I do like your attitude in this post a lot more, but the facts you cite are almost all wrong (you're right, my memory let me down and I got Emily Hobhouse's name wrong... to my shame).
Written by an English historian, each page clearly showing it's genuine documented sources - it basically backs up everything I say. Rhodes may not have been a policy maker but make no mistake he had enormous power and influence - and Milner acted on his instructions -the documentation to that effect exists and can be verified.
>The first Boer war involved a few thousand Boers and about a thousand >British soldiers, who being unprepared (untrained) for the conditions and >terrain with which the Boers were perfectly familiar, was a predictable >and one-sided affair. I think we have no disagreement here.
While not the description I would use, I cant' find factual fault with this assesment. Remember though - it was Britain who declared the first war.
>The second Boer war was not the same as the first. You fielded tens >of thousands of troops, properly organised and equipped with proper >artillery.
None of those troops had ever had military training of any kind. They were simply volunteers who answered the call. The proper artillery is true - though don't overestimate the amount, we had a total of 6 cannons for that army.
>When these failed, you turned to guerilla tactics, which the >British countered by locking down supply lines and key infrastructure >points and with a scorched earth policy.
They did fail - but only after Britain shipped in enough soldiers to outnumber us ten to one. That's a very key point. At every stage before that, we were winning. It's known that we fielded child-soldiers in that war, of this I feel greatly ashamed -but in some mitigation - none of them were sent, they were mostly runaways, often orphans who insisted (and due to the lack of authority or discipline) could participate without any oversight to get rid of them. The only case where one of them was officially enlisted was one 13 year old boy (I'm sorry, I forgot his name) who went to Pretoria with his father. His father was enlisting and bringing a wagonload of farm produce to donate to the war effort. The boy was to drive the wagon home afterward. As it happened they bumped into Kruger - who heard them arguing. The boy was demanding to fight along, the father refusing. Kruger is reported to have said: "Boy, right now there are three English soldiers for every one I got... will you shoot three Englishmen for me ?" When the boy said yes - Kruger himself gave him special dispensation. Technically the law decreed that nobody under the age of 16 could serve. It is not known what happened to him, and if he managed to keep his promise or even survived the war.
>Both of you fought with small >mobile units, but that doesn't mean that they were on either side these >undisciplined free-thinking hippies you try to paint them as.
The British never did small mobile units. Try reading up on the first, second and third wave. Their tactics was to basically send a giant line of soldiers from one side of the country swooping to the other trying to pin the boers down... the boers managed to actually get THROUGH those lines unseen repeatedly. Christiaan De Wet got his fame because all three waves were specifically intended to capture him - and he escaped every one of them. To imagine that the boer soldiers were disciplined however is to show a complete lack of understanding of their culture. They didn't ever go through a bootcamp, schooling at that stage was limited to "can write your name". The average family would see their neighbours no more than once in three months. There was no social cohesion, and no structure. They had lived a life dependent on being able to
Which bit of "I am not American" didn't you understand ?
Our most recent draft was still in my teenages, I missed it by just a few years.
You also seemed to ignore the bit about the fact that military justice is inherently flawed. Civilian justice systems figured out a very long time ago that the judiciary needs to be independent of both law-making AND law-enforcement or nobody gets a fair trial... how many military court justices are not serving members of the military then ?... oh right NONE.
Is that actually what you believe ? Sheez... the historical records are very clear on how wrong you are. You basically got EVERY detail wrong.
But then, I once saw a page from a British history text book that wrote "the women and children weren't put in concentration camps as part of the war of course, but to protect them from starvation on their farms with their husbands gone. The lack of resources in the camps are to blame for the deaths"
Winners tell their story. But that is just as false. The farms were doing fine. What do you think those women did when the husband got sick ? They were USED to running the farms - in that regard the Afrikaners were a very equal society, not only were the women ALLOWED to do the same jobs as the men - they were EXPECTED to. In fact, the real reason was that during the guerilla phase of the war- those farms were constantly SUPPLYING the troops with food and shelter, burning them down and taking the women and children off the land was the only way to stop losing.
The first boer war was a small war, but Britain was hardly that unprepared -the difference is that our lose-knit tactics WORKED better, we knew the country, we knew the teritory and my ancestors were excellent marksman - it was a basic survival skill for them. They took down a soldier with every single bullet fired - and could take out a squadron before anybody even managed to see ONE of them because they were THAT good at camouflage (again - a basic survival skill in their culture).
In the second war, we repeatedly won almost every battle, in fact in the first two years of the war Britain achieved only TWO successes. They took Pretoria and they won one battle. So we laid siege to Pretoria, and also most of the cities where British folk lived - and kept winning every battle. When it got to 10-to-1 numbers by the end of the second year - there was no POSSIBILITY anymore of winning a conventional war, so we came up with our guerilla warfare, small squads of between three and five highly mobile soldiers, working entirely indepently - raiding supply chains and taking on (and defeating) much bigger squads by being better at fighting in this country. Again - we were winning. Without the concentration camps we WOULD have won the war.
Now... as for the rest. Yes it bloody well WAS a struggle for liberation. We were NEVER British immigrants, our ancestry was predominantly Flemish, Dutch, French and German - in fact Modern day Afrikaans is so close to Flemish that I can chit-chat with Flemish people as if we're both speaking to a mothertongue speaker. The two boer republics WERE independent republics for nearly 80 years by the time of the first boer war - and their independence had previously been recognized by Britain in 1853. The desire for our gold and diamonds was the major reason why you decided that you now wanted to conquer these democratic republics we had built and reinstall over us the monarchic rule we had fled from more than a century before, the process that culminated in the foundation of these republics. The major players were Alfred Milner and Cecil John Rhodes and the immigrant-question was NEVER something Britain gave a flying fuck about. It was a very good EXCUSE for war however. Recorded letters between Milner, Rhodes and the British minister of Colonies show them plotting a war of conquest - to fulfill Rhodes' dream of a railway from Cape Town to Cairo running over nothing but British soil all the way. It was a struggle for independence. Under modern day international law, Britain would have had been considered guilty of crimes against humanity if the UN had existed then, and the very declaration of war as against international law. Sepperate geographic region, inhabited by a markedly unique culture -under CURRENT international law has the right (should they wish to) to seccede from their governing nation and form a new republic. It's not often used, but it has been used in the past when minorities living in the same region felt they were oppressed by the governmen
Rule number one free labour. If your boss pisses you off- you have the right to resign. If you can't RESIGN from a contract because you feel that you are no longer satisfied with your side of it, then that is called "indentured servitude" or more commonly - slavery, and it's banned in the constitution of every civilized country.
>How is it unjust? If you join the military (at least in the US), you did so voluntarily. You chose, of your own free will, to sign >over your time (and if need be, your health and/or life) to the military to be used as the leadership sees fit.
Idiots deserve justice too. Anyway your argument is false. When there is a draft (you've had them, we've had them) we don't exclude draftees from military law on the ground that the did NOT volunteer but were FORCED to become soldiers and give up their freedom of thought at risk of going to jail instead. Volunteering has nothing to do with it. How many people signed up for two years and are on their 5th tour ? How come you are bound to your side of the contract at pain of criminal proceedings but the government faces no penalty at all if they repeatedly and unilaterally change THEIR side of it ?
Sorry, military justice is an oxymoron. There is a REASON we don't let the judges work for the cops - only in the military is this BASIC concept of independent oversight not considered important.
>Part of being in the military means that you are on call all the time, and on the hook be called up at any moment and sent into >combat. Going and doing stupid things like getting in trouble with the law impairs your readiness to deploy, hence the additional >charges.
Tell me... have you ever heard a recruitment officer say those words ? They talk about free college for serving your country, they never tell you about selling your entire soul, your individuality and being turned into a sort of robotic trigger pulling device. If a corporation's marketing is that far from reality - we sue them for fraud.
>Don't like it? Don't sign up.
I never have, never will - because I VALUE my RIGHT to wear long hair and say "Fuck you" to my boss and walk out if I'm not happy - and if I have to give those up to 'defend it' then I've lost. The only way to defend it for ANYBODY is to defend it for EVERYBODY. That means no more soldiers with brushcuts except the ones who like it that way. Try pulling that one off... NOW try having a military with a democracy - where a soldier who DID sign up can say "I'm sorry sir, but this war we are going to now is unjust and in good conscience if you make me go, I shall refuse to ever pull a trigger for I would rather BE shot by a man defending himself from an agressor than to be that agressor" - and get to walk away without any issues ? If my boss asks me to do something my conscience does not allow, then I can do that- AND I can become a whistleblower and ensure he loses his job. He never gets so much control over my life that I end up following terrible orders with glee -because he doesn't HAVE enough authority to make me hit the torture button (I assume you know the experiment I refer to). Giving anybody such authority is ALREADY unconscienable in my book.
And don't tell me that such a military as I describe, where only volunteers show up for each BATTLE, where orders are followed only by those who agree - while others simply stay behind and where every soldier gets a say in what the battleplan will be cannot exist or work. My people had a military like that once. We fought Britain for our freedom - just like you. We beat them. They came back, for two years we beat them AGAIN. In the end the only way they could win was by killing 27 000 women and children, and shipping in soldiers till they outnumbered us more than 13 to 1. At 10 to 1 they were STILL losing - and this was the height of the British empire, that army was considered the largest and most powerful military on the planet, and we BEAT them and damn near beat them twice- WITHOUT any of the bullshit you are telling me we HAVE to have in a military. Did the peasant's revolt have drill sergeants ? Well they won right until they were betrayed by the king they followed. Did the Viking's follow orders ? But they were the most feared military force in the world for centuries.
