Communication needs to happen, but throttling it is a lot better than letting it explode all at once, because all you're doing is creating yet another event to enhance divisions.
Another poster was right - the US can afford free speech, mostly because of our wealth. In other countries more riddled with violence and with people in more fragile situations, reasonable limits on free speech can prevent things from being blown out of control.
According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the [Rwandan] genocide: local print and radio media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground. The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech "became so systemic as to seem the norm." The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990. In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the individuals behind Kangura have been accused of producing leaflets in 1992 picturing a machete and asking "What shall we do to complete the social revolution of 1959?" - a reference to the Hutu revolt that overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and the subsequent politically orchestrated communal violence that resulted in thousands of mostly Tutsi casualties and forced roughly 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring Burundi and Uganda. Kangura also published the infamous "10 Hutu Commandments," which called upon Hutus to massacre Tutsis, and more generally communicated the message that the RPF had a devious grand strategy (one feature article was titled "Tutsi colonization plan").
I get tired of these stories. You could claim it's a waste of money to spend 18 million for setting up a transparency website and then running it for a few years. But put these stories into perspective by visiting DefenseLink every day to view how much of your tax dollars are being "invested."
Yesterday alone we awarded over 120 million dollars. The day before that we awarded over 500 million dollars in contracts - I got too disgusted to continue adding the numbers.
So, would I rather not waste 18 million dollars? Sure. But I'd rather spend it on something constructive than destructive. A website about government spending is way more valuable to me than another novel way to hunt and kill humans.
Make people pay for the full environmental impact of oil, and the cost of their share of wars in the middle east. Solar looks great once the real costs of fossil fuels are not hidden in taxes and the benefits of running an empire.
I don't think there's a huge conspiracy, but oil producers manipulate prices on a regular basis - they even have an official racketeering ring called OPEC. It's unfortunate that American and British companies are in on the profits, though, because if they weren't, we would have probably abandoned oil as an energy source. Relying on a finite resource that is mostly on the other side of the planet for nearly everything we consider essential to modern life seems pretty short sighted.
If it's open source and has a unified API, you're overlooking the fact that this is now real competition to Windows. Brand name? Check. R&D budget? Check. Third party support? Check. Linux kernel? Check. Imagine Canonical with billions of dollars.
Hell, if it's actually a brand new WM this will probably take the top distro spot the day after release. Just providing developers with a consistent platform that requires the investment of one working computer and an internet connection is pretty appealing. Even if it sucks for Linux diehards, the competition will change the landscape for Microsoft and perhaps even Apple.
Imagine an advertising campaign: "Is your computer broken? Just stop by your local Starbucks or Staples and pick up your free copy of Google OS. After making room on your hard drive, it will load a new and secure operating system that will allow you to browse the internet, play Solitaire, and write letters with it's included office suite. Once it's loaded, you'll have the option of recovering data and backing it up online for free so you'll never have to worry about data loss again."
Yeah. Some eyebrows were just raised in Redmond and Cupertino.
The bible his been altered throughout history. There is no agreement even between Christians on what should be in the bible. That's why there were wars that destroyed Europe for hundreds of years after the reformation. So, you're right, the Christians have nothing like the burning of Qur'ans. They killed each other instead, over petty details, for centuries and centuries.
Furthermore, the Qur'an is far more accurate with earlier versions than any copy of the Bible, not in any small part because it's in the same language. But the whole "miracle" of being able to copy a book is one of the more pitiful claims of Christianity and religion in general. And in a contest, the Qur'an would beat the Bible - whichever version you'd like to pick - hands down for accuracy.
More saliently, Ehrman notes other portions of the Bible that appeared to have been subtly altered in order to combat specific heresies. Particularly, alterations were made in order to counter heresies that contended that Jesus was part of a trinity and was, in fact, the Son of God. Here's one example:
A similar phenomenon happens a few verses later in the account of Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Temple. The story line is familiar: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus attend a festival in Jerusalem, but then when the rest of the family heads home in the caravan, Jesus remains behind, unbeknowst to them. As the text says, "his parents did not know about it." But why does the text speak of his parents when Joseph is not really his father? A number of textual witnesses [later texts - Ed.] "correct" the problem by having the text read, "Joseph and his mother did not know it."
It's significant to note that both the King James version and the New King James version of the Bible both repeat this alteration in the text. This is significant because these translations are probably the most widely used among American evangelicals. They are also, as Ehrman notes, based on some very bad Greek texts due to the paucity of available Greek manuscripts at the time.
