" Terrorism is the use of mass murder, industrial sabotage, and threats of same to achieve political ends, usually calculated to promote fear in a target population."
Murder? Check- the wanton deliberate and reckless taking of human life, in this case to further political and economic ends. The only part of this that anyone can dispute is "deliberate" .
It's not really that relevant whether they *mean* to kill hundreds of millions or not btw. Doing so is still manslaughter.
But I hold that it IS deliberate. I hold that inside themselves these individuals believe on balance that what they are promulgating is *wrong*. These are people with variously, oppositional-defiant personality disorder and extremist political and racial views . It's not a coincidence that global warming deniers are also that segment of the population who are right wing and racist. For both cases, the death of large numbers of other people is a trifling thing. For oppostional defiant personality types, the ONLY thing that matters is defying authority. That is the unconscious, ultimate good and nothing else matters, everything else is rationalized.
For the extremist political reactionaries at FOX and Forbes, the death of a lot of undesirable people in Africa and elsewhere is not something to particularly worry about and even more specifically if the US government can be overthrown through the device of bankrupting it or undermining general social order, then that's a good way to achieve their ends- the reordering of all of society to their liking.
It's not insignificant that Koch when he was running on the Libertarian ticket for VP espoused the disbanding of the CIA the FBI and nearly all of national security. He means to topple this nation as it is through any device he can. He gave up on politics (libertarians get about 2% of the vote in any general election) and has has happened across a lucky fact- if we do nothing about climate change, human civilization as we know it will simply unravel. In the resulting "what's left" , he'll be able to build a new world. This is how insane psychopaths reason. This is what goes on in their imaginations. Just as completely ordinary mainstream you work next to them Christians long for the Apocalypse and the wanton destruction and mass death that event entails, so also do other delusionists imagine that at the end of civilization its THEY and THEIR cronies who will be imposing order on THEIR new world.
Ditto FoxNews and Forbes. They know they're lying, they are consciously or barely-unconsciously aware they're acting in bad faith. People doing this should note with fear - a near future lie detector will definitely nail. Lying to yourself is not an undetectable, no-cost / no signal activity. We really want to get there. This is very very heavily funded. We're are getting there. It's coming.
Don't kid yourself, these people are deliberately building a bomb called "catastrophic climate change" and they mean to set it off.
That my friend is murder and if we have to expand the definition of murder to include it, we 'll do that.
Criminals think they're cleverer than the rest of society. Criminals believe they have a loophole in the law through which they can smuggle their criminal activity. The thing is, laws go wherever criminals lead. If criminals try to do X to harm society, then the law will go there. If they try Y, then the law will go there. It's criminals who ultimately decide through their chosen conduct what laws are created by society and what is counted as a criminal act, not visa-versa. The law is not static, and can even e retroactive if needed because the law is there to serve a purpose- to stop and punish anti-social behavior however it manifests itself. And we will do that, have no doubt.
The other idea of "being positive" has exactly zero effect on people like Koch Fox Murdoch Forbes and those who would follow them. What you're saying is get more people on your side by sounding positive. Has that worked y
Average 2008â"2011 emissions in EU-15 were 11 % lower than the base-year level, below the Kyoto target of -8 % for the period 2008â"2012. In the sectors not covered by the EU ETS, emissions were lower than their respective target, by an amount equivalent to 1.7 % of base-year emissions.
LULUCF activities are
expected to decrease net emissions by an annual amount equivalent to 1.4 % of base-year level emissions. EU-15 intends to use the flexible mechanisms at
government level by acquiring an amount of Kyoto units equivalent to 2 % of base-year emissions per year.
Taking all these effects into account, average
emissions in the sectors not covered by the EU ETS in EU-15 were standing below their target level, by a gap representing 4.9 % of the base-year emissions.
The EU-15 was therefore on track towards its Kyoto target by the end of 2011. However, to ensure that the EU-15 reaches its common target, all of its Member
States must achieve their respective burden-sharing target. Excess Kyoto units resulting from overachievement by some countries might not be available to the
EU-15 for achieving compliance.
Oh I get it, you're not a "word and concept type " person. You need pictograms. Well, fortunately I have some handy:
That pretty much says , well, golly if it doesn't say EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you were saying.
Do you ever get sick of being just plain wrong. I mean I know we're all writing in persistent-anonymous identities and what not but... aren't you ashamed to show your persistent identity on line after you get caught out telling whale-size, exact-opposite-from-reality whoppers like that?
Just asking to get a datapoint for my little self-imposed project to try to understand the psychology behind denialism, especially the "I'm not a denier" type of denialism.
Yeah the individual judges on lower courts can say stuff like this:
"The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance," Callahan wrote.
but look at the grilling law enforcement got today from SCOTUS on just this very topic involving some 12 lbs of Merry Juana and a drug sniffing dog who was (legally) at the front door of the private residence. IT doesn't seem to be going so well for law enforcement.
Hey,. I have a idea. Why not have special rules for TERRORIST activity and any pot or dead bodies discovered are just inadmissible. Somewhere some part of what we have has to be made less than textbook perfect. Do you want that less than perfection to come at the cost of a terrorist attack, or a pot grower / criminal-->other and your civil liberties? I say let the criminal->other get away with it and nail the terrorist. It's not an easy decision but we don't get to pick and choose what we decide between.
I meant to say you should consult Wikipedia if you want to see what Kyoto and Copenhagen require of their signatories.
Just to put some more meat on the bones of this conversation, here's what 4 degree centigrade means to the earth- and remember, that is a number LESS than the one we're on track for today.
. That has nothing to do with "deniers". It has everything to do with the fact that India and China (and many other developing nations) have other priorities at this time.
Yeah what's going on is that China and India made a reasonable argument that they're not responsible for the C02 currently in the atmosphere, which is historically true, and wanted those responsible- Europe and America to take the lead cleaning up the mess they made with themselves making a smaller contribution. This makes sense since the US hs the most resources with which to implement reductions and cap and trade - a formerly Republican idea- was a viable economically palatable method through which the required reductions could be achieved. The rest of the world agreed. The US is now the sole non-signatory to Kyoto, thanks t the Republican opposition to cap and trade which they call "big government" and "socialism" .