>Human history shows that governments do the exact opposite (which is places like US have a constitution to chain the government & prevent abuses). Governments don't protect individual rights - they trample over them. The Supreme Law and a jury of the people is what protects you from government
As if the government alone is the enemy of freedom. If that was the case, abholish the government and be done with it, let the supreme court's decisions BE the law... and here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. The government's PURPOSE - the reason we consent to being governed, is to protect our rights. The limitations a constitution pus on their power is to prevent THEM abusing it - but the single biggest most grandiose mistake the American founding fathers made was to ONLY protect against government abuse. A truly free constitution should (at least aim to) protect people's rights from abuse by ANYBODY. A person, a corporation or a government. It should say "these are your rights, so inalienable that you cannot even waive them yourself voluntarily and we demand that any judge who faces a case that appears to be a waiver treat such an agreement with the jurisprudence of saying that it MUS have been signed under duress."
So you can't sign a contract giving a corporation search and siezure right (like EULA's try to do) - because the constitution says NOBODY can search you or your property without a court order. It should not be legally POSSIBLE to "consent" to a search - THEN duress can't happen.
What the police in theory is supposed to be there to do, is ensure that our rights are protected. That if somebody threatens our right to life, the government (in the form of oficers) intercedes and tries to ensure our safety. That if somebody has TAKEN your right to life, they be brought to justice to answer for that crime. That if somebody censors you from speaking your mind - they be prevented from doing so. This doesn't mean I get a free speach right to write grafiti on YOUR wall (it's your property and that's vandalism) but if I want to write "FUCK THE COPS" on my OWN wall, and my neighbour wants to demand I paint over it -I should be able to call those same policeman and insist they STOP him from attempting to censor me, and be able to do so BEFORE he uses harassment or violence.
I know we don't PRACICALLY live in that world, but that IS what the theory is meant to be (well except where I specifically point out that the theory needs these and these expansions).
>Actually, they can under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It applies to all US service members regardless of location, in and out of uniform. >I don't see why something similar wouldn't apply to other nations militiaries or other government organizations...
Because it's just about the most unjust idea since "some people may be forced to labor without reward" ? If I as a private citizen go to a bar, get drunk, get in a fight - I can reasonably expect to be charged with assault and disturbing the peace, and possibly be found guilty. The idea that I can get charged with an ADDITIONAL crime purely on the grounds of the fact that during the day I work for a branch of the government is utterly ludicrous and unjust... and people wonder why I'm a pacifist who thinks soldiers a pitiful weaklings. Nobody with any REAL courage would consent to a life of "following orders with discipline".
>Heinlein's point is a valid one - pacifists benefit from the sacrifice of thousands or millions of dead veterans, who died for their freedom, but somehow hold themselves to be morally superior to these guys who often paid the ultimate sacrifice.
No we don't. We hold ourselves morally superior to the corrupt power-mad politicians who gave the orders. How did the old anti-war protest cry in the 60's go again: "we're not against the soldiers - we're against the war".
Heinlein was a great author, with great insights into humanity and Stranger in a Strange Land was one of the greatest novels ever written, not just in SF but in the English language. He was still wrong about this.
War - by definition is depriving people of freedom. Your own soldiers of freedom of choice, freedom of thought, freedom of action. "Follow orders or go to jail for mutiny"... there is nothing heroic about then following orders.
I know one person here who, after 6 months in Angola (we had a draft at the time) was in such a state of PTSD that he shot himself in the foot because the only way he could get out of there was wounded, and the only way to stay out was to be disabled. As he himself put it: "I knew that a lifetime with a limp was better than to look into the face of another kid just like me, who is also just following orders... and pull a gun on him." Now THAT is moral bravery.
I don't respect soldiers. I pity them. I pity the fool who would voluntarily give up his power to choose about his own actions. Who would voluntarily let his free will be drilled out. Who would consent to bootcamp brainwashing so he could look at whoever his government doesn't like and just shut down the part of his brain that knows they are human. I pity him because that part cannot be shut down, it can, at best, be pushed away for a while... when it does come back, it never lets you forget, or forgive yourself. Slaves had more freedom than soldiers
I would never let anybody do that to me. I don't BELIEVE in discipline. Discipline is an illusion. But self-discipline does exist. I don't believe you prevent murder by making the punishment severe enough - that just breeds smarter murderers. You prevent murder by making people actually respect other people's right to life again. By teaching them to do the right thing "Because it is right" now because "you will get caught if you do the wrong thing.
The mistake however that both your AND Heinlein make is to think pacifists don't believe in defending yourself. That's just plain ignorant. Pacifism doesn't mean if somebody wants to stab me I have to stand there and give him a clear cut. It DOES mean I will deflect the knife if I can, I will cut him if I can't avoid it, kill him if there is no other way at all...
And I will STILL feel bad about it, still ask myself if there was SOME way I could have subdued him without spilling blood.
Of course pacifist believe in defense. One of my ancestors three most famous war heroes (Koos De La Rey) was a NOTED pacifist who actively campaigned in parliament AGAINST the war with the British -who believed that surrender was better than the bloodshed of a war, even if it meant losing our republic - we could ALWAYS get it back later some other way. But when the war was declared, he went and served as general - and when the final year of that war came and 27 000 women and children had died, he was the only one still fighting with measurable effective success. He is deemed by many to be the very first inventor of guerilla warfare. If he could have held out just another 6 months, we would have won the war - the British people were hating the parliament for the way the war was executed and whoever came into power next would HAVE to make surrendering a basic campaign promise (nobody likes being turned into a nation who massacres women and children and STILL losing).
Then the other generals who had pushed for a war against his advice surrendered - and he signed too under protest.
You do realize this was not a corporation ? It was a the police department, technically a government-run, tax-funded public service.
Isn't their JOB to PROTECT people's constitutional freedoms (like the freedom to tell a joke ?) as opposed to censoring people ?
The article doesn't say if the joke was made during working hours. If she was on the job, in uniform they could make a claim that the joke was conduct unbecoming of somebody employed in law enforcement or something, but surely when she takes that uniform off and walks out the door she's a private citizen with all the rights of such ? Soldiers can't be charged with conduct unbecoming for bad behavior unless they are in uniform, so why should it be different?
Of course this is just speculation since we don't KNOW if she was in uniform but essentially - if she was off duty, then she wasn't representing the department and if there is any "embarrassment" her behaviour it is only toward herself - so this would seem a crucial point of consideration I believe.
Everything you describe is the right of the user. "Controlling" a product is a complete and utter ethical failure. Why should tech companies have this privilege ? No OTHER companies do. They just put on a sticker saying modifications will void the warantee (fair enough) but if I want to open my microwave oven and put in a 5-times more powerful magnetron - L.G. doesn't get to tell me it's illegal to do so, or for that matter, try to build a huge titanium box around the magnetron to prevent me.
Or to use the obligatory car analogy: if I tune up my engine for higher speed, I am probably shortening it's lifespan - but the car company doesn't get to tell me it's illegal to put in a faster exhaust system. They generally won't even try too hard to stop me replacing the software on the onboard computer to adjust the timings for maximum performance. Short of safety features - no company gets to "control" how you use their products - it's against the principle of first sale (for starters, I can indeed sell my modified version - as long as I don't pretend it's unmodified [that would violate trademark law - and with good reason, it would be fraud and it's exactly what trademark law exists to prevent]).
Why the hell should tech companies get this privilege then ? Because they can claim software copyright ? Big whoop. Just because a part of a car is patented, BMW doesn't get to tell me I can't put in a different part there. It shouldn't work that way - and it's wrong that it does. Furthermore - the decision of the original authors to use the GPL clearly indicate that those authors agreed with my perspective here, so violating the spirit of that agreement is against the grounds under which you got to benefit from their work. In most countries, violating the spirit of a legal agreement is exactly as wrong as violating it's letter, the US can get confusingly literal at times though so this may not hold there.
Finally - I'm quite sure that withholding the tools required to actually install modified firmware on the device counts as breaking the GPLv3's anti-tivoization clause so if any of this software is under GPL3 or GPL2-or-later clauses - a case could be made that they are giving source while preventing the installation of modifications and that this violates the license.
>What use was it in 1938 that people - by then dead - had screwed up the peace after WW1.
Nothing at all -that's MY point. Here's how we SHOULD study history. Not only must we apply our judgement to the actions of those involved INSTEAD of the "context of the time" - we must apply that judgement to the context itself ! Then when it exceeds our expectations we can ask "how can we replicate the results" and when it falls short we can ask "how do we make sure that NEVER happens again" - NOW you're doing something USEFUL with history.
>Oh, it was Ron Hubbard who founded Scientology, *not* Robert Heinlein. File under bad, bad, bad, misguided and ill-informed.
Yes you're right, it was 3am and my memory let me down, that's not the same thing as misinformed. Nevertheless, call to authority is a falacy, so quite frankly I couldn't care WHO said it. The question is whether they were RIGHT - and I don't think he was.
>And it's useless to debate someone who would throw down his weapons and run when the Germans rolled across his border.
Well now see, I never SAID that. I said, sometimes war may be the only viable option, but it's STILL not just. The allies had no choice but to fight the axis, but the very ABSENSE of choice makes their actions unjust. World War 2 was preventable, if the peace accords after World War 1 had not been filled with retribution against the Germans, it would never have happened. World War 1 was perhaps unpreventable - but you know, how can any leader put people in a position where their average life expectancy after deployment is 47 seconds - and not think it's a horrible thing to do ? Of course it's unjust. That doesn't mean that sometimes you simply don't have any other choice. We can't live perfectly, but we can damn well try. The first step is to recognize that necessary evil is STILL evil. Only then can we reduce the necessity.