There are many examples of changes in the text. The version of Genesis which has two creation stories has been all but removed from modern Bibles, though it was present in the 50s and 60s. This is not new - Church leaders have hidden the truth from their followers for centuries, but now nearly everyone is literate, so religion is continuing to disappear where people are given the choice. Some notable exceptions would be the middle east, where lack of education and religious fundamentalism are so intertwined it hardly requires comment.
But what else would you expect from a God who waited tens of thousands of years to tell the "truth" to humans, and then gave it to "stupefied, illiterate, bronze age peasants" as Hitchens puts it. Not the smartest move for an omniscient God interested in presenting a coherent religion.
Although the Taliban government is not recognized by United Nations members who will again consider what do with the Afghanistan next month, it is treated as the de facto government by United Nations agencies, which run programs there. Afghanistan is also under Security Council sanctions for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant, to American courts.
On human rights, Mr. Zahid, who is meeting United Nations officials and other diplomats, said Taliban officials now let women work in health services, the Interior Ministry, at airports and for certain United Nations agencies like the World Food Program. But he said demands for a representative government and elections were unrealistic in a country destroyed by two decades of war, a drought and almost no foreign aid.
''How do they expect us to be in a position to hold elections?'' he asked. ''In all of Afghan history, there has never been an election. After 20 years of war, when we are only beginning to create institutions, when we are the first Afghan government to try to stop opium production, how can they expect us to do this now? They are demanding of us what they never before expected of this country.''
Quothz claims we didn't invade Afghanistan. I tell him that's bogus, because the Taliban were a client state of ours since we gave them 40 million dollars. Obviously we recognized they were in control of Afghanistan, until it suited us to say that they weren't "really" the government of Afghanistan. This is a matter of historical record, but let me back that up with something from the CATO Institute.
Yet the Bush administration did more than praise the Taliban's proclaimed ban of opium cultivation. In mid-May, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting Afghan refugees. Given Callahan's comment, there was little doubt that the new stipend was a reward for Kabul's anti-drug efforts. That $43 million grant needs to be placed in context. Afghanistan's estimated gross domestic product was a mere $2 billion. The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters.
I see he's been modded insightful for perpetuating the lie that we were "invited" to Afghanistan, but that's hardly surprising. He back pedals, and insists that giving a government that claims they run a country a huge sum of money doesn't mean we recognize they run the country. I pressed him on this point, saying that if a country doesn't recognize another, does that give them the right to invade? Iran versus Israel is an obvious example.
Now, making the claim that the practices of an installed dictatorship under US and British control in the 1970s are somehow are applicable to my argument that Iran in 2009, under the example of the United States, couldn't use an excuse like "the PLO invited us into Palestine" when the Northern Alliance invited the United States into Afghanistan, is just ridiculous. You might as well assert parallels between Poland in 1970 and Poland in 2000. In 2000, the Taliban controlled 95% of Afghanistan. It was lobbying for UN Membership. In 2001, we gave them 40 million dollars while they were at war with the Northern Alliance. I have to say that the political posturing done at the UN compares very little with our tacit monetary support of the Taliban during the same time period.
The bottom line is that he is defending colonial American activities, ignoring the history because that's a requirement for his statement that America didn't invade Afghanistan, and then claiming that my hypothetical invasion of Israel from Iran doesn't count because our colonial regime in 1979 at one point did recognize Israel. So, I showed him the map, which makes it pretty clear that 95% of the area doesn't have diplomatic relations with Israel, and the vast majority of those do not officially recognize Israel. So, you can have your little asterisk, but it's a meaningless technicality, just as it was that there were members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan at the UN, despite the fact that they controlled 5% of the country, and lost the capital years ago.
His argument only works if you have amnesia.
And, I'm sorry to say, no one is reading this thread besides you and I, and you're late to the argument with bad information.
Those are the only Arab states in blue on the map.
From Wikipedia:
Israel has no diplomatic relations with 36 countries, 20 of them members of the 22-member Arab League. Some of the countries, with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, accept Israeli passports and acknowledge other Israeli marks of sovereignty; however, most of these countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel at all.
Not even Iraq has established diplomatic relations with Israel. The parent was trying to claim that Israel is generally recognized by their neighbors, including Iran, which are demonstrably not true statements. Most of the Arab League is still boycotting Israel, doesn't recognize their passports, and some even prevent entry into their country if it's obvious you have been to Israel (like a border entry stamp from Taba, Egypt.)
