Taco Cowboy invoked an old saying which something that slowed my roll: judge not lest ye be judged. I'll leave it to someone else to tear you up. At least I'm open and honest.
The way I saw it, it was all of our unethical war. I'm sorry if that opinion offends you -- if you do not feel responsible for it for any given reason (I was also underage when it kicked off, I was 15) -- but I do believe that a society is, to an extent, the sum of its parts, and that we all owe it to ourselves to take ownership of whatever society we live in. It seemed like a better option than funding it with my tax dollars.
I also knew that if I was going to be critical of it, I had better see it first hand. And after seeing it first hand, the truth of the matter for the average Iraqi citizen was that he feared Iranian troops far more than he did American troops, and his biggest fear would be American troops leaving and opening the door for Iranian troops to enter. That was the feeling I got, time after time, talking to interpreters and 10 year old English speaking kids. They loved the same idea of America I grew up loving. I did my best to be ethical, as an individual, and to this day I can't say I ever once compromised my morals. Hell, by the time I got there, we weren't even doing raids. We did "soft-knocks," meaning we knocked first and tried to communicate before any escalation of force. The only reason we'd be there is if there was a known "terrorist," that is "insurgent," that is someone who had actively tried to kill people who did not deserve it or tried to kill soldiers. And the quandary in all this for me is that many times this information was not received through fancy, high-tech intelligence gathering methods. It was received through good old-fashioned tattle-tales from the same neighborhood, people who needed something we could give them (usually money). We did some good things now and then, too, you know, things I am proud to say I was a part of, like handing out bundles of your precious tax dollars to folks who would 1) never forget it and 2) use it for something more than a new car in their driveway or a new television on their wall. I actually think that one day Iraq will be a modern, booming country with much more promise than many parts of America, and I'm not sure it could have been that way if Saddam had stayed in power. That's only my opinion, and it's not based on any sort of data (this is a thing I am trying to overcome this year on a general level).
But to you, Citizen, I would like to apologize for having been a part of that unethical war. And I would like to apologize for the disability checks they send me. In hindsight, I'd probably have found another job if I had thought about it longer. But I wouldn't have commented on the war anymore, I wouldn't have felt equipped to. I was tired of people in my family telling me that 1) I couldn't have an opinion because I had not been there and 2) I simply did not have what it took to be a soldier. That last part is exactly why I went infantry. I'm not a violent person.
Okay, Taco.
So long as we're not claiming that he innocently joined the NSA in the belief he was defending Americans.
Thanks for the enlightening information.
I would extend this further to ALL public officials who either have not adequately studied the Constitution (mine's on the wall, about 2 feet from my face right now) or who've knowingly denigrated it. There is only one member of Congress I could presently, willingly exclude from execution, and I don't even like him as a person.
Trading partner? Okay, that's an odd concept. If we were trading partners and trade were free, you would protect your workers, I would protect my workers, and neither of us would sign deals which hurt our economies. At present, China does not protect her workers, we don't employ ours, and every trade agreement we sign gives away everything but the arms industry. Hmm.
A true trial would simply examine the facts and if there was reasonable doubt that Snowden was guilty of the charge then he would be judged not guilty by the jury.
In a better country, Bush would have faced similar charges when he outed that CIA agent.
I agree with this. And didn't Manning's case reveal a similar circumstance of intent? I was an a devout left-leaning anarchist in my early youth (and still little or no justification for a ruling class and/or government to do its bidding) and when I joined the military, in fact, it came up. I read the contract carefully, and it prohibited me from having contact with any group which in any way sought to overthrow the US Government. So during my time in the army, I had no contact with such groups. To me it was similar to Coke asking a delivery driver not to deliver Pepsi using a Coke truck. You could still drink Pepsi (you could still maintain your beliefs, and your personal integrity therein) but you could not, while working for Coke at least, undermine the brand that paid your bills.
Putin really gets off on showing his citizens that he is not afraid of the US. Sometimes I think China's periodic fucking-with Hong Kong is the same sort of fuckery.
I mean, we can talk all day and say that Snowden made great personal sacrifices, but did anyone ever ask why he was working with the NSA in the first damn place? All Federal level police organizations are corrupt in one way or another and all of them are guilty of wiping their ass with the constitution. Contractor or not, working for the NSA was immoral. Now whistle-blowing on them should vindicate his conscience, but does it really exonerate whatever work against our right to privacy that he did before? In a more just world, that is what he would be charged with, not his present charges. Just my two cents.
And let's not try to talk about my patriotism. I enlisted in the Army Infantry and deployed to Iraq in 2009. Snowden never did that. I did daily patrols. This was when I still had some faith left in America as a country and in Americans as a people. Now I'm sort of working on an exit strategy for my family. Sorry. I give up on this place.
I think disbarring these people for overzealously representing their clients might put personal injury, criminal defense, and other types of lawyers at risk. I do think they should be censured from bringing suit against Limewire ever again, though.
United States of America Gross Domestic Product 2010: $14.660 trillion.
I laughed extremely hard. I agree with the submitter: this is only going to weaken them and make the public think they are wasting the courts' time.