>Violence should never be a first option, but it always needs to be an option for dealing with evil, or evil will win. It's as simple as that.
Violence should not only never be a first option - it must always be the very LAST option. Even then it's still unjust, but it's forgiveable on the grounds that it's impossible to BE perfectly just in a world that isn't.
>Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty. - Robert Heinlein
You know, I actually thought we were working toward a common ground... but how on earth can I have any respect for somebody who would cite the founder of Scientology as an authority on right and wrong ? Heinlein may have had some pretty deep insights into human behavior but all he with it was to exploit it for the sake of money - he said so himself. Founding a dangerous cult, praying on people's tendency to believe what they want to - all in the name of the worlds most successful confidence trick ever played... yeah - he's a real beacon of moral justice that one.
>For example, consider that you (probably) think that hanging someone is wrong. There's this historical character X, who is an amazing guy, a paragon of virtue, and he also cleaned up his area by hanging a lot of people. You'd claim this guy was scum?
Actually - I'm in favor of the death penalty. The problem with your proposal is that it means justice is contextual, it can't be. Justice must be permanent thing, LAWS aren't always just, hence they need to be flexible and adaptable, but there was NEVER a time when owning slaves was NOT wrong, it just wasn't always illegal. I'm sure if you went back and asked any of the slaves from the cultures where it was acceptable THEY would not consider it moral or okay... context of the time or not, justice is firm and fixed. This presents no problems, because justice is incredibly simple.
>"God, save us from the Vikings" mean anything to you? I'm talking about the context of the time, not their individual morality.
All morality is individual, and at the time of the Vikings - what they did was NOBLE in the culture and context of the Norway of that time, and considered scum in most other places. So whose context wins ?
>And again, your entire rant about individuals and soldiers being haunted has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Christian doctrine regarding war. I'd summarize, but it's probably better for you to just read the official policy for yourself: http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=12206
Right and Catholic doctrine is official Christian doctrine now ? You ever heard of something called the reformation. Practically EVERY other branch of christianity disagrees with the most important parts of that doctrine (like the infallibility of the pope). I even gave you an EXAMPLE of a well known and notable branch that is entirely pacifist in doctrine.
>There's a really serious difference between a love for peace, and refusing to stop a rapist from attacking your daughter.
Strawman attack - I specifically stated that defending yourself and your loved ones with minimum required force is acceptable - you twist it as if I was proposing this. But I don't believe organised war is ever the answer, it's never just. My points about those soldiers being haunted is - they know it was wrong, because it was unjust, it's never any other way. Sometimes, it may be the only possible way forward, but that just proves how UNJUST humanity is, it doesn't make the war just. The sad thing is, even if a war was one day fought that was so perfect as to be just (something I deem logically impossible) it would STILL not be justifiable. Because the price of war is pretty much without exception far darker and more evil than the nobility of the cause can justify. Essentially, the ends never justify the means. When the means is war, it doesn't even add up.
I'm ending this now. It's useless to debate with somebody who genuinely believes that killing other people for wearing the wrong flag on their uniforms can ever be okay.
>Given my daughter's current age, it's likely that any potential grandchildren wouldn't even be born by then.
We would all have been so much happier if you could be reasonably certain of the answer either way as opposed "likely"...
I can think of about 50 different explanations of likely but since you're a father, naming any one of them will certainly get me on your foes list so I'll just leave that as an exercise for the reader.
>>It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid
>Not true. And... not true. It's a newb mistake to judge the distant past by modern morality. I studied history as well as an extra major - and you're just plain wrong. Nobody can be free of bias, it's a basic fact of human mental development, one of those biasses is our moral view - you cannot, EVER switch it off. So yes, impossible. I didn't go into it because it's irelevent to my point, but what you ARE supposed to do is be AWARE of the differences in bias of the people at the time -and be able to consider how those biases influenced their decisions. That is not the same as NOT judging by modern values. If we do that, then Vikings raping and pillaging cannot be judged against because it was NOBLE in THEIR morality ? Yes we need to be aware of the fact that they saw it as noble, and why, but we do NOT need to approve - we can and MUST be able to say "what they did was wrong even if they didn't know that".
>>That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time
>The equation of Islamic and Christian worlds/expansionism is one of the fundamental mistakes that people make these days; this is >exactly what I'm talking about. Yes, Christians weren't expansionist at all... they didn't christianise the Germanics by FORCE. The inquisition didn't happen AFTER the crucades. Face it. Expansionism is evil, no exceptions. Modern day American expansionism no less so. And the only cultures who hasn't done it at some point in their history were those who could too well remember being the victims of it very recently.
>>Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"
>Demonstrating your complete ignorance of Christian doctrine. Christians are supposed to stand up to evil, and having people >raiding your countries, kidnapping small boys, emasculating them, and sending them back at you as super soldiers IS evil.
I was raised a Christian and I know the doctrine that people SPEW. I said turn the other cheek. Don't hit back. I never said don't defend your children. But even THEN - you can't defend them UNTIL THE THREAT IS REAL - e.g. the soldier is AT YOUR DOOR - and with MINIMUM POSSIBLE FORCE. If you can leave him alive - you don't kill him. I'm a pacifist, you do know that several Christian churches are STRICTLY pacifist (some allow LESS exceptions than me) - the Quakers are a notable example. Like I said - way too many Christian churches just quietly forget the whole "love thy enemy" and "turn the other cheek" bit because it doesn't appeal to our human violent tendencies. Funny how they teach you to control sexual urges, but not the urge to kill. Same logic that has Americans sensor sex scenes much more stringently than violent movies.. because the greatest act of love is now a greater sin than the greatest act of hate. I couldn't care less if this is a CONSENSUS Christian view, I'm agnostic anyway - but I most stringently WILL stand by the belief that any Christian espousing a NON pacifist doctrine deserves to go to their hell. Jesus is NEVER recorded as resisting attacks, never recorded as hitting anybody, never recorded as ONCE engaging in ANY violence. The closest he came was the temple-merchants and even THEN he shouted and knocked over tables - he didn't so much as BRUISE any of the people there. THAT'S the example to live up to. Anything less is NOT Christianity justifiable.
This not even limited to the new Testament either. After the initial wars to conquer the holy land. David wanted to build a temple, God FORBADE him from doing so - the reason "there is too much blood on your hands". The privilege went to his son instead - who never fought a war or used it to kill a man so he could steal his wife.
Issaiah tells the Israelites that their age of warfare must come to an end - that their duty is to seek
Exactly - trademark law is supposed to be a consumer protection mechanism designed to prevent fraud. So that when I buy a product, I can be sure that the company name on the box really DID make this product, that it's not a cheap knock-off with the same branding on it. What you point out is true though, but again - the trademark in Apple Computer is used well outside the normal usage of the word - making it effectively a neoligism. I still think you can't trademark a common-use word in it's original meaning (if I'm wrong there, I would be very upset but would want to know). As you put it, you can't get a trademark on Beer Brand Beer, or for that matter Apple brand Apples.
The geekgirl trademark here seems to me to be a clear case of a trademark where the word is used in it's normal meaning, without a specific brand associated. I can see somebody starting "Geekgirl Clothing Company" - and deserving a patent. But that would allow you to stop somebody else selling a t-shirt with "Geekgirl" as it's brand-name, not from wearing a t-shirt that says "Geek girl" on it. This person isn't just trying to keep a trademark for a company named geekgirl, she is actively trying to censor other people from using the word - even going so far as to send lawyers letters to people demanding they can't use the #geekgirl tag on twitter to flag posts of interest to, well, geek girls. That is a flagrant abuse of a trademark under every legal system I know off - and exactly what trademark law is designed NOT to allow so unless Australia's trademark law is really messed up - I just don't see how she can imagine she's got the right to do that ?
> at the time by judging just their actions by modern day morality.
It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid. We're supposed to LEARN from history and not repeat it's mistakes, we can't DO that if we just say "this is why they felt justified to do what they did and that makes it okay even though it feels wrong to us." Sorry, by that logic - I should say appartheid was okay when my ancestors did it because nowhere in the WORLD were black people treated as equal back then ? No, I have the right to have expected better of them. Thus I can say "I will not repeat their thinking errors because recognize that they WERE errors". That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time, and often very cruel is without doubt, to suggest that EITHER cause was remotely just is NOT. Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"... oh right, that one is more of guideline than an actual rule right, to be followed when convenient... sorry, I don't agree - ALL wars are unjust. Sometimes they are also unavoidable, when the enemy soldier is marching down your streets, you HAVE to fight back - but even THEN it's still murder when you shoot him. The best you can say is "I had no other choice anymore." That doesn't make it okay, it just makes it forgiveable - and there's a HUGE difference.
If we don't judge the past through modern eyes, then we throw away all our progress - and we doom ourselves to repeat it. We must look at it with the critical eyes of people who have advanced further, and the humility of realising that OUR children will judge US as barbarian too - and we WILL deserve it. We can try to be less barbarian than our own ancestors.
My family will cite Guido De Bres as an example of the heroism in our religious lineage. "He died with a sword in his one hand and a bible in the other, protestant to the last" they will say. To me- he would have been a hero with JUST the bible, carrying the sword as well suggests he wasn't prepared to face the inquisition with all his trust in the book. How much blood was on that sword - how many people did he kill, who each of them, is now a hero to a Catholic family somewhere ?
To me - they are all just proof of how bloodthirsty our ancestors were, and what REALLY hurts me is watching the world repeat their mistakes. Still the animosity between the Muslims and the Christians remain and while the majority on both sides profess tolerance, the fringes who don't still rain bloodshed on us each time there is a terrorist attack, each time the US bombs another city... it gets worse, more of those who profess tolerance now start feel sympathetic toward the extremists...
