous Coward]

The longer we are in a country we invaded, killing their civilians, the more they will hate us. The sooner we get out, the less they will hate us. Do you not see the correlation?

Damage is done, now the only hope is to establish a stable pro-western government that will at the very least serve as a lightning rod that potential terrorists would rather attack than the US.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

Yes I agree we can't promote illegal behavior that's why Israel ought to come into compliance of the 60+ U.N. resolutions against regarding illegal extra-territorial holding and live within it's rightful 1967 green boundaries.

Jews against thee occupation has a few highlights here:

http://www.jatonyc.org/UNresolutions.html

And the full 60+ are here:

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/un.html

Yes it would be nice if Israel stopped flagrantly violating international law, wouldn't it?

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[makomk]

The ceasefire halted their advance, nothing else. The IDF was massing on the border at the time.

Judging from the way the war was going, if the IDF did go in on the ground in the numbers required to have a chance of defeating Hezbollah, a politically unacceptable number of Israeli soldiers would be killed. It wasn't really an option, IMO.

Medical use prohibited

[SnarfQuest]

This program can not be used for many types of medical research.

Curing cancer often incures rather nasty, harmful, effects. Hair falling out, severe nausia, and killing off of a large chunk of meat. The final effects are usually desirable, but this license forbids its use in the search for better cancer cures.

Then there is that stupid "or through inaction" bit. Therefore this program MUST automatically leap out of its repository, and catch anyone who falls off a ladder, or might somehow suffer ANY damaging effects. If it doesn't, it fails its legal responsibility, and should be held financially responsable. Since it is the programmers who added this requirement to the license, but failed to give the program any such capability, they are the responsable parties.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[AK Marc]

As for your claims that there are more dead terrorists now than existed before the war, I'd like to know: a) Where you get your numbers,

I used the numbers published by the US government.

I am, however, trying to convince you that, as a country, you're fucked if you don't follow through with what's already begun.

And I think you are wrong. I think that if we pull out now, we will be about the same in the long run as if we stay in with Bush's plan (not to imply that he has one, but the lack of a plan was a conscious choice that I'll just label as a "plan" for simplicity). Why is everything always all-or-nothing? If we pull out, then no one else on the planet will become involved, and Iraq will collapse. But wait, there's Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UN and others that are interested in what happens there. Not to mention, Bush claims that there is an "International Coalition" there, so if the US pulls out, the remainder should take over, right? The point is that the attention of many places is focused there, and if the US were to take a less active role, then someone else would step in. You claim it would be the terrorists or Saddam's family. I claim that it would not be. You can't convince me that your opinion is right. We've meddled and left many times before, and what you describe has never happened. If we were to pull out suddenly, based off previous US interference, we'd leave all sorts of advanced weaponry in the hands of the leader, he'd seize power, and become a dictator worse than Saddam. If you were to claim that, I could at least humour you, but if you claim that if the US left no one else in the world would step in and the country would collapse into civil war or Saddam's family would take back power, then I have to dismiss you as someone that is uninformed and alarmist.

Asimov smiles; Heinlein rolls his eyes...

[ForemastJack]

Part of the added language reads:

The Program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm a ny human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed. This is Asimov's first law of Robotics.

Yes, sir. Nothing is going to make world agressors think twice like pointing out that you got your legal language from a 60 year old Sci-fi novel. Well played.

What, couldn't the authors find any Terry Prachett quotes?

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

I never claimed that it would be terrorists or Saddam's family. What I claimed was that it would likely be someone at least as bad as Saddam. In which case, they'd likely sponsor terrorist activities towards the U.S. (that definitely seems to be in vogue over there at the moment...) The alternate "claim" was that the country would self-destruct, a scenario that is all too likely; it's basically what led to the Taliban controlling Afghanistan after you guys pulled out in the late 70s. In this case, the odds would be high that most citizens of what is now Iraq would have severely decimated families. My guess (and yes, here's where you've got me, this is pure speculation) is that these survivors would be rather pissed off about their losses and blame all their woes upon the U.S. .... Again, this laying of blame at your feet seems to be in vogue over there.

