The education system in America is so crappy that it's necessary to import foreigners from ineffective "socialist" countries just to keep the infrastructure from falling apart. The engineers/scientists are mostly second generation Americans or foreigners. Upper echelon natives become lawyers, bankers, or PHBs. Lower echelon Americans become [???] but not engineers. Somehow India and Russia can afford to churn out 100000s of competent engineers a year, but America is too efficient to do that. It's more efficient to let those silly socialists have state subsidised college education. That way the US can keep corporation taxes low, but make sure there are enough techs to keep things running. It's great - the owners get very rich. It leaves ordinary Americans on the slag heap, but who cares about that.
> We (Americans) has the best trained military the world has ever seen.
I think almost every country on earth is told that one. Quite often people believe it too. So, the British think their army is the best, as do the French, Germans, Chinese, Russians (spetchnez), Iraqis, etc etc. Of all the nations on earth, only the Italians spring to mind as *not* thinking they have the best trained military.
Tell me - where did you learn that America had the best trained army on earth ? Let me guess... it was in America right ?
America does have the most powerful army on the planet, which is not quite the same thing. Fat lot of good it'll do in this conflict though. Getting rid of terrorists with bombs is about as effective as trying to clean your windscreen with greasy hands. You might shift the original piece of dirt, but you make a much bigger mess in the process.
Sure, it's nothing to do with the fact that your phone system is owned by fat stupid monopolies who have bribed congress into introducing legislation to prevent competition. There is no corruption in the US, there's no need for corruption in a country where one can legally buy your policians. Oh wait, all those multi-million donations are made with no expectation that it will influence policy, of course, silly me.
Also, it's nothing to do with the fact that public education in the US is so crappy you have to import foreigners from ineffective "socialist" countries just to keep the infrastructure from falling apart. Your engineers/scientists are mostly second generation Americans or foreigners. Upper echelon natives become lawyers, bankers, or PHBs. Lower echelon Americans become ??? but not engineers. Somehow India and Russia can afford to churn out 100000s of competent engineers a year, but America is too efficient to do that. It's more efficient to let those silly socialists have state subsidised college education. That way the US can keep corporation taxes low, but make sure there are enough techs to keep things running. It's great - the owners get very rich. It leaves ordinary Americans on the slag heap, but who cares about that.
No, it's because America is just too big, after all it's always the smaller counties with advanced technology, those little Carribean states must have teleporters by now.
It sounds like your life is split between a desk and a couch. I'm sure there are devices which could make your inside life even more sedentary, but if I told you, then you might actually die. It sounds like having to hunt around for a remote, or heaven forbid, actually walk to the stereo, is the only exercise you get.
Before the condition becomes terminal, I suggest you sell your television, limit your online time to 1hr per day, and go outside. Possibly try actually talking to someone face to face, but give yourself an adjustment period first so you don't scare them away with a vampire like skin pallor.
Of course, I'm turning into a fat useless git too, and could do with taking my own advice, but hypocricy only troubles me when I observe it in others. It's still good advice.
"Terrorist" is a very fuzzy term, but as close as I can tell, a terrorist is someone who is prepared to use or threaten violance who disagrees with western policy. If you have any examples of someone the US was in favor of being described as a terrorist, I would
Do you really fail to see a disparity between phrases like "murder of innocent men, women, and children" and "inevitable collateral damage". When they crashed a plane into the pentagon, how did the media describe the deaths of those on the plane ? If Iraqi television said "some inevitable collateral damage occured during the attack on a legitimate military target" would that seem reasonable to you ?
I didn't say the terrorists were brave, but it's even more preposterous to rant about how cowardly the attack was. And I could really care less whether Bush had returned to DC or had carried on flying up, down and sideways until judgement day. Still, he certainly gave the impression of being panic stricken. My point was there is a huge distortion in the way things are presented.
What's really funny is that you assume I was in favor of Clinton bombing pharmaceutical factories in Sudan to distract from describing his blow jobs to the senate. The idea that because I don't support Bush I must support Clinton shows how restricted your thinking is. As far as I'm concerned there is barely a fart to separate democratic and republican politicians.
> People seem to be assuming the Washington Post is part of some grand conspiracy to restrict the availability of strong cryptography.
No, it's not a conspiracy, but it is a symptom of a much deeper problem. The fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties. This distortion is not a coincidence, but it's not deliberate either. In fact, it's scarier than that. People who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to.