Sorry, I judge by modern eyes - and I find my ancestors to come short. I find most of my CONTEMPORARIES to fall short too - and their inability to learn from history is why they do not progress. But I do think there are more people around today who HAVE learned then there were during the crusades, maybe a few more in the next generation - and that does lead to (slow) progress... of course humanity can REGRESS as well and between Bush and Osama they set us back many decades, it's going to be the great test of the early 21st century when historians look back at: did we progress again - or did we actually start regressing ? So far, it really could still go either way.
"Do you have any strong liquor, mind-altering herbs, pornography or material of a lewd and licentious nature ?" "No" "Would you like some ?" - Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies (I may not have the quotation 100% but it's close enough for slashdot).
As far as I know most trademark laws have specific restrictions to prevent abuse as a form of censorship. Trademarks are meant to be a CONSUMER protection device, not a corporate IP tool.
What's next, Intel forbidding us to use the word Intel to talk about their company ? Of course not. It's only a trademark violation if we try to call another company (in the SAME sphere of business) by that name.
So I don't see how using the word, even IF it's trademarked could be a violation.
With that said, there are other restrictions - you cannot trademark a common word (so no you can't trademark 'beer') and I think geekgirl has been in common usage for a very long time now (though I doubt the average employee of the trademark office would have heard it).
The other restrictions are not really applicable here I think (like you have to defend it or lose it).
Mind you - in most systems at least - you LOSE a trademark if it becomes common usage even AFTER it's registered. This happened in the past to both kleenex and band-aid.
I am quite sure that Cross has no legal leg to stand on and any decent lawyer ought to inform her of this fact, unless the Australian trademark law is by far the most draconian and missapplied such law I have ever heard of.
All you just said is that Lensing is evidence suggesting that the laws were always the same. Minor changes in the fundamental constants could affect many laws of physics WITHOUT affecting the law of gravity specifically.
Besides which - the actual theories suggesting it suggest a discrepency in fundamental constants immediately post big-bang, and does not put a time when it would have reached it's current values but does say that it must be a LONG time ago - it could easily be quite long enough to lie outside our lightcone, so it won't have any noticeable EFFECT on gravitational lensing... or right, on anything else - that's what "light cone" in physics means, the furthest space-time range we can detect, EVER. The universe isn't old enough for anything outside it too ever reach us.
Did you really think serious, respected cosmologists (who USED gravitational lensing to DISCOVER that the speed of galaxies is wrong) would suggest an explanation that is so easily debunked by they very thing they are trying to explain ?
Consider this. The jury is still out on blackhole singularities, with Hawking just about the only person who doesn't accept it as fact, but there is no debate about the big bang. The very CONCEPT implies a singularity. By definition there couldn't have been laws of physics BEFORE the big bang, there was no "there" for them to exist in, and no "before" for that matter. That's what makes it a singularity. Science offers no ANSWER to the question "were the laws of physics fundamental - so any universe would have the same ones ?" - it speculates but it cannot give any evidence for it. There is much (good scientific) speculation, but always with the proviso "we're trying to imagine the unimagineable, and certainly the unstudyable - so this is just an idea - no more valid than any other idea" - because it's mathematically impossible to test a theory about one side of a singularity from the other side. So at some point in the history of the universe, Planck's constant wasn't - there was no electron's for it to apply to. Then it was. We can't say exactly when that was. We can't say that if any big bang it would have the same end value. We can't say that the other fundamental constants all came into being at the same "first moment" - it could have been a billion year process. If just one of them was slightly different, or hell late in coming to be - it would affect the values of all the others. Just sticking to the "testable" stuff - early universe but POST big-bang if say the very first electrons had a slightly different value for Planck's constant (because the matter some other constants come from didn't exist yet, or because there was so much less space or something) - then the Fine Structure Constant would be changed, a lot of others that WERE around would be likewise changed. The constants are all mutually dependent. The thing is - such a thing could leave detectable evidence, but it's so long ago it is quite likely we wouldn't have found any (yet), and there is no guarantee it WOULD.
That doesn't mean it didn't HAPPEN. It also doesn't mean it DID. When we get MORE evidence about the early universe - especially that which lies beyond our lightcone (about 200 thousand light years) only THEN can we start to say "it didn't happen that way" or "turns out it did" - and when we can, we can then build new theories on top of this confirmation - but the confirmation either way could be hundreds of years away. If it's to be found at all, the evidence is probably NOT on this planet, and probably needs telescope technology way beyond anything we have to detect... maybe a space-born interferometer array would see something that confirms it either way ? Maybe some idea we've not even thought of yet - and it would say "yes" or "no" - till then, we're guessing and using indirect evidence. We know the galaxies are spinning too slowly, we have a few ideas about why - the most popular is cold dark matter - and there is other evidence that some at least could exist (it seems to bend light), but c
How the hell did my mention of some cutting edge cosmology hypothesis lead to a creationism debate... is there nothing in this world the creationists WON'T latch onto ? So I'm rather going to discuss the dragon posts - ignoring the bible stuff - because THOSE are at least slightly interesting.
>Flying lizard-like creature? I give you the Pterosaur [wikipedia.org].
Yes, erm - no mammals ever saw one, the earliest mammals were the Morganocodontids, who did live before the K/T event, but not THAT long before. Pterosaur is as far in the past of the earliest mammal as Tyranosaurus is in ours.Seems rather unlikely that racial memory from a time our ancestors were smaller than your pinky would remember the big lizards that were around at the time -and which we outlived.
>Fire breathing creature? Not quite, but the bombardier beetles [wikipedia.org] is somewhat there. It's not real fire, but getting hit by a liquid close to 100 C is going to feel like being burned. And if that compound is also acidic or caustic, it gets even worse, and anyone hit by a decent amount of it would certainly feel like they're on fire.
The fire breathing bit was never the hard part. There are numerous creatures on the planet that mix chemicals that create something very close to fire. There are many plausible evolutionary paths to that. The fact that none of them are big suggest however that either it is simply not a good trait for survival - or there just never was mutation to do that in any vertebrate. It's not that, that can't happen - it's that it just never did. Even the flying lizard bit is easy - probably not on the scale the legends drew them, but hey legends are prone to exaggeration - especially on size (what slashdotter does NOT exaggerate the size of their legendarily unused physical features ?).
>These two aren't exactly along the same evolutionary branches, but a combination of the two aren't beyond the realms of realism.
I said above that fire breathing wasn't hard - so lets see what IS hard. The hard part is this: every culture, every dragon story get the same basic body shape. A creature that has four legs AND wings. A vertebrate with six limbs. Nothing like that has EVER existed. Not in the fossil record, nor anywhere on the planet now. Birds have only TWO legs to get wings. The first vertebrate on the planet had 4 limbs, and every descendant got that basic body pattern - and the DNA evidence concurs.
Again, a mutation in DNA could produce a six-limbed vertebrate - but not a flying lizard in one jump. So you'd need a BRANCH of vertebrates with six limbs, before natural selection could refine those extra limbs into working wings. While a single species living and going extinct without leaving a fossil is statistically MORE probably than a species leaving one at all - an entire BRANCH - that level of natural selection means at least 500 thousand generations - multiple species, and never once did even ONE of them leave ANYTHING ? Unlikely. Now further - this creature is supposed to be a big reptile, so that's a fairly LATE branch-off from other vertebrates, and if humans ever saw one (and could draw it) then it must have been around until no less than 5000 years ago. The odds of THAT not leaving any fossils shrink to nearly nothing.
The dragon myth is still interesting because it's so pervasive. It occurs in every culture everywhere on earth. Even if we are generous and say it dates back more than 70-thousand years to when we were all one "race" in Africa - and this is how it got in them all (so how come NO other myth made it all the way through ? If there is something psychologically attractive to the myth - then that would be just as good evidence for it arising independently over and over - a hell of a lot of other ideas did) - that's still statistically unlikely to leave no fossil evidence but nevermind. The point is - in those cultures there are marked differences between their dragons (and a lot of what WE know as dragon stories aren't, they
Well by that definition - scratch both Rhodesia and Mozambique from your list for us.
Not to mention - we had a MAJOR regime change since those, with a new constitution - effectively an entirely new country (for starters it had new borders). THAT country has never been in a war, the only military action it's been involved in at ALL was to send a peacekeeping force to the DRC - on request of the United Nations.
Effectively - we were just the closest member of the security council and it was the UN's action, not ours.
Honestly though - I don't particularly care about the minor technicalities of what constitutes armed conflicts or not. U.S. soldiers using military or other interventions to interfere in the internal politics of a sovereign nation without express request from the citizens OF that nation counts as abuse of power in my book - and I'd say the same no matter WHAT country did it.
I say again as you keep missing it. I'm a pacifist - the ONLY time I think a soldier is allowed to shoot is when the invading soldier is ALREADY WITHIN YOUR BORDERS. Until that moment, it's not war. It's coldblooded murder.
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I do like your attitude in this post a lot more, but the facts you cite are almost all wrong (you're right, my memory let me down and I got Emily Hobhouse's name wrong... to my shame).
Allow me then - to give my source: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boer-War-Thomas-Pakenham/dp/0349104662
Written by an English historian, each page clearly showing it's genuine documented sources - it basically backs up everything I say. Rhodes may not have been a policy maker but make no mistake he had enormous power and influence - and Milner acted on his instructions -the documentation to that effect exists and can be verified.