In Copenhagen we have a world-wide agreement with definite targets but it is non-binding. This is what deal making looks like, it's what deal making has always looked like. It's not to my taste and I find it distressing however, it is what it is nad the process does lead to progress and agreements.
The question is not "will the world agree"?" The question is "will conservatives in America forestall necessary action for so long that the world spirals down into an unrecoverable abyss through some mechanism we either do or do not understand as of today.
So it's not true that China and India are "going their own way" or anything else. If you want to see what Kyoto and Copenhagen required of the signatories- of which China and India are both members "
It's a nonsensical argument anyway. If everyone is throwing grenades up in the air endangering everyone including themselves, the first thing you do is stop throwing grenades yourself irrespective of what others do.
Definition of "ideologically crazed"- a group of people who systematically deny reality. In this case, human civilization threatening reality.
What reality are they denying? The reality that either we will take world-wide coordinated action against carbon-induced climate change or we will extinguish human civilization.
That's pretty much the definition of a terrorist. Think the al Queda true believers didn't think they had a point to what they were doing? Who cares WHY a terrorist acts the way a terrorist acts? Who cares if,in their view , they're terrorists or that what they're doing qualifies as terrorism?
Charles Manson will give you a long elaborate argument about the rightness of his actions too. So what.
What you can't accept is that about 25% of this nation is taking action which will surely result in the destruction of the earth and human civilization. That's not hyperbole, that's not a melodramatic characterization of some social issue; that's a plain fact.
You can't reconcile that your crazy FoxNews - Limbaugh listening uncle Larry is going to be directly responsible for the end of human civilization. It's too big a jump. He's just harmless old man. But the fact is that there is nothing stopping us from taking the action we need to take EXCEPT the uncle Larrys of the world and the financiers and think tanks and media personalities that stoke their false beliefs.
The wretches at the CATO Institute and the Koch Brothers and psychotic, sociopathic scum at the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks and Fortune Magazine and the WSJ and Grover Norquist and Limbaugh and all the other professional deniers and merchants of genocide and their mouthpieces will end their lives on the business side of a hemp rope provided courtesy of the very United States Government they so loathe. They're the dead enders, people whose fates are sealed and whose recorded voices and writings are all anyone needs to convict them.
But it's more than the professional subhuman filth that is involved. It's civil war we're hurtling towards, thanks to your uncle Larry. When the world wide crop failures come, when the terrorists start their recruiting in earnest around American's denial of climate change and anti-American antipathy becomes a global tidal wave manifesting as humans from every corner of the earth wanting one thing and one thing only, to destroy this nation, when the full hell is unleashed because of fools like your uncle Larry and his jackassian evaluation of his own scientific credentials, then you'll see that people like me who you always regarded as over the top were in fact just telling you a truth you didn't want to hear.
Your uncle Larry is a genocidal maniac whether he believes that about himself, whether he intends that to be true about himself, or not.
The bloodiest most vicious wars in history are civil wars. Each side has exhausted sympathy with the other and every attempt at rational reconciliation has been played out, ad infinitum. Generally people can't wait for the killing to start and it's completely merciless when it does. That's what we're hurtling towards. You hate me and hate my voice and you hate what I'm saying and the way I'm saying it but has something else worked so far? How's that new scientific study influencing the other side ? It's me and not you who is actually provoking people to feel the fear they need to feel in order to act, who's painting the picture of our shared and certain future which we are ignoring because it makes us feel unhappy inside.
If rational argument was going to work, then it would have worked already. The rational debate is now 40 years old. Meanwhile, about 50% of the electorate is gearing up to vote a denier into the office of the Presidency from whence he will begin to build out the Keystone pipeline and seal all our fates absent the event of some technological miracle.
Deniers need to hear what the deal is. The deal is reality is going
And, naturally, it's planned to use a domestically developed MIPS processor
Because they're not going to let us do to them what they know they've done to us.
Hey free trade everybody.. get your free trade riiiight over here! Free movement of goods services and people... hey... whatsamatter with you??? Doncha' love FREEDOM????
This raises the question: can Google influence the elections even more than it already does via lobbying?
You're in John Birch territory now. Explain to the uninitiated how informing people who they can vote for and where is "influencing the elections" like lobbying for a cause does.
Is it perhaps because when it's easy for citizens to vote, the *wrong* people end up going to the polls and voting for the *wrong* policies?
This is the kind of headline that gets through Slashdot now? This is what we are now?
I think the previous poster was referring to the fact that what we have is socialism for corporations.
The difference between France and other nations with lower cost, better outcome health care systems is they control costs also. In the US, hospitals are forced to charge to make up for the uninsured (which is why car insurance is mandatory, otherwise the system doesn't work) and insurance companies charge whatever they want , as do doctors. A little known fact is it was doctors who opposed prior attempts to socialize medicine- no one was going to tell them what they can charge .
As the actual story unraveled in history however, it was the insurance companies who got the upper hand on the doctors. That makes sense- doctors aren't singularly and only dedicated to finding ways to gain power and money by inserting themselves into a high-dollar system as a middle man with the power of the purse on one side and the ability to define benefits on the other, based on a guaranteed income stream with no upper bound.
In Japan doctors are solidly and assuredly middle class, but not rich, not making 500k or even 150k a year. That's because the government at every instance controls costs, Ditto elsewhere. Some Americans consider that unAmerican and against our self image. Unfortunately the realities and contingencies of a heath care system do not feel the need to comply with national myths .
In the US, a lot of people go into medicine mainly for the prestige and to make a pile of moolah.
If it's really just snippets of a larger value proposition that people are allegedly willing to pay for, then I think this is better known elsewhere in the world as "free advertising".
Sorry France. Love your healthcare system, but this is just silly.
The thing is, if you decide that you're going to demand a better quality of life, they'll just import labor . The bounty of the haves does indeed depend on the desperation of the have nots.
