I've noticed that in Forecastfox, the choices are "standard" or "metric", which is of course absurd as the SI/metric system is the international standard.
They are not "English" units. The correct term is "Imperial" units. It's a Roman system (the word mile comes from the Latin mille passus, meaning 1000 paces) adapted and spread worldwide by the British empire.
If you need to refer to American variations on the Imperial system (e.g. the different gallon), then the term is "U.S. customary units".
Oh come on, don't overreact. Wine and ies4linux are perfectly adequate for ordinary testing purposes during web design. One the whole thing is finished it'll probably be a good idea to give it a final check on a Windows machine, but even that is perhaps paranoid.
Update: it seems that you need two hyphens before the "beta". It is also necessary to download the special beta version of ies4linux, which is not linked to from the main ies4linux page.
You make the false assumption that if the "rule of law" as you put it is allowed to grow, that if America loses its "veto", that war will somehow stop. It is not false, or even an assumption. It is an argument. I pointed out that aggression is illegal and that it would therefore be stopped or curbed if there is greater rule of law. This is almost self-evident. For example, this city used to be covered in dogshit. Then they brought in a law that gave harsh fines to people who let their animals foul the street. Because the rule of law is strong, there is now virtually no fouling here.
What you've left out of your equation is the fact that THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
In fact, it is very difficult to find even a 50 year period of time where the world was at peace EVERYWHERE in the world. You seem to have missed the point that I am not talking about a common past occurrence. I am talking about a new age dawning. Can you find any 50-year period before the 20th century in which there was a UN? In which there were several strong Geneva Conventions? In which there were millions of computers? In which there were nuclear non-proliferation agreements? No. We are at the end of an era, and everything is changing. We are reaching new levels of civilisation. If I look at TV programmes from as recent a period as the 1960s, the attitudes I see portrayed are often quaint or even offensive in their old-fashioned backwardness.
We will soon (in 50-100 years) see a new era in which 2007 is remembered as a stupid, violent time to live.
Presumably, they would have to stop it by force - in other words, engage in warfare, or let that war continue illegally. And where would they get the troops to do it?
During an intermediate period of many decades, member states would be allowed and even encouraged to have significant national armies. For example, the US could be allowed to have a massive military machine with 10% of its current budget. These armies would then be called upon by the UN to resolve occasional problems caused by rogue states.
In time, these standing armies would slowly dwindle. Within a couple of centuries they could probably be abolished, with the occasional peace-keeping role carried out by police.
All of your arguments boil down to a premise that a government, particularly a world government, would be benev[o]lent...
You've almost got it. My premise is that democratic government, particularly international democratic government, is preferable to warlordism as it is more likely to be benevolent.
your "rule of law" becomes a paper tiger... The alternative to the rule of law is the rule of might. It is an elementary principle of civilisation that the former is preferable.
The fact of the matter is that Europe was saved by the US several times now. And seemingly each time the US left Europe to its own devices [...]
That is a fiction. The US administration took cynical advantage of WWII in order to establish a huge network of military bases that it still uses to control the world. Knowing that the USSR would rebuild shattered Europe if allowed to, the US launched the Marshall Plan to keep Western Europe in its sphere of influence, and so it has remained ever since.
You're welcome.
As I pointed out before, you didn't do anything. Are you going to dole out or ask for thanks for every other event in history which you had no part in?
Recent history backs this up... European nations were seemingly oblivious to the atrocities happening in the Balkans and allows yet another genocide/"ethnic cleansing" to take place on the continent. It wasn't until the US finally pressed the issue that Nato got involved and "policed" the situation.
The US, like all other countries, desired stability in the region, and international action was carried out after discussion. This is exactly the sort of thing that I am advocating, except for the fact that most of the players were acting out of self-interest and carried out actions that often increased rather than decreased ethnic cleansing. Noam Chomsky notes, "The bombing was undertaken with the anticipation explicit [that] it was going to lead to large-scale atrocities in response. As it did. Now there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the [NATO] bombings." The NATO action should have been subject to greater international democratic control and been accountable.
Show me the US imperialism in the last 100 years? We fought to free Europe twice in that time. We did NOT create an empire out of that, we gave France back to the French... We gave Germany back to the Germans...