>The first Boer war involved a few thousand Boers and about a thousand
>British soldiers, who being unprepared (untrained) for the conditions and
>terrain with which the Boers were perfectly familiar, was a predictable
>and one-sided affair. I think we have no disagreement here.
While not the description I would use, I cant' find factual fault with this assesment. Remember though - it was Britain who declared the first war.
>The second Boer war was not the same as the first. You fielded tens
>of thousands of troops, properly organised and equipped with proper
>artillery.
None of those troops had ever had military training of any kind. They were simply volunteers who answered the call. The proper artillery is true - though don't overestimate the amount, we had a total of 6 cannons for that army.
>When these failed, you turned to guerilla tactics, which the
>British countered by locking down supply lines and key infrastructure
>points and with a scorched earth policy.
They did fail - but only after Britain shipped in enough soldiers to outnumber us ten to one. That's a very key point. At every stage before that, we were winning.
It's known that we fielded child-soldiers in that war, of this I feel greatly ashamed -but in some mitigation - none of them were sent, they were mostly runaways, often orphans who insisted (and due to the lack of authority or discipline) could participate without any oversight to get rid of them. The only case where one of them was officially enlisted was one 13 year old boy (I'm sorry, I forgot his name) who went to Pretoria with his father. His father was enlisting and bringing a wagonload of farm produce to donate to the war effort. The boy was to drive the wagon home afterward. As it happened they bumped into Kruger - who heard them arguing. The boy was demanding to fight along, the father refusing.
Kruger is reported to have said: "Boy, right now there are three English soldiers for every one I got... will you shoot three Englishmen for me ?"
When the boy said yes - Kruger himself gave him special dispensation. Technically the law decreed that nobody under the age of 16 could serve.
It is not known what happened to him, and if he managed to keep his promise or even survived the war.
>Both of you fought with small
>mobile units, but that doesn't mean that they were on either side these
>undisciplined free-thinking hippies you try to paint them as.
The British never did small mobile units. Try reading up on the first, second and third wave. Their tactics was to basically send a giant line of soldiers from one side of the country swooping to the other trying to pin the boers down... the boers managed to actually get THROUGH those lines unseen repeatedly. Christiaan De Wet got his fame because all three waves were specifically intended to capture him - and he escaped every one of them.
To imagine that the boer soldiers were disciplined however is to show a complete lack of understanding of their culture. They didn't ever go through a bootcamp, schooling at that stage was limited to "can write your name". The average family would see their neighbours no more than once in three months. There was no social cohesion, and no structure. They had lived a life dependent on being able to
But that failed... that's rather the point, isn't it ?
Which bit of "I am not American" didn't you understand ?
Our most recent draft was still in my teenages, I missed it by just a few years.
You also seemed to ignore the bit about the fact that military justice is inherently flawed. Civilian justice systems figured out a very long time ago that the judiciary needs to be independent of both law-making AND law-enforcement or nobody gets a fair trial... how many military court justices are not serving members of the military then ? ... oh right NONE.
Is that actually what you believe ?
Sheez... the historical records are very clear on how wrong you are. You basically got EVERY detail wrong.
But then, I once saw a page from a British history text book that wrote "the women and children weren't put in concentration camps as part of the war of course, but to protect them from starvation on their farms with their husbands gone. The lack of resources in the camps are to blame for the deaths"
Winners tell their story. But that is just as false. The farms were doing fine. What do you think those women did when the husband got sick ? They were USED to running the farms - in that regard the Afrikaners were a very equal society, not only were the women ALLOWED to do the same jobs as the men - they were EXPECTED to.
In fact, the real reason was that during the guerilla phase of the war- those farms were constantly SUPPLYING the troops with food and shelter, burning them down and taking the women and children off the land was the only way to stop losing.
The first boer war was a small war, but Britain was hardly that unprepared -the difference is that our lose-knit tactics WORKED better, we knew the country, we knew the teritory and my ancestors were excellent marksman - it was a basic survival skill for them. They took down a soldier with every single bullet fired - and could take out a squadron before anybody even managed to see ONE of them because they were THAT good at camouflage (again - a basic survival skill in their culture).
In the second war, we repeatedly won almost every battle, in fact in the first two years of the war Britain achieved only TWO successes. They took Pretoria and they won one battle. So we laid siege to Pretoria, and also most of the cities where British folk lived - and kept winning every battle.
When it got to 10-to-1 numbers by the end of the second year - there was no POSSIBILITY anymore of winning a conventional war, so we came up with our guerilla warfare, small squads of between three and five highly mobile soldiers, working entirely indepently - raiding supply chains and taking on (and defeating) much bigger squads by being better at fighting in this country. Again - we were winning. Without the concentration camps we WOULD have won the war.
Now... as for the rest. Yes it bloody well WAS a struggle for liberation. We were NEVER British immigrants, our ancestry was predominantly Flemish, Dutch, French and German - in fact Modern day Afrikaans is so close to Flemish that I can chit-chat with Flemish people as if we're both speaking to a mothertongue speaker.
The two boer republics WERE independent republics for nearly 80 years by the time of the first boer war - and their independence had previously been recognized by Britain in 1853.
The desire for our gold and diamonds was the major reason why you decided that you now wanted to conquer these democratic republics we had built and reinstall over us the monarchic rule we had fled from more than a century before, the process that culminated in the foundation of these republics.
The major players were Alfred Milner and Cecil John Rhodes and the immigrant-question was NEVER something Britain gave a flying fuck about. It was a very good EXCUSE for war however. Recorded letters between Milner, Rhodes and the British minister of Colonies show them plotting a war of conquest - to fulfill Rhodes' dream of a railway from Cape Town to Cairo running over nothing but British soil all the way.
It was a struggle for independence. Under modern day international law, Britain would have had been considered guilty of crimes against humanity if the UN had existed then, and the very declaration of war as against international law. Sepperate geographic region, inhabited by a markedly unique culture -under CURRENT international law has the right (should they wish to) to seccede from their governing nation and form a new republic. It's not often used, but it has been used in the past when minorities living in the same region felt they were oppressed by the governmen
>Rule number one of having a job:
>Don't Piss Off Your Boss.
Rule number one free labour.
If your boss pisses you off- you have the right to resign. If you can't RESIGN from a contract because you feel that you are no longer satisfied with your side of it, then that is called "indentured servitude" or more commonly - slavery, and it's banned in the constitution of every civilized country.
>How is it unjust? If you join the military (at least in the US), you did so voluntarily. You chose, of your own free will, to sign
>over your time (and if need be, your health and/or life) to the military to be used as the leadership sees fit.
Idiots deserve justice too.
Anyway your argument is false. When there is a draft (you've had them, we've had them) we don't exclude draftees from military law on the ground that the did NOT volunteer but were FORCED to become soldiers and give up their freedom of thought at risk of going to jail instead. Volunteering has nothing to do with it.
How many people signed up for two years and are on their 5th tour ? How come you are bound to your side of the contract at pain of criminal proceedings but the government faces no penalty at all if they repeatedly and unilaterally change THEIR side of it ?
Sorry, military justice is an oxymoron. There is a REASON we don't let the judges work for the cops - only in the military is this BASIC concept of independent oversight not considered important.
>Part of being in the military means that you are on call all the time, and on the hook be called up at any moment and sent into >combat. Going and doing stupid things like getting in trouble with the law impairs your readiness to deploy, hence the additional >charges.
Tell me... have you ever heard a recruitment officer say those words ? They talk about free college for serving your country, they never tell you about selling your entire soul, your individuality and being turned into a sort of robotic trigger pulling device. If a corporation's marketing is that far from reality - we sue them for fraud.
>Don't like it? Don't sign up.
I never have, never will - because I VALUE my RIGHT to wear long hair and say "Fuck you" to my boss and walk out if I'm not happy - and if I have to give those up to 'defend it' then I've lost. The only way to defend it for ANYBODY is to defend it for EVERYBODY. That means no more soldiers with brushcuts except the ones who like it that way. Try pulling that one off... NOW try having a military with a democracy - where a soldier who DID sign up can say "I'm sorry sir, but this war we are going to now is unjust and in good conscience if you make me go, I shall refuse to ever pull a trigger for I would rather BE shot by a man defending himself from an agressor than to be that agressor" - and get to walk away without any issues ?
If my boss asks me to do something my conscience does not allow, then I can do that- AND I can become a whistleblower and ensure he loses his job. He never gets so much control over my life that I end up following terrible orders with glee -because he doesn't HAVE enough authority to make me hit the torture button (I assume you know the experiment I refer to).
Giving anybody such authority is ALREADY unconscienable in my book.
And don't tell me that such a military as I describe, where only volunteers show up for each BATTLE, where orders are followed only by those who agree - while others simply stay behind and where every soldier gets a say in what the battleplan will be cannot exist or work.
My people had a military like that once. We fought Britain for our freedom - just like you. We beat them. They came back, for two years we beat them AGAIN. In the end the only way they could win was by killing 27 000 women and children, and shipping in soldiers till they outnumbered us more than 13 to 1.
At 10 to 1 they were STILL losing - and this was the height of the British empire, that army was considered the largest and most powerful military on the planet, and we BEAT them and damn near beat them twice- WITHOUT any of the bullshit you are telling me we HAVE to have in a military.
Did the peasant's revolt have drill sergeants ? Well they won right until they were betrayed by the king they followed.
Did the Viking's follow orders ? But they were the most feared military force in the world for centuries.
History says you are wrong.
>And don't get m
>Human history shows that governments do the exact opposite (which is places like US have a constitution to chain the government & prevent abuses). Governments don't protect individual rights - they trample over them. The Supreme Law and a jury of the people is what protects you from government
As if the government alone is the enemy of freedom. If that was the case, abholish the government and be done with it, let the supreme court's decisions BE the law... and here comes the new boss, same as the old boss.
