Many hundreds of thousands of us hit the streets after Bush started his illegal was of aggression against Iraq in 2003, but it didn't do any good as we got little media coverage. If you want to understand why American started falling in the early 70s and is falling more rapidly now look long and hard at our corporate media. If I didn't have the internet to access world news, I'd probably be a blithering idiot too. The internet in America in the 21st century equals a shortwave in Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R. in the 20th century. THAT is why I log onto sites like slashdot and digg even though I mainly consider myself to be an activist an artist and not a techie.
The million dead is not a fallacy, it's confirmed by scientific research:
"The number is shocking and sobering. It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count. (See the complete explanation.) The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US-led invasion. This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it."
The unconscionable suffering of the Iraqi people and the quite literal trillion dollars down the drain counting long term healthcare of our soldiers and restocking military hardware most likely to steal their oil makes me angry and no I won't be quiet about it. That trillion dollars could have provided BOTH health care for all Americans AND a real high speed rail system like civilized places in Europe and Asia have. Instead we pissed away a trillion dollars killing a million people in a country where they don't want us there in first place.
Here is a further point SK the American people handed your point a of view a quite through drubbing in the elections, if I were you I'd look for a new set of talking points, American's aren't buying the interventionist line anymore when OUR own country is in such trouble. Goodbye interventionists, and good riddance!
Let's put it this way Amit if the British had, had ubiquitous surveillance with wireless linked video cameras in 1776 do you think the American Revolution would have succeeded? In order to be a free people and to be able to propagate ideas that run counter to state ideology you need some privacy. Without privacy and with continual police monitoring a rebellion against state tyranny will never reach critical mass to get off the ground. That for example is how the Chinese maintain their iron fist on their people. IMO that's why the founding fathers put the 4th Amendment in the Bill of Rights because they had, had recent experience with ongoing harassment by British spies. IMO we need a hard left paleo-con/Libertarian alliance to resist the continuing placement of police surveillance cameras everywhere. It is quite literally turning us (U.S. citizen here) into Airstrip 1 (do a google search).
I never thought I'd say this but Gins and Roses are pretty damn prescient calling their cd "Chinese Democracy."
And if the kids had been exposed to violent images like a war that has killed a million people far from removing the kids from the room we'd have a fund raising drive to support the glorious war crime committing troops, right?
Considering our society is committing war crimes and the economy is going down the drain I think the kiddies seeing a titty is the least of our worries. They are doing to learn where babies come from at some point, why are we so hung about that?
Americans need to grow up and get our priorities straight or we will continue to fall behind Europe and Asia and become a laughing stock country, no longer famous for tech but for puritan religious fanatics much like Iran.
So our gilded cages with literal police microphones in the bushes now include free wi-fi? Can I get cappuccino with that? I mean who cares none of us were using our freedom, any ways? Right?
Dumbasses! A cage isn't better just because it's gilded...
"To be like âoea bird in a gilded cageâ is to live in luxury but without freedom.."
considering that "our" President engaged in gross violations of FISA and the 4th amendment by mass illegal spying on Americans, and engaged in a war of aggression against Iraq who did nothing to us leading to a million dead in fact I was too kind to him. I sincerely hope he is tried at the Hague and found guilty of crimes against humanity and then hung from the neck until dead. That is the right amount of attention and just punishment for those who torture, abrogate the Constitution, and cause a million innocent people to die.
p.s. Thanks for directly liking to a malware executable download, nice:
Have fun being on the losing end of history, cruel douche nozzle asswipe. I sincerely hope you are posting from America as an American citizen so you can watch your neo-con edifice crumble and die and be swept into the gutter of history.
"Everyone knows that if someone is giving you millions of dollars whatever it is, it's not going to be legal."
About that you are just plain factually wrong I have lived in backwoods Oregon less than a 100 miles from where that women lives, and I can assure the average resident there has absolutely no idea what the esoteric laws are regarding international financial transactions so don't ASSume they do.
14% of American adults are functionally illiterate:
"ll over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities. [1]"
And an even larger number are educated enough to be able to barely read and function in society but would have no knowledge of international finance laws like you ASSume, or the critical capability to analysis a true document from a fraudulent one.
Your attitude of throwing the book at the most vulnerable 5th of the population rather than working to educate and uplift them smacks of a barbaric cruelty that frankly disgusts me. You are definitely getting marked as a "foe" for it is people like you who advocate kicking people when they are down that make the world an endless cruel shit hole
First Oregon is not the "south" it's the west coast.