You are limiting imperialism to annexation. It is generally accepted that these are not synonymous. The US is at the same stage as the late Roman empire, which first went through a period of annexation, reached natural limits, and then went through a period of establishing puppet régimes beyond its borders to form a two-tiered empire. The US finished its annexation phase about 100 years ago with Hawaii (although it didn't become a state until comparatively recently).
You are truly a dreamer. If you think that US troops are going to be put under the command of a reformed UN to police the world, you are sadly mistaken. Most people in the US have NO INTEREST in policing the world.
After demanding thanks and praise for being a marvellous world cop, you now claim that "you" will never do such a thing because the US is isolationist.
There is in fact quite a strong mandate for international action from the US population. Huge numbers of people supported the Iraq adventure when it was presented to them as police operation to remove dangerous terrorists who had hurt them on 9/11. If the people can be mobilised for a pack of lies that caused thousands of American military deaths and hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian deaths, imagine the support that could be garnered for actual humanitarian missions costing a fraction of the money!
Even if we accept the idea of there being no current mandate, it is extremely myopic to suggest that the US population will never attain the level of civilisation to do such a thing. At a certain point in mediaeval Europe, local barons would no doubt have thought it a silly dream to imagine that their local garrisons and those of other nobles would one day be gathered together in national armies, instead of fighting in local squabbles... but it happened.
We didn't commit troops to the middle east until our civilians were incinerated on our own soil using our own airliners.
Prior to WWI, we stayed out of world affairs. The Europeans then ignited a world conflict
We, we, we? You didn't do anything. It was the US administration of the time.
Europe, Europe, Europe? Europe didn't do anything. It was the fascist powers of the time.
The US régime of the time did what it saw as best defending its interests in the face of a fascist threat, and France, Britain, etc did the same. No need to build it up into some Clark Kent America saving some Lois Lane Europe, in order to make some nationalistic point.
During the Cold War, Western might was as important in holding back Soviet imperialism as Soviet might was in holding back Western imperialism. Nobody is denying that, although it would be good to acknowledge that the Soviet bloc was at a military disadvantage most of the time and therefore would have been keen on entering into more disarmament talks than the US was willing to enter into.
Maybe the world will be a better place with US forces policing the world anymore. We can stay home, and when the carnage and humanitarian crises of the world begin to pile up, just give us a call.
That reflects a twisted view of the world. Only the forces of international law (the UN) can "police the world". The US merely prowls the world like any other predator, just as the British Empire did before. Humanitarian crises are largely piling up because of the US, not despite it. For example, well over.6 million people have been killed in Iraq by US actions. Palestinian society is collapsing into civil war due to the actions of the US's Middle Eastern client state, Israel. You mention Saddam Hussein as though he supports your point, whereas in reality he was an example of a dictator backed by the US for many years.
Now, the US could maintain a modest force which it could use as a general deterrent plus a tool to be used to uphold international law at the command of a reformed UN. I suggested before a cut to just 10% of current spending, which would not even knock the US off the top spot (it would tie with the UK at approximately US$48 billion). This would allow about US$400 billion a year to be assigned to healthcare in the US, thus greatly improving life for ordinary people. It would also at a stroke remove all the main reasons for the existence of Al-Qaeda, thus greatly increasing security for ordinary people in America.
International law allows warfare only when authorised by the UN, or in self-defence against an imminent threat when there is no time to go to the UN.
This is much like the situation with domestic law. If I have a quarrel with someone (e.g. they have robbed me, or I believe they are going to kill me) I can go to the relevant authority (the police) and have them deal with the problem with force. If there is an imminent threat (e.g. he's coming at me with a knife), I can use violence to defend myself. If I abuse the right to self-defence (e.g. by attacking pre-emptively), I myself will be charged with an offence.
Pretty much everyone in the 21st century accepts that this is justice in the domestic sphere. We will have reached a higher level of civilisation when exactly the same is accepted in the international sphere. At the moment, Bush is a war criminal according to the Geneva Conventions because he committed the supreme crime of aggression. The fact that only a minority of people recognise this is an indictment on our society in the same way that toleration of amphitheatre deaths was an indictment on Roman society.
If North Korea invaded the South (which could not possibly happen), the situation would not be as you describe. The UN would instantly pass unanimous resolutions condemning the invasion and authorising defensive action. Some defensive action would obviously have been already carried out by South Korea, and the UN would retrospectively recognise that action as legal self-defence. The idea of South Korea burning whilst suits debate in the UN is pure fiction.