The government's PURPOSE - the reason we consent to being governed, is to protect our rights. The limitations a constitution pus on their power is to prevent THEM abusing it - but the single biggest most grandiose mistake the American founding fathers made was to ONLY protect against government abuse.
A truly free constitution should (at least aim to) protect people's rights from abuse by ANYBODY. A person, a corporation or a government. It should say "these are your rights, so inalienable that you cannot even waive them yourself voluntarily and we demand that any judge who faces a case that appears to be a waiver treat such an agreement with the jurisprudence of saying that it MUS have been signed under duress."
So you can't sign a contract giving a corporation search and siezure right (like EULA's try to do) - because the constitution says NOBODY can search you or your property without a court order. It should not be legally POSSIBLE to "consent" to a search - THEN duress can't happen.
What the police in theory is supposed to be there to do, is ensure that our rights are protected. That if somebody threatens our right to life, the government (in the form of oficers) intercedes and tries to ensure our safety. That if somebody has TAKEN your right to life, they be brought to justice to answer for that crime. That if somebody censors you from speaking your mind - they be prevented from doing so.
This doesn't mean I get a free speach right to write grafiti on YOUR wall (it's your property and that's vandalism) but if I want to write "FUCK THE COPS" on my OWN wall, and my neighbour wants to demand I paint over it -I should be able to call those same policeman and insist they STOP him from attempting to censor me, and be able to do so BEFORE he uses harassment or violence.
I know we don't PRACICALLY live in that world, but that IS what the theory is meant to be (well except where I specifically point out that the theory needs these and these expansions).
>You think the police's job is to protect people's freedoms? You must be Swedish
Okay, I was speaking purely theoretically of course...
>Actually, they can under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It applies to all US service members regardless of location, in and out of uniform.
>I don't see why something similar wouldn't apply to other nations militiaries or other government organizations...
Because it's just about the most unjust idea since "some people may be forced to labor without reward" ? If I as a private citizen go to a bar, get drunk, get in a fight - I can reasonably expect to be charged with assault and disturbing the peace, and possibly be found guilty. The idea that I can get charged with an ADDITIONAL crime purely on the grounds of the fact that during the day I work for a branch of the government is utterly ludicrous and unjust... and people wonder why I'm a pacifist who thinks soldiers a pitiful weaklings. Nobody with any REAL courage would consent to a life of "following orders with discipline".
>Heinlein's point is a valid one - pacifists benefit from the sacrifice of thousands or millions of dead veterans, who died for their freedom, but somehow hold themselves to be morally superior to these guys who often paid the ultimate sacrifice.
No we don't. We hold ourselves morally superior to the corrupt power-mad politicians who gave the orders. How did the old anti-war protest cry in the 60's go again: "we're not against the soldiers - we're against the war".
Heinlein was a great author, with great insights into humanity and Stranger in a Strange Land was one of the greatest novels ever written, not just in SF but in the English language.
He was still wrong about this.
War - by definition is depriving people of freedom. Your own soldiers of freedom of choice, freedom of thought, freedom of action. "Follow orders or go to jail for mutiny"... there is nothing heroic about then following orders.
I know one person here who, after 6 months in Angola (we had a draft at the time) was in such a state of PTSD that he shot himself in the foot because the only way he could get out of there was wounded, and the only way to stay out was to be disabled.
As he himself put it: "I knew that a lifetime with a limp was better than to look into the face of another kid just like me, who is also just following orders... and pull a gun on him."
Now THAT is moral bravery.
I don't respect soldiers. I pity them. I pity the fool who would voluntarily give up his power to choose about his own actions. Who would voluntarily let his free will be drilled out. Who would consent to bootcamp brainwashing so he could look at whoever his government doesn't like and just shut down the part of his brain that knows they are human.
I pity him because that part cannot be shut down, it can, at best, be pushed away for a while... when it does come back, it never lets you forget, or forgive yourself.
Slaves had more freedom than soldiers
I would never let anybody do that to me. I don't BELIEVE in discipline. Discipline is an illusion. But self-discipline does exist. I don't believe you prevent murder by making the punishment severe enough - that just breeds smarter murderers. You prevent murder by making people actually respect other people's right to life again. By teaching them to do the right thing "Because it is right" now because "you will get caught if you do the wrong thing.
The mistake however that both your AND Heinlein make is to think pacifists don't believe in defending yourself. That's just plain ignorant. Pacifism doesn't mean if somebody wants to stab me I have to stand there and give him a clear cut. It DOES mean I will deflect the knife if I can, I will cut him if I can't avoid it, kill him if there is no other way at all...
And I will STILL feel bad about it, still ask myself if there was SOME way I could have subdued him without spilling blood.
Of course pacifist believe in defense. One of my ancestors three most famous war heroes (Koos De La Rey) was a NOTED pacifist who actively campaigned in parliament AGAINST the war with the British -who believed that surrender was better than the bloodshed of a war, even if it meant losing our republic - we could ALWAYS get it back later some other way.
But when the war was declared, he went and served as general - and when the final year of that war came and 27 000 women and children had died, he was the only one still fighting with measurable effective success. He is deemed by many to be the very first inventor of guerilla warfare. If he could have held out just another 6 months, we would have won the war - the British people were hating the parliament for the way the war was executed and whoever came into power next would HAVE to make surrendering a basic campaign promise (nobody likes being turned into a nation who massacres women and children and STILL losing).
Then the other generals who had pushed for a war against his advice surrendered - and he signed too under protest.
Pacifists will fight if we have t
You do realize this was not a corporation ? It was a the police department, technically a government-run, tax-funded public service.
Isn't their JOB to PROTECT people's constitutional freedoms (like the freedom to tell a joke ?) as opposed to censoring people ?
The article doesn't say if the joke was made during working hours. If she was on the job, in uniform they could make a claim that the joke was conduct unbecoming of somebody employed in law enforcement or something, but surely when she takes that uniform off and walks out the door she's a private citizen with all the rights of such ?
Soldiers can't be charged with conduct unbecoming for bad behavior unless they are in uniform, so why should it be different?
Of course this is just speculation since we don't KNOW if she was in uniform but essentially - if she was off duty, then she wasn't representing the department and if there is any "embarrassment" her behaviour it is only toward herself - so this would seem a crucial point of consideration I believe.
Disclaimers: IANAL. IANAA (I Am Not An American).
Everything you describe is the right of the user. "Controlling" a product is a complete and utter ethical failure. Why should tech companies have this privilege ? No OTHER companies do. They just put on a sticker saying modifications will void the warantee (fair enough) but if I want to open my microwave oven and put in a 5-times more powerful magnetron - L.G. doesn't get to tell me it's illegal to do so, or for that matter, try to build a huge titanium box around the magnetron to prevent me.
Or to use the obligatory car analogy: if I tune up my engine for higher speed, I am probably shortening it's lifespan - but the car company doesn't get to tell me it's illegal to put in a faster exhaust system. They generally won't even try too hard to stop me replacing the software on the onboard computer to adjust the timings for maximum performance.
Short of safety features - no company gets to "control" how you use their products - it's against the principle of first sale (for starters, I can indeed sell my modified version - as long as I don't pretend it's unmodified [that would violate trademark law - and with good reason, it would be fraud and it's exactly what trademark law exists to prevent]).
Why the hell should tech companies get this privilege then ? Because they can claim software copyright ? Big whoop. Just because a part of a car is patented, BMW doesn't get to tell me I can't put in a different part there.
It shouldn't work that way - and it's wrong that it does. Furthermore - the decision of the original authors to use the GPL clearly indicate that those authors agreed with my perspective here, so violating the spirit of that agreement is against the grounds under which you got to benefit from their work. In most countries, violating the spirit of a legal agreement is exactly as wrong as violating it's letter, the US can get confusingly literal at times though so this may not hold there.
Finally - I'm quite sure that withholding the tools required to actually install modified firmware on the device counts as breaking the GPLv3's anti-tivoization clause so if any of this software is under GPL3 or GPL2-or-later clauses - a case could be made that they are giving source while preventing the installation of modifications and that this violates the license.
>What use was it in 1938 that people - by then dead - had screwed up the peace after WW1.
Nothing at all -that's MY point. Here's how we SHOULD study history. Not only must we apply our judgement to the actions of those involved INSTEAD of the "context of the time" - we must apply that judgement to the context itself ! Then when it exceeds our expectations we can ask "how can we replicate the results" and when it falls short we can ask "how do we make sure that NEVER happens again" - NOW you're doing something USEFUL with history.
>Oh, it was Ron Hubbard who founded Scientology, *not* Robert Heinlein. File under bad, bad, bad, misguided and ill-informed.
Yes you're right, it was 3am and my memory let me down, that's not the same thing as misinformed. Nevertheless, call to authority is a falacy, so quite frankly I couldn't care WHO said it. The question is whether they were RIGHT - and I don't think he was.
>And it's useless to debate someone who would throw down his weapons and run when the Germans rolled across his border.
Well now see, I never SAID that. I said, sometimes war may be the only viable option, but it's STILL not just. The allies had no choice but to fight the axis, but the very ABSENSE of choice makes their actions unjust. World War 2 was preventable, if the peace accords after World War 1 had not been filled with retribution against the Germans, it would never have happened.
World War 1 was perhaps unpreventable - but you know, how can any leader put people in a position where their average life expectancy after deployment is 47 seconds - and not think it's a horrible thing to do ? Of course it's unjust. That doesn't mean that sometimes you simply don't have any other choice. We can't live perfectly, but we can damn well try. The first step is to recognize that necessary evil is STILL evil. Only then can we reduce the necessity.
