In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
I heard it a different way from a family member who was actually there and served in his division's intelligence unit. He said that the most effective way to get information out of high ranking POWs was to inform them that we'd turn them over to the Soviets if they failed to cooperate with us.
Doesn't it make you proud that now WE'RE the "Soviets?":-/
So, you allege that that the leadership of Iran consists of a bunch of suicidal fanatics? Pray tell, what exactly have they done to suggest this, rather than the conclusion that they are a bunch of power-hungry fanatics who want to hold on to their privileged positions at the top of government.
I see way more evidence for the latter conclusion.
For roughly 400 days they Iranians held those hostages. Why? Nobody remembers why, but they did it - and if nobody remembers why, it must not have been a very memorable reason (if any.)
Yeah, something about a military coup d'etat organized by the United States that overthrew their democratically-elected prime minister. Obviously, not very memorable.
Hostile countries spewing "We want to wipe [your friend] Israel off the map" are told to put their hands up, far away from nukes, and if they start drawing, shots will be fired.
Iran is hostile in about the same way that the American South is hostile: All talk about "rising again." Should we re-form the Union army, march into Georgia and burn Atlanta again, too?
(Hint: One of Iran's leaders who has nothing to do with foreign policy or the military allegedly made the "wipe of the map" comments, but actually didn't say that.)
Just look around today-- the very same tactics that were used to get us to support invading Iraq have been rolled out to manufacture support for attacking Iran: The drumbeat of ever-more-dire media reports, claims of the "greatest threat to the world today," making outrageous demands of the target so that they look evil when they do not comply (because they cannot comply), reporting provable falsehoods and failing to retract them, et cetera. Most of the very same people who wanted a U.S. invasion of Iraq are still in high positions of influence and power, and now they want an invasion of Iran. Never mind that these people were utterly wrong (at best) or liars (at worst) about Iraq-- no nuclear weapons, no biological weapons, no yellowcake from Niger, no fleets of unmanned drones, no al-Qaeda connection whatsoever. It doesn't matter. The media still holds them up as the only credible voices, the people with realistic foreign policy "gravitas" and experience. The people who were right about Iraq are still dismissed as naive, not credible on foreign policy, or fruitcakes.
No, the United States is not "extremely pacifistic about war" now! It's definitely on course to get involved in a third major war.
The sad part, to me, is that Americans are falling for it again. We just lived through the propaganda 8 years ago, and our troops are still occupying Iraq. Yet, here we are again, cowering under our beds in fear of a nation with less than 1/4 our population and about 0.6% of our military budget. Worried sick about a country half-way around the globe that doesn't have the motive nor the means to launch at us a weapon that they don't even have, can't yet build, and may or may not even want!
Worse, getting into this war would harm us more than Iran ever could. We're already mired in an economic crisis in part brought on by the massive diversion of our resources to two on-going conflicts. An attack on Iran could very well be our economic coup de grace, finishing off the dollar as the international reserve currency and ending our ability to finance our astronomical debt. Goodbye military spending, goodbye overseas empire, and goodbye American Dream. Even if we could keep the current, unsustainable borrowing going despite an attack on Iran and more-enormous military spending, that spending will keep our economy weak.
It's ridiculous to the point of absurdity, but the U.S. government is not trying to avoid war now.
The parent post includes a lot of conditional statements. Let me summarize some definite facts:
* Iran has made a promise to use nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes. * All the evidence points to the conclusion that they have kept this promise. * Iran had originally agreed to an even stricter protocol for its nuclear program voluntarily, but later withdrew. * Iran did violate the stricter protocol, but was never required to follow it anyway. * Iran revealed the existence of another nuclear facility, in accordance with its promise. * The U.S. jumped on Iran with the puzzling position that its disclosure is evidence that it's hiding something. * U.S. intelligence estimates say that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program. * Iran has not attacked anybody in centuries. * The leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khameni, states that he does not want to attack anybody.
And this all adds up to the greatest threat the world faces today?
Oh, it is indeed a double standard. However, the countries condemning them haven't alluded to wiping their enemies off the face of the planet, as Iran has http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahmadinejad/index.html
That's been proven false so many times that it's not even funny: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
Why didn't they let the Polish handle it? Hitler just wanted Danzig, which was torn away from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and was still 95% German. He actually admired the British and wanted an alliance with them; his main aim was to the east in Russia.
So, if Britain hadn't given a war guarantee to Poland, it's entirely likely that Hitler would have expended Germany's resources in a fight with the Red Army. But instead, Britain lost its empire and since Stalin still had a powerful army, the U.S. got almost 50 years of the Cold War.
As long as we're remembering history, we should remember it in all its nuances.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe... not spend money you haven't got in the first place?