We don't need any controlling evil mastermind to produce the appearance of a conspiracy. All we need is a set of implicit and unstated tendancies where most people do what they think ought to be done, and the mass moves inexhorably in a particular direction, irrespective of a few free thinkers trying to throw a spanner in the works. This group concensus serves the interest of those in power (the rich, via corporations, media - which is corporate owned, and politicians - who are also corporate owned), and pushes the rest of the population in that direction.
Mainstream media is even more laughably distorted than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
Corporations and politicians have a vested interest in eliminating free speach from the population. They don't want you talking to each other, they want you listening to them. They definitely don't want you saying stuff to each other without them being able to monitor it and punish you for saying stuff that makes them uncomfortable. The real reasons for the desire to restrict and monitor may not even be apparant to the "group mind", but everyone has a huge capacity for self-delusion.
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. Yeah, "they" hate us because they're jealous and they're victims of brainwashing and propoganda. Meanwhile, we're going to destroy civil liberties, escalate corporate welfare (through "defense" spending), slaughter innocent civilians and risk our own soldiers fighting people across the world who previously had no serious quarrel with us, because we're all well informed and logical.
> I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.
You can speculate what you like, but the fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties.
This distortion is not a coincidence, it's probably not deliberate either, but people who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to. Mainstream media is even more laughably distored than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. There is a widespread belief that the terrorists killed themselves because they believed they would be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven. It's time to reconsider who has been brainwashed.
Afghanistan has been at war for the last 13 years. They have lost 30% of the population, roughly 1 million dead, and 2 million refugees. The entire country is littered with land mines.
Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly informed the French press that he had sprung the Afghant trap months before the Russians actually invaded by arranging for US support for Mujahideen fighting the government. The Russians invaded partly to prevent CIA spsonsored Islamic fundamentalism from spreading into USSR. So, if there was any Afghan involvement in WTC attack (doubtful) then I expect they see it as taking the war back to US.
> So what if during that process innocent lives are taken?
....
> If there's one thing that human beings understand insinctively, it's raw, and extreme, force.
An opinion evidently shared by the terrorists. From a practical standpoint though, one has to wonder whether indescriminate bombing will make terrorism less likely. Certainly, a dead terrorist is less likely to attack than a live one, but if you kill a bunch of innocents too, then you make new terrorists at the same time.
Since 11/9 have you felt more inclined to bomb the crap out of someone or less inclined ? Do you expect people in mid-east to react differently ? The US is gearing up to kill a bunch of people. In all likelihood tens of thousands of people who had no more knowledge or support for the terrorist's activities than you did will die. Do you think this will make their kin more or less likely to do everything in their power to kill us ?
Different aims
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The politicians are very rational, if you understand their goals. People on/. are generally thinking along the lines of either:
what can we do to genuinely fix the situation ?
or:
what can we do to make ourselves feel better ?(revenge, nukes, blabla)
The politicians (who drive media discourse) are naturally thinking along the lines of:
how can we make the most of the situation ?
The answer to this is to use it to increase American corporate/military dominance of the world. The politicians are just doing their jobs, ie, they're doing what they're paid for, and most of their pay comes from corporate interests.
So, there are several ways to exploit the situation:
1. Increase corporate welfare, ie payment from taxpayers to corporations (also known as defense spending, and foreign aid). It's irrelevent that the missile defense shield will do nothing to protect Americans and will escalate the arms race - that's not the point. In fact, it's great if India, Pakistan, China and Russia respond by increasing their defense spending because (a) we can sell them weapons and (b) it justifies further increases in American defense spending.
2. Clamp down on civil liberties (corporations are not well served by a free and connected society so, you need to stamp out encryption, anonymous speech, decrease the basic ability for people to talk to each other, unionise, complain about GA crops, demand health care, or any other nonsense)
3. Strengthen America's position as "leader of the free world", or to put it another way, tighten one's grip on foreign countries. Any country with an unpleasant tendancy to not bow down to US interests, is told to show subservience or face punitive military action. It's a good time to demand subservience because there will be far less domestic opposition to bombing the hell out of them should anyone disagree.
4. Silence your detractors. Anybody who disagrees with you at a time like this is obviously "unAmerican" "unpatriotic" and "bowing down to terrorism".