I'm not trying to suggest that I embrace Bush's foreign policy, or that his plan (or lack thereof) gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside... but what I am trying to say is that it's a damned sight better than doing nothing. The last thing the world needs is another breeding ground for terrorists...

As for your comment that you've meddled and left many times before and it's never happened, I implore you to read about the country of Afghanistan in its post-Soviet occupation days. You guys basically gave the majority of these "freedom fighters" their start. Please please please don't pull out now and leave the rest of the world holding the bag....

Heh, gun signs

[marcus]

Running joke on anti-gunners who say/think that they have no deterrent effect on criminals...

If they really think that MY guns don't have a deterrent effect that also covers their house, tell them to do this: place a sign in your front yard that says "This is a gun free home".

Watch what happens. ;-)

Re:Heh, gun signs

[Firethorn]

If they really think that MY guns don't have a deterrent effect that also covers their house, tell them to do this: place a sign in your front yard that says "This is a gun free home".

Heh, a few communities back in the 70's tried this. The signs came down after a couple months because the police were overwhelmed.

Welp, managed to find a modern equivalent.

Of course, during my search, the number of webpages put up by otherwise intelligent people who just don't get it is astonishing.

It's very simple: A policy against carry of weapons will have no effect on the criminals. Unless you put airport style security up*, you have virtually no control over what people bring into your workplace. I can conceal a full size 1911 while wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and shorts. However, I've been trained, investigated, tested, and issued a permit. I'm not the one you have to worry about.

*and not even completely then.

Re:Violence isn't a tool it's an ineffective actio

[mrraven]

Really my stance is pragmatic. I think a substantial uptick in world peace and getting the U.S. out of Muslim gun sights by bringing justice to Palestine is worth 500 billion dollar land purchase. And I really don't see how Israel could complain either. 500 billion is a pretty good price for land that is in essence the same shape and size as a couple desert counties in Nevada. The Palestinians would have their state and the new "jihad" would be building Palestine, Israel is half a trillion richer and can build a giant wall at it's legitimate border and has a legitimate casus belli if still attacked, and the U.S. ends up saving money in the long run as we can DRASTICALLY reduce our military budget when the Islamic world ceases to hate us, what's not to like? Seriously. Although my rhetoric may be harsh at time this proposal was made in all sincerity. The fact that BOTH the pro Israel and pro Palestinian sides have slighted it now shows me that BOTH sides are more interested in conflict than solutions, even solutions that bring RICH benefits to both sides and to the U.S. to boot.

I live in Gun control hell. Re:Psssh.

[Forge]

I live in Gun control hell.

In Jamaica you need 4 recommendations including from senior police officer and a justice of the peace plus you must "demonstrate a "need" to be armed. It usually takes a year or more for your application to get processed.

Ohh... and if you are caught with a gun and without a proper license ("Gun" includes, ammunition, fireworks, realistic toy guns and depending on the judge unrealistic toy guns)

Very few Jamaicans have a license to Carry a gun (somewhere around 30,000 inclusive or 8,000 police, 5,000 (approximately) Army and 10,000 armed security guards.

Small Wonder we have the highest murder rate on the planet. 1,650 dead in 2005 in a country of only 2.7 million.

PS: Guess how much respect I have for true pasifists?

PPS: If you employ a bodyguard or even call on the police, you are no more a pasifist than the man with dreadlocks who eats Pork is a Rasta.

This is frustrating for the GPL

[QX-Mat]

Sadly a few ignorant people seem to believe that they can take something that is designed to be apolitical and get away with it.

I shall not use software that muddies the line between politics and free software. I may be a Republican hater, I may dispise floridans, and I may distrust the wars currently faught, but there is a THICK line between the software world and the political one.