Is there anything else you'd like to say to make yourself look slightly stupid and absolutely petty?
If we hadn't been threatening half the world and arming the other, what would be the practical application for stealth and high altitude bombers? Could you have developed these applications for less money for other purposes?
I think the argument for military spending because 10% of the amazing technology they produce can be used for something other than killing humans is a poor one.
That doesn't remove their obligation to crush anyone who threatens their authority.
Secret military contracts and projects are unethical, unconstitutional, and ineffective, because they are always misused. Without accountability, there's no hope for good behavior, especially when you're dealing in unlimited power. In order to keep their houses in order, the DoD and CIA and other organizations who don't even have names are required to commit evil on top of evil.
I think the only thing more preposterous to the founding fathers than handing any part of our national security to a privately owned entity like Northrop Grumman or Lockheed is that we are then expected to remain unquestionably faithful to the unelected officials who execute said contracts, and hand them hundreds of billions of dollars.
"Everyone's an atheist. No one believes in the Sun God Ra anymore. Nobody believes in Huitzilopochtli anymore. Nobody believes in Juno and Venus anymore. You're all atheists as far as that's concerned, and you look with pity on those who support, or ever did, such cults. All we say is make it consistent. Go one god more, and you're nearly there." --Hitchens
Best times of my teenage LAN life. Mine bus. Tank. Rocket launcher. It was like that old Micro Machines game with guns.
A little Starcraft. Command and Conquer. Subspace. And Ultima Online... that was like introducing heroin to a bunch of guys drinking chocolate milk. Cruising IRC bots for warez and mp3s.
Man. Anyone remember the sheer joy you felt when you connected with something more than dialup for the first time? It was like a geek frontier back in those days. Cue the guys who were phreaking long distance to get into BBSs with acoustic couplers to tell me that I missed the real frontier...
There will be screaming, but no crying. In GTA or anything similar, there are groans, shrieks, and most of them are a little "overdone" to be comical. A real death is less gory, but far more traumatizing. They would have to plead for their lives, start praying, or simply mutter the name of their child or their mother until their life leaves their body. I think only a very small subset of the population is going to want to see real death simulations.
Recently I ran over a fox, and I thought it was a small dog so I pulled over and I got out of the car. It was twisting in agony, gushing blood from it's mouth, and I watched it as it died. It tried to get up a few times, the rattling in it's throat grew louder, and I recognized the moment it gave up. That was the most terrifying part to watch, not the actual death at the end, but the moment were it seemed to realize that it's time had run out.
Death and suffering are something we have a natural aversion to. That's why Shock and Awe was shot from miles away. That's why hamburger arrives in little white styrofoam trays with no pictures of cows on it. That's why we've made it as a species - we've needed each other to survive, so our evolutionary morality led us to the point where we more or less share a similar set of values. And that's why I don't think the simulations will come close to reality, because few people want to see it, and many who think they do will realize that they don't.
Whoa, buddy. That's just ancestral indiscretion. It's not like GW Bush or his father helped start wars that conveniently profited themselves and their friends.
But the real trick here is that the world financial markets are getting gripped tighter every day, especially due to terrorism legislation, and new regulations from the shattering of the foundations of our financial system.
If Guido lives in Sicily, and has a few hundred kids on his payroll, he can give the gold in game to whomever he wants, let's say Freddie Crinkle Fingers. Freddie can sell the gold, and how would the police prove that Freddie hadn't been killing dwarves or whatever for six months, or made a good deal buying the account from some stupid kid?
Similarly, if you had those same hundred kids write a letter and drop $200 worth of cashier's checks in the mail, it's a novel way to move $20k. But it's highly traceable, and the final destination is somewhat out of Guido's control.
That discrepancy may also provide a way for people to beat the rap on prostitution charges: don't solicit someone for sex, tell them you're making a porno flick and you want them to be in it.
That's genius. Anyone have a cheap room for rent in SFV?
Repair does not include telling that country what to do or supporting one candidate or even governmental structure over another. If you want to help them, leave them alone. If we care about reparations, we should give Nicaragua the money they won in the world court.
If we decide that as a moral authority we only do business with democracies who we view as legitimate, then we'd better stop buying oil from half of OPEC, we'd better stop trading with China, and so on. Somehow I doubt this will happen.