>Violence should never be a first option, but it always needs to be an option for dealing with evil, or evil will win. It's as simple as that.
Violence should not only never be a first option - it must always be the very LAST option. Even then it's still unjust, but it's forgiveable on the grounds that it's impossible to BE perfectly just in a world that isn't.
>Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay; and claims a halo for his dishonesty. - Robert Heinlein
You know, I actually thought we were working toward a common ground... but how on earth can I have any respect for somebody who would cite the founder of Scientology as an authority on right and wrong ? Heinlein may have had some pretty deep insights into human behavior but all he with it was to exploit it for the sake of money - he said so himself. Founding a dangerous cult, praying on people's tendency to believe what they want to - all in the name of the worlds most successful confidence trick ever played... yeah - he's a real beacon of moral justice that one.
>For example, consider that you (probably) think that hanging someone is wrong. There's this historical character X, who is an amazing guy, a paragon of virtue, and he also cleaned up his area by hanging a lot of people. You'd claim this guy was scum?
Actually - I'm in favor of the death penalty. The problem with your proposal is that it means justice is contextual, it can't be. Justice must be permanent thing, LAWS aren't always just, hence they need to be flexible and adaptable, but there was NEVER a time when owning slaves was NOT wrong, it just wasn't always illegal.
I'm sure if you went back and asked any of the slaves from the cultures where it was acceptable THEY would not consider it moral or okay... context of the time or not, justice is firm and fixed. This presents no problems, because justice is incredibly simple.
>"God, save us from the Vikings" mean anything to you? I'm talking about the context of the time, not their individual morality.
All morality is individual, and at the time of the Vikings - what they did was NOBLE in the culture and context of the Norway of that time, and considered scum in most other places. So whose context wins ?
>And again, your entire rant about individuals and soldiers being haunted has absolutely nothing to do with the actual Christian doctrine regarding war. I'd summarize, but it's probably better for you to just read the official policy for yourself:
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=12206
Right and Catholic doctrine is official Christian doctrine now ? You ever heard of something called the reformation. Practically EVERY other branch of christianity disagrees with the most important parts of that doctrine (like the infallibility of the pope).
I even gave you an EXAMPLE of a well known and notable branch that is entirely pacifist in doctrine.
>There's a really serious difference between a love for peace, and refusing to stop a rapist from attacking your daughter.
Strawman attack - I specifically stated that defending yourself and your loved ones with minimum required force is acceptable - you twist it as if I was proposing this. But I don't believe organised war is ever the answer, it's never just. My points about those soldiers being haunted is - they know it was wrong, because it was unjust, it's never any other way.
Sometimes, it may be the only possible way forward, but that just proves how UNJUST humanity is, it doesn't make the war just. The sad thing is, even if a war was one day fought that was so perfect as to be just (something I deem logically impossible) it would STILL not be justifiable. Because the price of war is pretty much without exception far darker and more evil than the nobility of the cause can justify.
Essentially, the ends never justify the means. When the means is war, it doesn't even add up.
I'm ending this now. It's useless to debate with somebody who genuinely believes that killing other people for wearing the wrong flag on their uniforms can ever be okay.
>Given my daughter's current age, it's likely that any potential grandchildren wouldn't even be born by then.
We would all have been so much happier if you could be reasonably certain of the answer either way as opposed "likely"...
I can think of about 50 different explanations of likely but since you're a father, naming any one of them will certainly get me on your foes list so I'll just leave that as an exercise for the reader.
>>It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid
>Not true. And... not true. It's a newb mistake to judge the distant past by modern morality.
I studied history as well as an extra major - and you're just plain wrong. Nobody can be free of bias, it's a basic fact of human mental development, one of those biasses is our moral view - you cannot, EVER switch it off. So yes, impossible.
I didn't go into it because it's irelevent to my point, but what you ARE supposed to do is be AWARE of the differences in bias of the people at the time -and be able to consider how those biases influenced their decisions. That is not the same as NOT judging by modern values. If we do that, then Vikings raping and pillaging cannot be judged against because it was NOBLE in THEIR morality ?
Yes we need to be aware of the fact that they saw it as noble, and why, but we do NOT need to approve - we can and MUST be able to say "what they did was wrong even if they didn't know that".
>>That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time
>The equation of Islamic and Christian worlds/expansionism is one of the fundamental mistakes that people make these days; this is >exactly what I'm talking about.
Yes, Christians weren't expansionist at all... they didn't christianise the Germanics by FORCE. The inquisition didn't happen AFTER the crucades. Face it. Expansionism is evil, no exceptions. Modern day American expansionism no less so. And the only cultures who hasn't done it at some point in their history were those who could too well remember being the victims of it very recently.
>>Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"
>Demonstrating your complete ignorance of Christian doctrine. Christians are supposed to stand up to evil, and having people >raiding your countries, kidnapping small boys, emasculating them, and sending them back at you as super soldiers IS evil.
I was raised a Christian and I know the doctrine that people SPEW. I said turn the other cheek. Don't hit back. I never said don't defend your children. But even THEN - you can't defend them UNTIL THE THREAT IS REAL - e.g. the soldier is AT YOUR DOOR - and with MINIMUM POSSIBLE FORCE. If you can leave him alive - you don't kill him.
I'm a pacifist, you do know that several Christian churches are STRICTLY pacifist (some allow LESS exceptions than me) - the Quakers are a notable example.
Like I said - way too many Christian churches just quietly forget the whole "love thy enemy" and "turn the other cheek" bit because it doesn't appeal to our human violent tendencies.
Funny how they teach you to control sexual urges, but not the urge to kill. Same logic that has Americans sensor sex scenes much more stringently than violent movies.. because the greatest act of love is now a greater sin than the greatest act of hate.
I couldn't care less if this is a CONSENSUS Christian view, I'm agnostic anyway - but I most stringently WILL stand by the belief that any Christian espousing a NON pacifist doctrine deserves to go to their hell.
Jesus is NEVER recorded as resisting attacks, never recorded as hitting anybody, never recorded as ONCE engaging in ANY violence. The closest he came was the temple-merchants and even THEN he shouted and knocked over tables - he didn't so much as BRUISE any of the people there. THAT'S the example to live up to. Anything less is NOT Christianity justifiable.
This not even limited to the new Testament either. After the initial wars to conquer the holy land. David wanted to build a temple, God FORBADE him from doing so - the reason "there is too much blood on your hands". The privilege went to his son instead - who never fought a war or used it to kill a man so he could steal his wife.
Issaiah tells the Israelites that their age of warfare must come to an end - that their duty is to seek
Exactly - trademark law is supposed to be a consumer protection mechanism designed to prevent fraud. So that when I buy a product, I can be sure that the company name on the box really DID make this product, that it's not a cheap knock-off with the same branding on it.
What you point out is true though, but again - the trademark in Apple Computer is used well outside the normal usage of the word - making it effectively a neoligism. I still think you can't trademark a common-use word in it's original meaning (if I'm wrong there, I would be very upset but would want to know).
As you put it, you can't get a trademark on Beer Brand Beer, or for that matter Apple brand Apples.
The geekgirl trademark here seems to me to be a clear case of a trademark where the word is used in it's normal meaning, without a specific brand associated. I can see somebody starting "Geekgirl Clothing Company" - and deserving a patent. But that would allow you to stop somebody else selling a t-shirt with "Geekgirl" as it's brand-name, not from wearing a t-shirt that says "Geek girl" on it.
This person isn't just trying to keep a trademark for a company named geekgirl, she is actively trying to censor other people from using the word - even going so far as to send lawyers letters to people demanding they can't use the #geekgirl tag on twitter to flag posts of interest to, well, geek girls.
That is a flagrant abuse of a trademark under every legal system I know off - and exactly what trademark law is designed NOT to allow so unless Australia's trademark law is really messed up - I just don't see how she can imagine she's got the right to do that ?
> at the time by judging just their actions by modern day morality.
It is humanly impossible to do anything else. Even if we could - THAT would be bad history, bad science and really stupid. We're supposed to LEARN from history and not repeat it's mistakes, we can't DO that if we just say "this is why they felt justified to do what they did and that makes it okay even though it feels wrong to us."
Sorry, by that logic - I should say appartheid was okay when my ancestors did it because nowhere in the WORLD were black people treated as equal back then ? No, I have the right to have expected better of them. Thus I can say "I will not repeat their thinking errors because recognize that they WERE errors".
That both the Islamic and Christian world were expansionist at the time, and often very cruel is without doubt, to suggest that EITHER cause was remotely just is NOT.
Even if the Islamic world HAD invaded all the way to England... isn't the Christian credo supposed to be "turn the other cheek ?"... oh right, that one is more of guideline than an actual rule right, to be followed when convenient... sorry, I don't agree - ALL wars are unjust.
Sometimes they are also unavoidable, when the enemy soldier is marching down your streets, you HAVE to fight back - but even THEN it's still murder when you shoot him. The best you can say is "I had no other choice anymore." That doesn't make it okay, it just makes it forgiveable - and there's a HUGE difference.
If we don't judge the past through modern eyes, then we throw away all our progress - and we doom ourselves to repeat it. We must look at it with the critical eyes of people who have advanced further, and the humility of realising that OUR children will judge US as barbarian too - and we WILL deserve it. We can try to be less barbarian than our own ancestors.
My family will cite Guido De Bres as an example of the heroism in our religious lineage. "He died with a sword in his one hand and a bible in the other, protestant to the last" they will say.