Here's to a society where we really don't care that our boss knows who we fucked this weekend and how drunk we were when we did it; here's to a society where the boss has something better to do than worry about how much he pisses me off, because I'm still performing and he's still bossing; here's to the New America.
You pay for software that almost works 30% of the time and fails to work the other 70% of the time?
What does Microsoft have to do with Google other than that they are attempting -- and I use this word loosely -- to compete with them on their home turf?
Chrome has done more to keep people using Windows than MS would ever give credit for. You don't see Google trying to make it the default browser choice on all systems sold by, I dunno, Dell or HP, do you?
If you had said you pay for Apple products because they work and you get what you pay for, I would consider that reasonable. But all you prove in your comment is that you're some form of retarded Microsoft-bot, and that's a shame, because that bitch is finally on the way out and innovation is finally back on the way in, and it always sucks to be the last to realize that.
Next, we'll deal with the spectre of Apple evil -- even us who love their products.
I still wonder why Google hasn't moved their Checkout product to be more like PayPal, enable P2P payments and so forth. They're really missing out on a lot of revenue from people who are fed up with PayPal.
Why do they have a problem with allowing PayPal access to their checking account? I'm pretty sure it's probably that they're just doing such volume that PayPal wants some sort of security in case of disputes and what not. I do a lot of volume with PayPal and my account was on hold for awhile until I got my account verified, and later my address.
If they're moving that much money, they should probably go to a merchant account solution. They'd get a better rate anyways.
I just finished transcribing a series of interviews with British Muslim women on this very subject. One was college educated, a doctor; she sees it as an equalizer, the veil and the covering. When women go out, she says, they are judged not on their appearance but solely on their intellect etc. This is why she sees it as liberation. This particular interviewee also happened to be vehemently opposed to the hijab, forced or otherwise, because, she said, there was no directive from Allah to wear such. Hers was the only opinion I really paid a whole lot of attention to; the other seven, I would say, were more like what you're saying -- brainwashed and militantly so.
I'm with you, man, I'm more on the Sarkozy side of things -- even if the women see it as liberation, our culture does not, and so we should do everything we can to impede it and assimilate them to our, not superior, but more objectively just ways of doing things.
I guess my reasoning is this: it relates to the internet, and the internet was once the territory strictly of nerds, so I think that's why slashdot feels okay publishing just about anything web-related.
Slashdot Mirror
Taco Cowboy invoked an old saying which something that slowed my roll: judge not lest ye be judged. I'll leave it to someone else to tear you up. At least I'm open and honest.
The way I saw it, it was all of our unethical war. I'm sorry if that opinion offends you -- if you do not feel responsible for it for any given reason (I was also underage when it kicked off, I was 15) -- but I do believe that a society is, to an extent, the sum of its parts, and that we all owe it to ourselves to take ownership of whatever society we live in. It seemed like a better option than funding it with my tax dollars.
I also knew that if I was going to be critical of it, I had better see it first hand. And after seeing it first hand, the truth of the matter for the average Iraqi citizen was that he feared Iranian troops far more than he did American troops, and his biggest fear would be American troops leaving and opening the door for Iranian troops to enter. That was the feeling I got, time after time, talking to interpreters and 10 year old English speaking kids. They loved the same idea of America I grew up loving. I did my best to be ethical, as an individual, and to this day I can't say I ever once compromised my morals. Hell, by the time I got there, we weren't even doing raids. We did "soft-knocks," meaning we knocked first and tried to communicate before any escalation of force. The only reason we'd be there is if there was a known "terrorist," that is "insurgent," that is someone who had actively tried to kill people who did not deserve it or tried to kill soldiers. And the quandary in all this for me is that many times this information was not received through fancy, high-tech intelligence gathering methods. It was received through good old-fashioned tattle-tales from the same neighborhood, people who needed something we could give them (usually money). We did some good things now and then, too, you know, things I am proud to say I was a part of, like handing out bundles of your precious tax dollars to folks who would 1) never forget it and 2) use it for something more than a new car in their driveway or a new television on their wall. I actually think that one day Iraq will be a modern, booming country with much more promise than many parts of America, and I'm not sure it could have been that way if Saddam had stayed in power. That's only my opinion, and it's not based on any sort of data (this is a thing I am trying to overcome this year on a general level).
But to you, Citizen, I would like to apologize for having been a part of that unethical war. And I would like to apologize for the disability checks they send me. In hindsight, I'd probably have found another job if I had thought about it longer. But I wouldn't have commented on the war anymore, I wouldn't have felt equipped to. I was tired of people in my family telling me that 1) I couldn't have an opinion because I had not been there and 2) I simply did not have what it took to be a soldier. That last part is exactly why I went infantry. I'm not a violent person.
Okay, Taco. So long as we're not claiming that he innocently joined the NSA in the belief he was defending Americans. Thanks for the enlightening information.
I would extend this further to ALL public officials who either have not adequately studied the Constitution (mine's on the wall, about 2 feet from my face right now) or who've knowingly denigrated it. There is only one member of Congress I could presently, willingly exclude from execution, and I don't even like him as a person.