And I'm sorry, but until you have the same standard of living as the average Joe in one of our colonial conquests, you are probably still benefiting from those activities. If our economy is built on cheap energy, and it's cheap because we have killed hundreds of thousands of arabs and persians for the last century, supported every dictator who obeyed our orders in the region, and overthrown democracies for non-compliance, at what point and how will justice be served?
I have to ask, do you think that's any of our business anymore?
We split the Korean peninsula with the Russians without consulting any Koreans. The split lead to the destruction of both countries through a proxy war in the 50s. Maybe the whole peninsula would have turned into something like North Korea. Or maybe without in any Americans in the south, the Russians would have lost interest and left the north.
And the GPs post claiming that Iranians carry the full blame for their current dictatorship is absurd. They carry some blame. But we prepped their society for dictatorship for 26 years through military and political support of the Shah, after we threw out their democratic government in 53. To take their oil profits, it turns out.
Why anyone is surprised with Islamic fundamentalism's rise in our wake is beyond me.
Much of your post is nonsense, but let me reply to your sentiment.
And honestly, your entire post screams: "since these taxes won't affect me, I am in favour of them, as that will force other people to subsidise my own, different life style choices". You don't want *people* to pay the "full cost" of anything. You want *other people* to pay more for purchases which *you* aren't going to make, under the twisted and erroneous logic that your costs will go down. A very selfish view, given that your main implication is that other people are being too selfish with their consumption.
I hope that clarifies things for you.
No, I don't want any special treatment for anyone. I rarely eat cattle meat because of the environmental impact. When I do, I try to eat cattle meat from a farm where they are grass fed, humanely treated, and not from a cow factory stuffing them with corn and antibiotics. And I drive a small car, but not tiny, since I'm 6'7. Trust me, I understand the want to drive a yacht with a dvd player in the dash. I actually don't fit well in American made SUVs since they are engineered for soccer moms, but I digress.
Regardless, I expect to pay a price that reflects the real costs of what I consume. The real benefit of market economics comes when the market provides transparency through accurate pricing all the way through the production of everything. This means, in my opinion, that a business has to have a manufacturing cycle that does no damage to the sustainability of life on the planet. If it cannot operate sustainably, its costs should be enormous, or we'll kill the planet, since killing the planet is the best option for the economy, but not for anything else. I don't think this is a controversial statement - you may argue with me on how damaging a certain process is to the environment, but it logically follows that making environmental destruction the most economical option has dire consequences. For reference, look at the environment in China.
Focusing on the efficiency of those larger cars & trucks (and sports cars), however, requires ditching the philosophy of asceticism and accepting that many people do not want to drive tiny underpowered cars (and they don't want to stop eating red meat or running the AC either, damnit) and working with them to minimize the impact of the cars they do drive, the meat they do eat and the AC they do run. If we can't get to there from here, then environmentalism will always be something that a few people care very strongly about and the rest of the population cares not at all.
No, the important thing is to make sure that people pay the real cost of what they consume. Their behavior would change automatically, and I'm sure it'd be amazing to watch attitudes change after years of selfish subsidization and environmental destruction.
For instance, if you passed a law to stop the agribusinesses from polluting the Mississippi so much that a dead zone the size of New Jersey forms in the Gulf, meat prices would probably triple. If people paid as much at the tank as it costs to maintain our armies in the middle east, gas prices would at least double. Vehicles should be taxed for their wear and tear on our road system. If you want to drive an F350, fine, but since it weighs three times what my car does, you should pay three times as much into the federal tax system to pay for the infrastructure.
I don't care if you have a 20 ounce steak every night and park a fleet of hummers in your front yard. But I do want you to pay their full cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Communication needs to happen, but throttling it is a lot better than letting it explode all at once, because all you're doing is creating yet another event to enhance divisions.
Another poster was right - the US can afford free speech, mostly because of our wealth. In other countries more riddled with violence and with people in more fragile situations, reasonable limits on free speech can prevent things from being blown out of control.