I do agree that NK should be held to international norms of non-proliferation, but NK cannot be the only country held to such norms, otherwise they are not international. First and foremost, the global superpower, the country with the largest stockpiles of WMDs, and the only country to have nuked cities, must adhere to such standards, and force their client states (e.g. Israel) to follow suit. Only then can they credibly put pressure on NK to do the same.
Now, it's perfectly possible for an aggressive war to be disguised as a legitimate peace-keeping or liberating force by intimidating the international community into giving a UN mandate (the US nearly managed to make them happen over Iraq). And the UN can also fail to act when it should act. In the same way, it is possible to find lazy cops and bribable judges. There are miscarriages of justice. However, few would say that this means that the essential principles of the justice system and the concept of the rule of law itself need to be abandoned. Few would say that there is such a fine line between criminal and legal acts that it is pointless to bother distinguishing.
No, we all recognise the many flaws in the domestic justice system, and yet all civilised persons recognise that it is proper to go to the police to deal with crime, and not take things into their own hands. All I am saying is that this same level of civilised behaviour should reign in international affairs.
I agree with your basic sentiment that the fewer weapons there are the better, but it is important not to be naïve. When there is a huge imbalance in possession of weapons, the states with the most weapons should be called upon to reduce them first, then those who have hardly any in comparison.
Again, this is something that even a child would understand in another context. If we live in a Wild West environment where everyone carries a gun, what should Sheriff UN do? Should he go over to crazy slanty-eyed Kim Jong-Il's ranch and take his six-shooter and anthraxy sheep off him, or should he try to tackle the heavily-armed gang of bandits who have been burning down ranches everywhere, most recently old Hussein's ranch, who turned out not even to have a pistol?
I don't any of the ranch-owners should be allowed to keep their guns in the long term, but in the short term they really need some self-defence, until we throw the bandits in jail.
What military might. That may be true the threat to world peace may be the US, but there is nothing mighty about their military. If there is I haven't seen anything yet.
It is generally accepted that, on the military, the US spends sums of money roughly equal to the rest of the world combined. With this come forces that are roughly equal in power to the rest of the world combined. See this list. Even if we assume mind-boggling waste and incompetence in the US military and comparative excellence elsewhere, this still means that the American military machine clearly outclasses any other in the world.
You are perhaps referring to military failures in Vietnam and Iraq that are to do with stupid decision-making. That is a separate question.
P.S. My recommendation for a 90% reduction in the US military budget was an underestimate. 90% would leave the US tying for first place alongside the UK. A 99% reduction would be much better, leaving the US spending "only" as much as the huge sums that Israel spends on its army. Note that we are talking about annual expenditure. I'm not even suggesting a reduction in the American WMD stockpiles, which also outclass anything else in the world.
You actually believe this? Sorry, can't type anymore, I'm about to fall over laughing again.
You're using the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule.
But let's pretend you made an honest enquiry into the feasibility of what I mentioned.
There are various things to understand in the sequence of events given. Firstly, I stated that the rule of law will extend to the international arena at some point in the future. This comes from a general observation that the rule of law is a concept that has been growing over the last few centuries, and has made rapid progress in the last hundred years or so with things such as the Geneva Conventions. I forecast that this progress will continue unless blocked.
It is clear that this progress is currently blocked by the fact that the world superpower can veto any international decision by means of (1) overwhelming military (and also economic) might, (2) its Security Council veto.
Therefore, breaking US hegemony is likely to permit the international rule of law.
Aggressive war has already been abolished de jure by the Geneva Conventions; therefore, stronger international law will mean a de facto abolition of war.
Removing the main bully from the equation will give the UN a chance to reform and democratise itself under popular pressure. With luck, this will them happen.
The de facto abolition of war is a precondition to civilisation according to the strict criteria that I apply, because I consider mass murder to be uncivilised — to say the least. Therefore, the advances that I describe are in my estimation more than sufficient to mark a new era — they are far more important than recognised era-changes such as the fall of the Roman empire.
If you want to reply to this, I ask you to contradict some particular point instead of using a general appeal to humour or ridicule.