Linus' objections to v3 of the GPL are because of unrelated polical FUD like this, and he's right - we should make sure a computer licence affects only computer users and uses and NOT transcend to being a restrictive licence of world politics. I envisage "no chinese" licences to start popping up in WoW mods to stop gold farmers... all downhill from here.

    (Disclaimer on the GPLv3 comparison: Linus is almost entirely focused on DRM - which is bad, but I get what he's trying to say. he's just not realistic enough)

Matt

Nah, it would be 'classified'.

[FatSean]

They'd use the software illegally, and classify it as 'national security'. That way, you can't request information on it...and the citizens would hate you for even trying to find out because you would be 'hurting our security'. Also, any whistle-blower would be a criminal because they would need to expose the classified information to expose the crime.

It's very neat and tidy.

Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

Who cares how many "converts" it won, it's simply logic, that goes like this:

1. The class terrorist is the set of all people who kill innocent people for a political agenda

2. Governments such as the U.S. and Israel kill innocents for their political agenda.

3. Therefore the governments of Israel and the U.S. belong to the class terrorist.

Now given that the governments can be terrorist organizations we ought to be most outraged about their actions compared to private terrorist organizations as state terrorists kill far more people than private paramilitary organizations like Hamas or Hizbollah. Yes all murder is bad and all terrorists ought to be condemned, however, we condemn MORE those who kill more in the same way a serial killer will get a longer sentence than an individual murderer.

When a proposition follows from simple logic it doesn't matter how many people support it, it is in fact true even if no one supports it in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4 even if no one were to believe that fact. Only demagogues try to base the truth value of their propositions on how many "converts" they win. That's why the neo-cons are so scary when they disparage the "reality based community," and why Colbert's concept of truthiness is so powerful for it is EXACTLY a critique of the idea that "converts" to something that sounds good equals the truth when of course converts to an untrue position do not suddenly make it true.

Clear now?

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[susano_otter]

Like pretty much everybody else in the world, I've been debating this issue constantly for about the past five years. I've seen this argument many times already. It's always been quite clear to me. The logic is obvious and sound. But since I disagree with the premises, I can't agree with the conclusions.

That's not what we're discussing here, though. I get into it all the time in other fora, and with my friends and family. It's clear to me that you're not going to present any ideas about terrorism that I haven't already known and considered. I'm much more interested in your thoughts on this thread's topic: Pacifism vs. Passivism.

Are you prepared to discuss that, or would you rather bow out of the discussion?

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

OK you asked for it, I believe that violence is only defensible as a strictly defensive last measure. Thus I don't think a few bedraggled "terrorists" with a box of box cutters are any danger to the security of the U.S. whatsoever, and thus fail the test of going to war over. Call me me when the Chinese army has 10 million soldiers massed on the border then we can speak of a legitimate casus belli, and legitimate defense of the continental U.S. as a whole. As far as I'm concerned 911 was a vast and horrendous terrible crime and ought to be dealt with as such. In a way treating it as a war only gives Bin Laden MORE credit than he deserves. By treating him and his henchman as a legitimate threat to the power of the U.S. state it vast inflates the petty thug Bin Laden's true power in the world.

You asked and I answered, you're welcome. I do BTW appreciate your at least civil response to my previous response and retract your "foe status.

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

P.s. I'm curious as to what premise you disagree with in my argument regarding private terrorism v.s. state terrorism. Do you think the state has a special status when it comes to being allowed to kill innocent people? I'd be quite interested to see how you would justify that level of coercion against innocent people by the state. Though I have many problems with the Libertarian philosophy as a whole I have a great respect for Libertarian/paleo con Murray Rothbard's argument that mass indiscriminate killing by the state is always an act of terrorism as it treats people who wind up as collateral damage as mere means to an end.