The only bad thing is that people might wonder why this happened, you mustn't let people think about that in a meaningful way.
> American media has more propaganda than Pravda? Is that what you think?
No, and it's not what I said either. I said American media contains more *effective* propoganda than Pravda. The difference is that Americans, on the whole, entirely believe what they read in their mainstream media. Not so many Russians completely beleived what they read in Pravda.
> I am completely bedazzled by the anti-american bashers who never stop for a moment to think about how lucky they are that they can bash away all they...
America is a relatively free society, agreed. If someone disagrees with the government you can't just send him off to the gulag. That's why it's so important to control waht people think.
> PLEASE contact your Congressional representatives and tell them you support full scale nuclear war against Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I sure hope you're trolling.
Pakistan has nukes itself. Even though I can believe you would be prepared to see the deaths of 1,000,000s of Pakistani's in order to get revenge for the attack, I find it hard to believe that you would be prepared to see 1,000,000s of Americans die to achieve this.
Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe you really are that "patriotic".
Fine, but when you're done bombing "THEIR mothers, daughters and children", don't be surprised when the one's you miss come back to show their appreciation.
You probably have more in common with the people who carried out this attack than you realize. It seems unlikely that they came to be the way they are/were without stepping over a few body parts. I guess they were angry too, and I guess they figured their anger justified bombing innocent men and women too.
People say "I don't understand how anyone could do such a thing - killing innocent civilians", then they say, "we must have revenge, even if this involves killing innocent civilians". You understand them all too well.
I lived in the US for several years, my wife and many of my best friends are American. Here, for the very small amount it's worth, is my judgement:
The American people are generally compassionate, generous and decent. They are however, deluded into thinking that
(a) they live in a democracy
(b) they have a vague idea what's going on
(c) american actions abroad are for humanitarian reasons
"When was the last time your country was visited by nameless...."
If you lived in Kosovo, the answer was last year.
If you lived in Cambodia, 20 years ago.
If you lived in Palestine, last week (via Israel, which is entirely supported by US). They didn't need to hijack any more planes, because the bombers were already paid for by American taxpayers.
America itself was hijacked years ago by narrow corporate interests. It is often in the interests of these corporations to bomb other countries, or to prevent the development of democracy in these places. Ordinary Americans are as much of a victim of this as anybody else.
The foreign aid you talk of is paid from American taxpayers to American corporations. It, along with defense spending, is a form of corporate welfare. Meanwhile single mothers are told to be self-reliant, and 70% of the country has no health insurance. You're all working far more hours than you were a couple of decades ago, and your wives have to go to work as well now. The gap between rich and poor has reached levels that surpass those in Victorian london.
I know you think corporations are your friends, but then again you're submitted to roughly 30,000 3 minute segments of pure corporate propoganda per year. These ads are sandwiched between programs created by, and largely for the benefit of, large corporations. Pravda never had the resources of Madison avenue.
You're all getting fucked, and you don't realise it. The thing that really brought it home to me was buying a 1968 Buick LeSabre. At the time of manafacture, this was considered an average american family car. When I compared this car to one made in 1998 the difference in quality was
striking, even given the huge advances in computer aided design, manafacturing techniques, material science, the older car was of far superior build quality. The older car required roughly 3 times as much steel, and the extraction and processing of steel has become considerably more efficient over the last 30 years.
So, the old car required maybe 12 times as much manual labour, and 3 times as much steel to build than the newer car.
Average wage in USA - 1968: $5571 1998: $28861
Base price of Buick LeSabre - 1968: $3600 1998: $22000
So, in 1968 at an average wage it would have taken 7 months, 3 weeks worth of salary to pay for a new Buick LeSabre. In 1998 it would take 9 months. However, somehow you think you're better off now than you were then. This is largely because the media tells you that you are. Typically they point at rising share prices to prove it. Maybe the 10% of the population that own 90% of the shares are better off, but the rest of you are getting fucked.
The picture presented about the world outside America is even more grossly distorted to the one presented inside. There's nothing wrong with Americans, but there's definitely something wrong with America.
You're polite and sound sensible, but it seems to me that you have a very lop-sided view of the world.
Consider the possibility that American media contains more effective propoganda and distortion than Pravda ever managed.
Try reading some alternative viewpoints such as http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ . I'm not saying this stuff is more accurate than the mainstream media, judge for yourself, but at the very least it will give you a better understanding of where some people are coming from.