They know how to leverage those have-nots against you, specifically, those have nots want your job and will work 14 hours a day if you give it to them.
Then in 6 -10 years time they'll return to homeland exchange-rate adjusted multi-millionaires.
For DECADES now workers have raised their productivity year over year and now it's into the stratosphere relative to the 80s and what have they seen for their labor? Declining living standards. .
The only way anything is going to change is if people who want that change can make a competitive statement in the marketplace . IT's also going to take governmental action, as it always does. Programmers fancy themselves too smart and fast moving for slow government to do them any good but the fact is we have an even semi-tolerable society b/c of progressive legislation passed throughout the decades. You have to prevail upon your Congressmen for stuff like fair pay for women, maternity leave, limit to working hours, health benefits, paid vacations and personal time, child care, all the fairness and quality of life shit that Americans totally lack compared to say Germany whose fantastic goods we can't stop yearning for and whose progressive workplace policies and productivity is second to none...
It's a defective culture of sociopathy where every company sees both its customers and its employees as nothing but marks to be lied to exploited and shaken down for as much financial gain as possible.
It's not a ding on SV, it's a report from the trenches in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. . This is how it is. No one trusts anyone and no one is trustworthy either. There is zero comroderie that doesn't blow over with the first sign of shifting political winds. IT's one of the most disgusting atmospheres imaginable.
A few things I learned working here : corporations are like Darwinistic experiments in evolving and promoting sociopaths.
I will never hire anyone who has been in a position of management with a corporation for years.
I have no interest in incubators, VC or any of the other trappings of SV which are supposedly dedicated to helping entrepreneurs. Thanks. See ya.
I will think long and hard about hiring anyone who has been an engineer in a large corporation for a prolonged period of time. Long and hard. Sorry.
For having this much money, SV is basically a long series of yesteryear strip malls with very very very expensive houses most of which were built in the 50s and go for , oh, about 5-8 times their value elsewhere in the country, which is to say their actual worth.
Yeah you're just an idiot. No one killed anyone BECAUSE they were atheists.
People kill each other over IRRATIONAL BELIEF SYSTEMS . Maoists , Christians , Muslims, Communists , Nazis. Humanism, which defines morality in terms of human happiness and human benefit and science - which is the exact opposite of an irrational belief system, are the only things that don't inherently seek to kill people . Your fucking Bronze-age religion does not qualify as either of those.
If that weren't enough to rebut your exceedingly stupid, jingoistic point -which it is - atheism as an idea has been around at best a 100 plus years . Prior to that time nearly ALL killing was done in the name of the Big Three religions. The body count there is inestimable to say nothing of the sheer amount of human suffering that's gone on in the Abrahamic religion's names.
Just because SOME religions use coercion or violence, does not mean all do
Dude, that is the most historically ignorant statement ever committed to a HTML textbox.
Try reading world history from about 300 AD forward if you want some idea about the staggering amount of blood Christianity has spilled in its name. It's ANYTHING but a peaceful religion. The fact that it's natural tendencies are being suppressed by the overwhelming force of our secular society says NOTHING about what it would do if it could. Just a few hundred years ago they were still doing what they had always done up to that time, killing people for not believing in JEEEEEEZUS!!!!
Saying Christianity is a peaceful religion which doesn't use coercion is like saying Charles Manson is a peaceful fellow who means no one any harm because he's lately been locked up in jail.
Yeah buddy all you're doing is picking and choosing the passages to take literally and the passages to take figuratively and the passages to take historically and applying "God's meaning "of whatever fits the later two to suit yourself and your predispositions, so that by the end of that involved , tailored,, bespoke process of engineering you have what amounts to your own personalized version of Christianity with the following properties: P>
1) It makes you feel good about yourself (you're going to heaven) , if you try as much as you're inclined to try, which may be a not-inconsiderable amount.
2) It does nothing to combat the sick, diseased, science-denying Apocalyptic-yearning (yearning for all of humanity's fiery destruction) version of the same religion that about 40% of the American populace subscribes to, instead it bolsters the legitimacy of same.
3) It promulgates the superstitious moronic notion that there's a fucking Santa God who reads your mind on, like, an ongoing basis and judges you by what he finds there , by your intentions, basically setting the stage for a subjective evaluation of good and evil whereby no matter how much bad someone does or how much suffering they inflict they can always find both an excuse and room for forgiveness for themselves in their own minds by "getting right with God"- which is nothing more than an exercise in pure solopsism.
4)) Wastes your life dedicating the majority of your consciousness and best energy to nothing more than a false belief.
And you call yourself:"moral". What you are is an undeveloped, ignorant self-serving ape with so little , curiosity, courage and intellectual honesty you can get yourself to believe anything anything at all...
And you think everyone shoudl follow you.
Incorrect. When Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself", no exception was made for those committing specific sins. I may think someone a sinner and still follow the tenets of christian charity.
Wherever you are getting your information on the bible is either deliberately lying to you or else is ignorant; either way I suggest you rely on your own reading of the bible, not someone else's.
Incorrect. Wherever you are getting your information on the bible is either deliberately lying to you or else is ignorant. Either way I suggest you Google for contrary opinions who will support their position with plain quotes from the Bible. It's not a love fest,in fact, it's a work of supreme cruelty advocating amongst other things slavery, genocide, killing innocent children
(Exodus 21:15 "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.")
and murdering people of other faiths because they don't believe in Him
Kings 20:28 "And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
(20:28) "A man of God... said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD."
(20:29) "The children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day."
Christianity and other irrational belief systems like Communism and Maoism and Nazism have killed hundreds of millions of people over the years. Basing your morality on a Bronze Age book filled with Bronze-Age ideas about the nature of reality authored by and about sheep and goat herders from that time . Many of the Bible's authors can be presumed to have been suffering from chronic malnutrition and the chronic confusion and epileptic-like rage, that condition subtends,. They also certainly suffered from various mental illnesses including schizophrenia (hearing voices, seeing visions ) .
So how any adult today can base their morality on that politically-pieced together collection of insane rantings and fairy tales and still consider themselves to be responsible is the only real mystery surrounding the Bible.