Yes the fact she was scammed shows she doesn't have much wherewithal, and those are the people in society we ought to have compassion for, not throw the law book at in a haughty way as you were suggesting with your original post.
My point with Linux is not everyone in the U.S. is a techie and thus is going to immediately know what a Nigerian 419 scam is as she obviously didn't.
My overall point is, try having a little compassion for people different than yourself who are victims of scammers, rather than cruelly condemning them on top of there embarrassment and financial loss. Your argument is just the cyber version of the women who got raped was asking for it.
Dorks lack of social skills and empathy is not their redeeming quality I assure you.
a) Let's say there are 20,000 women here out of 2 million accounts, that would be 1% and i think it's probably more than that, but even at that number your "have no penis" statement just becomes ridiculous. It is in essence baiting tens of thousands of women to moderate you overrated. Do you really want to go that ?
b) Some of us would like to see more women in technology fields and on slashdot as well, crude sophomoric humor implying lack of penis equals bad comment is going to off putting to women who might post here. Again why go that way? It's just a pointlessly obnoxious broad bushing stereotype, and not even good humor, just weak.
Who provided concrete examples here? Who replied with a one line ad hominem smear backed with no sort of substance whatsoever? And I'm trolling!!!????? Keep spinning you are only making your self look bad.
Not everyone is upper middle class with a thoroughgoing understanding of the minutia of the law. Spend some time in places like rural Oregon where this women is from among ordinary people before you judge her for not being knowledgeable of these sorts of laws. Not everyone is like you or I a political animal that spends hours per day on the internet. Try to understand that there are people VERY different from yourself in this country and try to have some passion for their circumstances, OK?
And yes I DO know of what I speak having spent several years in rural coastal southern Oregon teaching an after school web design class in a tiny town there. And no it wasn't all bad, not only was the countryside beautiful but there were many interesting artists living in off the grid houses way before "peak oil" was a trendy buzzword. There were also a lot of "red necks" and almost none of these people were very computer literate and that's OK, IMO we are best poised to survive whatever comes down the pike if we have diverse memepool, which yes includes people who may not be able to configure Linux in a virtual machine but may know how to set up a water system from a spring, how to hunt, and how to grow a bountiful garden which may become damn useful if we run out of fossil fuel.
So in short there are MANY people living way beyond the boundaries of the map indicated by your white bread "moral compass," deal.
"If nothing else, show some concern for old people and people who are not as smart as you are."
I think this is quite literally the first compassionate response I have read in this whole long thread. The reason so many "nerds" don't have a social life is it's "cool" in the nerd sub culture to be an arrogant, unfeeling jerk. It makes me very thankful that I hang out with probably 50% social activists, 25% artists, and only 25% nerds (techno fetishists), y'all REALLY need to get out and meet some more kind hearted people.
"We need a National Dipshit Register. So these people can be flagged."
Anyone who would say such a thing ought to be the first person on said register.
Meanwhile we ought to be doing our best to educate older, trusting, naive people that there are organized scammers looking to cheat them out of their life savings. Blaming the victim is the A #1 quality of "dipshits" IMO.
Don't blame yourself though in America cruel is the new cool, sigh.
"I think it's a good thing to take resources from the stupid, and give it to the smart. And that's what's happening. Even if you do not like it.:)"
And if you can still say that if it happens to a parent, sibling, child, spouse or good friend then at least you are consistent and if not, not.
The upshot it's pretty easy to cruelly laugh at some gullible persons misfortune until some close to you is exploited. A noble society tries to uplift all it's members, not laugh at the misfortunate. It's your sort of snide glorification of cruelty that is alas all too common here in the U.S. that increasingly makes the U.S. a pariah state, which in the long run not only is immoral but actually endangers our safety when someone decides to "do something" about the cruel Americans. My assignment to you is to read some speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, and THINK (yes I'm shouting) about what they say, OK?
If you aren't ashamed of what you are posting, why are you posting AC? And yes I think you have a right to post AC and would even defend that right, but OTH an AC post generally indicates shame IMO.
"My own personal rule of thumb is to drive about 5 MPH over the posted speed, and honestly I get really ticked off if I'm stuck behind somebody not doing likewise."
In common useage driving 5 mph over the speed limit and harassing responsible people going slower is not "keep(ing) the speed down" it's called speeding and behaving like an overly aggressive yuppie douchebag.