I don't think many people would argue with killing those responsible, just make sure you can identify who they are first.
However, if you think the bombing of civilians is going to fix anything, I don't know whether I am more impressed by your hypocracy or your stupidity.
As for saying it is foolish to try and "understand" the terrorists, have you ever heard the phrase "know your enemy" ?
While we're on the subject of "Cowards" every news story calls the terrorists' attacks "Cowardly". Does anyone else find this absurd ? They may be crazed fanatics, but facing certain death in order to further your cause is not how I understand the term. Advocating the use of long-range missiles on civilian center's on the other side of the world seems a little closer to my understanding of the word.
Suppose US decides to bomb Baghdad in response. Suppose film showing a bunch of rednecks cheering this action was shown in Amman. Do you think this would justify further bombing of America ?
Maybe they were raised on anti-american propoganda, maybe you were raised on anti-arab propoganda, whatever... ignorance, misunderstanding and hatred is responsible for this insanity. The first defense against this crap is to try to understand where it's coming from. Even if this comes down to nothing more than "know your enemy", you would be well advised to find out a little bit about why palestinians hate the US so much.
Killing innocent civilians serves no good purpose. I just hope that principle is remembered even in anger and during calls for revenge. If you can positively identify and kill those responsible, fine, but if you are prepared to see the deaths of innocent civilians in the pursuit of revenge, then you have no moral advantage over the terrorists.
There will be a lot of pressure for punitive revenge attacks against suspected parties.
Doubtless this will happen, it is inconceivable that the US will allow this to go unpunished. For instance, after the attacks on several US embassies in Africa, the US bombed one of the only two pharmaceutical factories in Sudan on faulty intelligence info. Unfortunately it turned out that this factory was legitimate and this just led to the death of many innocent workers, plus many further deaths as a result of a lack of medicine.
When these revenge attacks occur, more innocent civilians will die. I just hope that Americans remember that the bombing of innocent civilians is wrong even when they are foreigners. I don't hold out much hope of this - when the revenge bombing occurs, I expect it will be greeted with jubliation, even though there will be a tenuous connection at best between those who die and those responsible for the atrocities in New York and Washington. It is appropriate to feel anger towards those responsible for the murder of innocents, but don't let that anger reduce you to "their" level.
I worked at http://www.3dsystems.com for several years. The SLA machines produce parts from photosensitive resin that have very good material properties and several companies used these parts directly in machines with good results. In fact, one company found that the replacement worked better as a small piece in a vacuum cleaner than the material they were using. They wanted to switch until they found out this stuff cost > $100/litre.
A more interesting useage was the rapid casting technology where they create a hollow inverse of the part, fill it with some kind of metallic powder and then use that directly to manafacture small runs of real parts.
Does the term "VM" mean anything to you ? This is why talk of java's portability is non-sensical, java programs only run on a single OS - the java VM. "I can write an OS, first of all, give me an OS..."
Besides, the point of an OS is to manage low level system resources, like registers, cache, memory, devices. You can do the meta-level stuff in a high-level language if you like, but at some stage you're going to have to go low level. Plenty of OS's have been written (as far as possible) in higher level languages than java.
New improved formula: not only do our missiles come with our patented peace ingredient, they are now environmentally friendly too.
The industrial-military complex has been selling to the west based on the premise that our weapons are fun and friendly and filled with "peace" for decades. It's not surprising they should attempt to market them on environmentally friendly grounds too.
Nerve gas would be even more environmentally friendly, but is harder to sell from a PR perspective. It's also relatively cheap to manafacture, which negates the main purpose of arms sales. Less corporate welfare to spread around.
Concorde can fly perfectly well across land, but Boeing successfully lobied US government to ban it from being used across continental USA.
This came as a rude shock and completely fucked the economics of concorde which was explicitly designed for long-haul, eg LA-London flights. It's the main reason so few were built.
Morons - what did they expect ? The US will always protect it's own corporations from competition if it can get away with it. This occurs at the expense of it's citizens, but nobody cares about that. Just like any other nation of course, but it's a lot harder to bully the US into accepting competition than smaller countries.