"But "aggression" only makes sense on the individual Smith-Jones level, as does the very term "police action." These terms make no sense whatever on an inter-State level. First, we have seen that governments entering a war thereby become aggressors themselves against innocent civilians; indeed, become mass murderers. The correct analogy to individual action would be: Smith beats up Jones, the police rush in to help Jones, and in the course of trying to apprehend Smith, the police bomb a city block and murder thousands of people, or spray machine-gun fire into an innocent crowd. This is a far more accurate analogy, for that is what a warring government does, and in the twentieth century it does so on a monumental scale. But any police agency that behaves this way itself becomes a criminal aggressor, often far more so than the original Smith who began the affair.

********

The libertarian foreign policy, then, is not a pacifist policy. We do not hold, as do the pacifists, that no individual has the right to use violence in defending himself against violent attack. What we do hold is that no one has the right to conscript, tax, or murder others, or to use violence against others in order to defend himself. Since all States exist and have their being in aggression against their subjects and in the acquiring of their present territory, and since inter-State wars slaughter innocent civilians, such wars are always unjust - although some may be more unjust than others. Guerrilla warfare against States at least has the potential for meeting libertarian requirements by pinpointing the guerrilla's battle against State officials and armies, and by their use of voluntary methods to staff and finance their struggle."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard84.htm l

Taps foot I'm waiting for a sound counter argument.

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[susano_otter]

OK you asked for it, I believe that violence is only defensible as a strictly defensive last measure.

What does this have to do with my question about whether or not Pacifists think they're at war when they use weapons of war such as subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda?

Thus I don't think a few bedraggled "terrorists" with a box of box cutters are any danger to the security of the U.S. whatsoever,

No danger whatsoever? No possibility at all that they might be able to kill thousands of people all at once? No threat to commuters on trains in Madrid and London?

And are you seriously arguing that there are only a "few" of them, they're all "bedraggled", and they're armed with nothing but "a box of box cutters"?

And finally, you're still talking about "terrorists", but the topic of this thread is still "pacifists".

and thus fail the test of going to war over.

Would you say that they consider themselves to be at war with me?

On a just-barely-related-but-definitely-on-topic note: Would you say that Pacifists who use weapons of war such as subterfuge, sabotage, and propaganda, consider themselves to be at war? (Please note that I'm not saying that these tactics automatically mean war. Advertisers use propaganda all the time, but they don't consider themselves at war, and neither do I.)

Call me me when the Chinese army has 10 million soldiers massed on the border then we can speak of a legitimate casus belli, and legitimate defense of the continental U.S. as a whole.

Not sure a phone call would be necessary, but I'll try to keep your request in mind.

As far as I'm concerned 911 was a vast and horrendous terrible crime and ought to be dealt with as such. In a way treating it as a war only gives Bin Laden MORE credit than he deserves. By treating him and his henchman as a legitimate threat to the power of the U.S. state it vast inflates the petty thug Bin Laden's true power in the world.

I think the current definitions of "war" and "crime" are too black-and-white, too polarized, to be very useful in this case. For what it's worth, I think that "terrorism" as it's employed today goes far beyond mere crime, and should be dealt with more in terms of a global network of guerrilla armies that are beholden to no state but alllied with and sponsored by many, and that "terrorism" is much better dealt with using the vocabulary and strategies of warfare rather than those of criminal justice. Even the "terrorists" themselves use the vocabulary and strategies of warfare. They're definitely not criminals in the usual sense.

You asked and I answered, you're welcome.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I asked about Pacifists; you're still answering about "terrorists".

I do BTW appreciate your at least civil response to my previous response and retract your "foe status.

Thank you. I appreciate your at least civil replies... After that first one, where you called me an asshole with no reason, I mean. Care to revisit my reply to that one, and see if maybe you can understand why you were wrong to call me an asshole?

