By refusing to buy films, individuals are trying to use their moral objections to what the MPAA does to make them change their policies.
The Helms-Burton law has NOTHING to with anyone morally objecting to Fidel Castro/communism in Cuba. As the US government have recently shown by renewing trade links with China, they don't object to trading with communist countries if it helps their economy. They are simply pandering to voters in Florida, and various rich companies which are anti-Castro by carrying on a 50 year grudge. I'm sorry, but if you think that the Cuban embargo, the Helms-Burton law etc. have anything to do with a moral standpoint on the part of the US goverment, I would have to disagree completely. Immediately following the Cuban revolution, the country offered to reimburse the US for their land which was nationalised (the correct way to go about things, according to UN guidelines). Kennedy refused to talk to them. Yet now they claim the Canadian (or whatever nationality) companies are profiting from "stolen" land.
I can see your point - it's using your influence to object to something you disagree with. But I feel that the US govt. attempting to do this wrt Cuba is petty, and purely for their own advantage, not to try and improve the situation in Cuba. Feel free to disagree, but I find politics in general fairly objectionable, and so I find it fairly impossible to believe that motivation for this law was anything other than financial or political.
Apologies for being idealistic, but although I feel that individuals should have the right to use their purchasing power to attempt to influence companies/organisations, when powerful governments attempt to use their economic power to put foreign companies in a difficult position, it seems wrong to me. In my opinion economic sanctions tend to do more harm than good. There are several examples (Cuba, Iraq) where it's clear that they are only harming the poor of the country, and not the rich who actually run the place. They don't cause the people to revolt against their govt., they give more power to the govt and weaken the people. There may be cases when they do have the desired effect (depending on what you believe the desired effect is), but it's been clear for many years that this isn't the case with Cuba. And even if I agree with countries trying to get across a moral standpoint by using economic force (which as I said, I'm doubtful about in quite a few cases), I don't for a minute trust the US's motives on this one. ----------- More is happening out there than we are aware of.
Yes, it has apparently had a huge effect on the work of lots of organisations trying to do humanitarian work in Cuba. Canadian, and especially Mexican companies have been scared off by the Helms-Burton law, and closed factories in Cuba (to avoid also losing their more lucrative trade with the US), making access to cheap building materials, farming equipment etc, fairly impossible. Various projects have been hugely affected by this.
Obviously the US government aren't going to be worried about humanitarian projects in Cuba . . . who cares so long as the voters in Florida are happy? But it's still utterly disgusting.
The US government's arrogance at forcing foreign companies to stop trading with countries they have a grudge against is more than a little frightening. (The official excuse is that they are profiting from land "stolen" from the US when it was nationalised (in accordance with UN rules on the subject) in the Cuban revolution. Which was HOW long ago?) So I wouldn't worry that the US'll feel unable to touch MS if they leave the country. ----------- More is happening out there than we are aware of.
(First, a disclaimer: I'm only a physics student, so feel free to correct me if I'm getting this wrong.)
As far as I can remember (and I'm too lazy to find my cosmology lecture notes), inflation was originally proposed by Alan Guth, then Linde sorted out some of the maths to make it work properly . . .
More importantly, inflation theory *does* predict a flat universe, but this isn't necessarily the same as one with zero cosmological constant. The cosmological constant is a term proposed by Einstein in order for his equations of general relativity to hold for a universe that wasn't expanding. When it was discovered that the universe *was*, the term was neglected and assumed to be zero. Whether or not the universe is flat is to do with the value of omega-nought, the density parameter, which is something different.
However there are various problems with inflationary theory and cold dark matter models (for example models predict much higher velocities of galaxies than are observed), and one way of solving these is to use a non-zero cosmological constant, whcih helps with the problem of there not being enough density. Although a non-zero cosmological constant is still a fairly unlikely possibility, this study does not say that the cosmological constant is zero. In fact if you read the Nature article, they used values of the constant between 0 and 1.
-Judith
----------- More is happening out there than we are aware of.