"So we can be fairly certain that the average real cost of delivery of excellent health care runs to less than $1,500 per man, woman and child"
Which is just some bullshit figure you MADE UP without any cites whatsoever based on one INDIVIDUAL case i.e. an anecdote. Hint the plural of anecdotes is not data., and the costs of health care varies VASTLY across different demographics, I have already given the DATA that the U.S. spends a greater percentage of it's GDP which is data, get i?. Not only do you lose but you are a stupid and cruelly self centered ASSHOLE who obviously doesn't give a rats ass if other people lay sick in the gutter as long as YOU are waited on hand and foot.
Look jackass it's it's pretty simple the U.S. spends a greater percentage of it's OVERALLL GDP for fewer visits to the doctor, a much more grossly unfair and cruelly selfish system, with a greater percentage spent on administration, and lower life expectancy, what part of that do you fail to understand? Like Utah Philips said talking to a Republican is like talking to a refrigerator, the light goes on the light goes and nothing comes out of it at that didn't go in, I'm done talking to my "refrigerator. Out.
Slashdot Mirror
You are kidding, right? Please say you are kidding...
Have fun beating off to internet pr0n tonight AC I'm going out, CYA!
Many hundreds of thousands of us hit the streets after Bush started his illegal was of aggression against Iraq in 2003, but it didn't do any good as we got little media coverage. If you want to understand why American started falling in the early 70s and is falling more rapidly now look long and hard at our corporate media. If I didn't have the internet to access world news, I'd probably be a blithering idiot too. The internet in America in the 21st century equals a shortwave in Nazi Germany or the U.S.S.R. in the 20th century. THAT is why I log onto sites like slashdot and digg even though I mainly consider myself to be an activist an artist and not a techie.
The million dead is not a fallacy, it's confirmed by scientific research:
"The number is shocking and sobering.
It is at least 10 times greater than most estimates cited in the US media, yet it is based on a scientific study of violent Iraqi deaths caused by the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003.
That study, published in prestigious medical journal The Lancet, estimated that over 600,000 Iraqis had been killed as a result of the invasion as of July 2006. Iraqis have continued to be killed since then. The graphic above provides a rough daily update of this number based on a rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count. (See the complete explanation.)
The estimate that over a million Iraqis have died received independent confirmation from a prestigious British polling agency in September 2007. Opinion Research Business estimated that 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed violently since the US-led invasion.
This devastating human toll demands greater recognition. It eclipses the Rwandan genocide and our leaders are directly responsible. Little wonder they do not publicly cite it."
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
Further the Iraq people don't want us there:
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/pollindex.htm
The unconscionable suffering of the Iraqi people and the quite literal trillion dollars down the drain counting long term healthcare of our soldiers and restocking military hardware most likely to steal their oil makes me angry and no I won't be quiet about it. That trillion dollars could have provided BOTH health care for all Americans AND a real high speed rail system like civilized places in Europe and Asia have. Instead we pissed away a trillion dollars killing a million people in a country where they don't want us there in first place.
Here is a further point SK the American people handed your point a of view a quite through drubbing in the elections, if I were you I'd look for a new set of talking points, American's aren't buying the interventionist line anymore when OUR own country is in such trouble. Goodbye interventionists, and good riddance!
Good point but even images of the glorious soldiers getting medals or whatever is promoting the occupation, shrug.
Let's put it this way Amit if the British had, had ubiquitous surveillance with wireless linked video cameras in 1776 do you think the American Revolution would have succeeded? In order to be a free people and to be able to propagate ideas that run counter to state ideology you need some privacy. Without privacy and with continual police monitoring a rebellion against state tyranny will never reach critical mass to get off the ground. That for example is how the Chinese maintain their iron fist on their people. IMO that's why the founding fathers put the 4th Amendment in the Bill of Rights because they had, had recent experience with ongoing harassment by British spies. IMO we need a hard left paleo-con/Libertarian alliance to resist the continuing placement of police surveillance cameras everywhere. It is quite literally turning us (U.S. citizen here) into Airstrip 1 (do a google search).
I never thought I'd say this but Gins and Roses are pretty damn prescient calling their cd "Chinese Democracy."
And if the kids had been exposed to violent images like a war that has killed a million people far from removing the kids from the room we'd have a fund raising drive to support the glorious war crime committing troops, right?