To me- he would have been a hero with JUST the bible, carrying the sword as well suggests he wasn't prepared to face the inquisition with all his trust in the book. How much blood was on that sword - how many people did he kill, who each of them, is now a hero to a Catholic family somewhere ?
To me - they are all just proof of how bloodthirsty our ancestors were, and what REALLY hurts me is watching the world repeat their mistakes. Still the animosity between the Muslims and the Christians remain and while the majority on both sides profess tolerance, the fringes who don't still rain bloodshed on us each time there is a terrorist attack, each time the US bombs another city... it gets worse, more of those who profess tolerance now start feel sympathetic toward the extremists...
Sorry, I judge by modern eyes - and I find my ancestors to come short. I find most of my CONTEMPORARIES to fall short too - and their inability to learn from history is why they do not progress. But I do think there are more people around today who HAVE learned then there were during the crusades, maybe a few more in the next generation - and that does lead to (slow) progress... of course humanity can REGRESS as well and between Bush and Osama they set us back many decades, it's going to be the great test of the early 21st century when historians look back at: did we progress again - or did we actually start regressing ? So far, it really could still go either way.
Heh, that reminded me of this:
"Do you have any strong liquor, mind-altering herbs, pornography or material of a lewd and licentious nature ?"
"No"
"Would you like some ?" - Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies (I may not have the quotation 100% but it's close enough for slashdot).
As far as I know most trademark laws have specific restrictions to prevent abuse as a form of censorship.
Trademarks are meant to be a CONSUMER protection device, not a corporate IP tool.
What's next, Intel forbidding us to use the word Intel to talk about their company ? Of course not. It's only a trademark violation if we try to call another company (in the SAME sphere of business) by that name.
So I don't see how using the word, even IF it's trademarked could be a violation.
With that said, there are other restrictions - you cannot trademark a common word (so no you can't trademark 'beer') and I think geekgirl has been in common usage for a very long time now (though I doubt the average employee of the trademark office would have heard it).
The other restrictions are not really applicable here I think (like you have to defend it or lose it).
Mind you - in most systems at least - you LOSE a trademark if it becomes common usage even AFTER it's registered. This happened in the past to both kleenex and band-aid.
I am quite sure that Cross has no legal leg to stand on and any decent lawyer ought to inform her of this fact, unless the Australian trademark law is by far the most draconian and missapplied such law I have ever heard of.
Heh... that's almost exactly what *I* said :P
All you just said is that Lensing is evidence suggesting that the laws were always the same. Minor changes in the fundamental constants could affect many laws of physics WITHOUT affecting the law of gravity specifically.
Besides which - the actual theories suggesting it suggest a discrepency in fundamental constants immediately post big-bang, and does not put a time when it would have reached it's current values but does say that it must be a LONG time ago - it could easily be quite long enough to lie outside our lightcone, so it won't have any noticeable EFFECT on gravitational lensing... or right, on anything else - that's what "light cone" in physics means, the furthest space-time range we can detect, EVER. The universe isn't old enough for anything outside it too ever reach us.
Did you really think serious, respected cosmologists (who USED gravitational lensing to DISCOVER that the speed of galaxies is wrong) would suggest an explanation that is so easily debunked by they very thing they are trying to explain ?
Consider this. The jury is still out on blackhole singularities, with Hawking just about the only person who doesn't accept it as fact, but there is no debate about the big bang. The very CONCEPT implies a singularity. By definition there couldn't have been laws of physics BEFORE the big bang, there was no "there" for them to exist in, and no "before" for that matter. That's what makes it a singularity. Science offers no ANSWER to the question "were the laws of physics fundamental - so any universe would have the same ones ?" - it speculates but it cannot give any evidence for it. There is much (good scientific) speculation, but always with the proviso "we're trying to imagine the unimagineable, and certainly the unstudyable - so this is just an idea - no more valid than any other idea" - because it's mathematically impossible to test a theory about one side of a singularity from the other side.
So at some point in the history of the universe, Planck's constant wasn't - there was no electron's for it to apply to. Then it was. We can't say exactly when that was. We can't say that if any big bang it would have the same end value. We can't say that the other fundamental constants all came into being at the same "first moment" - it could have been a billion year process. If just one of them was slightly different, or hell late in coming to be - it would affect the values of all the others.
Just sticking to the "testable" stuff - early universe but POST big-bang if say the very first electrons had a slightly different value for Planck's constant (because the matter some other constants come from didn't exist yet, or because there was so much less space or something) - then the Fine Structure Constant would be changed, a lot of others that WERE around would be likewise changed. The constants are all mutually dependent. The thing is - such a thing could leave detectable evidence, but it's so long ago it is quite likely we wouldn't have found any (yet), and there is no guarantee it WOULD.
That doesn't mean it didn't HAPPEN. It also doesn't mean it DID. When we get MORE evidence about the early universe - especially that which lies beyond our lightcone (about 200 thousand light years) only THEN can we start to say "it didn't happen that way" or "turns out it did" - and when we can, we can then build new theories on top of this confirmation - but the confirmation either way could be hundreds of years away. If it's to be found at all, the evidence is probably NOT on this planet, and probably needs telescope technology way beyond anything we have to detect... maybe a space-born interferometer array would see something that confirms it either way ? Maybe some idea we've not even thought of yet - and it would say "yes" or "no" - till then, we're guessing and using indirect evidence.
We know the galaxies are spinning too slowly, we have a few ideas about why - the most popular is cold dark matter - and there is other evidence that some at least could exist (it seems to bend light), but c
How the hell did my mention of some cutting edge cosmology hypothesis lead to a creationism debate ... is there nothing in this world the creationists WON'T latch onto ?
So I'm rather going to discuss the dragon posts - ignoring the bible stuff - because THOSE are at least slightly interesting.
>Flying lizard-like creature? I give you the Pterosaur [wikipedia.org].
Yes, erm - no mammals ever saw one, the earliest mammals were the Morganocodontids, who did live before the K/T event, but not THAT long before. Pterosaur is as far in the past of the earliest mammal as Tyranosaurus is in ours.Seems rather unlikely that racial memory from a time our ancestors were smaller than your pinky would remember the big lizards that were around at the time -and which we outlived.
>Fire breathing creature? Not quite, but the bombardier beetles [wikipedia.org] is somewhat there. It's not real fire, but getting hit by a liquid close to 100 C is going to feel like being burned. And if that compound is also acidic or caustic, it gets even worse, and anyone hit by a decent amount of it would certainly feel like they're on fire.
The fire breathing bit was never the hard part. There are numerous creatures on the planet that mix chemicals that create something very close to fire. There are many plausible evolutionary paths to that. The fact that none of them are big suggest however that either it is simply not a good trait for survival - or there just never was mutation to do that in any vertebrate. It's not that, that can't happen - it's that it just never did.
Even the flying lizard bit is easy - probably not on the scale the legends drew them, but hey legends are prone to exaggeration - especially on size (what slashdotter does NOT exaggerate the size of their legendarily unused physical features ?).
>These two aren't exactly along the same evolutionary branches, but a combination of the two aren't beyond the realms of realism.
I said above that fire breathing wasn't hard - so lets see what IS hard. The hard part is this: every culture, every dragon story get the same basic body shape. A creature that has four legs AND wings. A vertebrate with six limbs. Nothing like that has EVER existed. Not in the fossil record, nor anywhere on the planet now. Birds have only TWO legs to get wings. The first vertebrate on the planet had 4 limbs, and every descendant got that basic body pattern - and the DNA evidence concurs.
Again, a mutation in DNA could produce a six-limbed vertebrate - but not a flying lizard in one jump. So you'd need a BRANCH of vertebrates with six limbs, before natural selection could refine those extra limbs into working wings. While a single species living and going extinct without leaving a fossil is statistically MORE probably than a species leaving one at all - an entire BRANCH - that level of natural selection means at least 500 thousand generations - multiple species, and never once did even ONE of them leave ANYTHING ? Unlikely. Now further - this creature is supposed to be a big reptile, so that's a fairly LATE branch-off from other vertebrates, and if humans ever saw one (and could draw it) then it must have been around until no less than 5000 years ago.
The odds of THAT not leaving any fossils shrink to nearly nothing.
The dragon myth is still interesting because it's so pervasive. It occurs in every culture everywhere on earth. Even if we are generous and say it dates back more than 70-thousand years to when we were all one "race" in Africa - and this is how it got in them all (so how come NO other myth made it all the way through ? If there is something psychologically attractive to the myth - then that would be just as good evidence for it arising independently over and over - a hell of a lot of other ideas did) - that's still statistically unlikely to leave no fossil evidence but nevermind.
The point is - in those cultures there are marked differences between their dragons (and a lot of what WE know as dragon stories aren't, they
Well by that definition - scratch both Rhodesia and Mozambique from your list for us.
Not to mention - we had a MAJOR regime change since those, with a new constitution - effectively an entirely new country (for starters it had new borders).
THAT country has never been in a war, the only military action it's been involved in at ALL was to send a peacekeeping force to the DRC - on request of the United Nations.
Effectively - we were just the closest member of the security council and it was the UN's action, not ours.
Honestly though - I don't particularly care about the minor technicalities of what constitutes armed conflicts or not. U.S. soldiers using military or other interventions to interfere in the internal politics of a sovereign nation without express request from the citizens OF that nation counts as abuse of power in my book - and I'd say the same no matter WHAT country did it.
I say again as you keep missing it. I'm a pacifist - the ONLY time I think a soldier is allowed to shoot is when the invading soldier is ALREADY WITHIN YOUR BORDERS. Until that moment, it's not war. It's coldblooded murder.