Bad move. If you don't spend money you haven't got in the first place (a.k.a. don't use credit), then you don't have a credit history. If you don't have a credit history, your credit score is crap. Therefore, if you have always paid your bills on-time and in-full with money you have already earned, they don't trust you.
That tells you all you need to know, only in an immoral fantasy world.
If the Palestinian people ceased their resistance, there would be no more Palestine. Israel's actions in 1948, and since, clearly demonstrate that it is waging either its own Palestinian shoah or diaspora, whichever comes first.
Israel has a right to self-defense, surely, but not a right to use whatever cruel means they wish, and the Palestinian people have a right to self-defense, too.
Government is the only remaining bullwark between the thugs who run industry and the people they use up as labour resource and then destroy as a product.
I disagree. You see, the Corporation is the off-spring of the State. The State creates a Corporation by grant of a charter, and by its laws, shapes the character of the Corporation. The laws we have in America directly create the amoral monster corporations because the laws shield the people that make up a corporation from individual liability for its actions (and the courts only occasionally "pierce the corporate veil"), limit the ability of the American state to reign in corporations (Dartmouth College v. Woodward), and even grant them the same rights as a natural person (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad).
Of course, a Corporation in practice is a super-person because its potency far exceeds that of any natural person (e.g. it's effectively immortal), and the State does not impose analogous sanctions on it (e.g. prison or the death penalty).
If we as a society had the will to remove the legal framework that under-girds the Corporation, they would vanish.
The Bush administration has eliminated the writ of habeas corpus, the Great Writ, the foundation of our legal system since 1215, the fundamental power of the court... and you say it's "remarkable how little has changed in America?"
Yes, if by "little" you mean only everything. The Executive has the power to arrest you and hold you without charges, without access to counsel, and without the possibility of judicial review for as long as they feel like it. By this change, all other laws and rights become essentially meaningless. Freedom of expression? Gone. You may have the right to free speech, but the President has the right to lock you up if he doesn't like what you say.
As citizens of the United States, we now live under an authoritarian regime. We don't have individual freedom, we have freedom at the whim of the President. The experiment has failed. America is over.
The Colorado River has so little water left, it no longer flows into the ocean. It sort of peters out in the middle of the desert. People pump water from the Colorado for major agricultural operations, plus some of the largest agglomerations of humanity on the planet. Look up the Colorado River Compact on Wikipedia.
The American Southwest has sucked up so much water, they once contemplated a pipeline to tap the Great Lakes, a plan which had people around these parts threatening to take up arms... No there's really not a lot of water out there for another major agricultural project.
The answer is a resounding "no". He is free to travel by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, boat, or other device himself while not violating applicable pedestrian or traffic laws, or by bus or train, entirely anonymously.
The following apply in Madison, WI at least:
On foot: Wisconsin has a stop and identify law. Police officers can compel you to identify yourself if they have reasonable suspicion of your intent to commit a crime. Good thing the City Council repealed the anti-loitering ordinance...
By bike: You must register the bike and thus display a unique identifier.
By motorcycle: You must have a motorcycle endorsement on your state-issued driver's license.
By car: You must have a state-issued driver's license.
By boat: You must register the boat and display a unique registration number.
By train: You must show photo ID with your ticket if Amtrak attendants ask for it.
Looks like the bus provides your only option to travel entirely anonymously. Now, getting to the bus station, on the other hand...
Remember, that the federal government owns a full one-third of the land area of the United States of America. That's vast swaths of Alaska and the western states in which hardly anybody lives. Right off the top, subtract one-third of US land area before running your population density calculation.
Next, recall that most Americans live in cities. The proportion of the population living in rural areas has been steadily shrinking as more and more people move to the cities.
Americans are not at all uniformly distributed o'er the land.
You live in Minneapolis, eh? You might be interested to know that an old-fashioned "low-speed" train (90-110MPH) used to serve the Cities. Chicago & Northwestern railroad's Dakota 400 used to make the run between Chicago and Rapid City, ND by way of Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis and Fargo. That train would have taken 5-6 hours between Chicago and Minneapolis because of the stops, compared to the 2-3 hours* it takes to fly between those cities. High-speed rail could make the trip in the same time or less, and more comfortably and efficiently. A $30 train ticket to go visit my brother in the Cities would sure beat the $90 or more it would cost me to drive.
* The last time I flew through MSP, it was a good three hours between the time my flight began boarding, and I was leaving MSN to drive home.
I get notification email messages from my credit union monthly. When I signed up for the account, I had to enter a 'security phrase', and every email they send includes that phrase. If it doesn't have the phrase, it's phish. Simple. Effective. Can be defeated, but it would take orders of magnitude more effort.
Try this experiment: Block out your car's windshield somehow, perhaps with one of those cardboard solar reflectors. Turn on your GPS unit, and use its display to guide you as you drive somewhere at normal speeds. If you survive this experiment, come back and tell us how lighthouses are obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
In World War two it was discovered that the best way for the allies to get intel from their prisoners on what the Germans were up to was a steak dinner.