According to recent commentators the news media played a crucial role in the [Rwandan] genocide: local print and radio media fueled the killings, while the international media either ignored or seriously misconstrued events on the ground. The print media in Rwanda is believed to have started hate speech against Tutsis which was later continued by radio stations. According to commentators anti-Tutsi hate speech "became so systemic as to seem the norm." The state-owned newspaper Kangura had a central role, starting an anti-Tutsi and anti-RPF campaign in October 1990. In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the individuals behind Kangura have been accused of producing leaflets in 1992 picturing a machete and asking "What shall we do to complete the social revolution of 1959?" - a reference to the Hutu revolt that overthrew the Tutsi monarchy and the subsequent politically orchestrated communal violence that resulted in thousands of mostly Tutsi casualties and forced roughly 300,000 Tutsis to flee to neighboring Burundi and Uganda. Kangura also published the infamous "10 Hutu Commandments," which called upon Hutus to massacre Tutsis, and more generally communicated the message that the RPF had a devious grand strategy (one feature article was titled "Tutsi colonization plan").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
The correct joke would be:
Everything looks fine !@#-)@^Y^)$_*^*$&@) memory of the independence dayuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
And then the lameness filter would ruin it anyway.
You know you live in a fucked up country when you collectively hate the Bahamas.
Hats off, Kim Jong-Il. That's going to be a tough one to beat.
I'm still running a huge network of unpatched XP SP1 boxes and
I get tired of these stories. You could claim it's a waste of money to spend 18 million for setting up a transparency website and then running it for a few years. But put these stories into perspective by visiting DefenseLink every day to view how much of your tax dollars are being "invested."
http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/contract.aspx?contractid=4067
Yesterday alone we awarded over 120 million dollars. The day before that we awarded over 500 million dollars in contracts - I got too disgusted to continue adding the numbers.
So, would I rather not waste 18 million dollars? Sure. But I'd rather spend it on something constructive than destructive. A website about government spending is way more valuable to me than another novel way to hunt and kill humans.
Make people pay for the full environmental impact of oil, and the cost of their share of wars in the middle east. Solar looks great once the real costs of fossil fuels are not hidden in taxes and the benefits of running an empire.
I don't think there's a huge conspiracy, but oil producers manipulate prices on a regular basis - they even have an official racketeering ring called OPEC. It's unfortunate that American and British companies are in on the profits, though, because if they weren't, we would have probably abandoned oil as an energy source. Relying on a finite resource that is mostly on the other side of the planet for nearly everything we consider essential to modern life seems pretty short sighted.
If it's open source and has a unified API, you're overlooking the fact that this is now real competition to Windows. Brand name? Check. R&D budget? Check. Third party support? Check. Linux kernel? Check. Imagine Canonical with billions of dollars.
Hell, if it's actually a brand new WM this will probably take the top distro spot the day after release. Just providing developers with a consistent platform that requires the investment of one working computer and an internet connection is pretty appealing. Even if it sucks for Linux diehards, the competition will change the landscape for Microsoft and perhaps even Apple.
Imagine an advertising campaign: "Is your computer broken? Just stop by your local Starbucks or Staples and pick up your free copy of Google OS. After making room on your hard drive, it will load a new and secure operating system that will allow you to browse the internet, play Solitaire, and write letters with it's included office suite. Once it's loaded, you'll have the option of recovering data and backing it up online for free so you'll never have to worry about data loss again."
Yeah. Some eyebrows were just raised in Redmond and Cupertino.
I already believe in my relationship with the sun god Ra.
You're the atheist. You have a choice to make.
The bible his been altered throughout history. There is no agreement even between Christians on what should be in the bible. That's why there were wars that destroyed Europe for hundreds of years after the reformation. So, you're right, the Christians have nothing like the burning of Qur'ans. They killed each other instead, over petty details, for centuries and centuries.
Furthermore, the Qur'an is far more accurate with earlier versions than any copy of the Bible, not in any small part because it's in the same language. But the whole "miracle" of being able to copy a book is one of the more pitiful claims of Christianity and religion in general. And in a contest, the Qur'an would beat the Bible - whichever version you'd like to pick - hands down for accuracy.
http://www.hereticalideas.com/2009/06/book-review-misquoting-jesus-by-bart-ehrman/
More saliently, Ehrman notes other portions of the Bible that appeared to have been subtly altered in order to combat specific heresies. Particularly, alterations were made in order to counter heresies that contended that Jesus was part of a trinity and was, in fact, the Son of God. Here's one example:
A similar phenomenon happens a few verses later in the account of Jesus as a twelve-year-old in the Temple. The story line is familiar: Joseph, Mary, and Jesus attend a festival in Jerusalem, but then when the rest of the family heads home in the caravan, Jesus remains behind, unbeknowst to them. As the text says, "his parents did not know about it." But why does the text speak of his parents when Joseph is not really his father? A number of textual witnesses [later texts - Ed.] "correct" the problem by having the text read, "Joseph and his mother did not know it."