North Korea's military capabilities (and in particular its nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities) are irrelevant, because they will never be used against NK's immensely richer and more powerful neighbours and rivals.
All that matters is what these capabilities are perceived to be, and how these perceptions are utilised in propaganda.
It is clear from history (particularly recent Iraqi history) that there are three possible scenarios:
If NK is perceived to have a very small arsenal, then the US will not be able to present it as a threat, and NK is therefore safe. (This is the pre-9/11 scenario)
If NK is perceived to have a modest arsenal, then NK is at considerable risk of invasion because it will be too weak to defend itself, and yet the public will be able to be terrorised and manipulated by talk of WMDs. (This is the Iraq scenario)
If NK is perceived to have a significant arsenal, then it will be safe because the country will be able to defend itself from US aggression. (This is the Cold War scenario)
From this, we can see that if NK wants peace, they need to appear to be in scenario 1 or 2, that is to say, to appear to have very few weapons or very many. Of these two options, the cheapest is number 1.
However, Iraq shows us that having no WMDs and not being a threat is no guarantee of not being perceived as a threat. Intelligence will simply be fabricated. There, option 1 is taken away from the NK régime.
This leaves scenario 3 (Cold War) as a way of securing peace. Therefore, the NK régime should logically build up as large an arsenal of dangerous weapons as it possibly can. Since war is bad for the world in general, it follows that all responsible world citizens should want the terrible NK régime to accumulate such a stockpile, as it is the only thing that will stop Washington hawks initiating a bloodbath.
Furthermore, the NK régime should build this stockpile as fast as possible, in order to shorten as much as possible the intermediate stage in which they have enough weapons to be presented as a threat, but don't actually have enough to defend the country.
The US military is tied up in Iraq maintaining the puppet state that it has established there, and public support for another aggressive war would be very low right now. If the NK régime waits another five or ten years, the US régime may have been able to recover from Iraq in financial, military and propaganda terms, and be ready to liberate NK by means of mass annihilation. For these reasons, rapid armament for NK is particularly urgent and important for world peace.
Seoul is within *artillery* range of NK and NK has the capacity to bombard it with hundreds of thousands of rounds of artillery *per hour* until that capacity is destroyed. On the first day of fighting, there would probably be more than a million SK casualties. And these would be *first-world citizen* casualties, not third-world casualties taht nobody cares about.
Yes, this is a major reason to have hope. It may be that NK already has enough conventional military capacity to be perceived to be too dangerous to attack. However, is it enough to stop the maniacs who smashed Iraq? I would advise NK to accumulate a bit more conventional weaponry, and perhaps make a nuke or two, plus several fake nukes.
Bio-chemical weapons are probably not worth making, but they would benefit from publicly announcing that their agents have planted anthrax, plague, sarin gas, etc in remote-controlled devices in every South Korean city, and that these would detonate even if the US wiped out all NK artillery (and population) in a surprise attack.
Nuke The Motherfuckers into Oblivion
There's no alternative. We must hit North Korea with a surprise nuclear attack. Many nukes will be required to take out all chemical and biological facilities and sterilise them
Instead of producing uninformed speculation about harm caused, instead you could actually read about the Milgram experiment. According to this article:
"84 percent of former participants surveyed later said they were "glad" or "very glad" to have participated and 15 percent chose neutral (92% of all former participants responding). Many later wrote expressing thanks. Milgram repeatedly received offers of assistance and requests to join his staff from former participants. Six years later (during the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was "glad" to have been involved despite the apparent levels of stress."
It would be impracticable, but everybody ought to be subjected to the Milgram experiment in school, as an essential part of moral education in a civilised society.
Is that a joke?
Windows is ubiquitous. Handing out Windows liveCDs to give people a taste for it would be like water manufacturers handing out water in order to convert all those people who have only ever drunk beer.
I don't get some of the vitriol poured out here. If someone wants to encourage the use of Linux, that seems fine to me. If they were sitting on their arse playing Civ IV, you wouldn't bother criticising them and yet it would be a bigger waste of time.
As well as using a PCLinuxOS/Windows dual-boot, I sometimes run Puppy Linux from a thumb drive on this computer. Here are the advantages:
It is much safer than Windows, and even a bit safer than running Linux from the harddrive.
After booting (which is about as long as PCLinuxOS or XP), everything is incredibly fast.