Slashdot Mirror
The education system in America is so crappy that it's necessary to import foreigners from ineffective "socialist" countries just to keep the infrastructure from falling apart. The engineers/scientists are mostly second generation Americans or foreigners. Upper echelon natives become lawyers, bankers, or PHBs. Lower echelon Americans become [???] but not engineers. Somehow India and Russia can afford to churn out 100000s of competent engineers a year, but America is too efficient to do that. It's more efficient to let those silly socialists have state subsidised college education. That way the US can keep corporation taxes low, but make sure there are enough techs to keep things running. It's great - the owners get very rich. It leaves ordinary Americans on the slag heap, but who cares about that.
> We (Americans) has the best trained military the world has ever seen.
I think almost every country on earth is told that one. Quite often people believe it too. So, the British think their army is the best, as do the French, Germans, Chinese, Russians (spetchnez), Iraqis, etc etc. Of all the nations on earth, only the Italians spring to mind as *not* thinking they have the best trained military.
Tell me - where did you learn that America had the best trained army on earth ? Let me guess... it was in America right ?
America does have the most powerful army on the planet, which is not quite the same thing. Fat lot of good it'll do in this conflict though. Getting rid of terrorists with bombs is about as effective as trying to clean your windscreen with greasy hands. You might shift the original piece of dirt, but you make a much bigger mess in the process.
Sure, it's nothing to do with the fact that your phone system is owned by fat stupid monopolies who have bribed congress into introducing legislation to prevent competition. There is no corruption in the US, there's no need for corruption in a country where one can legally buy your policians. Oh wait, all those multi-million donations are made with no expectation that it will influence policy, of course, silly me.
Also, it's nothing to do with the fact that public education in the US is so crappy you have to import foreigners from ineffective "socialist" countries just to keep the infrastructure from falling apart. Your engineers/scientists are mostly second generation Americans or foreigners. Upper echelon natives become lawyers, bankers, or PHBs. Lower echelon Americans become ??? but not engineers. Somehow India and Russia can afford to churn out 100000s of competent engineers a year, but America is too efficient to do that. It's more efficient to let those silly socialists have state subsidised college education. That way the US can keep corporation taxes low, but make sure there are enough techs to keep things running. It's great - the owners get very rich. It leaves ordinary Americans on the slag heap, but who cares about that.
No, it's because America is just too big, after all it's always the smaller counties with advanced technology, those little Carribean states must have teleporters by now.
Resent your sig do I
It sounds like your life is split between a desk and a couch. I'm sure there are devices which could make your inside life even more sedentary, but if I told you, then you might actually die. It sounds like having to hunt around for a remote, or heaven forbid, actually walk to the stereo, is the only exercise you get.
Before the condition becomes terminal, I suggest you sell your television, limit your online time to 1hr per day, and go outside. Possibly try actually talking to someone face to face, but give yourself an adjustment period first so you don't scare them away with a vampire like skin pallor.
Of course, I'm turning into a fat useless git too, and could do with taking my own advice, but hypocricy only troubles me when I observe it in others. It's still good advice.
"Terrorist" is a very fuzzy term, but as close as I can tell, a terrorist is someone who is prepared to use or threaten violance who disagrees with western policy. If you have any examples of someone the US was in favor of being described as a terrorist, I would
Do you really fail to see a disparity between phrases like "murder of innocent men, women, and children" and "inevitable collateral damage". When they crashed a plane into the pentagon, how did the media describe the deaths of those on the plane ? If Iraqi television said "some inevitable collateral damage occured during the attack on a legitimate military target" would that seem reasonable to you ?
LOL, you are such a strawman but I'll bite.
I didn't say the terrorists were brave, but it's even more preposterous to rant about how cowardly the attack was. And I could really care less whether Bush had returned to DC or had carried on flying up, down and sideways until judgement day. Still, he certainly gave the impression of being panic stricken. My point was there is a huge distortion in the way things are presented.
What's really funny is that you assume I was in favor of Clinton bombing pharmaceutical factories in Sudan to distract from describing his blow jobs to the senate. The idea that because I don't support Bush I must support Clinton shows how restricted your thinking is. As far as I'm concerned there is barely a fart to separate democratic and republican politicians.
> People seem to be assuming the Washington Post is part of some grand conspiracy to restrict the availability of strong cryptography.
No, it's not a conspiracy, but it is a symptom of a much deeper problem. The fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties. This distortion is not a coincidence, but it's not deliberate either. In fact, it's scarier than that. People who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to.