It's significant to note that both the King James version and the New King James version of the Bible both repeat this alteration in the text. This is significant because these translations are probably the most widely used among American evangelicals. They are also, as Ehrman notes, based on some very bad Greek texts due to the paucity of available Greek manuscripts at the time.
There are many examples of changes in the text. The version of Genesis which has two creation stories has been all but removed from modern Bibles, though it was present in the 50s and 60s. This is not new - Church leaders have hidden the truth from their followers for centuries, but now nearly everyone is literate, so religion is continuing to disappear where people are given the choice. Some notable exceptions would be the middle east, where lack of education and religious fundamentalism are so intertwined it hardly requires comment.
But what else would you expect from a God who waited tens of thousands of years to tell the "truth" to humans, and then gave it to "stupefied, illiterate, bronze age peasants" as Hitchens puts it. Not the smartest move for an omniscient God interested in presenting a coherent religion.
I was looking for this article:
Although the Taliban government is not recognized by United Nations members who will again consider what do with the Afghanistan next month, it is treated as the de facto government by United Nations agencies, which run programs there. Afghanistan is also under Security Council sanctions for refusing to turn over Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant, to American courts.
On human rights, Mr. Zahid, who is meeting United Nations officials and other diplomats, said Taliban officials now let women work in health services, the Interior Ministry, at airports and for certain United Nations agencies like the World Food Program. But he said demands for a representative government and elections were unrealistic in a country destroyed by two decades of war, a drought and almost no foreign aid.
''How do they expect us to be in a position to hold elections?'' he asked. ''In all of Afghan history, there has never been an election. After 20 years of war, when we are only beginning to create institutions, when we are the first Afghan government to try to stop opium production, how can they expect us to do this now? They are demanding of us what they never before expected of this country.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/21/world/taliban-open-a-campaign-to-gain-status-at-the-un.html
Let me recap for you:
Quothz claims we didn't invade Afghanistan. I tell him that's bogus, because the Taliban were a client state of ours since we gave them 40 million dollars. Obviously we recognized they were in control of Afghanistan, until it suited us to say that they weren't "really" the government of Afghanistan. This is a matter of historical record, but let me back that up with something from the CATO Institute.
Yet the Bush administration did more than praise the Taliban's proclaimed ban of opium cultivation. In mid-May, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $43 million grant to Afghanistan in addition to the humanitarian aid the United States had long been providing to agencies assisting Afghan refugees. Given Callahan's comment, there was little doubt that the new stipend was a reward for Kabul's anti-drug efforts. That $43 million grant needs to be placed in context. Afghanistan's estimated gross domestic product was a mere $2 billion. The equivalent financial impact on the U.S. economy would have required an infusion of $215 billion. In other words, $43 million was very serious money to Afghanistan's theocratic masters.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3556
I see he's been modded insightful for perpetuating the lie that we were "invited" to Afghanistan, but that's hardly surprising. He back pedals, and insists that giving a government that claims they run a country a huge sum of money doesn't mean we recognize they run the country. I pressed him on this point, saying that if a country doesn't recognize another, does that give them the right to invade? Iran versus Israel is an obvious example.
Now, making the claim that the practices of an installed dictatorship under US and British control in the 1970s are somehow are applicable to my argument that Iran in 2009, under the example of the United States, couldn't use an excuse like "the PLO invited us into Palestine" when the Northern Alliance invited the United States into Afghanistan, is just ridiculous. You might as well assert parallels between Poland in 1970 and Poland in 2000. In 2000, the Taliban controlled 95% of Afghanistan. It was lobbying for UN Membership. In 2001, we gave them 40 million dollars while they were at war with the Northern Alliance. I have to say that the political posturing done at the UN compares very little with our tacit monetary support of the Taliban during the same time period.
The bottom line is that he is defending colonial American activities, ignoring the history because that's a requirement for his statement that America didn't invade Afghanistan, and then claiming that my hypothetical invasion of Israel from Iran doesn't count because our colonial regime in 1979 at one point did recognize Israel. So, I showed him the map, which makes it pretty clear that 95% of the area doesn't have diplomatic relations with Israel, and the vast majority of those do not officially recognize Israel. So, you can have your little asterisk, but it's a meaningless technicality, just as it was that there were members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan at the UN, despite the fact that they controlled 5% of the country, and lost the capital years ago.
His argument only works if you have amnesia.
And, I'm sorry to say, no one is reading this thread besides you and I, and you're late to the argument with bad information.