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

If you are saying that non violent tactics such as monkey wrenching, sabotage, blockaids, and propaganda as strictly non violent tactics constitute war such that the state is justified in using violence against these tactics I'd say you are justifying a first use of violence against non violent people which is truly abhorrent. By that logic turning the fire hoses on Dr. King was perfectly justified as he was somehow "at war" with the state by using "subterfuge and propaganda" to change fundamentally racist government policies in the south such as segregated lunch counters, being made to ride on the back of the bus, segregated schools, and poll taxes and literacy tests and other sham tactics to disenfranchise African Americans. So no I don't think someone who is using non violent tactics is "at war" (slippery term) with society I don't accept your fundamental premise in the argument.

And yes I do know of what I speak for I have been arrested for blockading a logging road in Northern California. It's definitely the cops who used violence in this case, they hurt my wrist when they put the cuffs on, and very severely injured my friends shoulder. Note this is the same Humboldt county Sheriffs office that lost a court case for swabbing pepper spray directly in activists eyes, see:

http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2005/Pepper-Spra y-Eight29apr05.htm

If you want to say the cops who use violence against non violent demonstrators are "at war" with the activist community then I might be in agreement with you.

See also: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.ht m

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[susano_otter]

P.s. I'm curious as to what premise you disagree with in my argument regarding private terrorism v.s. state terrorism.

I disagree that there is a consensus on what the word "terrorism" means; therefore I disagree with any argument that starts by assuming that we all agree that what "terrorists" do and what States do are both "terrorism".

But one difference between what you call "state terrorism" and what I call "private terrorism" is that states tend to consider civilian casualties as an unfortunate necessity of war, to be avoided as much as possible without courting defeat, are to be regretted publically when they do occur, and are to be investigated thoroughly. Israel consistently does things like drop warning leaflets well in advance of bombing campaigns, and apologizes and investigates when civilians are killed. Recently they announced a temporary cease-fire when it appeared they had killed a lot of civilians in a strike on Qana, so that they could reevaluate their tactics and decision process. In the event, the civilian casuaties turned out to be far less than originally claimed, and in fact may have been staged. At the same time, the cease-fire was anyway broken by Hezb'Allah.

Meanwhile, Hezb'Allah made an explicit point of attacking civilians as their primary strategy. Instead of regretting and apologizing for civilian deaths in greater numbers than what were claimed at Qana, they celebrated the success of such attacks. As far as I know, they never once shifted their rocket fire from civilian targets to military targets, even though Iraeli military forces were gathering on their border for weeks.

Then there's the whole "uniformed soldier" vs. "civilian terrorist" thing that terrorists do, in blatant disregard for the humanitarian provisions of the Geneva Convention. Whenever the state violates the Convention, great hue and cry is raised, investigations are started, public statements of regrets are made, people are held responsible and punished, etc. Justice isn't always done to perfection, but there's a world of difference between how the U.S. government responded Abu Graib and how "terrorist" leaders respond to regular beheadings of journalists, aid workers, and other civilian hostages. There's also a world of difference between how states tend to treat their POWs and how terrorists tend to treat their POWs.

Plus, there's the whole "human shield" thing. States invest huge amounts of their resources in giving their uniformed soldiers the best weapons and armor they can afford, often at great expense. "Terrorists" invest almost nothing in armor, and use civilians as propaganda cover instead.

And of course states are accountable. They're accountable to their citizens, and they're accountable to other states who may use diplomatic, economic, and even military force to put enemy states down. Who are "terrorists" accountable to? The states that sponsor them? The states they attack?

Do you think the state has a special status when it comes to being allowed to kill innocent people?

Yes. Yes I do.

I'd be quite interested to see how you would justify that level of coercion against innocent people by the state.

Sometimes difficult paths must be chosen. Sometimes the only choice is collateral damage and victory vs. defeat and annihiliation.