Trading partner? Okay, that's an odd concept. If we were trading partners and trade were free, you would protect your workers, I would protect my workers, and neither of us would sign deals which hurt our economies. At present, China does not protect her workers, we don't employ ours, and every trade agreement we sign gives away everything but the arms industry. Hmm.
Now I've learned something from this thread and I don't feel like it was all a waste of time. Thanks!
A true trial would simply examine the facts and if there was reasonable doubt that Snowden was guilty of the charge then he would be judged not guilty by the jury. In a better country, Bush would have faced similar charges when he outed that CIA agent.
I agree with this. And didn't Manning's case reveal a similar circumstance of intent? I was an a devout left-leaning anarchist in my early youth (and still little or no justification for a ruling class and/or government to do its bidding) and when I joined the military, in fact, it came up. I read the contract carefully, and it prohibited me from having contact with any group which in any way sought to overthrow the US Government. So during my time in the army, I had no contact with such groups. To me it was similar to Coke asking a delivery driver not to deliver Pepsi using a Coke truck. You could still drink Pepsi (you could still maintain your beliefs, and your personal integrity therein) but you could not, while working for Coke at least, undermine the brand that paid your bills.
Putin really gets off on showing his citizens that he is not afraid of the US. Sometimes I think China's periodic fucking-with Hong Kong is the same sort of fuckery.
No, that would be perfect. Even at that point, I'm afraid, Americans would miss the irony.
I mean, we can talk all day and say that Snowden made great personal sacrifices, but did anyone ever ask why he was working with the NSA in the first damn place? All Federal level police organizations are corrupt in one way or another and all of them are guilty of wiping their ass with the constitution. Contractor or not, working for the NSA was immoral. Now whistle-blowing on them should vindicate his conscience, but does it really exonerate whatever work against our right to privacy that he did before? In a more just world, that is what he would be charged with, not his present charges. Just my two cents. And let's not try to talk about my patriotism. I enlisted in the Army Infantry and deployed to Iraq in 2009. Snowden never did that. I did daily patrols. This was when I still had some faith left in America as a country and in Americans as a people. Now I'm sort of working on an exit strategy for my family. Sorry. I give up on this place.
So this means the price of their software is gonna come down... right? :P
I think disbarring these people for overzealously representing their clients might put personal injury, criminal defense, and other types of lawyers at risk. I do think they should be censured from bringing suit against Limewire ever again, though.
United States of America Gross Domestic Product 2010: $14.660 trillion. I laughed extremely hard. I agree with the submitter: this is only going to weaken them and make the public think they are wasting the courts' time.
And what rights were Americans guaranteed, I'd like to know?
Here's to a society where we really don't care that our boss knows who we fucked this weekend and how drunk we were when we did it; here's to a society where the boss has something better to do than worry about how much he pisses me off, because I'm still performing and he's still bossing; here's to the New America.
You pay for software that almost works 30% of the time and fails to work the other 70% of the time?
What does Microsoft have to do with Google other than that they are attempting -- and I use this word loosely -- to compete with them on their home turf?
Chrome has done more to keep people using Windows than MS would ever give credit for. You don't see Google trying to make it the default browser choice on all systems sold by, I dunno, Dell or HP, do you?
If you had said you pay for Apple products because they work and you get what you pay for, I would consider that reasonable. But all you prove in your comment is that you're some form of retarded Microsoft-bot, and that's a shame, because that bitch is finally on the way out and innovation is finally back on the way in, and it always sucks to be the last to realize that.
Next, we'll deal with the spectre of Apple evil -- even us who love their products.
The writer Tao Lin wrote a novel called "Richard Yates" which features Hailey Joel Osment as a main character. What gives, family of J.R.R.?
I still wonder why Google hasn't moved their Checkout product to be more like PayPal, enable P2P payments and so forth. They're really missing out on a lot of revenue from people who are fed up with PayPal.
Why do they have a problem with allowing PayPal access to their checking account? I'm pretty sure it's probably that they're just doing such volume that PayPal wants some sort of security in case of disputes and what not. I do a lot of volume with PayPal and my account was on hold for awhile until I got my account verified, and later my address. If they're moving that much money, they should probably go to a merchant account solution. They'd get a better rate anyways.
Obviously Bing is the freedom-loving choice, right Glenn?
I just finished transcribing a series of interviews with British Muslim women on this very subject. One was college educated, a doctor; she sees it as an equalizer, the veil and the covering. When women go out, she says, they are judged not on their appearance but solely on their intellect etc. This is why she sees it as liberation. This particular interviewee also happened to be vehemently opposed to the hijab, forced or otherwise, because, she said, there was no directive from Allah to wear such. Hers was the only opinion I really paid a whole lot of attention to; the other seven, I would say, were more like what you're saying -- brainwashed and militantly so.
It's Facebook, not a public building.
I'm with you, man, I'm more on the Sarkozy side of things -- even if the women see it as liberation, our culture does not, and so we should do everything we can to impede it and assimilate them to our, not superior, but more objectively just ways of doing things.
I guess my reasoning is this: it relates to the internet, and the internet was once the territory strictly of nerds, so I think that's why slashdot feels okay publishing just about anything web-related.