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/13/winter_soldier/
Where the fuck are our priorities?
Considering our society is committing war crimes and the economy is going down the drain I think the kiddies seeing a titty is the least of our worries. They are doing to learn where babies come from at some point, why are we so hung about that?
http://books.google.com/books?id=-A-7d-2VpwcC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=Europe+nude+advertising&source=web&ots=Q9pqfc6bGy&sig=TMqCxpzJk3sOB5TXsvPNz9UH91M&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result
Americans need to grow up and get our priorities straight or we will continue to fall behind Europe and Asia and become a laughing stock country, no longer famous for tech but for puritan religious fanatics much like Iran.
So our gilded cages with literal police microphones in the bushes now include free wi-fi? Can I get cappuccino with that? I mean who cares none of us were using our freedom, any ways? Right?
Dumbasses! A cage isn't better just because it's gilded...
"To be like âoea bird in a gilded cageâ is to live in luxury but without freedom.."
http://www.bartleby.com/59/4/gildedcage.html
Every time another cop camera goes up you make a founding father rotate at high velocity in their grave.
P.S. Less than a third of my posts mentioned Bush on slashdot
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=mrraven+site%3Aslashdot.org&btnG=Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=
considering that "our" President engaged in gross violations of FISA and the 4th amendment by mass illegal spying on Americans, and engaged in a war of aggression against Iraq who did nothing to us leading to a million dead in fact I was too kind to him. I sincerely hope he is tried at the Hague and found guilty of crimes against humanity and then hung from the neck until dead. That is the right amount of attention and just punishment for those who torture, abrogate the Constitution, and cause a million innocent people to die.
p.s. Thanks for directly liking to a malware executable download, nice:
http://www.google.com/search?q=impulsedriven+malware&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Have fun being on the losing end of history, cruel douche nozzle asswipe. I sincerely hope you are posting from America as an American citizen so you can watch your neo-con edifice crumble and die and be swept into the gutter of history.
http://www.change.gov/
You said in an earlier post:
"Everyone knows that if someone is giving you millions of dollars whatever it is, it's not going to be legal."
About that you are just plain factually wrong I have lived in backwoods Oregon less than a 100 miles from where that women lives, and I can assure the average resident there has absolutely no idea what the esoteric laws are regarding international financial transactions so don't ASSume they do.
14% of American adults are functionally illiterate:
"ll over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities. [1]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy
And an even larger number are educated enough to be able to barely read and function in society but would have no knowledge of international finance laws like you ASSume, or the critical capability to analysis a true document from a fraudulent one.
Your attitude of throwing the book at the most vulnerable 5th of the population rather than working to educate and uplift them smacks of a barbaric cruelty that frankly disgusts me. You are definitely getting marked as a "foe" for it is people like you who advocate kicking people when they are down that make the world an endless cruel shit hole
First Oregon is not the "south" it's the west coast.
Yes the fact she was scammed shows she doesn't have much wherewithal, and those are the people in society we ought to have compassion for, not throw the law book at in a haughty way as you were suggesting with your original post.
My point with Linux is not everyone in the U.S. is a techie and thus is going to immediately know what a Nigerian 419 scam is as she obviously didn't.
My overall point is, try having a little compassion for people different than yourself who are victims of scammers, rather than cruelly condemning them on top of there embarrassment and financial loss. Your argument is just the cyber version of the women who got raped was asking for it.
Dorks lack of social skills and empathy is not their redeeming quality I assure you.
Proud of yourself sexist troll?
a) Let's say there are 20,000 women here out of 2 million accounts, that would be 1% and i think it's probably more than that, but even at that number your "have no penis" statement just becomes ridiculous. It is in essence baiting tens of thousands of women to moderate you overrated. Do you really want to go that ?
b) Some of us would like to see more women in technology fields and on slashdot as well, crude sophomoric humor implying lack of penis equals bad comment is going to off putting to women who might post here. Again why go that way? It's just a pointlessly obnoxious broad bushing stereotype, and not even good humor, just weak.
Do better, OK?
Who provided concrete examples here? Who replied with a one line ad hominem smear backed with no sort of substance whatsoever? And I'm trolling!!!????? Keep spinning you are only making your self look bad.