"This isn't something to become angry about or fight against."
Wrong . Completely and totally wrong. It is something to become angry and fight against because ideas and the beliefs they engender in people have consequences. They vote and they take over school boards and they run for office. Take a look at our exciting national debate about rape this election season and tell me that fringey, quirky religious ideas aren't something to fight against.
I get your point, but it's so ivory tower and just plain counter-factual it makes me dizzy. There is no fire wall between what the people in a nation believe... what they acknowledge as their moral and philosophical ground and how they ultimately legislate.
If you are left with only desperately trying to convince them by the time they're getting ready to legislate, you've already lost your democracy to a theocracy.
What do Libertarians, Maoists, Stalinists, Communists, Nazis, and the Big Three religions all have in common? Just this- they want to impose their irrational belief system on the real world. It's not right against left, or Commie against capitalism or Libertarians against statists.. it's irrational belief systems against the Enlightenment, against Humanism, against science, against rational humans.
Riiiiiiight..... because there's a moral equivalence between people who hate others because they hold contrary opinions on this or that social issue and people who hate others because the actions of those other people lead directly and indisputably to the death of millions of innocent people.
You need to read history. What yo're saying is exactly what the South said during the run up to the Civil War. What they said was- we are not convinced. We are of the (then scientific / religious) belief that Negroes are not human. We do not believe as you do and you must either convince us of your side through rational arguments or do nothing about slavery.
This is what every cult that wants to impose its alternative-reality on main stream society says. "Hey, you can't prove you're right. We are not convinced., We dissent. We have a right to dissent and a right to live as we see fit.You cannot impose your will upon us! It's immoral.
That's why the South called the Civil War the "War of Norther Aggression". Because they were just living their lives, and conducting their affairs as their belief system bid. Then the North came along and provoked them and would not leave them be.
You need to read history if you think the "we are not convinced, Sir. " meme bear any weight.
People act like their religion is a diagnosis of cancer or something As soon as they announce it, etiquette requires that their belief be treated tenderly. Not a chance. Not when you're delusional shit for brains belief system threatens the existence of me and my family. Get ready for it, fundie fucktard.. Fuckin' have some...
Climate scientists are routinely subjected to death threats t themselves and their families by the people you now claim just want a rational debate. They are subject to politically motivated FOIA searches, public ridicule and accusations that they are lying, corrupt, faking data. They have their emails stolen and their personal lives wrecked through constant harassment. All that is now SOP for the right wing lunatic deniers. The Glenn Becks. The Koch brothers. Murdoch. The Cucinellis. FoxNews employees. Lord Monckton. The Heritage Foundation the religious right Ayn Rand amphetamine addicts et al....
So you've got to be kidding.
The rational debate you want has been happening for the past 30 years, in scientific journals and at symposiums and conferences where rational debate on technical matters occurs. Did they join it? Can they understand it, or do they just tell themselves they can? If you can't understand the arguments then you need to listen to experts who can. That's the nature of modern society; that's reality. And when 97% of all qualified experts agree , then that is a bright clear line on the other side of which lies willful and deliberate manslaughter and murder. Just ask any court how it works.
Just because someone can't accept reality doesn't mean they are exempt from the morality that applies to their judgement and actions which issue as a consequence of their reality denial.
If I am thoroughly convinced I can perform brain surgery and fake my way into an operation, I can expect to be prosecuted when I am outed. Ditto Lord Monckton and the Koch Brothers and all the wretched animals at the Heritage Foundation.
It's not about rational debate, it's not about convincing anyone through data or studies or the application scientific method . We know that because, as human society defines that process,- and it is human society that gets to define that process and not the right wing- that has already taken place .
Don't like the outcome? Tough shit.
Here's the game they're playing.: "You can't prove it. " . You can't prove I was lying. You can't prove I didn't believe my own horseshit. You can't prove that I was not perfectly conscious of the fact that the position I was espousing was contrary to reality. I'm safe inside my own brain where only I know the truth. So you can't prosecute me, because I 'm entitled to my opinion.
But you know what ? People make laws. They make laws with the directed and specific purpose of punishing anti-social behavior that harms other innocent humans. We call that behavior "criminal". and it's criminals- through their actions- who ultimately decide what laws we write into existence for the sole purpose of stopping and punishing them.
What these people believe is that law is something which will not pursue them wherever they go, whatever they do irrespective of the real world consequences their actions have on humanity.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
In Nuremberg we hung Germans for breaking laws we made up after the fact - ex post facto lawmaking- specifically to address their crimes. They also thought they were in some sort of legal safe harbor, since what they had done they had done to their own citizens acting as agents of a sovereign nation. And they were right. That is until the day we decided they were wrong. On that day, we made up a new crime -Crimes Against Humanity. Then we tried them for it. Then we hung them for breaking it.
It's criminals who decide what behavior comes to be seen as criminal. The delusion that the law will not, cannot for some reason follow you THERE is just that- a delusion.
It's a great and important tool for policy makers to be able to crunch this magnitude of data, but not being able to do this is not the problem wrt climate change.
The problem is purely political, specifically, American conservatives are denying this science the same way they deny the science of evolution, the same way they deny the overwhelming proof that smoking causes cancer and second hand smoke does the same, the same way they denied CFCs caused a hole in the ozone layer and risked all our lives on that occasion also.
On the one hand you have hard working, selfless scientists who at this point are sacrificing their personal lives, financial security, their sanity and risking literal criminal prosecution from out-of-control attorneys generals who are drunk blind on power and dieology to continue to speak the truth, Cassandra-fashion, to a heedless and reckless nation.
On the other you have people who have never worked a day in their lives to earn the just authority to advise and inform Congress on this topic nevertheless holding forth, just stealing the authority the other group has worked to earn and effectively screaming "NO FIRE" in a burning theater, inducing people to do nothing when in reality they must do something in order to survive.
The first group fits perfectly my definition of hero .
The second fits perfectly my definition of murderer.