What I do is not limited to this computer.
The third point links in with the major advantage of my portable, 90MB Puppy. This Xmas I'm going to be staying with the in-laws. Instead of messing around with their crappy Windows machine, I'm going to be able to plug in my thumb drive and instantly access all my e-mails, Firefox favourites, and most important documents.
It will be particular cool because Puppy will allow me to leave the computer on, checking for e-mails. You see, my mother-in-law only allows her Windows machine to be online for a few minutes at a time because she is so paranoid about malware. All I will have to do is convince her that Puppy is immune to viruses and I won't have to keep turning the computer back on every twenty minutes.
I wouldn't recommend replacing any installed OS with Puppy, but it is a valuable tool. Setting it up would be beyond most people, but i believe that if I gave someone this thumb drive as a Xmas gift, saying "this thing is like a floppy, but it can hold a gig of your favourite stuff so you can use it when you're round your mate's house; plus if you put it in before turning the computer on, it boots up this Linux thing that lets you surf with zero chance of viruses," I'm sure they'd find it to be a cool little gadget.
Slashdot Mirror
I've noticed that in Forecastfox, the choices are "standard" or "metric", which is of course absurd as the SI/metric system is the international standard.
Great. A step towards the future.
Just one thing about the article:
They are not "English" units. The correct term is "Imperial" units. It's a Roman system (the word mile comes from the Latin mille passus, meaning 1000 paces) adapted and spread worldwide by the British empire.
If you need to refer to American variations on the Imperial system (e.g. the different gallon), then the term is "U.S. customary units".
Oh come on, don't overreact. Wine and ies4linux are perfectly adequate for ordinary testing purposes during web design. One the whole thing is finished it'll probably be a good idea to give it a final check on a Windows machine, but even that is perhaps paranoid.
Are you sure?
I've just entered the following:
wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4 linux-latest.tar.gz
./ies4linux -beta-install-ie7
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
And it failed.
Update: it seems that you need two hyphens before the "beta". It is also necessary to download the special beta version of ies4linux, which is not linked to from the main ies4linux page.
wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4 linux-2.5beta3.tar.gz
./ies4linux --beta-install-ie7
tar zxvf ies4linux-2.5beta3.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-2.5beta3
That should work, but I'm getting "An error occured when trying to cabextract some files."
In fact, it is very difficult to find even a 50 year period of time where the world was at peace EVERYWHERE in the world. You seem to have missed the point that I am not talking about a common past occurrence. I am talking about a new age dawning. Can you find any 50-year period before the 20th century in which there was a UN? In which there were several strong Geneva Conventions? In which there were millions of computers? In which there were nuclear non-proliferation agreements? No. We are at the end of an era, and everything is changing. We are reaching new levels of civilisation. If I look at TV programmes from as recent a period as the 1960s, the attitudes I see portrayed are often quaint or even offensive in their old-fashioned backwardness.
We will soon (in 50-100 years) see a new era in which 2007 is remembered as a stupid, violent time to live.
Presumably, they would have to stop it by force - in other words, engage in warfare, or let that war continue illegally. And where would they get the troops to do it?During an intermediate period of many decades, member states would be allowed and even encouraged to have significant national armies. For example, the US could be allowed to have a massive military machine with 10% of its current budget. These armies would then be called upon by the UN to resolve occasional problems caused by rogue states.
In time, these standing armies would slowly dwindle. Within a couple of centuries they could probably be abolished, with the occasional peace-keeping role carried out by police.
All of your arguments boil down to a premise that a government, particularly a world government, would be benev[o]lent...You've almost got it. My premise is that democratic government, particularly international democratic government, is preferable to warlordism as it is more likely to be benevolent.
your "rule of law" becomes a paper tiger... The alternative to the rule of law is the rule of might. It is an elementary principle of civilisation that the former is preferable.The fact of the matter is that Europe was saved by the US several times now. And seemingly each time the US left Europe to its own devices [...]
That is a fiction. The US administration took cynical advantage of WWII in order to establish a huge network of military bases that it still uses to control the world. Knowing that the USSR would rebuild shattered Europe if allowed to, the US launched the Marshall Plan to keep Western Europe in its sphere of influence, and so it has remained ever since.
As I pointed out before, you didn't do anything. Are you going to dole out or ask for thanks for every other event in history which you had no part in?