Only Egypt and Jordan have recognized Israel, as far as I can tell, and they are the only ones mentioned in this article from the NY Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/world/middleeast/01arab.html
Those are the only Arab states in blue on the map.
From Wikipedia:
Israel has no diplomatic relations with 36 countries, 20 of them members of the 22-member Arab League. Some of the countries, with which Israel has no diplomatic relations, accept Israeli passports and acknowledge other Israeli marks of sovereignty; however, most of these countries refuse to recognize the State of Israel at all.
Not even Iraq has established diplomatic relations with Israel. The parent was trying to claim that Israel is generally recognized by their neighbors, including Iran, which are demonstrably not true statements. Most of the Arab League is still boycotting Israel, doesn't recognize their passports, and some even prevent entry into their country if it's obvious you have been to Israel (like a border entry stamp from Taba, Egypt.)
Is there anything else you'd like to say to make yourself look slightly stupid and absolutely petty?
If we hadn't been threatening half the world and arming the other, what would be the practical application for stealth and high altitude bombers? Could you have developed these applications for less money for other purposes?
I think the argument for military spending because 10% of the amazing technology they produce can be used for something other than killing humans is a poor one.
That doesn't remove their obligation to crush anyone who threatens their authority.
Secret military contracts and projects are unethical, unconstitutional, and ineffective, because they are always misused. Without accountability, there's no hope for good behavior, especially when you're dealing in unlimited power. In order to keep their houses in order, the DoD and CIA and other organizations who don't even have names are required to commit evil on top of evil.
I think the only thing more preposterous to the founding fathers than handing any part of our national security to a privately owned entity like Northrop Grumman or Lockheed is that we are then expected to remain unquestionably faithful to the unelected officials who execute said contracts, and hand them hundreds of billions of dollars.
"Everyone's an atheist. No one believes in the Sun God Ra anymore. Nobody believes in Huitzilopochtli anymore. Nobody believes in Juno and Venus anymore. You're all atheists as far as that's concerned, and you look with pity on those who support, or ever did, such cults. All we say is make it consistent. Go one god more, and you're nearly there." --Hitchens
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnMYL8sF7bQ
Best times of my teenage LAN life. Mine bus. Tank. Rocket launcher. It was like that old Micro Machines game with guns.
A little Starcraft. Command and Conquer. Subspace. And Ultima Online... that was like introducing heroin to a bunch of guys drinking chocolate milk. Cruising IRC bots for warez and mp3s.
Man. Anyone remember the sheer joy you felt when you connected with something more than dialup for the first time? It was like a geek frontier back in those days. Cue the guys who were phreaking long distance to get into BBSs with acoustic couplers to tell me that I missed the real frontier...
There will be screaming, but no crying. In GTA or anything similar, there are groans, shrieks, and most of them are a little "overdone" to be comical. A real death is less gory, but far more traumatizing. They would have to plead for their lives, start praying, or simply mutter the name of their child or their mother until their life leaves their body. I think only a very small subset of the population is going to want to see real death simulations.
Recently I ran over a fox, and I thought it was a small dog so I pulled over and I got out of the car. It was twisting in agony, gushing blood from it's mouth, and I watched it as it died. It tried to get up a few times, the rattling in it's throat grew louder, and I recognized the moment it gave up. That was the most terrifying part to watch, not the actual death at the end, but the moment were it seemed to realize that it's time had run out.
Death and suffering are something we have a natural aversion to. That's why Shock and Awe was shot from miles away. That's why hamburger arrives in little white styrofoam trays with no pictures of cows on it. That's why we've made it as a species - we've needed each other to survive, so our evolutionary morality led us to the point where we more or less share a similar set of values. And that's why I don't think the simulations will come close to reality, because few people want to see it, and many who think they do will realize that they don't.
Whoa, buddy. That's just ancestral indiscretion. It's not like GW Bush or his father helped start wars that conveniently profited themselves and their friends.
Wait a second...
God, that word makes me want to kill myself.
But the real trick here is that the world financial markets are getting gripped tighter every day, especially due to terrorism legislation, and new regulations from the shattering of the foundations of our financial system.
If Guido lives in Sicily, and has a few hundred kids on his payroll, he can give the gold in game to whomever he wants, let's say Freddie Crinkle Fingers. Freddie can sell the gold, and how would the police prove that Freddie hadn't been killing dwarves or whatever for six months, or made a good deal buying the account from some stupid kid?