I heard it a different way from a family member who was actually there and served in his division's intelligence unit. He said that the most effective way to get information out of high ranking POWs was to inform them that we'd turn them over to the Soviets if they failed to cooperate with us.
Doesn't it make you proud that now WE'RE the "Soviets?" :-/
So, you allege that that the leadership of Iran consists of a bunch of suicidal fanatics? Pray tell, what exactly have they done to suggest this, rather than the conclusion that they are a bunch of power-hungry fanatics who want to hold on to their privileged positions at the top of government.
I see way more evidence for the latter conclusion.
For roughly 400 days they Iranians held those hostages. Why? Nobody remembers why, but they did it - and if nobody remembers why, it must not have been a very memorable reason (if any.)
Yeah, something about a military coup d'etat organized by the United States that overthrew their democratically-elected prime minister. Obviously, not very memorable.
The Iranian theocracy has made it abundantly clear that they want to nuke Israel.
Evidence?
Hostile countries spewing "We want to wipe [your friend] Israel off the map" are told to put their hands up, far away from nukes, and if they start drawing, shots will be fired.
Iran is hostile in about the same way that the American South is hostile: All talk about "rising again." Should we re-form the Union army, march into Georgia and burn Atlanta again, too?
(Hint: One of Iran's leaders who has nothing to do with foreign policy or the military allegedly made the "wipe of the map" comments, but actually didn't say that.)
Oh, and Hezbollah starting the last war with Israel doesn't count as Iran starting the war because they Hezbollah isn't Iran's lapdog? Grow up.
The burden of proof (i.e. that it does count) is on you. Go.
A ploy not to go to war? That's funny!
Just look around today-- the very same tactics that were used to get us to support invading Iraq have been rolled out to manufacture support for attacking Iran: The drumbeat of ever-more-dire media reports, claims of the "greatest threat to the world today," making outrageous demands of the target so that they look evil when they do not comply (because they cannot comply), reporting provable falsehoods and failing to retract them, et cetera. Most of the very same people who wanted a U.S. invasion of Iraq are still in high positions of influence and power, and now they want an invasion of Iran. Never mind that these people were utterly wrong (at best) or liars (at worst) about Iraq-- no nuclear weapons, no biological weapons, no yellowcake from Niger, no fleets of unmanned drones, no al-Qaeda connection whatsoever. It doesn't matter. The media still holds them up as the only credible voices, the people with realistic foreign policy "gravitas" and experience. The people who were right about Iraq are still dismissed as naive, not credible on foreign policy, or fruitcakes.
No, the United States is not "extremely pacifistic about war" now! It's definitely on course to get involved in a third major war.
The sad part, to me, is that Americans are falling for it again. We just lived through the propaganda 8 years ago, and our troops are still occupying Iraq. Yet, here we are again, cowering under our beds in fear of a nation with less than 1/4 our population and about 0.6% of our military budget. Worried sick about a country half-way around the globe that doesn't have the motive nor the means to launch at us a weapon that they don't even have, can't yet build, and may or may not even want!
Worse, getting into this war would harm us more than Iran ever could. We're already mired in an economic crisis in part brought on by the massive diversion of our resources to two on-going conflicts. An attack on Iran could very well be our economic coup de grace, finishing off the dollar as the international reserve currency and ending our ability to finance our astronomical debt. Goodbye military spending, goodbye overseas empire, and goodbye American Dream. Even if we could keep the current, unsustainable borrowing going despite an attack on Iran and more-enormous military spending, that spending will keep our economy weak.
It's ridiculous to the point of absurdity, but the U.S. government is not trying to avoid war now.
The parent post includes a lot of conditional statements. Let me summarize some definite facts:
* Iran has made a promise to use nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes.
* All the evidence points to the conclusion that they have kept this promise.
* Iran had originally agreed to an even stricter protocol for its nuclear program voluntarily, but later withdrew.
* Iran did violate the stricter protocol, but was never required to follow it anyway.
* Iran revealed the existence of another nuclear facility, in accordance with its promise.
* The U.S. jumped on Iran with the puzzling position that its disclosure is evidence that it's hiding something.
* U.S. intelligence estimates say that Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program.
* Iran has not attacked anybody in centuries.
* The leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khameni, states that he does not want to attack anybody.
And this all adds up to the greatest threat the world faces today?
(Gee, didn't they say that about Iraq?)
Oh, it is indeed a double standard. However, the countries condemning them haven't alluded to wiping their enemies off the face of the planet, as Iran has http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahmadinejad/index.html
That's been proven false so many times that it's not even funny: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
(Score:-1, Not Politically Correct)
Why didn't they let the Polish handle it? Hitler just wanted Danzig, which was torn away from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and was still 95% German. He actually admired the British and wanted an alliance with them; his main aim was to the east in Russia.