We don't need any controlling evil mastermind to produce the appearance of a conspiracy. All we need is a set of implicit and unstated tendancies where most people do what they think ought to be done, and the mass moves inexhorably in a particular direction, irrespective of a few free thinkers trying to throw a spanner in the works. This group concensus serves the interest of those in power (the rich, via corporations, media - which is corporate owned, and politicians - who are also corporate owned), and pushes the rest of the population in that direction.
Mainstream media is even more laughably distorted than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
Corporations and politicians have a vested interest in eliminating free speach from the population. They don't want you talking to each other, they want you listening to them. They definitely don't want you saying stuff to each other without them being able to monitor it and punish you for saying stuff that makes them uncomfortable. The real reasons for the desire to restrict and monitor may not even be apparant to the "group mind", but everyone has a huge capacity for self-delusion.
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. Yeah, "they" hate us because they're jealous and they're victims of brainwashing and propoganda. Meanwhile, we're going to destroy civil liberties, escalate corporate welfare (through "defense" spending), slaughter innocent civilians and risk our own soldiers fighting people across the world who previously had no serious quarrel with us, because we're all well informed and logical.
> I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.
You can speculate what you like, but the fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties.
This distortion is not a coincidence, it's probably not deliberate either, but people who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to. Mainstream media is even more laughably distored than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. There is a widespread belief that the terrorists killed themselves because they believed they would be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven. It's time to reconsider who has been brainwashed.
lol
> Take the war to Afghanistan...
Afghanistan has been at war for the last 13 years. They have lost 30% of the population, roughly 1 million dead, and 2 million refugees. The entire country is littered with land mines.
Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski proudly informed the French press that he had sprung the Afghant trap months before the Russians actually invaded by arranging for US support for Mujahideen fighting the government. The Russians invaded partly to prevent CIA spsonsored Islamic fundamentalism from spreading into USSR. So, if there was any Afghan involvement in WTC attack (doubtful) then I expect they see it as taking the war back to US.
> So what if during that process innocent lives are taken?
....
> If there's one thing that human beings understand insinctively, it's raw, and extreme, force.
An opinion evidently shared by the terrorists. From a practical standpoint though, one has to wonder whether indescriminate bombing will make terrorism less likely. Certainly, a dead terrorist is less likely to attack than a live one, but if you kill a bunch of innocents too, then you make new terrorists at the same time.
Since 11/9 have you felt more inclined to bomb the crap out of someone or less inclined ? Do you expect people in mid-east to react differently ? The US is gearing up to kill a bunch of people. In all likelihood tens of thousands of people who had no more knowledge or support for the terrorist's activities than you did will die. Do you think this will make their kin more or less likely to do everything in their power to kill us ?
The politicians are very rational, if you understand their goals. People on /. are generally thinking along the lines of either:
what can we do to genuinely fix the situation ?
or:
what can we do to make ourselves feel better ?(revenge, nukes, blabla)
The politicians (who drive media discourse) are naturally thinking along the lines of:
how can we make the most of the situation ?
The answer to this is to use it to increase American corporate/military dominance of the world. The politicians are just doing their jobs, ie, they're doing what they're paid for, and most of their pay comes from corporate interests.
So, there are several ways to exploit the situation:
1. Increase corporate welfare, ie payment from taxpayers to corporations (also known as defense spending, and foreign aid). It's irrelevent that the missile defense shield will do nothing to protect Americans and will escalate the arms race - that's not the point. In fact, it's great if India, Pakistan, China and Russia respond by increasing their defense spending because (a) we can sell them weapons and (b) it justifies further increases in American defense spending.
2. Clamp down on civil liberties (corporations are not well served by a free and connected society so, you need to stamp out encryption, anonymous speech, decrease the basic ability for people to talk to each other, unionise, complain about GA crops, demand health care, or any other nonsense)
3. Strengthen America's position as "leader of the free world", or to put it another way, tighten one's grip on foreign countries. Any country with an unpleasant tendancy to not bow down to US interests, is told to show subservience or face punitive military action. It's a good time to demand subservience because there will be far less domestic opposition to bombing the hell out of them should anyone disagree.
4. Silence your detractors. Anybody who disagrees with you at a time like this is obviously "unAmerican" "unpatriotic" and "bowing down to terrorism".
The only bad thing is that people might wonder why this happened, you mustn't let people think about that in a meaningful way.