Not everyone is upper middle class with a thoroughgoing understanding of the minutia of the law. Spend some time in places like rural Oregon where this women is from among ordinary people before you judge her for not being knowledgeable of these sorts of laws. Not everyone is like you or I a political animal that spends hours per day on the internet. Try to understand that there are people VERY different from yourself in this country and try to have some passion for their circumstances, OK?
And yes I DO know of what I speak having spent several years in rural coastal southern Oregon teaching an after school web design class in a tiny town there. And no it wasn't all bad, not only was the countryside beautiful but there were many interesting artists living in off the grid houses way before "peak oil" was a trendy buzzword. There were also a lot of "red necks" and almost none of these people were very computer literate and that's OK, IMO we are best poised to survive whatever comes down the pike if we have diverse memepool, which yes includes people who may not be able to configure Linux in a virtual machine but may know how to set up a water system from a spring, how to hunt, and how to grow a bountiful garden which may become damn useful if we run out of fossil fuel.
So in short there are MANY people living way beyond the boundaries of the map indicated by your white bread "moral compass," deal.
@quarterbuck:
"If nothing else, show some concern for old people and people who are not as smart as you are."
I think this is quite literally the first compassionate response I have read in this whole long thread. The reason so many "nerds" don't have a social life is it's "cool" in the nerd sub culture to be an arrogant, unfeeling jerk. It makes me very thankful that I hang out with probably 50% social activists, 25% artists, and only 25% nerds (techno fetishists), y'all REALLY need to get out and meet some more kind hearted people.
Rant=over
@Dan541
"We need a National Dipshit Register. So these people can be flagged."
Anyone who would say such a thing ought to be the first person on said register.
Meanwhile we ought to be doing our best to educate older, trusting, naive people that there are organized scammers looking to cheat them out of their life savings. Blaming the victim is the A #1 quality of "dipshits" IMO.
Don't blame yourself though in America cruel is the new cool, sigh.
@Hurriacan78
"I think it's a good thing to take resources from the stupid, and give it to the smart. And that's what's happening. Even if you do not like it. :)"
And if you can still say that if it happens to a parent, sibling, child, spouse or good friend then at least you are consistent and if not, not.
The upshot it's pretty easy to cruelly laugh at some gullible persons misfortune until some close to you is exploited. A noble society tries to uplift all it's members, not laugh at the misfortunate. It's your sort of snide glorification of cruelty that is alas all too common here in the U.S. that increasingly makes the U.S. a pariah state, which in the long run not only is immoral but actually endangers our safety when someone decides to "do something" about the cruel Americans. My assignment to you is to read some speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, and THINK (yes I'm shouting) about what they say, OK?
@Free the Cowards
"If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis."
So a lot of women rate you Overrated? Are you sure you want to go that way?
Now back to your fascinating conversation about scammers...
If you aren't ashamed of what you are posting, why are you posting AC? And yes I think you have a right to post AC and would even defend that right, but OTH an AC post generally indicates shame IMO.
In this response you said:
"My own personal rule of thumb is to drive about 5 MPH over the posted speed, and honestly I get really ticked off if I'm stuck behind somebody not doing likewise."
Earlier though you said:
"I drive a small car, and keep the speed down"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=595159&cid=23940399
In common useage driving 5 mph over the speed limit and harassing responsible people going slower is not "keep(ing) the speed down" it's called speeding and behaving like an overly aggressive yuppie douchebag.
Mod parent up insightful! I am SO sick of trolls and racist bullshit
The crux of this BTW is your statement:
"So we can be fairly certain that the average real cost of delivery of excellent health care runs to less than $1,500 per man, woman and child"
Which is just some bullshit figure you MADE UP without any cites whatsoever based on one INDIVIDUAL case i.e. an anecdote. Hint the plural of anecdotes is not data., and the costs of health care varies VASTLY across different demographics, I have already given the DATA that the U.S. spends a greater percentage of it's GDP which is data, get i?. Not only do you lose but you are a stupid and cruelly self centered ASSHOLE who obviously doesn't give a rats ass if other people lay sick in the gutter as long as YOU are waited on hand and foot.
Look jackass it's it's pretty simple the U.S. spends a greater percentage of it's OVERALLL GDP for fewer visits to the doctor, a much more grossly unfair and cruelly selfish system, with a greater percentage spent on administration, and lower life expectancy, what part of that do you fail to understand? Like Utah Philips said talking to a Republican is like talking to a refrigerator, the light goes on the light goes and nothing comes out of it at that didn't go in, I'm done talking to my "refrigerator. Out.