Slashdot Mirror
" Terrorism is the use of mass murder, industrial sabotage, and threats of same to achieve political ends, usually calculated to promote fear in a target population."
Murder? Check- the wanton deliberate and reckless taking of human life, in this case to further political and economic ends. The only part of this that anyone can dispute is "deliberate" .
It's not really that relevant whether they *mean* to kill hundreds of millions or not btw. Doing so is still manslaughter.
But I hold that it IS deliberate. I hold that inside themselves these individuals believe on balance that what they are promulgating is *wrong*. These are people with variously, oppositional-defiant personality disorder and extremist political and racial views . It's not a coincidence that global warming deniers are also that segment of the population who are right wing and racist. For both cases, the death of large numbers of other people is a trifling thing. For oppostional defiant personality types, the ONLY thing that matters is defying authority. That is the unconscious, ultimate good and nothing else matters, everything else is rationalized.
For the extremist political reactionaries at FOX and Forbes, the death of a lot of undesirable people in Africa and elsewhere is not something to particularly worry about and even more specifically if the US government can be overthrown through the device of bankrupting it or undermining general social order, then that's a good way to achieve their ends- the reordering of all of society to their liking.
It's not insignificant that Koch when he was running on the Libertarian ticket for VP espoused the disbanding of the CIA the FBI and nearly all of national security. He means to topple this nation as it is through any device he can. He gave up on politics (libertarians get about 2% of the vote in any general election) and has has happened across a lucky fact- if we do nothing about climate change, human civilization as we know it will simply unravel. In the resulting "what's left" , he'll be able to build a new world. This is how insane psychopaths reason. This is what goes on in their imaginations. Just as completely ordinary mainstream you work next to them Christians long for the Apocalypse and the wanton destruction and mass death that event entails, so also do other delusionists imagine that at the end of civilization its THEY and THEIR cronies who will be imposing order on THEIR new world.
Ditto FoxNews and Forbes. They know they're lying, they are consciously or barely-unconsciously aware they're acting in bad faith. People doing this should note with fear - a near future lie detector will definitely nail. Lying to yourself is not an undetectable, no-cost / no signal activity. We really want to get there. This is very very heavily funded. We're are getting there. It's coming.
Don't kid yourself, these people are deliberately building a bomb called "catastrophic climate change" and they mean to set it off.
That my friend is murder and if we have to expand the definition of murder to include it, we 'll do that.
Criminals think they're cleverer than the rest of society. Criminals believe they have a loophole in the law through which they can smuggle their criminal activity. The thing is, laws go wherever criminals lead. If criminals try to do X to harm society, then the law will go there. If they try Y, then the law will go there. It's criminals who ultimately decide through their chosen conduct what laws are created by society and what is counted as a criminal act, not visa-versa. The law is not static, and can even e retroactive if needed because the law is there to serve a purpose- to stop and punish anti-social behavior however it manifests itself. And we will do that, have no doubt.
The other idea of "being positive" has exactly zero effect on people like Koch Fox Murdoch Forbes and those who would follow them. What you're saying is get more people on your side by sounding positive. Has that worked y
Yeah do you ever bother to think that something you say might get fact checked? For the EU-15 from http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/ghg-trends-and-projections-2012/
Average 2008â"2011 emissions in EU-15 were 11 % lower than the base-year level, below the Kyoto target of -8 % for the period 2008â"2012. In the sectors not covered by the EU ETS, emissions were lower than their respective target, by an amount equivalent to 1.7 % of base-year emissions.
LULUCF activities are expected to decrease net emissions by an annual amount equivalent to 1.4 % of base-year level emissions. EU-15 intends to use the flexible mechanisms at government level by acquiring an amount of Kyoto units equivalent to 2 % of base-year emissions per year.
Taking all these effects into account, average emissions in the sectors not covered by the EU ETS in EU-15 were standing below their target level, by a gap representing 4.9 % of the base-year emissions.
The EU-15 was therefore on track towards its Kyoto target by the end of 2011. However, to ensure that the EU-15 reaches its common target, all of its Member States must achieve their respective burden-sharing target. Excess Kyoto units resulting from overachievement by some countries might not be available to the EU-15 for achieving compliance.
Oh I get it, you're not a "word and concept type " person. You need pictograms. Well, fortunately I have some handy:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/nov/30/copenhagen-summit-world-carbon-emissions
That pretty much says , well, golly if it doesn't say EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you were saying.
Do you ever get sick of being just plain wrong. I mean I know we're all writing in persistent-anonymous identities and what not but ... aren't you ashamed to show your persistent identity on line after you get caught out telling whale-size, exact-opposite-from-reality whoppers like that?
Just asking to get a datapoint for my little self-imposed project to try to understand the psychology behind denialism, especially the "I'm not a denier" type of denialism.
Yeah the individual judges on lower courts can say stuff like this:
"The Supreme Court has upheld the use of technology as a substitute for ordinary police surveillance," Callahan wrote.
but look at the grilling law enforcement got today from SCOTUS on just this very topic involving some 12 lbs of Merry Juana and a drug sniffing dog who was (legally) at the front door of the private residence. IT doesn't seem to be going so well for law enforcement.
Hey,. I have a idea. Why not have special rules for TERRORIST activity and any pot or dead bodies discovered are just inadmissible. Somewhere some part of what we have has to be made less than textbook perfect. Do you want that less than perfection to come at the cost of a terrorist attack, or a pot grower / criminal-->other and your civil liberties? I say let the criminal->other get away with it and nail the terrorist. It's not an easy decision but we don't get to pick and choose what we decide between.
I meant to say you should consult Wikipedia if you want to see what Kyoto and Copenhagen require of their signatories.
Just to put some more meat on the bones of this conversation, here's what 4 degree centigrade means to the earth- and remember, that is a number LESS than the one we're on track for today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechange
http://grist.org/climate-energy/what-would-it-mean-to-treat-climate-change-like-a-security-threat/
. That has nothing to do with "deniers". It has everything to do with the fact that India and China (and many other developing nations) have other priorities at this time.