Slashdot Mirror
By refusing to buy films, individuals are trying to use their moral objections to what the MPAA does to make them change their policies.
The Helms-Burton law has NOTHING to with anyone morally objecting to Fidel Castro/communism in Cuba. As the US government have recently shown by renewing trade links with China, they don't object to trading with communist countries if it helps their economy. They are simply pandering to voters in Florida, and various rich companies which are anti-Castro by carrying on a 50 year grudge. I'm sorry, but if you think that the Cuban embargo, the Helms-Burton law etc. have anything to do with a moral standpoint on the part of the US goverment, I would have to disagree completely. Immediately following the Cuban revolution, the country offered to reimburse the US for their land which was nationalised (the correct way to go about things, according to UN guidelines). Kennedy refused to talk to them. Yet now they claim the Canadian (or whatever nationality) companies are profiting from "stolen" land.
I can see your point - it's using your influence to object to something you disagree with. But I feel that the US govt. attempting to do this wrt Cuba is petty, and purely for their own advantage, not to try and improve the situation in Cuba. Feel free to disagree, but I find politics in general fairly objectionable, and so I find it fairly impossible to believe that motivation for this law was anything other than financial or political.
Apologies for being idealistic, but although I feel that individuals should have the right to use their purchasing power to attempt to influence companies/organisations, when powerful governments attempt to use their economic power to put foreign companies in a difficult position, it seems wrong to me. In my opinion economic sanctions tend to do more harm than good. There are several examples (Cuba, Iraq) where it's clear that they are only harming the poor of the country, and not the rich who actually run the place. They don't cause the people to revolt against their govt., they give more power to the govt and weaken the people. There may be cases when they do have the desired effect (depending on what you believe the desired effect is), but it's been clear for many years that this isn't the case with Cuba. And even if I agree with countries trying to get across a moral standpoint by using economic force (which as I said, I'm doubtful about in quite a few cases), I don't for a minute trust the US's motives on this one.
-----------
More is happening out there than we are aware of.
Yes, it has apparently had a huge effect on the work of lots of organisations trying to do humanitarian work in Cuba. Canadian, and especially Mexican companies have been scared off by the Helms-Burton law, and closed factories in Cuba (to avoid also losing their more lucrative trade with the US), making access to cheap building materials, farming equipment etc, fairly impossible. Various projects have been hugely affected by this.
Obviously the US government aren't going to be worried about humanitarian projects in Cuba . . . who cares so long as the voters in Florida are happy? But it's still utterly disgusting.
The US government's arrogance at forcing foreign companies to stop trading with countries they have a grudge against is more than a little frightening. (The official excuse is that they are profiting from land "stolen" from the US when it was nationalised (in accordance with UN rules on the subject) in the Cuban revolution. Which was HOW long ago?) So I wouldn't worry that the US'll feel unable to touch MS if they leave the country.
-----------
More is happening out there than we are aware of.
(First, a disclaimer: I'm only a physics student, so feel free to correct me if I'm getting this wrong.)
As far as I can remember (and I'm too lazy to find my cosmology lecture notes), inflation was originally proposed by Alan Guth, then Linde sorted out some of the maths to make it work properly . . .
More importantly, inflation theory *does* predict a flat universe, but this isn't necessarily the same as one with zero cosmological constant. The cosmological constant is a term proposed by Einstein in order for his equations of general relativity to hold for a universe that wasn't expanding. When it was discovered that the universe *was*, the term was neglected and assumed to be zero. Whether or not the universe is flat is to do with the value of omega-nought, the density parameter, which is something different.
However there are various problems with inflationary theory and cold dark matter models (for example models predict much higher velocities of galaxies than are observed), and one way of solving these is to use a non-zero cosmological constant, whcih helps with the problem of there not being enough density. Although a non-zero cosmological constant is still a fairly unlikely possibility, this study does not say that the cosmological constant is zero. In fact if you read the Nature article, they used values of the constant between 0 and 1.
-Judith
-----------
More is happening out there than we are aware of.