So, if Britain hadn't given a war guarantee to Poland, it's entirely likely that Hitler would have expended Germany's resources in a fight with the Red Army. But instead, Britain lost its empire and since Stalin still had a powerful army, the U.S. got almost 50 years of the Cold War.
As long as we're remembering history, we should remember it in all its nuances.
Oh, I dunno. Maybe... not spend money you haven't got in the first place?
Bad move. If you don't spend money you haven't got in the first place (a.k.a. don't use credit), then you don't have a credit history. If you don't have a credit history, your credit score is crap. Therefore, if you have always paid your bills on-time and in-full with money you have already earned, they don't trust you.
The system punishes responsible behavior, too.
That tells you all you need to know, only in an immoral fantasy world.
If the Palestinian people ceased their resistance, there would be no more Palestine. Israel's actions in 1948, and since, clearly demonstrate that it is waging either its own Palestinian shoah or diaspora, whichever comes first.
Israel has a right to self-defense, surely, but not a right to use whatever cruel means they wish, and the Palestinian people have a right to self-defense, too.
I disagree. You see, the Corporation is the off-spring of the State. The State creates a Corporation by grant of a charter, and by its laws, shapes the character of the Corporation. The laws we have in America directly create the amoral monster corporations because the laws shield the people that make up a corporation from individual liability for its actions (and the courts only occasionally "pierce the corporate veil"), limit the ability of the American state to reign in corporations (Dartmouth College v. Woodward), and even grant them the same rights as a natural person (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad).
Of course, a Corporation in practice is a super-person because its potency far exceeds that of any natural person (e.g. it's effectively immortal), and the State does not impose analogous sanctions on it (e.g. prison or the death penalty).
If we as a society had the will to remove the legal framework that under-girds the Corporation, they would vanish.
The Bush administration has eliminated the writ of habeas corpus, the Great Writ, the foundation of our legal system since 1215, the fundamental power of the court... and you say it's "remarkable how little has changed in America?"
Yes, if by "little" you mean only everything. The Executive has the power to arrest you and hold you without charges, without access to counsel, and without the possibility of judicial review for as long as they feel like it. By this change, all other laws and rights become essentially meaningless. Freedom of expression? Gone. You may have the right to free speech, but the President has the right to lock you up if he doesn't like what you say.
As citizens of the United States, we now live under an authoritarian regime. We don't have individual freedom, we have freedom at the whim of the President. The experiment has failed. America is over.
That's a joke, right?
The Colorado River has so little water left, it no longer flows into the ocean. It sort of peters out in the middle of the desert. People pump water from the Colorado for major agricultural operations, plus some of the largest agglomerations of humanity on the planet. Look up the Colorado River Compact on Wikipedia.
The American Southwest has sucked up so much water, they once contemplated a pipeline to tap the Great Lakes, a plan which had people around these parts threatening to take up arms... No there's really not a lot of water out there for another major agricultural project.
Feingold reads constitution on Senate floor
t itution_on_Senate_floor_0301.html
http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Feingold_reads_cons
How often do you cross the United States, and how often do you eat?
Lies, damn lies, and statistics?
Remember, that the federal government owns a full one-third of the land area of the United States of America. That's vast swaths of Alaska and the western states in which hardly anybody lives. Right off the top, subtract one-third of US land area before running your population density calculation.
Next, recall that most Americans live in cities. The proportion of the population living in rural areas has been steadily shrinking as more and more people move to the cities.
Americans are not at all uniformly distributed o'er the land.
You live in Minneapolis, eh? You might be interested to know that an old-fashioned "low-speed" train (90-110MPH) used to serve the Cities.
Chicago & Northwestern railroad's Dakota 400 used to make the run between Chicago and Rapid City, ND by way of Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis and Fargo. That train would have taken 5-6 hours between Chicago and Minneapolis because of the stops, compared to the 2-3 hours* it takes to fly between those cities.
High-speed rail could make the trip in the same time or less, and more comfortably and efficiently. A $30 train ticket to go visit my brother in the Cities would sure beat the $90 or more it would cost me to drive.
* The last time I flew through MSP, it was a good three hours between the time my flight began boarding, and I was leaving MSN to drive home.
I get notification email messages from my credit union monthly. When I signed up for the account, I had to enter a 'security phrase', and every email they send includes that phrase. If it doesn't have the phrase, it's phish.
Simple. Effective. Can be defeated, but it would take orders of magnitude more effort.
Try this experiment: Block out your car's windshield somehow, perhaps with one of those cardboard solar reflectors. Turn on your GPS unit, and use its display to guide you as you drive somewhere at normal speeds. If you survive this experiment, come back and tell us how lighthouses are obsolete.