Yeah what's going on is that China and India made a reasonable argument that they're not responsible for the C02 currently in the atmosphere, which is historically true, and wanted those responsible- Europe and America to take the lead cleaning up the mess they made with themselves making a smaller contribution. This makes sense since the US hs the most resources with which to implement reductions and cap and trade - a formerly Republican idea- was a viable economically palatable method through which the required reductions could be achieved. The rest of the world agreed. The US is now the sole non-signatory to Kyoto, thanks t the Republican opposition to cap and trade which they call "big government" and "socialism" .
In Copenhagen we have a world-wide agreement with definite targets but it is non-binding. This is what deal making looks like, it's what deal making has always looked like. It's not to my taste and I find it distressing however, it is what it is nad the process does lead to progress and agreements.
The question is not "will the world agree"?" The question is "will conservatives in America forestall necessary action for so long that the world spirals down into an unrecoverable abyss through some mechanism we either do or do not understand as of today.
So it's not true that China and India are "going their own way" or anything else. If you want to see what Kyoto and Copenhagen required of the signatories- of which China and India are both members "
It's a nonsensical argument anyway. If everyone is throwing grenades up in the air endangering everyone including themselves, the first thing you do is stop throwing grenades yourself irrespective of what others do.
Definition of "ideologically crazed"- a group of people who systematically deny reality. In this case, human civilization threatening reality.
What reality are they denying? The reality that either we will take world-wide coordinated action against carbon-induced climate change or we will extinguish human civilization.
That's pretty much the definition of a terrorist. Think the al Queda true believers didn't think they had a point to what they were doing? Who cares WHY a terrorist acts the way a terrorist acts? Who cares if ,in their view , they're terrorists or that what they're doing qualifies as terrorism?
Charles Manson will give you a long elaborate argument about the rightness of his actions too. So what.
What you can't accept is that about 25% of this nation is taking action which will surely result in the destruction of the earth and human civilization. That's not hyperbole, that's not a melodramatic characterization of some social issue; that's a plain fact.
You can't reconcile that your crazy FoxNews - Limbaugh listening uncle Larry is going to be directly responsible for the end of human civilization. It's too big a jump. He's just harmless old man. But the fact is that there is nothing stopping us from taking the action we need to take EXCEPT the uncle Larrys of the world and the financiers and think tanks and media personalities that stoke their false beliefs.
The wretches at the CATO Institute and the Koch Brothers and psychotic, sociopathic scum at the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks and Fortune Magazine and the WSJ and Grover Norquist and Limbaugh and all the other professional deniers and merchants of genocide and their mouthpieces will end their lives on the business side of a hemp rope provided courtesy of the very United States Government they so loathe. They're the dead enders, people whose fates are sealed and whose recorded voices and writings are all anyone needs to convict them.
But it's more than the professional subhuman filth that is involved. It's civil war we're hurtling towards, thanks to your uncle Larry. When the world wide crop failures come, when the terrorists start their recruiting in earnest around American's denial of climate change and anti-American antipathy becomes a global tidal wave manifesting as humans from every corner of the earth wanting one thing and one thing only, to destroy this nation, when the full hell is unleashed because of fools like your uncle Larry and his jackassian evaluation of his own scientific credentials, then you'll see that people like me who you always regarded as over the top were in fact just telling you a truth you didn't want to hear.
Your uncle Larry is a genocidal maniac whether he believes that about himself, whether he intends that to be true about himself, or not.
The bloodiest most vicious wars in history are civil wars. Each side has exhausted sympathy with the other and every attempt at rational reconciliation has been played out, ad infinitum. Generally people can't wait for the killing to start and it's completely merciless when it does. That's what we're hurtling towards. You hate me and hate my voice and you hate what I'm saying and the way I'm saying it but has something else worked so far? How's that new scientific study influencing the other side ? It's me and not you who is actually provoking people to feel the fear they need to feel in order to act, who's painting the picture of our shared and certain future which we are ignoring because it makes us feel unhappy inside.
If rational argument was going to work, then it would have worked already. The rational debate is now 40 years old. Meanwhile, about 50% of the electorate is gearing up to vote a denier into the office of the Presidency from whence he will begin to build out the Keystone pipeline and seal all our fates absent the event of some technological miracle.
Deniers need to hear what the deal is. The deal is reality is going
Denier == terrorist.
Because they're not going to let us do to them what they know they've done to us.
Hey free trade everybody.. get your free trade riiiight over here! Free movement of goods services and people ... hey ... whatsamatter with you??? Doncha' love FREEDOM????
This raises the question: can Google influence the elections even more than it already does via lobbying?
You're in John Birch territory now. Explain to the uninitiated how informing people who they can vote for and where is "influencing the elections" like lobbying for a cause does.
Is it perhaps because when it's easy for citizens to vote, the *wrong* people end up going to the polls and voting for the *wrong* policies?
This is the kind of headline that gets through Slashdot now? This is what we are now?
I think the previous poster was referring to the fact that what we have is socialism for corporations.
The difference between France and other nations with lower cost, better outcome health care systems is they control costs also. In the US, hospitals are forced to charge to make up for the uninsured (which is why car insurance is mandatory, otherwise the system doesn't work) and insurance companies charge whatever they want , as do doctors. A little known fact is it was doctors who opposed prior attempts to socialize medicine- no one was going to tell them what they can charge .
As the actual story unraveled in history however, it was the insurance companies who got the upper hand on the doctors. That makes sense- doctors aren't singularly and only dedicated to finding ways to gain power and money by inserting themselves into a high-dollar system as a middle man with the power of the purse on one side and the ability to define benefits on the other, based on a guaranteed income stream with no upper bound.
In Japan doctors are solidly and assuredly middle class, but not rich, not making 500k or even 150k a year. That's because the government at every instance controls costs, Ditto elsewhere. Some Americans consider that unAmerican and against our self image. Unfortunately the realities and contingencies of a heath care system do not feel the need to comply with national myths . In the US, a lot of people go into medicine mainly for the prestige and to make a pile of moolah.