Recent history backs this up... European nations were seemingly oblivious to the atrocities happening in the Balkans and allows yet another genocide/"ethnic cleansing" to take place on the continent. It wasn't until the US finally pressed the issue that Nato got involved and "policed" the situation.
The US, like all other countries, desired stability in the region, and international action was carried out after discussion. This is exactly the sort of thing that I am advocating, except for the fact that most of the players were acting out of self-interest and carried out actions that often increased rather than decreased ethnic cleansing. Noam Chomsky notes, "The bombing was undertaken with the anticipation explicit [that] it was going to lead to large-scale atrocities in response. As it did. Now there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the [NATO] bombings." The NATO action should have been subject to greater international democratic control and been accountable.
Show me the US imperialism in the last 100 years? We fought to free Europe twice in that time. We did NOT create an empire out of that, we gave France back to the French... We gave Germany back to the Germans...
You are limiting imperialism to annexation. It is generally accepted that these are not synonymous. The US is at the same stage as the late Roman empire, which first went through a period of annexation, reached natural limits, and then went through a period of establishing puppet régimes beyond its borders to form a two-tiered empire. The US finished its annexation phase about 100 years ago with Hawaii (although it didn't become a state until comparatively recently).
You are truly a dreamer. If you think that US troops are going to be put under the command of a reformed UN to police the world, you are sadly mistaken. Most people in the US have NO INTEREST in policing the world.
After demanding thanks and praise for being a marvellous world cop, you now claim that "you" will never do such a thing because the US is isolationist.
There is in fact quite a strong mandate for international action from the US population. Huge numbers of people supported the Iraq adventure when it was presented to them as police operation to remove dangerous terrorists who had hurt them on 9/11. If the people can be mobilised for a pack of lies that caused thousands of American military deaths and hundreds of thousands of foreign civilian deaths, imagine the support that could be garnered for actual humanitarian missions costing a fraction of the money!
Even if we accept the idea of there being no current mandate, it is extremely myopic to suggest that the US population will never attain the level of civilisation to do such a thing. At a certain point in mediaeval Europe, local barons would no doubt have thought it a silly dream to imagine that their local garrisons and those of other nobles would one day be gathered together in national armies, instead of fighting in local squabbles... but it happened.
We didn't commit troops to the middle east until our civilians were incinerated on our own soil using our own airliners.
It is known that the atta
We, we, we? You didn't do anything. It was the US administration of the time.
Europe, Europe, Europe? Europe didn't do anything. It was the fascist powers of the time.
The US régime of the time did what it saw as best defending its interests in the face of a fascist threat, and France, Britain, etc did the same. No need to build it up into some Clark Kent America saving some Lois Lane Europe, in order to make some nationalistic point.
During the Cold War, Western might was as important in holding back Soviet imperialism as Soviet might was in holding back Western imperialism. Nobody is denying that, although it would be good to acknowledge that the Soviet bloc was at a military disadvantage most of the time and therefore would have been keen on entering into more disarmament talks than the US was willing to enter into.
That reflects a twisted view of the world. Only the forces of international law (the UN) can "police the world". The US merely prowls the world like any other predator, just as the British Empire did before. Humanitarian crises are largely piling up because of the US, not despite it. For example, well over .6 million people have been killed in Iraq by US actions. Palestinian society is collapsing into civil war due to the actions of the US's Middle Eastern client state, Israel. You mention Saddam Hussein as though he supports your point, whereas in reality he was an example of a dictator backed by the US for many years.
Now, the US could maintain a modest force which it could use as a general deterrent plus a tool to be used to uphold international law at the command of a reformed UN. I suggested before a cut to just 10% of current spending, which would not even knock the US off the top spot (it would tie with the UK at approximately US$48 billion). This would allow about US$400 billion a year to be assigned to healthcare in the US, thus greatly improving life for ordinary people. It would also at a stroke remove all the main reasons for the existence of Al-Qaeda, thus greatly increasing security for ordinary people in America.
International law allows warfare only when authorised by the UN, or in self-defence against an imminent threat when there is no time to go to the UN.