I think that such choices should not be given to individuals, but rather should be made by communities, after extensive debate and free elections: i.e. by a state. In practice, it's the individual agents of the state, by the authority vested in them by the people who elected them, who make the decisions, but for me the principle is the same: The state, not the terrorist cell, is the proper entity for making such decisions. If the terrorists wish to dispute it with violence, that's their prerogative, of course, but of course that frees the state to respond with violence.

See also: the

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[susano_otter]

If you are saying that non violent tactics such as monkey wrenching, sabotage, blockaids, and propaganda as strictly non violent tactics constitute war such that the state is justified in using violence against these tactics

I am not saying that.

I am asking the OP if, as a Pacifist, he is saying that.

Do you understand the difference between "saying" and "asking"?

I'd say you are justifying a first use of violence against non violent people which is truly abhorrent.

In general, I agree with you on this. I do believe, however, that if someone else says they're playing a zero-sum game with me, in which they intend to win by making me lose, then their decision to play that game gives me a lot more justification for doing whatever I deem necessary to make sure they lose and I win. War is war, after all. If you declare war on me, either let us first agree on some ground rules (such as the Geneva Convention or the Law of Land Warfare). Either that, or you need to accept that anything goes, and either go to war anyway, or make whatever peace you can before I start using violence to defeat you.

That's what I want to know: are the Pacifists declaring war on me, or do they simply think they're engaging me in rational debate as a fellow citizen? If it's the former, they're chumps for not agreeing on the ground rules before going to war, but fortunate that our state and my own philosophy encourage proportional and humane responses to their chosen form of warfare. If it's the latter, then I disagree that their tactics are really a form of rational debate, but I won't worry about whether or not I need to win a war.

By that logic turning the fire hoses on Dr. King was perfectly justified as he was somehow "at war" with the state by using "subterfuge and propaganda" to change fundamentally racist government policies in the south

I think it's totally clear from everything Dr. King said and did that he absolutely considered himself to be engaged in rational debate with his fellow citizens, not at war with them. Not only that, but his actual arguments and their presentation seem to me much more rational than the arguments and presentation of Pacifists today (and even of Pacifists back then).

such as segregated lunch counters, being made to ride on the back of the bus, segregated schools, and poll taxes and literacy tests and other sham tactics to disenfranchise African Americans.

Thanks, but I'm actually already well aware of the injustices Dr. King was fighting.

So no I don't think someone who is using non violent tactics is "at war" (slippery term) with society

And neither do I. It seemed to me that the OP might think that Pacifists do wage war, using only nonviolent strategies. That's what I wanted to know from him.

I don't accept your fundamental premise in the argument.

My fundamental premise was that if someone thinks they're at war with me, and thinks they're waging war against me to the limits of their philosophy, then it's proper for me to also think they're at war with me, and that then it's proper for me to wage war against them to the limits of my philosophy.

Do you agree with that premise? That if someone declares war on me, then they're at war with me, regardless of the tactics they use? And that if they declare war on me, then I'm justified in saying we're at war?

And yes I do know of what I speak for I have been arrested for blockading a logging road in Northern California. It's definitely the cops who used violence in this case, they hurt my wrist when they put the cuffs on, and very severely injured my friends shoulder. Note this is the same Humboldt county Sheriffs office that lost a court case for swabbing pepper spray directly in activists eyes, see:

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

The whole long argument you put forth boils down to the idea that governments get to kill innocent people because of the clothes they wear (a uniform). I suspect it matters very little to the relatives of a dead family (say in Lebanon) whether their murderers were wearing the uniform of the military of a state (say Israel), gang colors (another sort of uniform), or a tee shirt. Further it probably matters very little to them as well if the decsion to kill was made by a small band of people or a Republic in which leaders are elected from a small pool of rich men who use extensive propaganda to get elected and then are COMPLETLY unaccountable once elected. Dead is dead to the family of the victims.

Please note also that most of the things you responded to were written by Libertarian scholar Murray Rothbard, I'd ask you to respond to him but alas he's dead, the closest you might be able to come to is to write his biographer Justin Raimondo at the Libertarian web site, antiwar.com .