Oh, you're speaking now of the 1% who engineer the laws to take money from taxpayers and give it to themselves?
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484
http://www.unjustdeserts.com/inside.cfm
If it's really just snippets of a larger value proposition that people are allegedly willing to pay for, then I think this is better known elsewhere in the world as "free advertising".
Sorry France. Love your healthcare system, but this is just silly.
The thing is, if you decide that you're going to demand a better quality of life, they'll just import labor . The bounty of the haves does indeed depend on the desperation of the have nots.
They know how to leverage those have-nots against you, specifically, those have nots want your job and will work 14 hours a day if you give it to them.
Then in 6 -10 years time they'll return to homeland exchange-rate adjusted multi-millionaires.
For DECADES now workers have raised their productivity year over year and now it's into the stratosphere relative to the 80s and what have they seen for their labor? Declining living standards. .
The only way anything is going to change is if people who want that change can make a competitive statement in the marketplace . IT's also going to take governmental action, as it always does. Programmers fancy themselves too smart and fast moving for slow government to do them any good but the fact is we have an even semi-tolerable society b/c of progressive legislation passed throughout the decades. You have to prevail upon your Congressmen for stuff like fair pay for women, maternity leave, limit to working hours, health benefits, paid vacations and personal time, child care, all the fairness and quality of life shit that Americans totally lack compared to say Germany whose fantastic goods we can't stop yearning for and whose progressive workplace policies and productivity is second to none...
It's not a ding on SV, it's a report from the trenches in Sunnyvale and Mountain View. . This is how it is. No one trusts anyone and no one is trustworthy either. There is zero comroderie that doesn't blow over with the first sign of shifting political winds. IT's one of the most disgusting atmospheres imaginable.
A few things I learned working here : corporations are like Darwinistic experiments in evolving and promoting sociopaths.
I will never hire anyone who has been in a position of management with a corporation for years.
I have no interest in incubators, VC or any of the other trappings of SV which are supposedly dedicated to helping entrepreneurs. Thanks. See ya.
I will think long and hard about hiring anyone who has been an engineer in a large corporation for a prolonged period of time. Long and hard. Sorry.
For having this much money, SV is basically a long series of yesteryear strip malls with very very very expensive houses most of which were built in the 50s and go for , oh, about 5-8 times their value elsewhere in the country, which is to say their actual worth.
Yeah you're just an idiot. No one killed anyone BECAUSE they were atheists.
People kill each other over IRRATIONAL BELIEF SYSTEMS . Maoists , Christians , Muslims, Communists , Nazis. Humanism, which defines morality in terms of human happiness and human benefit and science - which is the exact opposite of an irrational belief system, are the only things that don't inherently seek to kill people . Your fucking Bronze-age religion does not qualify as either of those.
If that weren't enough to rebut your exceedingly stupid, jingoistic point -which it is - atheism as an idea has been around at best a 100 plus years . Prior to that time nearly ALL killing was done in the name of the Big Three religions. The body count there is inestimable to say nothing of the sheer amount of human suffering that's gone on in the Abrahamic religion's names.
Just because SOME religions use coercion or violence, does not mean all do
Dude, that is the most historically ignorant statement ever committed to a HTML textbox.
Try reading world history from about 300 AD forward if you want some idea about the staggering amount of blood Christianity has spilled in its name. It's ANYTHING but a peaceful religion. The fact that it's natural tendencies are being suppressed by the overwhelming force of our secular society says NOTHING about what it would do if it could. Just a few hundred years ago they were still doing what they had always done up to that time, killing people for not believing in JEEEEEEZUS!!!!
Saying Christianity is a peaceful religion which doesn't use coercion is like saying Charles Manson is a peaceful fellow who means no one any harm because he's lately been locked up in jail.
2) It does nothing to combat the sick, diseased, science-denying Apocalyptic-yearning (yearning for all of humanity's fiery destruction) version of the same religion that about 40% of the American populace subscribes to, instead it bolsters the legitimacy of same.
3) It promulgates the superstitious moronic notion that there's a fucking Santa God who reads your mind on, like, an ongoing basis and judges you by what he finds there , by your intentions, basically setting the stage for a subjective evaluation of good and evil whereby no matter how much bad someone does or how much suffering they inflict they can always find both an excuse and room for forgiveness for themselves in their own minds by "getting right with God"- which is nothing more than an exercise in pure solopsism.
4)) Wastes your life dedicating the majority of your consciousness and best energy to nothing more than a false belief.
And you call yourself :"moral". What you are is an undeveloped, ignorant self-serving ape with so little , curiosity, courage and intellectual honesty you can get yourself to believe anything anything at all...
And you think everyone shoudl follow you.
Incorrect. When Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself", no exception was made for those committing specific sins. I may think someone a sinner and still follow the tenets of christian charity.
Wherever you are getting your information on the bible is either deliberately lying to you or else is ignorant; either way I suggest you rely on your own reading of the bible, not someone else's.
Incorrect. Wherever you are getting your information on the bible is either deliberately lying to you or else is ignorant. Either way I suggest you Google for contrary opinions who will support their position with plain quotes from the Bible. It's not a love fest,in fact, it's a work of supreme cruelty advocating amongst other things slavery, genocide, killing innocent children
(Exodus 21:15 "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death.")
and
(Billy Graham and Mark 7:9: "No picking and choosing allowed! You must stone to death your disobedient children." http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2012/08/billy-graham-and-mark-79-10-no-picking.html ) ,
and murdering people of other faiths because they don't believe in Him
Kings 20:28 "And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD. (20:28) "A man of God ... said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD."
(20:29) "The children of Israel slew of the Syrians an hundred thousand footmen in one day."
Christianity and other irrational belief systems like Communism and Maoism and Nazism have killed hundreds of millions of people over the years. Basing your morality on a Bronze Age book filled with Bronze-Age ideas about the nature of reality authored by and about sheep and goat herders from that time . Many of the Bible's authors can be presumed to have been suffering from chronic malnutrition and the chronic confusion and epileptic-like rage, that condition subtends,. They also certainly suffered from various mental illnesses including schizophrenia (hearing voices, seeing visions ) .