This is much like the situation with domestic law. If I have a quarrel with someone (e.g. they have robbed me, or I believe they are going to kill me) I can go to the relevant authority (the police) and have them deal with the problem with force. If there is an imminent threat (e.g. he's coming at me with a knife), I can use violence to defend myself. If I abuse the right to self-defence (e.g. by attacking pre-emptively), I myself will be charged with an offence.
Pretty much everyone in the 21st century accepts that this is justice in the domestic sphere. We will have reached a higher level of civilisation when exactly the same is accepted in the international sphere. At the moment, Bush is a war criminal according to the Geneva Conventions because he committed the supreme crime of aggression. The fact that only a minority of people recognise this is an indictment on our society in the same way that toleration of amphitheatre deaths was an indictment on Roman society.
If North Korea invaded the South (which could not possibly happen), the situation would not be as you describe. The UN would instantly pass unanimous resolutions condemning the invasion and authorising defensive action. Some defensive action would obviously have been already carried out by South Korea, and the UN would retrospectively recognise that action as legal self-defence. The idea of South Korea burning whilst suits debate in the UN is pure fiction.
I do agree that NK should be held to international norms of non-proliferation, but NK cannot be the only country held to such norms, otherwise they are not international. First and foremost, the global superpower, the country with the largest stockpiles of WMDs, and the only country to have nuked cities, must adhere to such standards, and force their client states (e.g. Israel) to follow suit. Only then can they credibly put pressure on NK to do the same.
Now, it's perfectly possible for an aggressive war to be disguised as a legitimate peace-keeping or liberating force by intimidating the international community into giving a UN mandate (the US nearly managed to make them happen over Iraq). And the UN can also fail to act when it should act. In the same way, it is possible to find lazy cops and bribable judges. There are miscarriages of justice. However, few would say that this means that the essential principles of the justice system and the concept of the rule of law itself need to be abandoned. Few would say that there is such a fine line between criminal and legal acts that it is pointless to bother distinguishing.
No, we all recognise the many flaws in the domestic justice system, and yet all civilised persons recognise that it is proper to go to the police to deal with crime, and not take things into their own hands. All I am saying is that this same level of civilised behaviour should reign in international affairs.
I agree with your basic sentiment that the fewer weapons there are the better, but it is important not to be naïve. When there is a huge imbalance in possession of weapons, the states with the most weapons should be called upon to reduce them first, then those who have hardly any in comparison.
Again, this is something that even a child would understand in another context. If we live in a Wild West environment where everyone carries a gun, what should Sheriff UN do? Should he go over to crazy slanty-eyed Kim Jong-Il's ranch and take his six-shooter and anthraxy sheep off him, or should he try to tackle the heavily-armed gang of bandits who have been burning down ranches everywhere, most recently old Hussein's ranch, who turned out not even to have a pistol?
I don't any of the ranch-owners should be allowed to keep their guns in the long term, but in the short term they really need some self-defence, until we throw the bandits in jail.
It is generally accepted that, on the military, the US spends sums of money roughly equal to the rest of the world combined. With this come forces that are roughly equal in power to the rest of the world combined. See this list. Even if we assume mind-boggling waste and incompetence in the US military and comparative excellence elsewhere, this still means that the American military machine clearly outclasses any other in the world.
You are perhaps referring to military failures in Vietnam and Iraq that are to do with stupid decision-making. That is a separate question.
P.S. My recommendation for a 90% reduction in the US military budget was an underestimate. 90% would leave the US tying for first place alongside the UK. A 99% reduction would be much better, leaving the US spending "only" as much as the huge sums that Israel spends on its army. Note that we are talking about annual expenditure. I'm not even suggesting a reduction in the American WMD stockpiles, which also outclass anything else in the world.
You're using the logical fallacy of appeal to ridicule.
But let's pretend you made an honest enquiry into the feasibility of what I mentioned.
There are various things to understand in the sequence of events given. Firstly, I stated that the rule of law will extend to the international arena at some point in the future. This comes from a general observation that the rule of law is a concept that has been growing over the last few centuries, and has made rapid progress in the last hundred years or so with things such as the Geneva Conventions. I forecast that this progress will continue unless blocked.
It is clear that this progress is currently blocked by the fact that the world superpower can veto any international decision by means of (1) overwhelming military (and also economic) might, (2) its Security Council veto.
Therefore, breaking US hegemony is likely to permit the international rule of law.