Similarly, if you had those same hundred kids write a letter and drop $200 worth of cashier's checks in the mail, it's a novel way to move $20k. But it's highly traceable, and the final destination is somewhat out of Guido's control.
That discrepancy may also provide a way for people to beat the rap on prostitution charges: don't solicit someone for sex, tell them you're making a porno flick and you want them to be in it.
That's genius. Anyone have a cheap room for rent in SFV?
Repair does not include telling that country what to do or supporting one candidate or even governmental structure over another. If you want to help them, leave them alone. If we care about reparations, we should give Nicaragua the money they won in the world court.
If we decide that as a moral authority we only do business with democracies who we view as legitimate, then we'd better stop buying oil from half of OPEC, we'd better stop trading with China, and so on. Somehow I doubt this will happen.
And I'm sorry, but until you have the same standard of living as the average Joe in one of our colonial conquests, you are probably still benefiting from those activities. If our economy is built on cheap energy, and it's cheap because we have killed hundreds of thousands of arabs and persians for the last century, supported every dictator who obeyed our orders in the region, and overthrown democracies for non-compliance, at what point and how will justice be served?
I have to ask, do you think that's any of our business anymore?
We split the Korean peninsula with the Russians without consulting any Koreans. The split lead to the destruction of both countries through a proxy war in the 50s. Maybe the whole peninsula would have turned into something like North Korea. Or maybe without in any Americans in the south, the Russians would have lost interest and left the north.
And the GPs post claiming that Iranians carry the full blame for their current dictatorship is absurd. They carry some blame. But we prepped their society for dictatorship for 26 years through military and political support of the Shah, after we threw out their democratic government in 53. To take their oil profits, it turns out.
Why anyone is surprised with Islamic fundamentalism's rise in our wake is beyond me.
Much of your post is nonsense, but let me reply to your sentiment.
And honestly, your entire post screams: "since these taxes won't affect me, I am in favour of them, as that will force other people to subsidise my own, different life style choices". You don't want *people* to pay the "full cost" of anything. You want *other people* to pay more for purchases which *you* aren't going to make, under the twisted and erroneous logic that your costs will go down. A very selfish view, given that your main implication is that other people are being too selfish with their consumption.
I hope that clarifies things for you.
No, I don't want any special treatment for anyone. I rarely eat cattle meat because of the environmental impact. When I do, I try to eat cattle meat from a farm where they are grass fed, humanely treated, and not from a cow factory stuffing them with corn and antibiotics. And I drive a small car, but not tiny, since I'm 6'7. Trust me, I understand the want to drive a yacht with a dvd player in the dash. I actually don't fit well in American made SUVs since they are engineered for soccer moms, but I digress.
Regardless, I expect to pay a price that reflects the real costs of what I consume. The real benefit of market economics comes when the market provides transparency through accurate pricing all the way through the production of everything. This means, in my opinion, that a business has to have a manufacturing cycle that does no damage to the sustainability of life on the planet. If it cannot operate sustainably, its costs should be enormous, or we'll kill the planet, since killing the planet is the best option for the economy, but not for anything else. I don't think this is a controversial statement - you may argue with me on how damaging a certain process is to the environment, but it logically follows that making environmental destruction the most economical option has dire consequences. For reference, look at the environment in China.
Focusing on the efficiency of those larger cars & trucks (and sports cars), however, requires ditching the philosophy of asceticism and accepting that many people do not want to drive tiny underpowered cars (and they don't want to stop eating red meat or running the AC either, damnit) and working with them to minimize the impact of the cars they do drive, the meat they do eat and the AC they do run. If we can't get to there from here, then environmentalism will always be something that a few people care very strongly about and the rest of the population cares not at all.
No, the important thing is to make sure that people pay the real cost of what they consume. Their behavior would change automatically, and I'm sure it'd be amazing to watch attitudes change after years of selfish subsidization and environmental destruction.
For instance, if you passed a law to stop the agribusinesses from polluting the Mississippi so much that a dead zone the size of New Jersey forms in the Gulf, meat prices would probably triple. If people paid as much at the tank as it costs to maintain our armies in the middle east, gas prices would at least double. Vehicles should be taxed for their wear and tear on our road system. If you want to drive an F350, fine, but since it weighs three times what my car does, you should pay three times as much into the federal tax system to pay for the infrastructure.
I don't care if you have a 20 ounce steak every night and park a fleet of hummers in your front yard. But I do want you to pay their full cost.