So how any adult today can base their morality on that politically-pieced together collection of insane rantings and fairy tales and still consider themselves to be responsible is the only real mystery surrounding the Bible.
"This isn't something to become angry about or fight against."
Wrong . Completely and totally wrong. It is something to become angry and fight against because ideas and the beliefs they engender in people have consequences. They vote and they take over school boards and they run for office. Take a look at our exciting national debate about rape this election season and tell me that fringey, quirky religious ideas aren't something to fight against.
I get your point, but it's so ivory tower and just plain counter-factual it makes me dizzy. There is no fire wall between what the people in a nation believe... what they acknowledge as their moral and philosophical ground and how they ultimately legislate.
If you are left with only desperately trying to convince them by the time they're getting ready to legislate, you've already lost your democracy to a theocracy.
What do Libertarians, Maoists, Stalinists, Communists, Nazis, and the Big Three religions all have in common? Just this- they want to impose their irrational belief system on the real world. It's not right against left, or Commie against capitalism or Libertarians against statists.. it's irrational belief systems against the Enlightenment, against Humanism, against science, against rational humans.
Riiiiiiight..... because there's a moral equivalence between people who hate others because they hold contrary opinions on this or that social issue and people who hate others because the actions of those other people lead directly and indisputably to the death of millions of innocent people.
This is what every cult that wants to impose its alternative-reality on main stream society says. "Hey, you can't prove you're right. We are not convinced., We dissent. We have a right to dissent and a right to live as we see fit .You cannot impose your will upon us! It's immoral.
That's why the South called the Civil War the "War of Norther Aggression". Because they were just living their lives, and conducting their affairs as their belief system bid. Then the North came along and provoked them and would not leave them be.
You need to read history if you think the "we are not convinced, Sir. " meme bear any weight.
People act like their religion is a diagnosis of cancer or something As soon as they announce it, etiquette requires that their belief be treated tenderly. Not a chance. Not when you're delusional shit for brains belief system threatens the existence of me and my family. Get ready for it, fundie fucktard.. Fuckin' have some...
You've got to be kidding.
Climate scientists are routinely subjected to death threats t themselves and their families by the people you now claim just want a rational debate. They are subject to politically motivated FOIA searches, public ridicule and accusations that they are lying, corrupt, faking data. They have their emails stolen and their personal lives wrecked through constant harassment. All that is now SOP for the right wing lunatic deniers. The Glenn Becks. The Koch brothers. Murdoch. The Cucinellis. FoxNews employees. Lord Monckton. The Heritage Foundation the religious right Ayn Rand amphetamine addicts et al. ...
So you've got to be kidding.
The rational debate you want has been happening for the past 30 years, in scientific journals and at symposiums and conferences where rational debate on technical matters occurs. Did they join it? Can they understand it, or do they just tell themselves they can? If you can't understand the arguments then you need to listen to experts who can. That's the nature of modern society; that's reality. And when 97% of all qualified experts agree , then that is a bright clear line on the other side of which lies willful and deliberate manslaughter and murder. Just ask any court how it works.
Just because someone can't accept reality doesn't mean they are exempt from the morality that applies to their judgement and actions which issue as a consequence of their reality denial.
If I am thoroughly convinced I can perform brain surgery and fake my way into an operation, I can expect to be prosecuted when I am outed. Ditto Lord Monckton and the Koch Brothers and all the wretched animals at the Heritage Foundation.
It's not about rational debate, it's not about convincing anyone through data or studies or the application scientific method . We know that because, as human society defines that process,- and it is human society that gets to define that process and not the right wing- that has already taken place .
Don't like the outcome? Tough shit.
Here's the game they're playing.: "You can't prove it. " . You can't prove I was lying. You can't prove I didn't believe my own horseshit. You can't prove that I was not perfectly conscious of the fact that the position I was espousing was contrary to reality. I'm safe inside my own brain where only I know the truth. So you can't prosecute me, because I 'm entitled to my opinion.
But you know what ? People make laws. They make laws with the directed and specific purpose of punishing anti-social behavior that harms other innocent humans. We call that behavior "criminal". and it's criminals- through their actions- who ultimately decide what laws we write into existence for the sole purpose of stopping and punishing them.
What these people believe is that law is something which will not pursue them wherever they go, whatever they do irrespective of the real world consequences their actions have on humanity.
Wrong. Dead wrong.
In Nuremberg we hung Germans for breaking laws we made up after the fact - ex post facto lawmaking- specifically to address their crimes. They also thought they were in some sort of legal safe harbor, since what they had done they had done to their own citizens acting as agents of a sovereign nation. And they were right. That is until the day we decided they were wrong. On that day, we made up a new crime -Crimes Against Humanity. Then we tried them for it. Then we hung them for breaking it.
It's criminals who decide what behavior comes to be seen as criminal. The delusion that the law will not, cannot for some reason follow you THERE is just that- a delusion.
It's a great and important tool for policy makers to be able to crunch this magnitude of data, but not being able to do this is not the problem wrt climate change.
The problem is purely political, specifically, American conservatives are denying this science the same way they deny the science of evolution, the same way they deny the overwhelming proof that smoking causes cancer and second hand smoke does the same, the same way they denied CFCs caused a hole in the ozone layer and risked all our lives on that occasion also.
On the one hand you have hard working, selfless scientists who at this point are sacrificing their personal lives, financial security, their sanity and risking literal criminal prosecution from out-of-control attorneys generals who are drunk blind on power and dieology to continue to speak the truth, Cassandra-fashion, to a heedless and reckless nation.
On the other you have people who have never worked a day in their lives to earn the just authority to advise and inform Congress on this topic nevertheless holding forth, just stealing the authority the other group has worked to earn and effectively screaming "NO FIRE" in a burning theater, inducing people to do nothing when in reality they must do something in order to survive.
The first group fits perfectly my definition of hero .
The second fits perfectly my definition of murderer.
I'm waiting for the ShellShocker promo in my email before I upgrade to this baby.