> American media has more propaganda than Pravda? Is that what you think?
No, and it's not what I said either. I said American media contains more *effective* propoganda than Pravda. The difference is that Americans, on the whole, entirely believe what they read in their mainstream media. Not so many Russians completely beleived what they read in Pravda.
> I am completely bedazzled by the anti-american bashers who never stop for a moment to think about how lucky they are that they can bash away all they...
America is a relatively free society, agreed. If someone disagrees with the government you can't just send him off to the gulag. That's why it's so important to control waht people think.
> PLEASE contact your Congressional representatives and tell them you support full scale nuclear war against Sudan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
I sure hope you're trolling.
Pakistan has nukes itself. Even though I can believe you would be prepared to see the deaths of 1,000,000s of Pakistani's in order to get revenge for the attack, I find it hard to believe that you would be prepared to see 1,000,000s of Americans die to achieve this.
Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe you really are that "patriotic".
Fine, but when you're done bombing "THEIR mothers, daughters and children", don't be surprised when the one's you miss come back to show their appreciation.
You probably have more in common with the people who carried out this attack than you realize. It seems unlikely that they came to be the way they are/were without stepping over a few body parts. I guess they were angry too, and I guess they figured their anger justified bombing innocent men and women too.
People say "I don't understand how anyone could do such a thing - killing innocent civilians", then they say, "we must have revenge, even if this involves killing innocent civilians". You understand them all too well.
I lived in the US for several years, my wife and many of my best friends are American. Here, for the very small amount it's worth, is my judgement:
The American people are generally compassionate, generous and decent. They are however, deluded into thinking that
(a) they live in a democracy
(b) they have a vague idea what's going on
(c) american actions abroad are for humanitarian reasons
"When was the last time your country was visited by nameless...."
If you lived in Kosovo, the answer was last year.
If you lived in Cambodia, 20 years ago.
If you lived in Palestine, last week (via Israel, which is entirely supported by US). They didn't need to hijack any more planes, because the bombers were already paid for by American taxpayers.
America itself was hijacked years ago by narrow corporate interests. It is often in the interests of these corporations to bomb other countries, or to prevent the development of democracy in these places. Ordinary Americans are as much of a victim of this as anybody else.
The foreign aid you talk of is paid from American taxpayers to American corporations. It, along with defense spending, is a form of corporate welfare. Meanwhile single mothers are told to be self-reliant, and 70% of the country has no health insurance. You're all working far more hours than you were a couple of decades ago, and your wives have to go to work as well now. The gap between rich and poor has reached levels that surpass those in Victorian london.
I know you think corporations are your friends, but then again you're submitted to roughly 30,000 3 minute segments of pure corporate propoganda per year. These ads are sandwiched between programs created by, and largely for the benefit of, large corporations. Pravda never had the resources of Madison avenue.
You're all getting fucked, and you don't realise it. The thing that really brought it home to me was buying a 1968 Buick LeSabre. At the time of manafacture, this was considered an average american family car. When I compared this car to one made in 1998 the difference in quality was
striking, even given the huge advances in computer aided design, manafacturing techniques, material science, the older car was of far superior build quality. The older car required roughly 3 times as much steel, and the extraction and processing of steel has become considerably more efficient over the last 30 years.
So, the old car required maybe 12 times as much manual labour, and 3 times as much steel to build than the newer car.
Average wage in USA - 1968: $5571 1998: $28861
Base price of Buick LeSabre - 1968: $3600 1998: $22000
So, in 1968 at an average wage it would have taken 7 months, 3 weeks worth of salary to pay for a new Buick LeSabre. In 1998 it would take 9 months. However, somehow you think you're better off now than you were then. This is largely because the media tells you that you are. Typically they point at rising share prices to prove it. Maybe the 10% of the population that own 90% of the shares are better off, but the rest of you are getting fucked.
The picture presented about the world outside America is even more grossly distorted to the one presented inside. There's nothing wrong with Americans, but there's definitely something wrong with America.
"In order to have the desired effect the hostile nation must feel the pain deeply"
Great, for anybody who wishes to understand the terrorist mindset, look no further.
You're polite and sound sensible, but it seems to me that you have a very lop-sided view of the world.
Consider the possibility that American media contains more effective propoganda and distortion than Pravda ever managed.