Aggressive war has already been abolished de jure by the Geneva Conventions; therefore, stronger international law will mean a de facto abolition of war.
Removing the main bully from the equation will give the UN a chance to reform and democratise itself under popular pressure. With luck, this will them happen.
The de facto abolition of war is a precondition to civilisation according to the strict criteria that I apply, because I consider mass murder to be uncivilised — to say the least. Therefore, the advances that I describe are in my estimation more than sufficient to mark a new era — they are far more important than recognised era-changes such as the fall of the Roman empire.
If you want to reply to this, I ask you to contradict some particular point instead of using a general appeal to humour or ridicule.
North Korea's military capabilities (and in particular its nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities) are irrelevant, because they will never be used against NK's immensely richer and more powerful neighbours and rivals.
All that matters is what these capabilities are perceived to be, and how these perceptions are utilised in propaganda.
It is clear from history (particularly recent Iraqi history) that there are three possible scenarios:
From this, we can see that if NK wants peace, they need to appear to be in scenario 1 or 2, that is to say, to appear to have very few weapons or very many. Of these two options, the cheapest is number 1.
However, Iraq shows us that having no WMDs and not being a threat is no guarantee of not being perceived as a threat. Intelligence will simply be fabricated. There, option 1 is taken away from the NK régime.
This leaves scenario 3 (Cold War) as a way of securing peace. Therefore, the NK régime should logically build up as large an arsenal of dangerous weapons as it possibly can. Since war is bad for the world in general, it follows that all responsible world citizens should want the terrible NK régime to accumulate such a stockpile, as it is the only thing that will stop Washington hawks initiating a bloodbath.
Furthermore, the NK régime should build this stockpile as fast as possible, in order to shorten as much as possible the intermediate stage in which they have enough weapons to be presented as a threat, but don't actually have enough to defend the country.
The US military is tied up in Iraq maintaining the puppet state that it has established there, and public support for another aggressive war would be very low right now. If the NK régime waits another five or ten years, the US régime may have been able to recover from Iraq in financial, military and propaganda terms, and be ready to liberate NK by means of mass annihilation. For these reasons, rapid armament for NK is particularly urgent and important for world peace.
Yes, this is a major reason to have hope. It may be that NK already has enough conventional military capacity to be perceived to be too dangerous to attack. However, is it enough to stop the maniacs who smashed Iraq? I would advise NK to accumulate a bit more conventional weaponry, and perhaps make a nuke or two, plus several fake nukes. Bio-chemical weapons are probably not worth making, but they would benefit from publicly announcing that their agents have planted anthrax, plague, sarin gas, etc in remote-controlled devices in every South Korean city, and that these would detonate even if the US wiped out all NK artillery (and population) in a surprise attack.
Is that a joke? Windows is ubiquitous. Handing out Windows liveCDs to give people a taste for it would be like water manufacturers handing out water in order to convert all those people who have only ever drunk beer.
I don't get some of the vitriol poured out here. If someone wants to encourage the use of Linux, that seems fine to me. If they were sitting on their arse playing Civ IV, you wouldn't bother criticising them and yet it would be a bigger waste of time.
As well as using a PCLinuxOS/Windows dual-boot, I sometimes run Puppy Linux from a thumb drive on this computer. Here are the advantages:
The third point links in with the major advantage of my portable, 90MB Puppy. This Xmas I'm going to be staying with the in-laws. Instead of messing around with their crappy Windows machine, I'm going to be able to plug in my thumb drive and instantly access all my e-mails, Firefox favourites, and most important documents.
It will be particular cool because Puppy will allow me to leave the computer on, checking for e-mails. You see, my mother-in-law only allows her Windows machine to be online for a few minutes at a time because she is so paranoid about malware. All I will have to do is convince her that Puppy is immune to viruses and I won't have to keep turning the computer back on every twenty minutes.
I wouldn't recommend replacing any installed OS with Puppy, but it is a valuable tool. Setting it up would be beyond most people, but i believe that if I gave someone this thumb drive as a Xmas gift, saying "this thing is like a floppy, but it can hold a gig of your favourite stuff so you can use it when you're round your mate's house; plus if you put it in before turning the computer on, it boots up this Linux thing that lets you surf with zero chance of viruses," I'm sure they'd find it to be a cool little gadget.
(My first /. post)