Here is another thing to keep in mind, the state ALWAYS claims it's under attack and often lies about this fact for example Nazi Germany for example claimed it was under attack by Polish "terrorists." The U.S. in the Gulf of Tonken incident lied that it was under attack by the Vietnamese:

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2261

Further the U.S. most likely allowed the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor to get us into WWII despite already having broken Japan's Naval code.

http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id =127

Regardless of whether we should have entered WWII or not the repeated use of deceit by the government regarding WWII and Vietnam is certainly damning in trying to decipher whether the governments estimate of the terror danger ought to be trusted. Anyone who believes the state when it says it's under attack is an utter fool who is most likely buying lies from the one institution in human history that it is known for certain has killed tens of millions of people. Our government alone for example killed AT LEAST two million people based on a fraudulent casus belli in Vietnam alone:

"The lowest casualty estimates, based on North Vietnamese statements (now discounted by Vietnam), are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam's Ministry of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs released figures on April 3, 1995, reporting that 1.1 million fighters--Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers--and nearly 2 million civilians in the north and 2 million in the south were killed between 1954 and 1975. Robert McNamara, in his regretful memoir of the war, references a figure of 3.2 million. The number of wounded fighters was put at 600,000. It remains even more unclear how many Vietnamese civilians were wounded."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Casualtie s

Considering how often governments lie I'll take my chance with chances with the rag tag band of people with boxes of box cutters and I'll take back the bill of rights, 400 billion dollars, 30,000 + dead Iraqi civilians, and 2500 hundred dead Iraqis all so we could create a civil war that far from fighting terrorism is in fact acting as training ground for car bombers and other killers of innocents.

The terrorists scare me very little, certainly less than taking a drive in my car, or eating a cheese sandwich with mayonnaise. A president who uses singing statements that blatantly disregard Congress's intentions in passing laws based on the (false) idea that we are at war, on the other hand terrifies me.

Re:Converts don't matter, logic does...

[mrraven]

The direct action of sitting at a segregated lunch counter on the restaurant owners private property and not eating thus denying the restaurant owner their livelihood is not one bit different than non violently blocking a logging road using direct action. I'm quite certain that seeing your attitude of justifying police violence against environmental activists who harmed no one, that in 1962 you would have advocated for the same against civil rights activists using the justification of

"it's violence against the means of production, it's violence against the citizens who depend on unrestricted use of that LUNCH COUNTER for their livelihood."

Of course you can't say that NOW because people who advocated non violent direct action for civil rights for African Americans won a great moral victory, and you know you'd look like an asshole if you tried to argue for Dr. King being sprayed with a fire hose. Similarly in 20 years my prediction is that justifying police violence against activists who harmed no one trying to save the last 4% of old growth Redwoods (1) will be similarly frowned upon and you will change your tune conveniently forgetting your previous position on the matter. Your ATTITUDE and form of argument is the EXACT same one segregationists used in the south, think about that for a moment and hang your head in shame.

(1) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/jan-jun e99/trees_3-3.html

p.s there is no such thing as "violence against the means of production." Only sentient beings that can suffer EXPERIENCE violence. You can say property destruction is unjustified sabatoge but it is not violence. Remember as well that sabatoge is always debatable too, after all one mans sabatoge wielding terrorist, is another mans French resistance.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[AK Marc]

As for your comment that you've meddled and left many times before and it's never happened, I implore you to read about the country of Afghanistan in its post-Soviet occupation days. You guys basically gave the majority of these "freedom fighters" their start. Please please please don't pull out now and leave the rest of the world holding the bag....