Try reading some alternative viewpoints such as http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/ . I'm not saying this stuff is more accurate than the mainstream media, judge for yourself, but at the very least it will give you a better understanding of where some people are coming from.
Oh wow, you're a true patriot are you ?
I don't think many people would argue with killing those responsible, just make sure you can identify who they are first.
However, if you think the bombing of civilians is going to fix anything, I don't know whether I am more impressed by your hypocracy or your stupidity.
As for saying it is foolish to try and "understand" the terrorists, have you ever heard the phrase "know your enemy" ?
While we're on the subject of "Cowards" every news story calls the terrorists' attacks "Cowardly". Does anyone else find this absurd ? They may be crazed fanatics, but facing certain death in order to further your cause is not how I understand the term. Advocating the use of long-range missiles on civilian center's on the other side of the world seems a little closer to my understanding of the word.
Since when was ignorance a point of view ?
Suppose US decides to bomb Baghdad in response. Suppose film showing a bunch of rednecks cheering this action was shown in Amman. Do you think this would justify further bombing of America ?
Maybe they were raised on anti-american propoganda, maybe you were raised on anti-arab propoganda, whatever... ignorance, misunderstanding and hatred is responsible for this insanity. The first defense against this crap is to try to understand where it's coming from. Even if this comes down to nothing more than "know your enemy", you would be well advised to find out a little bit about why palestinians hate the US so much.
Killing innocent civilians serves no good purpose. I just hope that principle is remembered even in anger and during calls for revenge. If you can positively identify and kill those responsible, fine, but if you are prepared to see the deaths of innocent civilians in the pursuit of revenge, then you have no moral advantage over the terrorists.
There will be a lot of pressure for punitive revenge attacks against suspected parties.
Doubtless this will happen, it is inconceivable that the US will allow this to go unpunished. For instance, after the attacks on several US embassies in Africa, the US bombed one of the only two pharmaceutical factories in Sudan on faulty intelligence info. Unfortunately it turned out that this factory was legitimate and this just led to the death of many innocent workers, plus many further deaths as a result of a lack of medicine.
When these revenge attacks occur, more innocent civilians will die. I just hope that Americans remember that the bombing of innocent civilians is wrong even when they are foreigners. I don't hold out much hope of this - when the revenge bombing occurs, I expect it will be greeted with jubliation, even though there will be a tenuous connection at best between those who die and those responsible for the atrocities in New York and Washington. It is appropriate to feel anger towards those responsible for the murder of innocents, but don't let that anger reduce you to "their" level.
I worked at http://www.3dsystems.com for several years. The SLA machines produce parts from photosensitive resin that have very good material properties and several companies used these parts directly in machines with good results. In fact, one company found that the replacement worked better as a small piece in a vacuum cleaner than the material they were using. They wanted to switch until they found out this stuff cost > $100/litre.
A more interesting useage was the rapid casting technology where they create a hollow inverse of the part, fill it with some kind of metallic powder and then use that directly to manafacture small runs of real parts.
Does the term "VM" mean anything to you ? This is why talk of java's portability is non-sensical, java programs only run on a single OS - the java VM. "I can write an OS, first of all, give me an OS..."
Besides, the point of an OS is to manage low level system resources, like registers, cache, memory, devices. You can do the meta-level stuff in a high-level language if you like, but at some stage you're going to have to go low level. Plenty of OS's have been written (as far as possible) in higher level languages than java.
New improved formula: not only do our missiles come with our patented peace ingredient, they are now environmentally friendly too.
The industrial-military complex has been selling to the west based on the premise that our weapons are fun and friendly and filled with "peace" for decades. It's not surprising they should attempt to market them on environmentally friendly grounds too.
Nerve gas would be even more environmentally friendly, but is harder to sell from a PR perspective. It's also relatively cheap to manafacture, which negates the main purpose of arms sales. Less corporate welfare to spread around.
Concorde can fly perfectly well across land, but Boeing successfully lobied US government to ban it from being used across continental USA.
This came as a rude shock and completely fucked the economics of concorde which was explicitly designed for long-haul, eg LA-London flights. It's the main reason so few were built.
Morons - what did they expect ? The US will always protect it's own corporations from competition if it can get away with it. This occurs at the expense of it's citizens, but nobody cares about that. Just like any other nation of course, but it's a lot harder to bully the US into accepting competition than smaller countries.