You are confusing unofficial wars with official ones. For there, we didn't want a full-out war with the USSR, so we sent our weapons (usually brokered through some other terrorists that took a few for themselves for deniability) and sent "advisors" only. There were supposedly no US military ground troops there ever, so it would not be possible to withdraw from a place never held. It was not like Vietnam and Korea where the US military was on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with the resistance. Also, we went in with a singular goal, stop the USSR, and left when that was accomplished. Putting the Taliban in power was a success at the time. The problem wasn't withdrawing, it was the definition of success. I draw a distinction between "invading" and "meddling" that differs from yours. The CIA has made things worse many times.

You also make the presumption that if the US pulls out no one else will step in. I think that would not be the case. I believe that regional neighbors would see some of the same parallels you have stated and would step in and try to influence the outcome. Of course Iran would be one of those, so the outcome might not be what the US would like. Perhaps with the mess the US has made of it, an actual international coalition could be formed (rather than the fake one there now) to go in under the UN to finish the US's goal of establishing elections and supporting the winners. That will retain stability and get the US out of the "rogue nation" role it loves so much.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

There's actually not a helluva lot of distinction to be drawn between official and unofficial wars where the U.S. is concerned. Though I'll concede that no US ground troops were ever in Afghanistan in any official capacity, or in any way that could have, through combat, made a difference. The U.S. did, however, offer support to the various warlords in Afghanistan, to aid them in pushing the Soviets out. Once the Soviets were pushed out of the country, the U.S. dropped Afghanistan like a bad habit. The U.S. also never put any one group of warlords in power... that was the problem, they just left and the warlords began to fight amongst themselves for control of the country, and it's lucrative poppy fields. The Taliban eventually emerged as the ruling faction... and Bin Laden said "thank you" to the U.S. of A. for all it's support during the soviet occupation, as he was one of the freedom fighters that you guys trained and then dropped... much like the training that's going on in Iraq right now... it is all for a good cause, just like it was then.

Because of this, I'm trying to assert that there's not much difference between meddling and invading. I'd put a couple of paychecks, at least, on a similar situation arising in Iraq if the U.S. simply pulled out.

I didn't really make the presumption that no one would step in... I'm sure Iran would jump in there post haste. I will put this question to you though: would you, personally, feel comfortable with the state of the world if the U.S. pulled out of Iraq and Iran took it over?

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[AK Marc]

would you, personally, feel comfortable with the state of the world if the U.S. pulled out of Iraq and Iran took it over?

Well, I don't think that the rest of the region or world would allow it. Even if we pulled out as soon as possible, it would be at least 6 weeks and probably closer to 6 months for a realistic withdrawl plan. In that time, non-Iran neighbors would step in. Also, given the animosity between Iran and Iraq, I doubt that there would be a rush to embrace Iran. I don't think I will answer your question. I can see no way in which Iran would "take over" Iraq. The closest to that is something along the lines of Lebanon, where a "political party" (or arm of the army, or whatever they are) is influencing the government and is tied to Iran. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that, but then I'm not comfortable with the US engaged in a protracted invasion of a foreign country. The level of comfort is about equal between the two. Oh, and for comparison, Saddam in command with the power he had after the end of the first Gulf War is a much more comfortable position than any outcome I see from the current engagement. He was low on money and very low on influence. It took all his effort just to maintain power and Iraq was unable to launch a coordinated attack outside its borders. An impotent evil is quite comfortable.

Free software or higher taxes?

[cfpresley]

I've seen software in the past that would not grant license to military customers. I can tell you that as a sysadmin for the USAF, I am always looking for ways of doing things that save tax payer money, like using free VMware server instead of IBM Power5 virtualiztion. Irrespective of the umbrage I take from people telling me I can't use their software at work, I see it as utterly foolish. Not that the software in mention has any value to the military, but if real FOSS had this license, it would do more to continue the military's reliance on big-tech companies like MS and Oracle. All this expensive software comes from our tax dollars.

Re:The Spirit of Liberty and Ruminations on Pacifi

[Morphine007]

LOL... agreed... though an impotent evil seldom stays that way for long.